Aleatory architectures

We discuss new approaches and concepts at the intersection of granular materials research and architecture/structural engineering that are based on stochastic (re-) configuration of individual structural elements. These approaches, which we term aleatory architectures, suggest that building materials and components can have their own 'agency'-that they can be designed to adapt and to find their own responses to structural or spatial contexts. Here we introduce some of the key ideas and ask: Can there be design by disorder? What are the possibilities of material agency? Can we develop a vocabulary of concepts to interpret various orderings of chance? Several papers in this Topical Collection then investigate these questions in more detail from a range of different scientific and architectural perspectives.