Algorithms can already produce remarkable architecture of incredible detail at the higher ends of the market; might robotic craftsmen soon add a touch of uniqueness to stock standard buildings? 

One architect exploring this idea is Michael Hansmeyer, who is currently a visiting professor at Southeast University in Nanjing, China. He sees architecture as being at an inflection point whereby the maturation of computation and fabrication technologies means that we're entering an era where the formerly impossible is now doable and the unimaginable is taking form.

Complexity is no longer an impediment but rather an opportunity, he writes on his website. And we see this embodied in his work, which is full of fine lines and curves and intricate patterns and shapes that look almost alien.

Most famous among his projects is Digital Grotesque, a 2013 collaboration he did with fellow computational architect Benjamin Dillenburger. To make their design, the pair wrote a program that uses a subdivision algorithm to divide the surface of each column into four smaller surfaces, each slightly different in texture (though not randomly so), and then divide those surfaces on and on to ever-smaller surfaces. In the process, the form of the structure morphed into something elaborate and alien yet also clearly rooted in geometry.