A design domain can be thought of as coherently related ecologies of knowledge, materials, techniques, actions and circumstances from which advanced architecture is instanced. Informatics, glocal relations, contemporary modes of production, sensibilities and activities become constituent of the incipient domain from which architecture emerges.

Technique is a key term in the structuring of a design domain, as it allows instances of a particular domain to become manifest. Techniques may be analogue processes or digital methods. An interest in digital methods recognises architecture itself as an operative complex of physical and informational relationships. RMIT Architecture academics aligned with the Advanced Technologies stream worksclosely with researchers in the RMIT Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory, who are investigating digital techniques of design development and collaborative networked practices.

Emerging from the design domain, architectural instantiations come to be in various ways. An expanded notion of composition is developed to account for the qualities of open forms rather than closed designs, emphasising the resonant intensities of processural forces over formal aesthetics.