Aware of its heavy environmental impact, the construction industry is on the lookout for new tools that provide a closer control of the end performance of buildings, e.g. the energy and volume of materials that they demand and their ability to be repaired or recycled. Still, designers would favor tools that encourage unbiased creativity. So, what should the future design tools of architects and structural designers be like? New directions are currently being explored to answer that fundamental question. This paper gives an account of experimental applications where forces and forms are designed simultaneously, within a process that fully integrates architectural and structural concerns.