‘Emergent’ is defined as that which is produced by
multiple causes, but which cannot be said to be
the sum of their individual effects. It has been an
important concept in biology and mathematics,
in artificial intelligence, information theory and
computer science, and in the newer domains of
weather and climatic studies, the material sciences,
and in particular biomimetic engineering.
Commonplace terms such as ‘self-organising
structures’ and ‘bottom-up systems’ have their
origin in the science of emergence, and are
encountered in fields as disparate as economics
and urbanism.
The seminar course will commence with a survey
of the origins of the science and technologies
associated with emergence traced in Turing’s
work on cryptographic analysis in the Second
World War, his 1952 paper on the mathematics of
biological development, ‘Morphogenesis’, Shannon
and Weaver’s ‘The Mathematical Theory of
Communication’, Weaver’s 1948 paper ‘Science and
Complexity’, Norbert Weiner’s 1949 ‘Cybernetics’
and the work of Selfridge and Minsky at MIT on
Artificial Intelligence. The conceptual structures
and philosophies of Emergence in Evolutionary
Computation and Artificial Life will be reviewed,
and the application to structural and architectural
design explored, focusing on genetic algorithms
for generative design processes.
An examination of the critical and scientific basis
of research of the Emergent Design Software
Group at MIT will be made, focusing specifically on
Genr8, which exploits evolutionary adaptation for
surface generation. Students will be required to
design and run 3d ‘evolutionary’ experiments
within Maya using our modified version of Genr8.
Design and Technology
The course’s aim is to provoke a re-examination of
theories and practices of design from the point of
view of their embedded material implications.
An introduction to the ways
in which organisms have evolved their form,
materials and structures in response to varied
functions and environments will be followed by an
account of the way in which engineering design
principles have been abstracted from nature in
current research projects for industry and material
science.
The investigation into the properties and
behaviour of bamboo, giant lily and palms
conducted last year will be extended this year by
students within the seminar course. An in-depth
study of plant morphology (general form) and
anatomy (structure) will be carried out, and the
interrelations explored, using digital geometric
modelling and digital structural analysis. Exact
geometric models created in Rhino and Maya and
are then converted and imported into the ‘ANSYS’
analysis software.