The Emergent Technologies and Design programme continues to evolve through the development of our research in studio, the seminar coursework and the dissertations. We aim to produce new research each year, building from our interests and expertise in material organisation and the design and development of systems in a variety of scales. This continuation of work is focused on the interdisciplinary effects of emergence, biomimetics and evolutionary computation of design and production technologies, as well as developing these as creative inputs to new architectural and urban design processes.

Building on the achievements of our past studies, we will include greater involvement from experts in the fields of component systems and material computation, urban physics and algorithmic urban design, engineering, advanced computation and computationally driven fabrication. We will continue our Masterclass series for the third year, along with lectures, tutorials and workshops from Wolf Mangelsdorf (Buro Happold), Fabian Scheurer (Design to Production), Achim Menges (ICD Stuttgart), Cristina Díaz Moreno and Efren Garcia Grinda (AMID/Cero 9), Neri Oxman (MIT), Joan Busquets (Harvard GSD) and Jan Carmeliet (Urban Physics, ETHZ).

The programme is focused on the concepts and convergent interdisciplinary effects of emergence on design and production technologies, and on developing these as creative inputs to new architectural design processes. The instruments of analysis and design in Emergent Technologies are computational processes. The seminar courses and core studio are designed to familiarise students with these instruments, their associated conceptual fields and with their application to architectural design research. The courses are extensively cross-linked, thematically and instrumentally, with each other and the core studio. In Core Studio 1 the focus is on the exploration of material systems and their development into differentiated surfaces and assemblies. These assemblies demonstrate the potential for integrated structural and environmental performance producing local ‘microclimatic’ variations that define spatial arrangement. In Core Studio 2 we investigate a larger and more complex piece of the city – examining urban systems and generating new material, social and ecological organisations.

Core Studio 1 – Material Systems

Evolutionary strategies and computational techniques are used to develop the architectural qualities of different material systems. Physical models will explore the integration of material behaviour and fabrication processes. The studio is supported by weekly sessions on associative modelling in Grasshopper/ Rhino, workshops on scripting in VB and in Grasshopper, sessions on geometry and iterative processes, and L-Systems to model and control growth processes. The studio concludes with fully fabricated and digitally modelled, doubly-curved material systems that exhibit integrated structural and environmental properties.

Core Studio 2 – City Systems

Terms 1 & 2
The Core Studio 2 project extends the system logics to a larger and more complex piece of the city. The microclimatic, typological; and social organisations of a defined urban tissue are studied and the interactions between them across the hierarchical levels analogous to cell, tissue and organ are analysed. A generative set of rules at the scale of the neighbourhood is developed and initiated. The studio concludes with the design of a new urban tissue and its systems and the detailed design of one ‘cell’ within it that is fully fabricated and digitally modelled.

Emergence Seminar Course

Terms 1 & 2
Emergence has been an important concept in biology, mathematics, artificial intelligence, information theory and computer science, newer domains of climatic modelling and other complex systems analysis and simulations. A survey is presented of the mathematics of evolution and embryological development, the data structures and processes of the genome and population dynamics and pressures. Applications to architectural design are explored in The Generative Design Experiments. The experiment concludes with the detailed modelling and analysis of the set of forms, surfaces and structures evolved.

Biomimetics Seminar Course

Term 1
An introduction to the ways in which organisms have evolved their form, materials and structures in response to varied functions and environments is followed by an account of engineering design principles that have been abstracted from nature in current research projects for industry and material science. A study of a natural system (general form, anatomy, energy flows and behaviour) is carried out, the interrelations explored and the engineering principles abstracted. (Analysis continues into Term 2.)

Master Classes

Including (tbc): Cristina Díaz Moreno and Efrén García (Grinda, AMID/ Cero9); Neri Oxman (MIT Media Lab); Alan Dempsey (NEX); Hugh Whitehead (Specialist Modelling Group, Foster and Partners); Achim Menges (Institute for Computational Design, Stuttgart); Fabian Scheurer (designtoproduction); Wolf Mangelsdorf (Buro Happold) Joan Busquets (Harvard GSD) Systems of Organisation Design Workshop Cristina Díaz Moreno and Efrén García Grinda (AMID/Cero 9).

Urban Physics and Climatology

A series of lectures given by Jan Carmeliet (Chair of Urban Physics at ETH), and Janet Barlow (Reader in Urban Meteorology at Reading University.

Design Research Studio and the Thesis / Dissertation

Three main fields of design research are offered – Active Material Systems with Advanced Fabrication, Natural Ecological Systems Design (currently focused on shorelines and deltas), and Urban Metabolic Design (currently focused on algorithmic design for energetic models of new cities in emergent biomes). Students may choose one of the three fields and will work in pairs. The Design Research Studio facilitates the development of a deeper understanding of emergence and its application to advanced production in architecture, urbanism and ecological engineering, while integrating theoretical discourses, science and the insights gained from experiments. The studio work allow students to develop the ability to analyse complex issues and to engage in independent research. The Design Research Studio concludes with the presentation of the fully developed thesis/dissertation proposal.

All taught graduate degrees at the AA are validated by the Open University.

Emtech Programme Tutors

Suryansh Chandra is a research architect at Zaha Hadid Architects where he developed parametric design systems at the architectural and urban scale that explore new paradigms of the design process. His specialised teaching includes associative modelling in Rhino with Grasshopper and scripting in VB.net.

Mehran Gharleghi received his BA degree from Tehran University of Science and Technology, and Master of Architecture from the Emergent Technologies and Design Programme at the AA. His Dissertation has won awards including the AA Fab Research Cluster Symposium 2009 and International Prize for Sustainable Architecture 2010. He has lectured and exhibited work internationally, collaborated with architects in Iran, and has worked for Plasma Studio and Foster and Partners in London. Mehran is director of Studio Integrate.

Studio Master

Evan Greenberg is co-director of GMG Collective http://gmgcollective.com/ , a design collaborative operating at the confluence of computational design processes and techniques of craft. In both research and practice, he focuses on the application of computational fluid dynamics, biomimetics, fabrication processes, and the behaviour of responsive material systems at the architectural scale. Evan gained his Master of Science with Distinction in Emergent Technologies and Design from the AA School of Architecture in 2008, and has taught in the Emtech programme since completion. He has lectured and taught internationally and has been Director of the AA San Francisco Visiting School (Biodynamic Structures http://sanfrancisco.aaschool.ac.uk/ ) since 2009.

Visiting Professors

Achim Menges
Wolf Mangelsdorf

Directors

Michael Weinstock is an architect. Born in Germany, lived as a child in the Far East and then West Africa, attended an English public school. Ran away to sea at age 17 after reading Conrad. Years at sea in traditional sailing ships, with shipyard and shipbuilding experience. Studied architecture at the AA and has taught at the AA School of Architecture since 1989. Founder of Emergent Technologies Masters programme. His research interest lies in exploring the convergence of biomimetic engineering, architecture, emergence and material sciences. He received the Acadia Award for Excellence 2008. He has published The Architecture of Emergence, and Emergent Technologies and Design – Towards a Biological Paradigm for Architecture, and has been visiting professor at Rome, Barcelona and Yale.

George Jeronimidis is the director of the Centre for Biomimetics in the School of Construction Management and Engineering. He is an active member of the Smart Materials and Structures Committee of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IoM3). He has published extensively in these fields with articles in scientific journals, book and conference contributions, including keynote lectures. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Colloid and Interface Research in Golm, Germany and on the editorial board of the International Journal of Virtual and Physical Prototyping.