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Down to page [NCSA Mosaic users only]
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An exhibition of the work of John Frazer and Diploma Unit 11 of the Architectural Association School of Architecture.
Web edition produced and published by Ellipsis London
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Introduction
Down to page [NCSA Mosaic users only]
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Introduction
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The exhibition
Down to page [NCSA Mosaic users only]
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The exhibition
These web pages are based on an exhibition that was launched at London's Architectural Association in February 1995. They aim to present the culmination of thirty years of research into the potential for an alternative approach to architectural design. The exhibition was backed up by the simultaneous publication of a book describing the theoretical background and philosophy of this work. Both the exhibition and the publication are supported by funding from the Arts Council of Great Britain.
Explanatory and background material included a series of electronic models of interface devices, neural networks and intelligent electronic models. These were supported by more conventional architectural models and drawings of evolved building forms and responsive structural systems.
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Evolutionary architecture
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Evolutionary architecture
The exhibition charts the exploration of fundamental form-generating processes in architecture. It proposes the evolutionary model of nature as the generating process for architectural form, in an attempt to achieve in the built environment the symbiotic behaviour and metabolic balance that are characteristic of the natural environment. The profligate prototyping and awesome creative power of natural evolution are emulated by creating virtual architectural models which respond to changing environments. Successful developments are encouraged and evolved. Architecture is considered as a form of artificial life, subject, like the natural world, to principles of morphogenesis, genetic coding, replication and selection.
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Genetic language
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Genetic language
Architectural concepts are expressed as generative rules so that their evolution and development can be accelerated and tested by the use of computer models. Concepts are described in a genetic language which produces a code script of instructions for form-generation. Computer models are used to simulate the development of prototypical forms which are then evaluated on the basis of their performance in a simulated environment. Very large numbers of evolutionary steps can be generated in a short space of time and the emergent forms are often unexpected.
These techniques have previously been limited to easily quantified engineering problems. Only now is it becoming feasible to apply them to the complex problems associated with our built environment. To achieve this, we have to consider how structural form can be coded for a technique known as a 'genetic algorithm', how ill-defined and conflicting criteria can be described, how these criteria operate for selection, and how the morphological and metabolic processes are adapted for the interaction of built form and its environment. Once these issues are resolved, the computer can be used not as an aid to design in the usual sense, but as an evolutionary accelerator and a generative force.
This genetic technique for design models inner logic, rather than external form, and affords a glimpse of a future architecture as yet evolving only in the imagination of a computer.
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Virtual interaction
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Virtual interaction
Virtual visitors are able to view the current state of the model and receive an explanation of it, or they can participate by providing genetic or environmental information. For real enthusiasts, future plans include making copies of the software available for download. Feedback from remote copies of the software will also affect the source model.
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The Interactivator model
Down to page [NCSA Mosaic users only]
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The Interactivator model
An interactive computer model creates an evolving virtual architecture in response to a changing environment. Successful developments are encouraged by evaluation of environmental fitness and by the response of visitors to the exhibition. The model responds immediately to visitor reaction, and it evolves over the course of the exhibition. Development is recorded on stop frame video and by the production of physical models by direct connection of the computer to numerically controlled modelling equipment. The virtual computer model is thus externalized as physical models, or fossils, recording steps in the evolution of the architectural genetic code.
The model will be connected via the Internet to a series of remote sites, first in England and then internationally. Successful developments of the model will be replicated at other centres where their evolution diverges. Feedback from other exhibition sites, and from any participant connected to the Internet, will also affect the source model.
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Elements of the virtual model
Down to page [NCSA Mosaic users only]
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Elements of the virtual model
The object is to establish a virtual environmental model which will evolve new architectural forms as a result of global interaction via the Internet. The evolution of a complex generative model is controlled by expressing rules in the form of a genetic code script (referred to here as genes). The genes undergo crossover and mutation to develop structural forms for evaluation in a simulated environment and successful genes form a genepool with biodiversity provided by the international nature of the interaction.
The Interactivator pages here at the Ellipsis WWW site explain the project and an animated sequence of the latest state of the model is available for viewing. The front end to this is a computer model of the physical exhibition at the Architectural Association in Bedford Square, London , giving access to the virtual model.
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The Interactivator
Down to page [NCSA Mosaic users only]
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The Interactivator
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An evolutionary architecture, John Frazer
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