metamorphogenesis001

Emergent Design as a Decentralized Process
Emergent Design brings a synergy of new and existing ideas about design into focus at a time when
Computer Science technology and Artificial Intelligence research can support the objectives of
Architecture. Emergent Design is not entirely new. Architects have always sought to identify the
elements of a problem scenario and understand them syncretically. Emergent Design is unique in
exploiting and emphasizing the role of software designed for self-organizing spatial simulations. It is a
decentralized style of thinking about problems and a way of evolving solutions from the bottom-up.
Emergent Design emphasizes appraising and understanding individual behavior (where an
architectural component is endowed with agency) as being influenced by other individuals in the
system. The system view also incorporates recognition of levels (Resnick, 1994; Wilensky & Resnick,
1998) and the insight derived from understanding how complex, collective, macroscopic phenomena
arise from the simple, local interactions of individuals. Architects continually strive to understand the
complexity of a system. The recognition of levels in the system and the phenomena that give rise to the
formation of levels provide system level insights that are influential towards arriving at an adaptive
design. Examples of such complex adaptive systems can be found in both natural and synthetic
environments. These forms may be urban configurations, or spatial and organizational patterns but all
are evolved through generative probing and grouping in the space of possibilities.