Computational Morphogenesis of City Tissues

The study of cities has been focused most strongly on their morphology and less on the relational qualities of how systems interact to produce a functioning spatial configurations. To understand the complexity associated with cities, it important to understand the behaviour of complex systems in general and how they are designed. The use of biological models in designing complex models at the urban scale addresses this issue by proposing new generative models that integrate systems during the design phase. Bottom-up models derived from biology will be used to ask how principles of biological morphogenesis can establish new organisational models in design and new principles of spatial formation? And how the structuring of information as data-structures (digital genomes) can generate differentiated city morphologies (phenotypes)? By breeding data, digital objects are manifested, differentiated and speciated. Their collection (referred to as tissues) are evolved based on principles of evolutionary development and analysed based on their performance. This process is known as computational morphogenesis and applied at the urban scale.

Ali Farzaneh is a PhD Candidate in Architectural Design, at the Architectural Association in London. He has worked at Coop Himmelb(l)au in Vienna and SOM in Washington DC. He is co-director of the AA Visiting School in Aarhus, Denmark and has taught architectural design at the University of Oklahoma.