“The context and long term goal of the project is to develop design environments in which the computer becomes an active and creative partner in the design process. To try to set-up a system that would enhance the design process by suggesting possibilities, has been preferred to an approach that emphasises optimisation and problem-solving.”
morphogenesis – “the process of development of a system’s form or structure” e.g. embryological growth, biological evolution
Ontogenesis – “the study of the development of organisms”
Epigensis – “the mode Ontogenesis operates”
“this work explores the possibilities of using a model based in bone accretion to develop structural systems”
” It is not answers the computer should provide, but questions about the problematic of the design. It is in this context of ‘problem-worrying’ (as opposed to problem solving) that the work has been carried.”
pg 1
“discussion in developmental biology on the precedence of Ontogenesis or inheritance in the generation and development of form. A Philogenetic, inheritance based, approach to morphogenesis can account for the great diversity of biological life, but âFortuitous variationâ and selection can not alone acknowledge for all the variation and difference in the world of forms [2].”
“Plants offer many other examples of the capability of reacting and adapting to the conditions of their environment through changes in their form: from mechanisms as photo-tropism (the tendency of plants to steer their body towards the sun) or the hill-climbing-like behaviour of their roots in search of water”
“Artificial models of Ontogenetic adaptation also offer the possibility of studying the emergent aspects of form, pattern and structure, and a chance for examining their complex relations with function and meaning”
pg 2
“‘Philogenetic‘ evolutionary models are constituted by a population of individuals, and what evolves are the characteristics of those individuals. An Ontogenetic model is also made of a population of individuals, but in this case what evolves is the way those individuals are organised. What evolves is the overall structure, a concept that shares many similarities with that one of ‘Gestalt’.”
“Chreod refers to the stabilised or buffered pathway of change that the nature of a system directs it in, and Homeorhesis refers to the stabilisation of a course of change. Homeorhesis can be defined therefore as the co-ordinated changes of body tissues to support a physiological state.[4]”
pg 3
“Gestalt theory emphasises the qualities of the assembly or form of complex objects (a melody, a faceâŚ). … The concept of Gestaltis essential in trying to develop a generative approach to form, since it is opposed to mechanistic explanations in which form is just the sum of its parts.”
take on “best form”. self imposed, simple, regula, symmetry, continuity. e.g. “the Gestalt soap bubbles: maximum volume for minimum surface”
pg 4
Gaudi hung chains to optimize the structure of compression based domes. Otto used soap bubbles to define a minimum energy tensile roof form.
pg 5
“In this respect, S. Kauffman has explained a similar process in relation to co-evolutionary self-constructing communities of agents. The individual points in our system bear many parallelisms with the agents described by Kauffman. Instead of an epigenetic landscape of the whole assembly we have in his explanation individual âfitness landscapesâ for each agent. In his model the adaptive moves of one agent deform the fitness landscapes of its partners. Endogenous co-evolutionary processes allow agents, each adapting itâs own selfish âfitnessâ to tune their couplings and fitness landscapes, so the entire system achieves a specific self-organised critical state.[9]
pg 9
Source: http://armyofclerks.net/SelfDesign/SDGA2001.pdf