A Crosscutting Research Program and Curriculum

Emergent Design:

A Crosscutting Research Program and Curriculum

Integrating Architecture and Artificial Intelligence

Peter Testa (1), Una-May O'Reilly (2), Devyn Weiser (3), Ian Ross (3)

School of Architecture and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1)

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2)

Emergent Design Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (3)

77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, 02139, USA

Email:

ABSTRACT

We describe a design process, Emergent Design, that draws upon techniques and approaches from the disciplines of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence in addition to Architecture. The process focuses on morphology, emphasizing the emergent and adaptive properties of architectural form and complex organizations. Emergent Design explicitly uses software tools that allow the exploration of locally-defined, bottom-up, emergent spatial systems. We describe our Emergent Design software, inspired by concepts from Artificial Life, that is open-source and written in Java. This software is an integral part of a curriculum to teach Emergent Design that has original content and pedagogical aspects.

Introduction

Emergent Design describes an approach to architectural design that is characterized by several fundamental principles:

In order to comprehend the complexity of a contemporary design scenario numerous situational factors of a scenario must be identified and their inter-relationships must be well understood even though they may not be well defined.

An effective solution to a complex design scenario is achieved through a non-linear process of bottom-up experimentation involving independent, related or progressive investigations into architectural form and complex organizations. This interactive process increasingly builds a complex solution which considers the numerous complicated, interdependent relationships of the scenario.

A complex solution derived in such a bottom-up, investigative style is advantageous because it retains explicability and has the flexibility to be revised in any respect appropriate to a change or new understanding of the design scenario.

Computer software is an excellent means of performing bottom-up architectural experimentation because, despite a simple specification, a decentralized, emergent software simulation can yield complex behavior, exploit graphics capability to model organization and pattern, can be written flexibly so that alternatives can be quickly examined.

In the spring of 1999 at MIT’s School of Architecture we developed a new design and computation studio with the goal of introducing graduate students to Emergent Design.

In this paper our intent is to:

Describe the motivation and concepts of Emergent Design.

Supply an account of how Emergent Design can be actualized for design projects.

Outline our curriculum, the software, and initial applications.

The paper starts by further describing the motivation and concepts of Emergent Design.

Essential to our notion of Emergent Design is the integration of effective and powerful software tools from the domain of Artificial Intelligence into the process of exploring spatial relationships through consideration of the architectural program and agency of primitive design components. Thus, the description of Emergent Design is followed by an explanation of the software-related steps of the process. These steps intentionally are looped; that is, the process of using software for creative discovery and exploration is not linear.

To demonstrate and instantiate Emergent Design the remainder of the paper calls upon an account of teaching the Emergent Design curriculum.

We set forth the goals and context of the studio then relate how members of design teams used the Emergent Design software. We present our findings that the concepts of Emergent Design and the design of software tools provide the students with guidance towards informed and innovative designs. In addition the findings bear out the decisions behind the software tools design in terms of choosing to write it in Java, provide flexibility using a general library of classes and methods, and using the world wide web (WWW) as a studio platform. The merits of the software indicate that our goal of making it both a tool in design and a means of learning the important concepts of Emergent Design has been accomplished at an initial level.

The paper concludes with a future work section that explains how we intend to extend and further improve the system. These changes involve adding an evolutionary algorithm component to the search process of the Emergent Design software and involving students in a project where spatial development and form growth takes place in conjunction with environmental factors. The system would additionally benefit from a application programmer interface that would allow simple design and implementation of an application's graphical user interface. We also anticipate the extension beyond our current focus on spatial organization to other software systems that focus on form and structure within a three dimensional shaping environment.

1.0Emergent Design as a DecentralizedProcess

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.

We make no claim that Emergent Design is entirely new. For example, architects have always sought to identify the elements of a problem scenario and understand them syncretically. We think Emergent Design is unique in exploiting and emphasizing the role of software designed for self-organizing spatial simulationsto do this and to explore solutions. Further, Emergent Design emphasizes decentralized thinking and the study of a system of entities that are imbued with agency and that are capable of forming macroscopic levels of organization.

In fact, a way of describing Emergent Design is as a decentralized style of thinking about problems. It is a way of evolving solutions from the bottom-up. It relies on the aid of software simulations for experimentation. Emergent Design is worthwhile because it produces interesting and innovative design outcomes, which would not be arrived at by other methods. In complex problem scenario circumstances Emergent Design will be instrumental in discriminating the issues, relations and consequences of sub-solutions as the scenario is conceptually sorted out and the solution incrementally developed.

Emergent Design emphasizes appraising and understanding individual behavior (where an architectural component is endowed with agency) as being influenced by other individuals in a 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. This algorithmic model of design, recognizes that complex systems do not follow straight lines of historical narration, but are composed of multiple series of parallel processes, simultaneous emergences, discontinuities and bifurcations. (Kwinter, 1998)

Emergent Design differs from traditional design approaches which emphasize things in space as fundamental and time as something that happens to them. In Emergent Design artifacts or designs (e.g. rooms, hallways, buildings) are viewed as secondary to the processes through which they evolve and change in time. In this approach the fundamental things in the environment are the processes. Emergent Design seeks to formulate principles of architecture in this space of processes allowing space and time (architecture) as we know it to emerge only at a secondary level.

1.1Architecture and Artificial Life

Numerous concepts in the field of Artificial Life (ALife) (Langton, 1989; Langton et. al., 1991) are advantageously applicable to an architectural design process that emphasizes system-level and constituent understanding. In ALife every component of a system, including elements of the environment, is conceptualized as being capable of agency. Thus, a component of the system may or may not act. Acting is not necessarily actually undergoing a change of internal or external state. It also encompasses the way in which a component may exert influence on the state of the environment or other components. Agency between components implies that their interactions create a level of dynamics and organization. Organizations that dynamically define themselves on one level can themselves exhibit agency and, thus, a new level of organization can form as a result of the lower level dynamics. Levels are not necessarily hierarchically organized. They may, in fact, be recognizable by a particular perspective from which the entire system is viewed.

The ALife community pursues the study of such systems. They are compelling to study because they have multiple levels of dynamics and organization. Architectural systems are compelling for the same reason. Architectural systems have numerous levels and each level is interdependent with others.

For example, an office building can have a level in which the components are moveable and semi-fixed relative to movement patterns and more stable space defining elements or infrastructures. Different local organizations (work groups) emerge in response to changing organizational structures and projects. Contemporary non-hierarchical work environments when studied closely may be effectively conceptualized as living systems with a myriad of interdependencies between their components and with numerous levels of interdependent organizations.

As shown by the office building example, in general, architectural systems are very complex. One type of complexity encountered is that small, simple, “local” decisions, when coupled with other similar decisions, have large, complex, global effects on the outcome of a design. For example, a choice about locating a work group solely on one floor has ramifications in the choices of circulation allocation, and work equipment placement. These choices, in turn, influence later choices such as material selection or building infrastructure assignment. ALife studies systems in a manner that highlights and elucidates the consequences of locally defined behavior. ALife models are defined in terms of component agency and decentralized component interactions. The running of an ALife system consists of playing out the local interactions and presenting views of the complex global behavior that emerges. Thus, the Emergent Design version of an ALife system is one in which the environment and components are architectural and spatial in nature. The “running of the system” consists of designating components, defining their agency in local terms and then watching the macroscopic outcome of their interaction.

Both ALife and Architecture find it necessary to consider the influence of non-determinism in the outcome of complicated system behavior. ALife simulations can be used by architects to model non-determinism. The systems can be defined so that certain behavior has only a probability of occurring. Then different runs of the system will show the result of such non-determinism. In addition, both ALife and Architecture are very aware of how an outcome is sensitive to details of initial conditions. ALife simulations can be defined with parameterized initial conditions and run with different parameter values for the initial conditions. They allow architects to study the impact of initial conditions.

ALife has a powerful capacity to model spatio-temporal phenomena and to represent these conditions via computer graphics. Visualization conveys actual movement, changes in a modeled environment or, the influence of spatial proximity. For example, a designer may want to investigate the implication of a spatial constraint. How does plan morphology and volumetric form interact with distribution of program requirements, height restrictions, circulation area, and day lighting? Or how will a limited set of forms interact with a given site boundary? ALife simulations facilitate the interactive investigation of many possible spatial outcomes. While ALife models abstract the physical into visualization, the computer is extremely fast and flexible in exploring and modeling a vast design space. These tools can be employed in parallel with more traditional visualization tools or used directly to produce physical models for evaluation via CAD/CAM technology.

In summary, key concepts of ALife have relevance to Architecture. In particular, ALife simulations model:

- agency of components and environment

- emergent levels

- local, simple behaviors giving rise to global, complex organization

- sensitivity to initial conditions

- non-determinism affecting outcome

- abstraction using visualization

We have incorporated an ALife tool designed for architectural investigation into Emergent Design.

1.2Emergent Design Software Process

Note that Emergent Design is a process that, by high-level description, could theoretically be pursued without the convenience of software. However, convenience aside, Artificial Life software is what truly makes Emergent Design powerful. Emergent Design is innovative and advantageous because it incorporates state-of-the-art software technology plus Artificial Life research concepts into a design process. Without the aid of software and the speed of simulations that it facilitates, one would not be able to achieve a fraction of the depth, breadth and richness of emergent designs. The next section of the paper explains the sub-process within Emergent Design in which software is used.

1.3Using Emergent Design Software

Step 1).Define the goals of an investigation concerning how spatial elements may be configured within a bounded area (i.e. site). Specify initial conditions (e.g. initial quantity of elements, size of size, scale, conditions of site). Identify the elements and the relationships among them. State how elements influence each other and under what conditions they interact. Both the site and its elements can exhibit agency. This identification forms a functional description of the simulation.

Step 2).Using the existing set of Java class methods in the toolbox, specialize the tool with software that implements the element and site behavior. Run the simulation from initial conditions and investigate the outcome. Usually a simulation has non-deterministic behavior so outcomes from multiple runs are assessed. Based on the outcome, return to either step 1 or 2 to improve or refine.

The process is practical and not complicated. In the first part, goals and initial conditions are defined. It encourages thinking of elements and site as “active” or imbued with agency. In fact, this style of thinking is very common. The architect says “this is what happens when a comes into contact with b or, when c comes close enough to d or when the corner of any element of class e touches the boundary, when the bounded area is full”, etc. Unfortunately we have noted that our students stop considering agency when they move from thinking to explicitly designing because they can not actualize behavior or manage to ‘play it out’ in complex, non-linear circumstances. We have found that using the software reverses this trend.

The second part is the software programming, and running and evaluating the simulations. Multiple runs can be gathered and analyzed for general properties or one particular run may be scrutinized because it shows something unanticipated or interesting. It is possible to find that the initial conditions are too constraining or, conversely, too unconstrained. Often, in view of the results, the architect revises the initial conditions to try out different relationships and actions. If the outcomes are satisfactory, they are now used to take the next step in the larger process of solution definition.

Overall, the process demands that the architect incrementally refine the software. It may demand that the architect make repeated attempts to capture the dynamics and nature of the scenario. This can be arduous, but it is ultimately rewarding. Architects do not shy away from detailed time-consuming work such as the building of physical models. Software specification and design may be equally time-consuming but it is intellectually challenging and has equally satisfying outcomes. The approach to thinking of design elements and their site as dynamic interacting agents is also provocative and enlivening. Because global outcomes can not be predicted from the initial conditions, there is an element of suspense and eagerness to observe the outcome of the simulation runs. The hypothetical exploration of this process is engaging and, despite simple questions and initial conditions, it yields complicated and interesting results. With Emergent Design, an architect is empowered with a tool to creatively model potential outcomes that are based on complicated, interdependent conditions.

2.0Emergent Design Curriculum

The introduction of computation has begun to fundamentally transform the teaching and practice of architecture. New processes and tools are necessary to interact with the vast amounts of information found in complex spatial and material systems characteristic of contemporary building programs and advanced manufacturing processes. Building adaptive computational models of these dynamical systems requires interactions among the disciplines of Architecture, Computer Science, and Artificial Intelligence. The Emergent Design curriculum is structured to respond to these challenges with a model of design and computation as synergetic processes embedded in and interacting with a dynamic environment. It is intended to also foster a community among students, researchers and faculty in Architecture, Computer Science, and Artificial Intelligence.

We have introduced the Emergent Design curriculum via a graduate level design studio course. The course is project-based and emphasizes hands-on experience, collaborative learning and teamwork. Students work in a wide range of media including computation. Traditionally, computation in design studios has been limited to the use of closed-source software applications for drafting and rendering. Instead, in the Emergent Design curriculum computation is introduced during the conceptualization of projects as a tool for design exploration. Students explore the use of computational tools to develop complex parameterized models of spatial and material systems. They model and simulate such factors as patterns of use, development over time, and environmental factors. The students themselves extend the initially supplied software toolbox. To assist collaboration, the project software is maintained and shared via the World Wide Web. It is our intent that the toolbox will act as a stimulus for the design of new tools that may be tested on architectural projects.