ALIVE: Designing with Aggregate Behaviour in Self-Aware Systems

Contemporary building design is increasingly engaging a practice where sensed or simulated data informs a computational design model. In order to use the iterative power of computation a parameter space is developed, in which a generative model is placed to find an appropriate design solution. Its performance and behaviour is then visualized through either a physical or simulated manifestation. Repeatedly cycling through this process of parameterization/generation/simulation/analysis enables the designer to optimize for selected effects and characteristics of the model. The problem of this approach lies with the execution of feedback. Parametric design tools are practical but they effectively rely on the definition of base infrastructures that operate within a fixed set of boundary conditions. An inherent resistance to change in the modelling environment during the design process emerges as a result. Hence attempts to address the changing state of our environment and to find appropriate design solutions face the fundamental limits of the computational models that underlie contemporary practice. How can the rigidity and overly-deterministic behaviour of our models be overcome and feedback become an integral part of them? Is it possible to collapse this digital design cycle such that morphogenesis and the simulation of material behaviours operate as an interdependent whole? How might this modelling process engage in an iterative dialogue with physical material design and analytical approaches?