Sea Unsea - Lamella Flock

Multi-agent systems have been attracting increasing interest over the past few years. In architecture and many other disciplines these systems are beginning to play an important role in engaging with complex phenomena. But whereas in other disciplines they have been used primarily as a mode of simulation, within architecture multi-agent systems are emerging as a strategy for generative design. We are witnessing, it would seem, a radical methodological development in architecture.
This book is an attempt to chart this emerging phenomenon and to set it within a broader cultural context. It brings together some of the leading authorities from a range of disciplines – biology, swarm robotics, engineering, sociology, art, architecture, philosophy and cultural studies – to expose the interdisciplinary background out of which these ideas have emerged, and to provide a point of comparison between their impact on architecture and on other disciplines. The book includes a series of ambitious design projects to illustrate the potential of these processes for architecture. In so doing it seeks to provide a critical framework for an experimental movement in architectural design at a crucial moment in its development.