ETD

Emergent Technologies & Design

The Emergent Technologies and Design programme is focused on the concepts and convergent interdisciplinary effects of emergence on design and production technologies, and on developing these as creative inputs to new architectural and urban design processes. 

The programme continues to evolve through the development of our research in studio, seminar coursework and dissertations. We aim to produce new research each year, building on our interests and expertise in material organisation and the design and development of systems in a variety of scales. This continuation of work is focused on the interdisciplinary effects of emergence, biomimetics and evolutionary computation of design and production technologies. 

The instruments of analysis and design in Emergent Technologies and Design are computational processes. The seminar courses and core studio are designed to familiarise students with these instruments, their associated conceptual fields and with their application to architectural design research. The courses are extensively cross-linked, thematically and instrumentally, 

with each other and the core studio. In Core Studio 1 the focus is on the exploration of material systems and their development into differentiated surfaces and assemblies. These assemblies demonstrate the potential for integrated structural and environmental performance, producing local microclimatic variations that define spatial arrangement. In Core Studio 2 we investigate a larger and more complex piece of the city, examining urban systems and generating new material, social and ecological organisations.