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Emergent Technologies and Design
Michael Weinstock, George Jeronimidis, Christina Doumpioti, Toni Kotnik, Evan Greenberg, Suryansh Chandra

In 2011 the Emergent Technologies and Design programme evolved through the development of our research in studio and course dissertations. This continuation of work focused on the interdisciplinary effects of emergence, biomimetics and evolutionary computation of design and production technologies in addition to developing these as creative inputs to new architectural and urban design processes.

In Core Studio 1 the focus was 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 investigated a larger and more complex piece of the city – examining urban systems and generating new material, social and ecological organisations. 

Three main fields of design research are offered:
1. Active Material Systems with Advanced Fabrication
2. Natural Ecological Systems Design emphasises the interface between blighted industrial landscapes and urban inhabitation
3. Urban Metabolic Design focuses on algorithmic design for energetic and hydrological models of innovative morphologies for cities 

Visiting tutors delivered a series of workshops and lectures for the programme, which this year include:
Systems of Organisation Design Workshop – directed by Cristina Díaz Moreno and Efrén García Grinda (AMID/Cero 9). 

Urban Physics and Climatology – a series of lectures given by Jan Carmeliet, Chair of Urban Physics at ETH, and Janet Barlow, Reader in Urban Meteorology at Reading University. 

This year the master classes included: Cristina Díaz Moreno and Efrén García Grinda, AMID/Cero9; Albert Williamson-Taylor, Partner of AKT; Alan Dempsey, Director of NEX; Hugh Whitehead, Specialist Modelling Group, Partner at Foster and Partners; Professor Achim Menges, Director of the Institute for Computational Design, Stuttgart; Professor Fabian Scheurer, Partner ‘designtoproduction’; Wolf Mangelsdorf, Director and Partner Buro Happold; Mark Goulthorpe, Decoi and MIT.