Urban Ecologies Conference in Toronto
Posted: May 31, 2013 Filed under: Design Research, Genius of Place | Tags: adaptive capacity, biomimicry research, conference in toronto, design research, homeostasis and resilience, surfaces of the city, urban ecology 1 Comment
June has totally snuck up on me, so sincere apologies for not sharing this sooner, but there is an excellent Urban Ecologies conference in Toronto this summer at OCAD University from June 20 – 21st.
In the topic of Regenerating Cities, I will be doing a presentation with Bruce Hinds and Ian Clarke, and running a workshop with Bruce Hinds and Jamie Miller. Key topics being explored are homeostasis and resilience as goals for the built environment, with the workshop focusing on the skin of the city. I’ve included the proposals below, and while there may be some changes, especially considering the presentation and workshops are far to brief to cover everything we hoped, I think it gives you a heads up into the research we have been doing.
All research was supported by Autodesk who supported Bruce and I and our students to really experiment with ideas around the built environment. I’ll be sharing more in the future, so stay tuned.
Let me know if you have any questions – hope to see some of you in Toronto – or maybe there are opportunities to play with some of these ideas elsewhere in the world? Let me know!
Workshop Proposal (Accepted):
Skin Deep – Adaptive Capacity, Surfaces and the City
Design in the Age of Biology
Posted: March 31, 2013 Filed under: Beauty of Design, Biomimicry Methodology | Tags: 3D printed house, design and biology, design research, hugh dubberly, malleable design, the age of biology Leave a commentI have been re-reading a superb paper by Hugh Dubberly about the future of design as we (which I mean in the grandest sense) move into an age of biology. Every time I read it through something new sticks out at me. The paper is an excellent review of a whole range of different ideas of change, transition and sometimes tension.
Throughout the paper there are a series of tables summarizing these ideas. This one below is a personal favourite:
Source: Hugh Dubberly – Principles of Organization
What stands out to me are the discussions about control, the shifting relationships and the “stopping condition”. Biology suggests a concept of good enough – optimizing over time – which is outside of the scope for human design when the solution being generated is fixed. I’m personally fascinated by what this implies for ideas being more “malleable”, which is easy to understand when it comes to software and coding, but a little more abstract when it comes to tangible design. But what if architecture begins to become organic?
Source: Dezeen – by Gilles Retsin of Softkill Design
Bouncing Ideas 
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