Morphogenetic Prototyping

Morphogenetic Prototyping

Morphogenetic Prototyping was the original name for the method we use here to define our Agile Prototypes. In future iterations of the course, it will just be called Morphogenetic Prototyping.

We divide the building into meta-disciplinary elements. These are then organised in Gene Systems. Morphogenetic Prototyping enables us to then go forwards and backwards in the pseudo developmental stages of the agile prototypes. Thereby enabling the designer to jump forwards and backwards in ‘design time’.

Why call it Morphogenetic, and why change the name now?

” Morphogenesis which is derived from the Greek, morphê (form) and genesis(creation). In developmental biology morphogenesis describes how a single cell organism can self-organise and grow into a complex multicellular organism that is capable of a variety of functions. “

McGinley (2015).

Wouldn’t it be cool if we could control this process and apply it in the design, construction and operation of buildings?

” There are examples of applying morphogenetic principles from biology in both architecture and engineering. These include morphogenetic engineering (Doursat, Sayama, and Michel 2012) and digital morphogenesis (Leach 2009; Kolarevic 2009). Many of these studies do not explore the potential of the morphogenetic growth process. Previous approaches to employ morphogenetic approaches in buildings have tended to draw on general concepts of evolutionary development as an analogy to design based on computational processes and geometrical systems, however these models are not specific representations of morphogenetic (biological) processes. For instance Lynn (1994) proposes an embryological house. Lynn advocates the importance of animation in the design process and the existence of forces or actions and force fields on the form and that these should be expressed in the design. However, despite a biological reference to the two poles of the house, the embryogenetic metaphor is not explored from a developmental biology perspective. An alternative approach is proposed by Beal et al. (2011) who use the developmental stages to describe the morphogenetic development of a robot. Lynn’s concept could be expanded for architecture to include an explanation of the phenotype (the resulting organism) as a result of the ‘interaction of its genotype with its environment’ as discussed by Roudavski (2009). “

McGinley (2015).

Morphogenetic Prototyping

Morphogenetic prototyping provides a method for designers to manipulate a design over a series of pseudo ‘developmental’ stages as if it had grown biologically. Designers can then manipulate the development by carving the design. Carving alludes a surfer defining a path in the water with their board. It requires an alternative design metaphor to the antiquated drawing board metaphor used in traditional digital design systems.

McGinley, et. al. (2018)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308466538_Carving_Morphogenetic_Prototypes_with_a_Katana

Morphogenetic Protoyping Lab

In 2016 I co-founded the Morphogenetic Protootyping Lab with colleagues at UNISA in Australia. Whilst in Denmark I have been working on how these ideas fit into contemporary design and engineering systems. This Agile Prototyping Course is the result of these experiments. In future iterations we will change the name of the course to Morphogenetic Prototyping.

Glossary of terms

  • Body Plan: An anatomical pattern.
  • Dorsal and Ventral: The back and front of an organism respectively.
  • Fate Map: A diagram that expresses the embryonic origin of tissues and their path to theirposition in the body plan.
  • HOX genes: A set of genes responsible for regulation of anatomical development
  • In-vivo: Commonly tissue that is developed on or in an existing organism.
  • Model Organism: Extensively studied organism, i.e. Drosophila melanogaster
  • Morphogens: A substance governing patterning in tissue development.
  • Morphogenetic Architecture: A holistic approach to architecture that informs the development of all the buildings spatial, material, informational, structural, experiential,service and intelligence systems.
  • Neural Crest: A group of cells that develop the neural tube of the organism.

References

  • Kolarevic, Branko. 2009. “Digital Morphogenesis in Computational Architectures.”Architectural Design 79 (1) (January 16): 32–37. doi:10.1002/ad.806.http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/ad.806.
  • Leach, Neil. 2009. “Digital Morphogenesis.” Architectural Design.
  • Roudavski, Stanislav. 2009. “Towards Morphogenesis in Architecture.” InternationalJournal of Architectural Computing 07 (03): 345–374.
  • Beal, Jacob, Jessica Lowell, Annan Mozeika, and Kyle Usbeck. 2011. “Using Morphogenetic Models to Develop Spatial Structures.” 2011 Fifth IEEE Conferenceon Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems Workshops (October): 85–90.doi:10.1109/SASOW.2011.17.http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/lpdocs/epic03/wrapper.htm?arnumber=6114579.
  • Doursat, Rene, Hiroki Sayama, and Olivier Michel. 2012. “Morphogenetic Engineering :Reconciling Self-Organization and Architecture.” In Morphogenetic Engineering,Understand, 1–20. Springer-Verlag.
  • Lynn, Gregg. 1994. “Embrological House.” Architectural Design.
  • McGinley, T. (2015), A Morphogenetic Architecture for Intelligent Buildings Intelligent Buildings International, (7) 1, DOI: 10.1080/17508975.2014.970120
  • McGinley, T., Hoshi, K., Haddy, S., Zavoleas, Y., Tan, L., Blaiklock, D., Gruber, P. (2018) A Katana Design Experience. In book: SimTect/ISAGA. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Publisher: Springer

Thesis