Architecture &

Unconventional
Computing
Conference_
/// Organized by
Rachel Armstrong, Martin Hanczyc and Neil Spiller

_08.30 –18.00 Friday 26 February 2010

_The Building Centre 26 Store Street London WC1E 7BT

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 TIMETABLE

08.30 – 09.00 Registration

09.00 – 09.05 Neil Spiller Introduction

09.05 – 09.30 Neil Spiller Communicating Vessels
09.30 – 10.00 Rachel Armstrong Architecture & Unconventional Computing
10.00 – 10.30 Martin Hanczyc Protocells as Architectural Agents
10.30 – 11.15 Lisa Iwamoto Iwamoto Scott Architecture
11.15 – 12.00 Ben de Lacy Costello Chemical Computing
12.00 – 12.45 Philip Beesley Hylozoic Ground

12.45 – 13.30 LUNCH

13.30 – 14.15 Simon Park Material Computation and Architectural Possibilities in Simple Organisms
14.15 – 15.00 Paul Preissner Man’s Best Friend
15.00 – 15.45 Lee Cronin Inorganic Evolution and Life
15.45 – 16.30 Evan Douglis Evan Douglis Studio
16.30 – 17.00 Nic Clear Film on the ethics of unconventional computing & protocell architecture (Synthetic Space)
17.00 – 17.45 Chair, Nic Clear Panel Discussion
17.45 – 18.00 Neil Spiller Thanks

18.00 CLOSE

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 The Architecture and Unconventional Computing conference
brings innovative architects together with scientists
working with new technologies that are capable of self-
assembly and higher-order organization.
These advanced technologies form the basis of a new, realizable vision of architecture
underpinned by a new class of materials whose properties are familiar to the world
of synthetic biology, namely programmability and self-organization. These materials
are generated through a novel ‘bottom-up’ approach to both synthetic biology and the
construction of materials. The outcome is the production of buildings that are connected
to their environments in which they are able to make decisions and respond to them
without an obligate digital intermediary. These architectures therefore possess some of
the properties exhibited by living systems but are not truly ‘alive’ and can be regarded
as a form of unconventional computing, which is the science & technology of materials
with intrinsic properties that are suitable for solving particular kinds of problems.
Unconventional computing systems differ from digital ones in that they possess mass and
therefore operate within a finite timeframe, require physical inputs to generate material
outputs. These systems can be robust, but also can behave unpredictably and therefore
have the capacity to solve unpredictable situations (Armstrong, 2001).

We will explore the possible synergies between the broad disciplines of synthetic
biology and architecture through the lens of unconventional computing. A new vision
of architecture is emerging that requires the reconsideration of materials in the built
environment. How are materials manufactured, how are they maintained, and what
properties (perhaps not yet realized) are desired? Of particular interest is the integration

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 of structure into both the built and natural environments with an intention towards
sustainability. Research programs that bridge both synthetic biology and architecture may
produce the next generation of materials needed to produce a sustainable system. We
would like to begin to design this integrative interface between the built structure and the
environment.

The conference & workshop follow a series of novel events, publications and research
created through an exploratory collaboration between Neil Spiller and Rachel Armstrong
at UCL and Martin Hanczyc at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. Our initial
work has been featured in Wired, London Times, Architects’ Journal and MIT’s Artificial
Life Journal to name just a few publications. Our research has also attracted considerable
interest and publicity having been featured as a keynote at the UK government’s
Department of Science conference on Futures and Climate Change in September 2009 and
also has the backing of the University College London’s Grand Challenges research team.

Ultimately, we aim to encourage new, mutually beneficial, interdisciplinary research

teams that can develop the technology of unconventional computing through a bottom-up
approach to synthetic biology, discover its architectural applications and to generate a truly
international architectural vision of architecture in the 21 century.

/// Rachel Armstrong, Martin Hanczyc and Neil Spiller

Reference:
Armstrong, R (2009), Living Buildings: plectic systems architecture, Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, Volume 7 Number 2, Intellect, p 86

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 A manifesto
for protocell
architecture:
against
biological
formalism
_Rachel Armstrong
_Martin Hanczyc
_Neil Spiller

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 1. We want to change the world with almost nothing. It is possible to generate complex
materials and architectures through 
harnessing the fundamental energetics of matter. In other words,
doing 
more with less.

2. What we call protocell architecture is, at root, a piece of Dadaist and 
Surrealist
research, in which all the lofty questions have become 
involved. The novel self-assembling
material systems that arise from protocell 
architectural practice make no reference to, nor attempt to
mimic 
bio-logic. As such, protocell architecture is an alien to the natural 
world, yet speaks the same
fundamental languages of chemistry and physics. 
The results of these conversations and interactions
constitute a parallel 
biology and second biogenesis whose aesthetics are described by Surrealist 
agendas.

3. Architecture is dead, long live architecture. Protocells constitute a disruptive technology

for architectural practice 
since they are capable of reaching a transition point when evolution 
emerges
within the system, the outcome of which is unpredictable and 
therefore offer novel and surprising ways of
constructing architecture 
that will succeed and replace conventional technologies.

4. Protocell architecture swallows contrast and all contradictions 
including the

grotesquery and illogicality of life. Protocell technology is at the beginning of an evolutionary
pathway that 
is connected to and dependent on the environmental conditions around it. 
The
responsiveness of protocells to stimuli, means they can be regarded as 
computing units. Consequently,
protocells do not seek to generate 
idealized architectural forms but reflect and interpret the full
spectrum 
of the processes they encounter in the real world.

5. What is generally termed life is really a frothy nothing that merely 
connects.
Protocell technology offers an opportunity for architects to engage with 
the evolutionary process itself.
Unlike natural biological systems that 
evolve randomly according to Darwinian evolution, protocell
technology 
allows deliberate and specific interventions throughout the entire course 
of its coming into
being. By moving and metabolizing, protocells may form 
the basis for a synthetic surface ecology. These
interventions are the 
basis of what we call protocell architecture.

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 6. We do not wish to imitate nature, we do not wish to reproduce nature, 
we want to
produce architecture in the way a plant produces its fruit. We do not want to depict, we want
to produce directly, not indirectly, since 
there is no trace of abstraction. We call it Protocell Architecture.
Protocell Architecture embodies the principles of emergence, bottom-up 
construction techniques and
self-assembly. It is equipped with design 
‘handles’ that enable the architect to persuade rather than
dominate the 
outcome of the system through physical communication. As such, these 
systems are
unknowable, surprising and anarchic.

7. We want to collage effective organic machinery that composes itself 
according to

the drivers of biological design. Protocell Architecture is chemically programmable and operates in
keeping 
with the organizing principles of physics and chemistry.

8. We want over and over again, movement and connection; we see peace only 
in
dynamism. Protocell Architecture gathers its energy from the tension that resides at 
an interface
between two media such as oil and water, which causes 
movement, disruption and change. Protocell
Architecture resists the 
equilibrium since this constitutes death.

9. The head is round, so thoughts can revolve. The head of architecture is 
green, robust,
synthesized and exists everywhere simultaneously, whether 
it is large or very, very small.
Protocell Architecture is fashioned from ‘low tech biotech’ characterised 
by ubiquitous, durable and
affordable materials.

10. We wish to blur the firm boundaries, which self-certain people 
delineate
around all we can achieve. Protocell Technology becomes a co-author in the production of
architecture 
through the possession of living properties and its ability to 
self-assemble.

11. We tell you the tricks of today are the truths of tomorrow. Protocell Architecture
is better adapted to the prevailing physical and 
social conditions since it is founded on a new set of

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 technologies that 
are not ‘alive’ but which possess some of the properties of living 
systems. As such
these technologies are qualitatively different to the 
industrial and digital technologies that have become
the mainstream tools 
of the twentieth century.

12. We will work with things that we do not want to design, things that 
already
have systematic existence. Protocell Technology has the capacity to transform and modify
existing 
building materials and architecture with the potential for surprise.

13. You know as much as we do that architecture is nothing more than 
rhythms and
connections. Protocell Architecture embodies the complexity of materials in a literal, 
rather than
metaphorical manner and becomes a physical part of our 
existence.

14. We will construct exquisite corpses not dead but alive and useful. Protocell
Architecture is central to the understanding of living systems. 
It allows us to work with and enhance the
unavoidable inconsistency which 
is the essence of life itself.

15. We deal in a second aesthetic, one that initiates beginnings and 
moulds with
natural forces. Protocell Architecture is connected to the environment through constant 
conversation
and energy exchange with the natural world in a series of 
chemical interactions called ‘metabolism’. This
involves the conversion of 
one group of substances into another, either by absorbing or releasing energy -
doing more with less.

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 Andy
Adamatzky
Andy Adamatzky is Professor in Unconventional Computing,
University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. His research
interests include novel and emerging computing paradigms
and architectures, cellular-automata theory and applications,
and collective artificial intelligence. He authored Identification
of Cellular Automata (Taylor & Francis, 1994), Computing in
Nonlinear Media and Automata Collectives (IoP Publishing, 2001),
Dynamics of Crowd-Minds (World Scientific, 2005), Reaction-
Diffusion Computers (Elsevier, 2005), His new book Physarum
Machines is coming out late 2010.
_Voronoi diagram built in hot ice computer

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 From Reaction-Diffusion to
Physarum Computing
A reaction-diffusion computing is a massively parallel computation based on interaction between
propagating patterns in spatially extended non-linear chemical media. The reaction-diffusion computing
is realized in experiments with excitable and precipitating chemical processors. Data are represented
by spatial configuration of local disturbances of medium’s characteristics. Information is transferred by
propagating patterns. Computation is implemented by interaction of the traveling waves and localizations.
A stationary or dissipative structure of the medium’s states is result of the computation. We overview
recent findings in the field of reaction-diffusion computing, outline perspectives of further developments
in the field, and focus of deficiencies of reaction-diffusion computing. We demonstrate that some spatial
problems can be solved in chemical reaction-diffusion computers but are solvable in Physarum (slime
mould) machines. Physarum machine is an implementation of storage modification machine in foraging
behaviour of plasmodium of acellular slime mold Physarum polycephalum. We provide comparative
analysis on how various problems of computational geometry, optimization, logic and robotics are solved in
reaction-diffusion computers and Physarum machines.

References
Adamatzky A., De Lacy Costello B., Asai T. Reaction-Diffusion Computers (Eslevier, 2005).
Adamatzky A. Physarum Machines (World Scientific, 2010).

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 Rachel
Armstrong
Dr Rachel Armstrong is an interdisciplinary practitioner
with a background in medicine who has collaborated
extensively with artists, scientists and architects to
create a new experimental space to explore scientific
concepts and re-engage with the fundamental
creativity of science. She regards the discipline of
architecture as holding a unique place in the cultural
imagination being simultaneously iconic and personal,
and which offers an ideal forum to engage with and
reimagine our experience of the world so that we
can reinvent our role within it. She is a Senior TED
Fellow, Teaching Fellow at the Bartlett and member
of Professor Neil Spiller’s AVATAR Research Group.
Her research investigates a new approach to building
materials called ‘Living Architecture’ that suggests
it is possible for our buildings to share some of the
properties of living systems.
_Artificial cells (Traube Cells)

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 Unconventional Computing and
Architecture
New technologies that work with the fundamental energetic, chemistry and physics of materials have the
potential to generate truly sustainable architectures that are integrated with the natural world and not
separate from it. They also offer the potential to change the way that buildings are constructed and more
importantly, address the current negative relationship between making a building and its impact on the
environment by becoming part of complete, complex ecological systems.

The new materials proposed in this conference do not yet exist for use in architectural practice but we
are collaboratively making them with international architects and scientists. Our research draws from
advances in scientific laboratories that investigate self-organization and self-assembly (Armstrong,
online). Inspiration is derived from a cross disciplinary range of scientific fields including synthetic biology,
complexity chemistry and unconventional computing where experts have been invited to share their

_ Rachel Armstrong proposes a solution to save Venice from sinking by using

protocell as an architectural material in TED TEDGlobal 2009, July 2009, Oxford, UK

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 research findings and discuss them with architectural
practitioners. The notion of an unconventional approach
to computing underpins the performance of these new
materials in that they are embedded in and responsive to
their environment without the need for mediation using
external information systems such as, conventional digital
computing, yet they possess design handles through
which they can be engineered and manipulated to serve
useful functions. Examples of these technologies include
protocells (chemically programmable agents based on the
chemistry of oil and water), slime mould (primitive robust
organisms), bacteria and various forms of complexity
chemistry.

The ability to sense and respond to the environment

in a direct and unmediated way is a characteristic that
is anticipated to be shared by these new technologies
and uniquely enables them to act as ‘computers’, or
autonomous decision makers, which can deal with
unpredictability, as in the case of climate change, to which
they can robustly respond and perhaps can ultimately
become capable of evolution.

References:
Armstrong, R., (online, 2010) Architecture that repairs itself, www.ted.com/talks/
rachel_armstrong_architecture_that_repairs_itself.html (accessed January 2010)

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 _Membrane of Traube Cell

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 Philip Beesley
Philip Beesley practices architecture in parallel with digital media art. He
is the principal of the interdisciplinary Toronto design firm PBAI and a
professor in the School of Architecture, University of Waterloo. Beesley is
widely published and exhibited. In the last three decades Beesley’s work
includes numerous public buildings, sculpture and landscape installations,
exhibition and stage design. Beesley’s experimental projects have
increasingly worked with immersive digitally fabricated lightweight ‘textile’
structures. The most recent generations of his work pursue environments
that ‘care’, incorporating interactive kinetic systems that use dense arrays
of microprocessors and sensors as well as living biological matter. Projects
this past year have included major installations in Madrid, Linz, Enschede,
Brussels, New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Copenhagen. His work
has also appeared in Barcelona, Beijing, Tokyo and Taipei and has been
featured in WIRED and MARK magazine and numerous journals including the
covers of LEONARDO and ARTIFICIAL LIFE. Distinctions for his work are many
and include the Prix de Rome in Architecture (Canada), 1st prize at Spain’s
VIDA 11.0, a Far Eastern International Digital Architectural Design Award
(FEIDAD), and two Dora Mavor Moore Awards. Philip Beesley was educated
in visual art at Queen’s University, in technology at Humber College, and in
architecture at the University of Toronto.

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 _Traube Cells that are being grown as scaffolding

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 Hylozoic Ground
Philip Beesley presents a series of recent field-
oriented installations with a post-humanist
context. Using a series of illustrated projects
Beesley suggests new interactive paradigms
drawing from the specific behaviours and
interactive affects of these installations.
These pursue the qualities of sentiment and
empathy that are commonly associated with
nineteenth-century aesthetics. Examples
include, the recent 2009 Sargasso Field
installation, produced in collaboration with
CITA, AVATAR and the FLinT group in the UK and
Denmark which includes an overhead cloud-
like layer composed of many hundreds of light
mylar pores, controlled by proximity sensors
and arrays of microprocessors. The sculpture
acts in the tradition of the marginalized mid-
century American medical doctor Wilhelm
Reich, who said “all plasmatic matter perceives,
with or without sensory nerves. The amoeba
has no sensory or motor nerves, and still it
perceives. … The terror of the total convulsion,
of involuntary movement and spontaneous
excitation is joined to the splitting up of organs
and organ sensations. This terror is the real
stumbling block...”

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 The structure breathes and shivers in response to occupants. It also responds to signals received from
a ground-oriented layer positioned on the ground below. This lower layer is an automated geotextile, a
lightweight sculptural field housing arrays of organic batteries housed within a lattice system that might
reinforce new growth. By sending signals in the form of weak light pulses and whisker motions upward,
the lower structure signals a need for nourishment. The upper layer responds with breathing motions
organized as billowing waves that send humidified air and stray organic downward, to circulate through
the geotextile. The system suspended overhead includes a flexible kinetic meshwork that is powered by
‘air muscle’ mechanisms chained together and controlled by microprocessors. This meshwork is densely
populated by bamboo whiskers fitted with mylar pores that filter and stir humidified air. These filters
work much like the baleen of a whale, sweeping gently through the air and collecting increments of
organic matter. The collected material is loosened by periodic shivering waves and releases it for gravity-
fed deposition into the lower matrix. The lower layer structure works as an ‘earth surface machine’ that
burrows slowly into the ground and sends out extremely light space-filling lattice material as a growth-
supporting matrix. The system employs a dense series of very thin whiskers and vibrating burrowing leg
mechanisms, and supports low-power miniature lights, pulsing and shifting in slight increments. Within
this distributed matrix, microbial growth is fostered by enriched seed-patches housed within nest-like
forms sheltered beneath main lattice units. Within the geotextile, repeating clusters of bladders stand
within the field of bent bamboo tripods. The cell wiring is arranged in series, feeding into miniature
electronic circuits that gather the weak currents and emit pulses of power when sufficient strength
accumulates. Three main component types including main filter-packs, supporting whisker-anchor units,
and bladder cells are arranged in a tripod field with clusters of specialized units making a repeating
hexagonal array. Weak electrical charges are generated by copper and aluminum electrodes immersed
in vinegar within latex bladders within these units. The continuous support-skeleton is composed of
minimal-mass bamboo compression struts arranged as a primitive space-truss, tied in digitally fabricated
triangular joints and stabilized by a web of thread and cable tension members. The life of this hybrid
organic system erodes during the exhibition.

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 Nic Clear
Currently Nic is Director Diploma/
MArch in Architecture and MArch
(Architectural Design) AVATAR History
and Theory Coordinator at the Bartlett
and ran his own company Clear Space
for many years before setting up the
now defunct General Lighting and
Power which generated a wide range of
creative media including pop promos,
architecture, advertising campaigns and
art installations. Nic has abandoned the
‘corporate architectural complex’ and
now divides his time between teaching,
writing fiction, performing, drawing and
making his films.

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 Synthetic Space
Nic has been using film, animation and motion graphics
for over ten years as a way of developing and exploring
new architectural modes of representation and practice.
Encouraging a variety of techniques from stop frame
animation to sophisticated c.g.i. The works produced by
his students demonstrates a unique sensibility to content
and form and suggests a whole new series of possibilities
for architectural production that may be described as the
architecture of Synthetic Space. This is a hybrid space that
is a site of explorations and propositions in its own right,
uniting formal architectonic concerns with spatial and
temporal practices that exist between the actual & virtual, as
well as the analogue & digital. Synthetic Space is speculative
and unconstrained by cost, patronage or function. It is
architecture of the possible. Synthetic Space inhabits
the realm of architecture of interconnected networks to
liminally and directly inform traditional methods of practice
and with the convergence of the Nano-Bio-Info-Congo
(NBIC) technologies. Synthetic Space becomes a strategy for
transgression and the production of dynamic architectures.

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 Lee Cronin
Lee Cronin graduated with a first class honours degree in Chemistry in 1994 and
his DPhil. In 1997, both from the University of York. After postdoctoral research
at Edinburgh University and as an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow in
Germany, he returned to the UK as a lecturer at the University of Birmingham in
2000. In 2002 he moved to take up a Lectureship in Glasgow and was promoted
to Reader in 2005, Professor in 2006, and was appointed to the Gardiner Chair
of Chemistry in April 2009 and at 36 years old he is the youngest chair holder at
the University of Glasgow. He holds both an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship
and a Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award, and is a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s National Academy of Science and Letters. He
runs a group of around 30 people, has around £6 M in research income, and
his research interests range from the mainstream e.g. inorganic molecules,
energy applications, nanoelectronics to trying to engineering ‘inorganic-life’,
understanding self assembly at the nanoscale, as well as investigating the
design / emergence of complex self organising chemical systems. His ultimate
research aim is nothing less than the development of inorganic biology and
evolution perhaps even leading to intelligent systems. To date he has published
over 160 papers and given over 100 lectures around the world, and one of his
papers describing the non equilibrium self assembly of a gigantic nanostructure
was highlighted on the front cover of Science in January 2010.

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 Inorganic Evolution
and Life
Recent breakthroughs in chemistry have allowed a
fundamental change in the way chemists both perceive and
investigate the chemical world. This is due to the process
of molecular recognition (the way molecules recognise
each other), which is fundamental to the biological world
and has also been found to be vital in the chemical world.
‘Self-assembly’, where well defined building blocks can
be assembled to complex and often highly symmetrical
architectures without ‘external’ intervention, has been
possible through the manipulation of recognition and
kinetic elements of molecular recognition systems.
Although the concepts underpinning the traditional art
of making molecules are extremely powerful, the ability
to produce highly functional molecular systems using
a ‘designed’ approach is still far from reach. We are
interested in using the principles of molecular recognition
and self assembly under non-equilibrium conditions such
that entropy (disorder) is being ‘pumped’ through the
system - i.e. the system is dissipative. The idea is to
allow the ‘emergence’ of new molecular organizations that
may not be stable under equilibrium conditions and to
utilize such systems to create highly complex functional
architectures (c.f. the architectures present in a living
cell). In this respect there appears to be a fundamental

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 gap in our understanding of emergent systems on the
chemical level since although we all know what a cell
looks like, understanding the cooperative dynamics that
allows whole cell processes to function is still a mystery.
Also, the process of self assembly and organization of the
components required for the emergence of life as we know
it today is also far from being understood. In our current
work we hypothesise that modelling (in chemical space
and in silico) cooperative self assembly of dissipative
systems is the fundamental key to development of non
equilibrium structures that have well defined functions
and information processing potential, and we are also
employing approaches for the experimental simulation
of the assembly of artificial chemical cells (CHELLS) as
well as a theoretical framework based upon a ‘Turing’
test for artificial life (Cronin et al, 2006). Finally, in very
recent work, we have shown the development of inorganic
molecular systems (Miras et al., 2010), appears to be able
to form minimal self replicators, as well as a library of
information carrying structures, metabolic pathways, and
even inorganic membranes and cells. It is even possible
to devise a situation whereby, using such components,
inorganic evolution, could allow the emergence of new
living systems in thousands of hours rather than billions
of years, and work is currently underway in our laboratory
working towards this fantastic discovery.
Reference:
Cronin, L., Krasnogor, N., Davis, B.G (2006), The imitation game—a computational
chemical approach to recognizing life’, Nature Biotech., 24, 1203-1205.
Miras, H. N., Cooper, G. J. T., Long, D.L., Bögge, H., Müller, A., Streb, C., Cronin, L (2010)
‘Unveiling the Transient Template in the Self Assembly of a Molecular Oxide Nano-
Wheel’, Science, 327, 72-74.

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 Ben de Lacy
Costello
Dr Ben de Lacy Costello completed a PhD in synthesising
new composite materials for gas sensors. He first worked in
the area of “unconventional computing” about a decade ago
as a researcher on a project to produce excitable chemical
controllers for robots. Since then he has split his research
between making medical devices to diagnose disease based
on patterns of volatiles and “unconventional computing”
utilising chemical reactions. He is one of the authors of the
book Reaction-Diffusion Computers (Elsevier 2005) and the
author of over 50 papers many in the area of unconventional
computing. These are in two main areas - the use of the light
sensitive BZ reaction to implement collision based gates
and also the study of simple inorganic reactions (similar to
Liesegang systems), which produce tessellations of the plane
and extended pattern formation (precipitate waves, spirals
etc.) at different concentration ranges.

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 _Chemical tessellation formed when drops of three metal salts
are reacted on a potassium ferricyanide gel (reaction complete)

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 Chemical Computing
We use the light sensitive Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) as a model system
for exploring ideas of collision based computing. Rather than project
differential light fields we simply project a uniform field onto the reaction
which maintains the reaction in a sub-excitable state. In this state excitation
waves maintain a fragment like architecture and can undergo a number of
collisions with other fragments which can be interpreted as computation
(collision based gates). We have also used the BZ reaction in this format
alongside evolutionary computing architectures in order to implement logic
gates etc. At certain concentration ranges a number of simple reactions
between metal salts and gels impreganted with potassium ferrocyanide/
ferricyanide can produce tessellations of the plane - “generalised Voronoi
diagrams”. These reactions become unstable when reagent concentrations
are altered – eventually they produce extended pattern formation in the form
of 2D precipitate waves. Eventually they become unstable as the solution
penetrates the gel layer leading to 3-D trigger waves. In some reactions where
metal salts are impreganted in the gel and sodium hydroxide is used as the
outer electrolyte then these 3-D trigger waves form double spiral waves. In
the aluminium chloride/sodium hydroxide reaction these spiral precipitate
waves can be seen to grow and interact in real time. In these systems if the
concentration of reagents is adjusted below a certain threshold then circular
trigger waves and double spiral waves can be initiated at controlled locations
by adding a heterogenity to the gel surface. The thrust of our research is
controlling chemical parameters in order to implement computation – this
amounts to controlling pattern formation in these systems. A major aim is
therefore, a fundamental study of the mechanisms of these little understood/
studied inorganic systems beyond traditional computational ideas.

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 Evan Douglis
Evan Douglis is the principal of Evan Douglis Studio; an internationally renowned
architecture and interdisciplinary design firm committed to the practice of
digital alchemy.

The firm’s unique cutting edge research into computer-aided digital design and
fabrication technology as applied to a range of diverse gallery installations,
commercial projects, and prefabricated modular building components has
elicited international acclaim. Douglis was recently appointed the new Dean
of the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Prior to this
appointment he was the Undergraduate Chair at the School of Architecture
at Pratt Institute between 2003-9, an Associate Assistant Professor and the
Director of the Architecture Galleries at Columbia University, and a Visiting
Instructor at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union.
He has taught at various programs including; The International University at
Cataluyna, Barcelona, Spain, Hubei Fine Arts Institute in Wuhan, China, SCI-Arc
Southern California Institute of Architecture, and The Central Academy of Fine
Arts in Beijing, China. In 2008 he was awarded a Distinguished Professorship
from The City College of New York. Recognized for his innovative approach to
design Douglis’ awards include: a NYFA fellowship, a Design Vanguard profile
by Architectural Record, an I.D. Magazine Honorable Mention, a FEIDAD Design

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 Merit Award, a finalist nomination for the North American James Beard
Foundation Restaurant Design Awards, a selected fellow in the EKWC European
Ceramic Work Centre’s Brick Project Residency Program and an ACADIA Award
for Emerging Digital Practice. His work has been exhibited at the SAM Swiss
Architecture Museum, ARCHILAB in Orléans, France, the MOCA Museum at
the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, Artist Space in New York and the
Rotterdam and London Biennales. His Helioscope project is in the permanent
architecture collection at the FRAC Centre in Orleans, France.
His work has been included in the publications: Sign as Surface, INDEX
Architecture, The State of Architecture at the Beginning of the 21st
Century, the ARCHILAB Exhibition Catalog: Naked City, and the Phaidon
publication titled 10 x10_2, Distinguishing Digital Architecture, the SAM
catalog Re-Sampling Ornament, the AD issues; Protoarchitecture: Analogue
and Digital Hybrids and Programming Cultures: Design,
Science and Software, FURNISH: Furniture and Interior
Design for the 21st Century, Architecture Now 5 by
Taschen Publishers and
Digital Architecture
Now: a Global
Survey of Emerging
Talent. His recent
book Autogenic
Structures published
by Taylor & Francis was
released in 2008. Douglis
received his BArch from The
Cooper Union and his MArch
from the GSD at Harvard
University.

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 _Helioscope

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 Evan Douglis
Studio
Evan Douglis has elicited international
acclaim at the cutting edge of a diverse range
of projects that explore the architectural
applications of self-generative systems,
membrane technology, contemporary
fabricational techniques and multi-media
installations. The emphasis of this multi-
task research and design lab is aimed at
synthesizing a broad-based ecology of
theoretical and pragmatic concerns, en route
to discovering new paradigms of haptic
interaction in the beginning of the new
millennium. His preoccupations with these
systems include their aesthetic concerns and
foibles as well as their method of working
which is collaborative, thinly corporately
structured and technologically experimental.
The Evan Douglis Studio’s aesthetic is one
of sleek yet organic forms that have the
well tended shine of fetish outfits. This wet
look surface often undulates with sensuous
ripples that are individually unique and
skillfully composed with smooth, striking,
fecund surfaces.

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 Martin Hanczyc
Associate Professor, Institute of Physics and Chemistry and the Center for
Fundamental Living Technology (FLinT), University of Southern Denmark.

Martin Hanczyc is Associate Professor at the Institute of Physics and Chemistry

and the center for Fundamental Living Technology (FLinT) in Denmark. He is also
a Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University
College London. He is developing novel synthetic chemical systems based on
the properties of living systems. These synthetic systems are often termed
‘protocells’ as they are model systems of primitive living cells and chemical
examples of ‘artificial’ life. Particularly of interest is the development of
dynamic and responsive materials of simplistic composition. He has previously
also held the position of Laboratory Director at The European Center for Living
Technology in Venice, Italy and Chief Chemist at ProtoLife Srl in Venice, Italy. He
received a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Pennsylvania State University, a
doctorate in Genetics from Yale University and was a postdoctorate fellow under
Jack Szostak at Harvard University. Martin is interested in the development of
protocell models into new technologies and their applications in art and design.

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AUC_book.indd 37 2/22/2010 7:41:03 PM
 Protocells and
architecture
We have been developing and investigating simple chemical models of
natural living cells (protocells). The protocells are constructed using a
so-called bottom up approach: a small set of molecules self-organize
into protocellular structures. Some such structures may possess
properties that are characteristic of living systems. Using this approach
we have been able to construct a very simple protocell (consisting of
only 5 different chemicals) that exhibits self-propulsion (Hanczyc et
a, 2007). The protocell’s movement can be self-directed, but also it
is also able to respond to external chemical signals, which results in
chemotaxis (i.e. directional movement towards a chemical signal in the
environment). We are currently analyzing how such a life-like self-
propulsion system emerges in simple chemical systems. Protocells can
be programmed to a certain extent. With regard specifically to motion
we have been able to create protocells that follow gradients of acidity
(pH), molecular concentrations (food), as well as protocells that move
into or away from light. By demonstrating a programmable response to
such fundamental chemical signals, a diverse chemical language may be
developed that can be used to direct not only single protocell behavior but

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 group behavior as well. The ability of the protocell to make decisions whilst navigating through a complex
environment is speculative. The behavior of the agent would depend upon both the internal state of the
agent and the environmental state. Over time the protocells may change the internal state, position
through movement, and the environmental state through their metabolic action. This can lead to the
development of a chemistry-based, multi-agent reconfigurable platform, to be explored as unconventional
computation. Furthermore, these ‘smart’ protocell agents can be used as experimental model systems for
the investigation of abstracted living processes that can be programmed to produce architectural design
outcomes. Protocell architecture aims to bring about a new way of thinking about the built environment
by developing new materials and methodologies, in design and planning, based on the fundamental
properties of matter (Hanczyc and Ikegami, 2009). This is not architecture based on biological formalism
but architectural research from the bottom up and a direct novel application of technologies discovered
through fundamental scientific research. In collaboration with Christian Kerrigan, an explorative narrative
is evolving comprised of a taxonomy that details the diversity of protocells situated in their environments.
In collaboration with Rachel Armstrong, we are developing new substrates and materials tending towards
sustainability, carbon capture and life-like building envelopes. In collaboration with Neil Spiller, we advance
a systems science approach to architectural design that challenges the distinction between artificial and
natural living systems and by implication, the boundary between the built environment and the landscape.

References
Hanczyc MM, Toyota T, Ikegami T, Packard N, Sugawara T. 2007. Fatty Acid Chemistry at the Oil-Water Interface: Self-Propelled Oil Droplets. J Am Chem Soc.
129(30):9386-91.
Hanczyc M and Ikegami T. 2009. Protocells as smart agents for architectural design. Technoetic Arts Journal,Vol. 7.2

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 Lisa Iwamoto
Lisa Iwamoto is partner of IwamotoScott Architecture, a San Francisco based
practice formed in partnership with Craig Scott in 2000. She received her
Master of Architecture degree with Distinction from Harvard University where
she was recipient of the Faculty Design Award, and a Bachelor of Science degree
in Structural Engineering from the University of Colorado. Iwamoto is Associate
Professor in the Department of Architecture at The University of California,
Berkeley. Her research focuses on digital fabrication and material technologies
for architecture. Her book, Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material
Techniques was published last year by Princeton Architectural Press as part of
their series Architecture Briefs.

IwamotoScott’s work has been published widely nationally and internationally.

Recent projects include: Edgar Street Towers, a speculative building proposal as
part of a revisioning study for Lower Manhattan commissioned by the Downtown
Alliance of New York; Voussoir Cloud, SCIArc Gallery, Los Angeles; ORDOS100;
Hydronet, the winning scheme for City of the Future: San Francisco 2108; REEF,
PS1 Young Architects Program 2007; and Jellyfish House, a theoretical house
design incorporating ambient technologies for the Vitra Design Museum’s
exhibition OPEN HOUSE.

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 IwamotoScott
Architecture
Committed to pursuing architecture as a form of applied
design research, IwamotoScott engages in projects at
multiple scales and in a variety of contexts consisting of
full-scale fabrications, museum installations and exhibitions,
theoretical proposals, competitions and commissioned
design projects. The conceptual themes of our work focuses
on intensifying the experiential and performance based
qualities of architecture by rethinking the very terms of its
production – program, form, space, geometry, structure,
material and fabrication technique – relative to site and
environmental contexts. Our design stems from observing
and heightening specific characteristics of these terms to
instigate architectural innovation. We are interested in
the idea of “adaptation”, a process whereby initial forms
or conditions are adapted to particulars of environment
so as to produce a transformative result. As such, our
work explores how to strategically produce architectural
adaptation by synthesizing conditions of the everyday, where
subtle adaptations of ordinary things are often demanded
by external necessity, alongside exploration into the fluid
potentials of digital and material technologies. Recent
experiments include investigations into structure and
geometry as constraints for exploiting material performance.

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 Paul
Preissner
Paul Preissner established his practice in 2005 to
pursue an unapologetic interest in the capacity of
architecture to develop new formal relationships
with its audience. Prior to founding PAUL PREISSNER
ARCHITECTS LTD, Preissner was a senior designer
at Eisenman Architects in New York, Skidmore,
Owings and Merrill and served as a Project Architect
for Wood-Zapata in Chicago on the renovation of
Soldier Field. He received a Bachelor of Science in
Architecture from the University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign (1996) and Masters in Architecture
from Columbia University (2000). Paul Preissner is
a registered architect in New York and Illinois and
has taught at SCI-Arc, the University of Nebraska,
and the Art Institute of Chicago. He lives and works
in Chicago, where he currently is an Assistant
Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago
School of Architecture.

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AUC_book.indd 43 2/22/2010 7:41:11 PM
AUC_book.indd 44 2/22/2010 7:41:12 PM
 Man’s Best Friend
Architecture (both past and current) can neatly be organized into
a number of ways to understand how things look like; whether
by hiding something (propaganda), pretending to be something
serious (pragmatics), meaning something (symbolism), decorating
something (dress), or doing something (eco-whatnot). The
attention and interests of Paul Preissner Architects pushes
architecture to find new ways to develop relationships with an
audience by believing architecture to be participatory within
culture as a figure in itself; capable of projecting and developing
distinct personalities through curation of its qualities and
formal characteristics. Looking at the fantastic proliferation of
domestic dog breeds that occurred within the last 100 years
(compared to the rather sluggish expansion of breed types in
the preceding 15,000 years), Paul Preissner proposes that the
simultaneous collapse of functional usage for the dog (from
variety of employments) into “pet” is not coincidence, but an
incredible realization in the power of personal relationship with our
environments to motivate and accelerate new necessities in form,
shape, pattern, and habits. The projects that the office has pursued
in the past couple of years has followed this belief in architecture’s
ability to create new audiences beyond its traditional constituents
and direct users. Through top-down curation and sequencing of
events, architecture can ultimately engage beyond the technocratic
institution of building politics and being to practice as social
participant in the community; as a new pet.

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 Simon
Park
Dr Simon Park is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Health
and Medical Sciences at the University of Surrey where
he teaches Bacteriology and Molecular Biology. As an
internationally recognized molecular bacteriologist and
he has published over 60 papers in international refereed
journals, books and other periodicals. His wider activities,
and practice, are driven by the common misconception that
microbiological life is primitive and always detrimental, and
that through collaborations with artists the real nature of _
the microbiological world can be revealed. In this context,
he has been widely involved in many collaborative projects
with artists. Funded collaborations include “Sixty Days of
Goodbye Poems of Ophelia” with artist Jo Wonder (Funded
by The Wellcome Trust and “Exploring the Invisible” with
artist Anne Brodie (Funded by the Wellcome Trust).

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 Material Computation
and Architectural
Possibilities in Simple
Organisms
Microbes have many intrinsic properties, such as problem solving
abilities, cell to cell communication, the ability to form complex
patterns in response to their environment, and a wide palette of
physiological activities, that make them a valuable resource for
unconventional computing and architecture. My work in art and
science explores a number of threads in relationship to this. In
bacteria, many activities, such as bioluminescence and pigment
production, are controlled by cell to cell communication, which
endows them with a form of social intelligence, and I am interested
_ Traces of paths left by glow-in-the-dark in exploring whether this has computational utility. Slime moulds
slime mold (Physarum polycephalum) are able to solve computational problems and, are embedded with
simple intelligence, and I have also exploited this in a number
of works that bridge art and science. Finally, I am interested in
exploiting the properties of bacteria that might have architectural
applications, such as their innate pattern forming ability, their use
in the construction of biomaterials and the provision of low energy
lighting.

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 Neil Spiller
Neil Spiller is Professor of Architecture and Digital Theory and a practising
architect. He is the Graduate Director of Design, Director of the Advanced Virtual
and Technological Architecture Research Group (AVATAR) and Vice Dean at the
Bartlett School of Architecture, University College, London. He is author of the
book ‘Digital Dreams- Architecture and the New Alchemic Technologies’(1998).
He is co-editor of AD ‘Architects in Cyberspace’ (1995), guest-editor of AD
‘Integrating Architecture’ (1996), AD’ Architects in Cyberspace II’ (1998) and
AD ‘Young Blood’ (2001) and formally editor of ‘Building Design Interactive’
magazine. He is co-editor with Peter Cook of ’The Power of Contemporary
Architecture (1999) and the ‘Paradox of Contemporary Architecture’ (2001). His
monograph ‘Maverick Deviations’ was published by Wiley in 2000 and his book
‘Lost Architecture’ about architectural projects of the last two decades of the
twentieth Century was published by Wiley in 2001. He was also one of the ten
international critics featured in the Phaidon book 10x10. He is also the Editor
of ‘Cyberreader’ for Phaidon published in March 2002. Also he has guest-edited
a further edition of AD entitled ‘Reflexive Architecture’ published in May 2002.
His book ‘Visionary Architecture- Blueprints of the Modern Imagination’ was
published by Thames and Hudson in November 2006 and his ‘Digital Architecture
NOW’ a compendium of contemporary digital architectural practice was
published by Thames and Hudson in November 2008. His “Spiller’s Bits” articles
appear in every AD Magazine.

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 He was the 2002 John and Magda McHale Research Fellow at the State University
of New York at Buffalo. For the last ten years has been working on a major
theoretical project entitled “Communicating Vessels” which now consists of
hundreds of drawings and many, many thousands of words. The “Communicating
Vessels” project seeks to create new relationships between architecture,
landscape, space, time, duration and geography. These landscape pieces and
their relationship to one another are highly ‘Pataphysical, their logistics of form
are conditioned by notions of variance, alliance and deviance. Such ideas produce
a very rich formal and Surreal architectural language bursting with potential.
He lectures around the world and his work has been exhibited and published
worldwide.

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 Communicating Vessels:
The ‘Pataphysical Exceptions of
Reflexive Architecture
Since the mid Nineties the impact of virtual technology has rapidly changed the architectural profession.
This change has altered even the most mundane normative practice. Also it has drastically altered the
nature of the architectural avant-garde. Its direction has progressed from the affected nihilism of the
‘deconstructive’ era of the eighties to paradigms of responsiveness. The basic premises of this work is that
objects and events can be made to respond to the specifics of sites, the evolutionary emergent imperative,
users and viewers, manufacturing processes and virtual tectonics.

This notion gives rise to six fundamental paradigms that responsive architecture with any virtual
component must deal with:
1_ Architects must design in the second aesthetic of the algorithm. This is an aesthetics of programmed
possible outcomes or forms and is concerned with the provisions of inputs that are manipulated to produce
varying outputs.
2_ That architects must choreograph space by manipulating the progression and regression of objects
along the Virtuality Continuum. This continuum ranges from the hard real of “out here” to full body
inversion in cyberspace “in there” and the gamut of mixed and augmented realities in between
3_ Natural and machine ecologies form palimsests of possibilities. The new architecture must respond to
the spectacular genius loci of specific sites. Each place is a deep tapestry of space-time vectors
4_ Space and time are not inviolate, they are reversible, collageable and loaded with memory.
5_ Biotechnology, nanotechnology and cyberspace has caused the old adages of architecture to collapse,
‘Form no longer follows function’
6_ Architectural education can never be the same again. When we educate prospective young architects,
we must make them aware of the myriad spaces within and between which architecture can dwell. Spaces

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AUC_book.indd 51 2/22/2010 7:41:14 PM
 whose dimensions unfurl at the click of a digital switch. How do we train the next generation to imagine,
use and create sublimity in these obscure jump cut invigorated spaces? And how will we talk about the
aesthetics of this new architecture?

It my contention that the impact of virtuality and advanced remote sensing devices should lead architects
to reassess Surrealist and ‘Pataphysical concepts of space. There are many similarities between these
modes of creativity and the way an architect might perceive, interact and make connections between
their architecture and the myriad of machinic and natural ecologies that constitute the sites of our
contemporary architecture. I will illustrate these ideas with my design project “Communicating Vessels”
which seeks to create new relationships between architecture, landscape, space, time, duration and
geography. These landscape pieces and their relationship to one another are highly ‘Pataphysical, their
logistics of form are conditioned by notions of variance, alliance and deviance. Such ideas produce a very
rich formal and Surreal architectural language bursting with potential.

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 Thanks_
\\ The Building Centre
\\ Beth Broughton _ Acting Marketing Manager Emma Mortimer _ Membership Secretary, One Alfred Place
\\ Luke Razzell, Weaver Digital
\\ Artistic Direction + Graphic Design by Shïnitö

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 Architecture &
Unconventional
Computing
conference

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