Stanislav Roudavski

Towards Morphogenesis in Architecture

Procedural, parametric and generative computer-supported techniques in combination with mass customization and automated fabrication enable holistic manipulation in silico and the subsequent production of increasingly complex architectural arrangements. By automating parts of the design process, computers make it easier to develop designs through versioning and gradual adjustment. In recent architectural discourse, these approaches to designing have been described as morphogenesis. This paper invites further reflection on the possible meanings of this imported concept in the field of architectural designing. It contributes by comparing computational modelling of morphogenesis in plant science with techniques in architectural designing. Deriving examples from case-studies, the paper suggests potentials for collaboration and opportunities for bi-directional knowledge transfers.

Selective Jamming: Digital Architectural Design in Foundation Courses:

This article considers how the concepts and practice of digital architectural design can influence early architectural education. The article approaches this topic through one example, the Virtual Environments course – a constituent of the Bachelor of Environments program at the University of Melbourne. The institutional remit of this course is to introduce first-year students to the roles of design representation. However, recently, the course developed to encompass these pragmatic educational aims and began to question canonical attitudes towards architectural education and practice. At the core of this course are the notions, methods and skills of digital architectural design, understood not as a stylistic option or as a novel paradigm, but as a catalyst for creativity, experimentation, critical thinking and the sustained growth of creative communities.

Narrative expressive space

Drama and Narrative Narrative is fundamental to the way humans understand, remember, describe or imagine the world in literature in literature and in film [4][5][20][8][3]. Drama is an important engine for narrative [30][11]. Broadly speaking, drama results from the friction generated between the goals and actions of the constituents of a dynamic system instantiating emotional relationships. These relationships are usually based on the development of characters [29][17]. Such relationships, even when they are to do with inter-character conflicts, are located in specific places. This means that they are interlinked with and depend upon the spatial definition and functionality of the objective or subjective fictional representations of the world where they occur and through which they are presented.

Field creativity and post-anthropocentrism

Can matter, things, nonhuman organisms, technologies, tools and machines, biota or institutions be seen as creative? How does such creativity reposition the visionary activities of humans? This article is an elaboration of such questions as well as an attempt at a partial response. It was written as an editorial for the special issue of the Digital Creativity journal that interrogates the conception of Post-Anthropocentric Creativity. However, the text below is a rather unconventional editorial. It does not attempt to provide an overview of the issue’s theme but, instead, samples it via a particular example. The idea of the issue was to think about post-anthropocentricism by considering (1) agents, recipients and processes of creativity alongside with its (2) purpose, value, ethics and politics. This article addresses the first subtheme by puzzling at the paradoxes of “field learning” and picks at the second by considering the texture of “automated beauty”. Both of these parts use chess for an example. The narrative on chess is intermitted by a section “on creativity” that attempts to contextualize the case-based discussion in the wider context and to consider motivations and implications.

Post-anthropocentric creativity

As described in the call for submissions, this special issue aimed to audit existing conceptions of creativity in the light of non-anthropocentric interpretations of agency, autonomy, subjectivity, social practices and technologies. A review and update of these conceptions is prudent in an age when human creativity is credited as the dominant, yet hugely destructive, influence on the planetary environment. The conceptual componentry of creativity is in redesign on many shop floors, including those of new materialism (Barrett and Bolt 2013; Coole and Frost 2010), speculative realism and object-oriented philosophy (Bryant, Srnicek, and Harman 2011), posthumanism (Callus and Herbrechter 2012), ontological designing (Fry 2012), biology (Turner 2000), science and technology studies (Knorr-Cetina 1999), multispecies ethnography (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010), deep ecology (Sessions 1995), post-environmentalism (Shellenberger and Nordhaus 2011) and ecosystem approaches (Waltner-Toews, Kay, and Lister 2008), to name but a few. In response, the editors proposed two lines of enquiry, aiming to engage and connect the relevant work that already exists in a variety of disciplines: The first line of enquiry considered the agents, recipients and processes of creativity. With current developments emphasising the interdependence between human and biophysical systems, nonhuman entities can be seen as creative agents. How do such agents differ from the recipients of their creativity? Posthumanism questioned understandings of humanity but largely continued the focus on human invention, human freedom and human selfconstruction through technology. Can matter, things, nonhuman organisms, technologies, tools and machines, biota or institutions be seen as creative? Turning from agents to relationships and processes; are the concepts of embodied or autonomous agency necessary for thinking about creativity? How can existing notions of creativity be extended or challenged through the developing understandings of complexity, emergence, supervenience, evolution and ecosystems? With the notion of creative agency made more inclusive, the second line of enquiry would consider the purpose, value, ethics and politics of creativity. The concept of creativity implies production of desirable novelty. But is production of novelty always of value? In a finite world, the creation of the new often comes with the destruction of the old. Should creativity be judged by the equity of its goals

Mobile Gaming for Agonistic Design

This paper demonstrates how mobile games can contribute to participatory design and its aim of achieving positive change through the involvement of stakeholders. This overarching goal is considered via a particular case-study that utilizes a purpose-built smartphone game. The case-study applies this game to the design challenges of urban cycling. Utilisation of the game in a stakeholder workshop suggests that mobile play can aid understanding and help to establish communication amongst diverse participants. For further information and media, see https://osf.io/vy5dq/

Activist systems: Futuring with living models

This article considers how computational simulation can be used to amplify imagination and make its effects sharable, persuasive and activist. It argues that this is not only possible but important for the future of design and introduces the concept of living models as a device that can express the futuring potential of such simulations. Developing this argument, the article explores whether, by postponing top-down rationalisms in favour of a ‘methodological naiveté’, designers can gain the capacity to uncover and engage with the unusual participants of the complex dynamic assemblages they aim to change. When designers collaborate with the agencies of the living models they deploy, the outcomes prove useful for the exploration of alternative values and worldviews. Explorations of this kind are significant because human designs need to improve their integrations with existing complex systems and are innovative in their ambition to see creative agency in non-human actors. In a practical demonstration of such approaches, the experiments in generative computation presented in this article illustrate that design creativity occurs through humans but not entirely because of them.

Evocative research in art history and beyond: imagining possible pasts in the Ways to Heaven project

This article discusses a particular project that attempted to make art-historical research evocative as well as analytical by employing rich, interactive multi-media. This reliance on evocative material extended techniques practised by television drama-documentaries and considered their legitimacy and potential within academic art history.

Context Design and Cinematic Mediation in Cuthbert Hall Virtual Environment

This poster briefly describes the motivations behind the architectural decisions taken in the design of Cuthbert Hall virtual college and gives an example that demonstrates how cinematic mediation techniques can contribute towards dramatized interpretation of the environment.