Emergence has been an important concept in biology and mathematics, in artificial intelligence, information theory and computer science, and in the newer domains of climatic modelling and other complex systems analysis and simulations. The seminar course commences with a survey of the origins of the science and technologies associated with emergence; the conceptual structures and philosophies of Emergence in Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life are reviewed, and the application to structural and architectural design explored, focusing on algorithms for generative design processes. Students develop their understanding of these concepts by engaging in The Generative Design Experiment that runs 12 successive generations of digital populations. The experiment concludes with the detailed modelling and analysis of the set of forms, surfaces, and structures evolved in the experiment.
