Our built environment is cold and sterile

These forms are not naturally occurring. You will not find them

in nature.

Automation vs. Innovation

• Our computerized tools are automations of that which we used to do on the drafting board

• lines and circles are easy to draw, perform hand calculation on

• there is no underlying structure, if you modify one part the rest does not change to accommodate (e.g. you can’t make a picture of a tree bend)

Existing popular drawing tools

• paint programs– nice filters and effects but requires great skill– managing the complexity required to make

something organic is arduous

• drawing programs– Euclidean geometry

Simple Drawing Program

Hard to Draw Nature

The Language of our Tools is Important

• The language of our design = the language of the product.

• The language of our tools affects the design act.

Would you likely design this with today’s drawing programs?

Yet we are no longer constrained by this. We can derive new

geometries.

Nature is:

• messy, complicated

• detailed

Yet Nature is Structured

Fractals

• Closer to nature because they have structure and detail at different scales.

• But you can’t craft one to look the way you want, so not useful for design.

Genetic algorithms

• Can produce complex structures (more complex than perhaps you would do by hand)

• But they do not prescribe a language to the design. So not necessarily organic.

Our ideal drawing program would:

• be natural

• be expressive

• be deterministic

• manage the complexity for us

(Demo of Splat)

Macroscopic Control with Free Microscopic Variety

Conclusions

• How did we do?– Natural: Yes– Deterministic: Yes– Manages complexity for us: Yes– Fun, surprises

Drawbacks

– limited vocabulary (not as expressive as we would like)

– hard to gain intuition

Synopsis

• You can get a mix of control + variety

• Can create systems sufficiently rich to produce complexity

• Pattern our graphic language, and tools, from nature