The LNCS series reports state-of-the-art results in computer science research, development, and education, at a high level and in both printed and electronic form. Enjoying tight cooperation with the R&D community, with numerous individuals, as well as with prestigious organizations and societies, LNCS has grown into the most comprehensive computer science research forum available. The scope of LNCS, including its subseries LNAI and LNBI, spans the whole range of computer science and information technology including interdisciplinary topics in a variety of application fields.

The book investigates the subject of urban ecology from the perspective of architectural design, engaging its definition at multiple levels, the biological, the informational and the social. The book has two main goals - to discuss the contemporary relevance of a systemic practice to architectural design, and to share a toolbox of informational design protocols developed to describe the city as a territory of self-organization, a new kind of emergent "real-time world-city". Structured in the form of a manual, the authors draw on nearly a decade of design experiments from their ecoLogicStudio practice.

This is a manual investigating the subject of urban ecology and systemic development from the perspective of architectural design. It sets out to explore two main goals: to discuss the contemporary relevance of a systemic practice to architectural design, and to share a toolbox of informational design protocols developed to describe the city as a territory of self-organization. Collecting together nearly a decade of design experiments by the authors and their practice, ecoLogicStudio, the book discusses key disciplinary definitions such as ecologic urbanism, algorithmic architecture, bottom-up or tactical design, behavioural space and the boundary of the natural and the artificial realms within the city and architecture. A new kind of "real-time world-city" is illustrated in the form of an operational design manual for the assemblage of proto-architectures, the incubation of proto-gardens and the coding of proto-interfaces. These prototypes of machinic architecture materialize as synthetic hybrids embedded with biological life (proto-gardens), computational power, behavioural responsiveness (cyber-gardens), spatial articulation (coMachines and fibrous structures), remote sensing (FUNclouds), and communication capabilities (Ecological Footprint Grotto). Supporting the authors’ own essays and projects are contributions from key innovators in contemporary architecture and urban design: Michael Batty, Andrew Hudson-Smith, Michael Weinstock and Patrik Schumacher.

Form-finding in Architecture looks at processes in nature to discover a more correct way in which to organize building. It is a study into the capability of discovering optimum form, dynamic adaptability, and exposes a set of unique relationships not relevant to Architecture previously. The beauty of these objects does not have to be designed. It is an emergent property of natural form. However, the wonder lies not in aesthetics, but in the manner in which natural forms come into being seemingly without a plan, at a multitude of scales, and in a vast array of materials. Alone, pattern in nature opens a vast array of potentialities for the study into new methods of architectural design. It is important to note that this inquiry will not be into the aesthetics of self-organized pattern, but the mathematical and procedural processes of formation itself. This study forms a set of principles, methodologies and tools for structuring a full-scale form-finding inquiry through the self-organization of pattern in nature. Following this inquiry one should be able to apply the organizational principles of patterning in nature, specifically breakdown patterns, to inform the programmatic design and layout of shopping malls. The rules set forth outline the formation of breakdown patterns, and the ordering of shopping malls. Through the use of parametric modeling software and computer programming language, sets of digital models efficiently explore of the vast number of potential pattern organizations by mimicking their formation in digital space. Through computational scripting, digital models also reveal formation changes due to the adaptation to site, circulatory loads, and spatial distribution, while still maintaining the laws of pattern formation.

This book contains the refereed post-conference proceedings of the First International Self-Organizing Architectures Workshop (SOAR) in Cambridge, UK, in September 2009. The book includes 9 revised papers, which were selected from 17 submissions of the workshop, as well as 4 invited papers. The papers cover a broad range of topics related to self-organizing architectures, including self adaptive architectures, decentralized architectures, nature-inspired approaches, and learning approaches.

Self-organisation, self-regulation, self-repair, and self-maintenance are promising conceptual approaches to deal with the ever increasing complexity of distributed interacting software and information handling systems. Self-organising applications are able to dynamically change their functionality and structure without direct user intervention to respond to changes in requirements and the environment. This book comprises revised and extended papers presented at the International Workshop on Engineering Self-Organising Applications, ESOA 2004, held in New York, NY, USA in July 2004 at AAMAS as well as invited papers from leading researchers. The papers are organized in topical sections on state of the art, synthesis and design methods, self-assembly and robots, stigmergy and related topics, and industrial applications.

In response to increasingly complex sets of design criteria faced within architectural practice, this investigation sets out to interrogate the prevalently passive role of the model within contemporary architectural design discourse. Through the adoption of the algorithm as a primary design tool, it posits the model as an active site of programmable collective intelligence - one that is able to inform its own development internally. This model is in essence a synthetic self-organizing system producing architectural order that emerges from an embedded ecology of simple distributed decision-making routines defined by the architect. For obvious reasons, such an approach has significant implications on the role of the architect within the design process. Complex design problems are no longer solved directly by this singular high-level decision-maker. Rather, they are approached indirectly through the programming and deployment of many low-level decision-making entities acting in parallel. This is the same decentralized approach nature takes in producing its various architectures which can only be admired for their sophistication. To the architect, it presents a new, largely uncharted, domain of design solutions - one that was previously inaccessible through traditional top-down design methodologies. In order to traverse this territory with intent, however, the architect must be fluent with the non-linearity of self-organization - where the nature of the whole is not necessarily evident in the nature of the part. Without a sense of what types of local rules give rise to what types of global order how can these generative agencies be critically programmed? Based on this line inquiry, the following aims to build the necessary intuitions of emergent phenomena by examining goal-oriented mechanisms of self-organization in natural systems. From here, construction can begin on this new autonomous model of architecture.