Material and digital design synthesis

The advanced material and morphogenetic digital design techniques and technologies presented in this journal call for a higher level methodological integration, which poses a major challenge for the next generation of multidisciplinary architectural research and projects. This collaborative task encompasses the striving for an integrated set of design methods, generative and analytical tools and enabling technologies that facilitate and instrumentalise evolutionary design, and evaluation of differentiated material systems towards a highly performative and sustainable built environment. Michael Hensel and Achim Menges describe recent progress towards a higher-level design synthesis of material self-organisation, digital morphogenesis, associative parametric modelling and computer-aided manufacturing (cam) on the basis of two works produced within the context of the Emergent Technologies and Design Masters programme at the Architectural Association in London, and a recent competition entry by Scheffler + Partner Architects and Achim Menges.