"is architecture D.E.A.D?" asks what the practice of architecture could be at the intersection of the post-genetic age, where the mysteries of the human genome have been unlocked, and the digital age, where over 50% of all american households have a computer.

The proposed project is not one unbuilt work, but a field of 1.68 x 10²³ possible projects, for as many potential programs. The Distributed Evolutionary Algorithmic Design system (D.E.A.D) is a computational device for evolving architecture utilizing genetic algorithms. The system is a piece of software that can be distributed across a network to provide a virtual bioreserve where architectural 'organisms' - for lack of a better term - grow, live, reproduce and die. These organisms are spatial structures based around a highly variable structural system that co-evolve with a set of organizational and programmatic descriptions. The video on the right (click the image to download) shows the evolution, through 250 generations, of one possible species of architectural organism.

The project builds from an idea proposed by Tom Ray¹, a biologist and digital theorist, in 1994. He proposed to create a digital biodiversity reserve, "a very large, complex and inter-connected region of cyberspace that will be inoculated with digital organisms which will be allowed to evolve freely through natural selection." The purpose of which was to evolve informational processes that would thrive and prosper online, producing new types of software that would "fully utilize the capacities inherent in our parallel and networked hardware."

one potential building harvested from D.E.A.D

The D.E.A.D system uses this model of an online bioreserve, but instead of evolving software, it is an environment for evolving architectural structures. This bioreserve strategy to design completely changes the practice of architecture, changing it to something more akin to agriculture. Instead of designing a solution to an architectural problem, the bioreserve could be seeded, and a bounty of potential buildings (and programs) could be harvested.

While all of the potential buildings that exist within the software are unbuilt, the system itself has been built and tested. The following pages describe the D.E.A.D. system, its inner workings and some of its potential crops. The project description is divided into four components, matching the four crucial aspects of the D.E.A.D system – Distributed, Evolutionary, Algorithmic and Design.

Distributed
The system works in a distributed manner, utilizing the millions of computers connected to the internet as a massive parallel computer. This portion of the description explains in depth how the networking aspects of the system work.

Evolutionary
The heart of the D.E.A.D system is its utilization of evolutionary processes to explore the overwhelming potential architectural structures that the software can generate. This section of the description explains the genetics of the system work, how reproduction occurs, and how the system determines the survival of certain species.

Algorithmic
The morphology of the architectural organism is based on a set of form-generating algorithms. This section of the project description will explain operational logic of these algorithms and how they map to spatial and structural concepts.

Design
The final component of the project description discusses some of the potential structures that can be harvested from the system.