Autogenic Design

Definition

Autogenic design names a self-generating design process: "auto" is "a prefix meaning 'of oneself,'" and "genic" is "an adjective meaning 'produced or generated by'"; autogenic is therefore "an object, system, or process that is characteristically self-generated or self-produced" (Anderson & Lovell-Anderson, after Evan Douglis's Autogenic Structures, 2009). In the interior-architecture register the chapter develops, the designer authors the system — the input data, the rules, the parameters — and the system authors the form: "these variable inputs allow for the calculated manipulation of the surface parameter, environment size, and variations in the number of nodes or agents." The chapter's object is the autogenic design topography: a surface generated through "analysis and systemic computation," developed "at the interior scale and context," whose transformation produces the interior volume. The process "requires a hybrid process combining foundational design elements – volume, surface, and mass – with both spatial geometries and systems theory," and it is necessarily computational: agent-based visual scripting "expresses an algorithm to intervene in a system and segment a complex design query into several simplified sub-problems, and later reconstructed to create a solution."

The concept's philosophical weight is in the transfer of authorship it performs. Where the wiki's alteration tradition (authorship) attributes built works "collective[ly], across generations," and the production-stream tradition repositions the designer as "strategist" of systems and tools, the autogenic register makes the self-generation itself the design method: "This process stems from the notion of 'self-generated' modular forms as a result of a subdividing process" (Yeung). The autogenic designer does not draw the form; they configure the conditions under which the form generates itself — and then fabricate it ("The output can be translated through analog and digital means, with an array of modeling or physical prototyping realities").

The concept's natural prototype — and its standing test — is Bachelard's shell, read through Mark Goulthorpe's essay: the shell's essential force is "that it is exuded from within, the secretion of an organism; it is not fabricated from without as an idealised form," the perfect self-generation whose "secretions are unselfconscious and 'felicitous,' obeying an internal law" (Goulthorpe 2002/2006, p. 134) — the same internal-law condition Bachelard casts as the mollusc's motto, "one must live to build one's house, and not build one's house to live in!" (quoted p. 134). Frazer's genetic algorithms are the engineering translation of exactly this inversion ("code not the form but rather precise instructions for the formative process" — see evolutionary-architecture); Anderson & Lovell-Anderson's autogenic topographies are its interior-scale descendant. But Goulthorpe's audit is the concept's unheeded warning: generated forms can lack "any… cultural qualification other than their technical feasibility" (p. 134) — self-generation of the geometry is cheap; the "unselfconscious and 'felicitous'" self-generation of the shell is the part no one has yet specified.

Key Thinkers

• Jonathon R. Anderson & Laura Lovell-Anderson — the interior-scale deployment: "defining interior volumes using surface mathematics to develop autogenic design topographies at the interior scale and context" (2018); the Gyroid studio as the method's academic proving ground.
• Evan Douglis — Autogenic Structures (Taylor & Francis, 2009), the source of the term (via the chapter's notes 9 and 12); architecture-scale autogenic structures as the chapter's named precedent. Not yet paged (see log).
• Janine Yeung — the student practitioner whose Gyroid (2016, Ryerson, supervised by Anderson) realizes the method: "'self-generated' modular forms as a result of a subdividing process" (2016, p. 12).
• Donella Meadows — Thinking in Systems: A Primer (2009), the systems-theoretical base: the system definition and the algorithmic "intervention in a system" that segments "a complex design query into several simplified sub-problems." Not yet paged (see log).

Related Concepts

• surface-mathematics — the medium: autogenic topographies are generated "using surface mathematics" — the surface as the computable carrier of the volume.
• emergence — the logic: micro-level nodes or agents and macro-level patterns, "a loop-based calculation" between them; self-organization as the assembly rule.
• the-gyroid — the built instance: Yeung's autogenic topography from the butterfly-wing gyroid.
• computational-design — the enabling discipline: agent-based visual scripting as "a medium for experimentation, decision-making, and problem solving."
• authorship — the displaced function: the designer configures inputs and rules; the form is "self-generated" — cf. "We did not actually design the wall itself" (Satterfield & Swackhamer).
• interactive-architecture — the sibling technological register: the chapter's "dynamic surfaces and topographies" are computed at design time, where Taylor's responsive environments are actuated at run time.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Transforming Interior Volumes (Anderson & Lovell-Anderson 2018) — the source that deploys the concept at interior scale: the etymology and definition ("characteristically self-generated or self-produced"), the variable inputs ("surface parameter, environment size, and variations in the number of nodes or agents"), the hybrid formula ("volume, surface, and mass… with both spatial geometries and systems theory"), and The Gyroid case study.
• Notes on Digital Nesting (Goulthorpe 2002/2006) — the concept's natural prototype and its audit: the shell as the perfect self-generation ("exuded from within, the secretion of an organism… not fabricated from without as an idealised form"), whose "secretions are unselfconscious and 'felicitous,' obeying an internal law" (p. 134); Bachelard's mollusc's motto ("one must live to build one's house, and not build one's house to live in!", quoted p. 134) as the concept's founding inversion; Frazer's genetic algorithms as its engineering translation; and the warning that computed self-generation can lack any "cultural qualification other than… technical feasibility" (p. 134). See evolutionary-architecture, forms-of-absence.
• source-notes/garofalo-khan-2018-sensorial-interior-landscapes

Open Questions

• Is "autogenic" a genuine self-generation or a rhetorical transfer? Every input — the data source, the 50/50 parameter, the cube mapping, the subdivision method — is chosen upstream by someone. What exactly is "of oneself" in an autogenic design, and whose self is it?
• Douglis's Autogenic Structures (2009) names the concept at architecture scale; Anderson & Lovell-Anderson import it to the interior. Is the interior-scale version a distinct concept (volume transformation rather than structure) or the same method re-sited?
• Does autogenic design presuppose fabrication? The chapter's autogenic topographies are "tangible installations" — is an autogenic design that exists only as model still autogenic, or does the process require "physical and fabricated realization" to close?
• If "designs and their meanings [can] be viewed as the results of computations carried out according to rules of composition" (March & Stiny, via the chapter), what becomes of design meaning when the rules are borrowed from a butterfly's cuticle — is the meaning in the biology, the mathematics, or the interior?
• Goulthorpe's shell audit sets the concept's hardest test: the shell is "unselfconscious and 'felicitous'" — but an autogenic process is deliberately configured by a designer. Is configured unselfconsciousness possible, or is every autogenic design an "abridged evolution" — the self-generation's geometry without its life?