The Darwin machine

Abstract

This design led research aims to explore how architecture would respond if required to exist for five hundred years. Our current architectural methodologies tend to utilize a process that results in a paralyzed form, one that rests static within its landscape. This method of construction deals profoundly with permanence in a world that is constantly in a degree of flux. As a response, this body of research proposes the formation of a new settlement along the Kapiti coast of New Zealand. Here, experimental housing is tested against the dynamic environment New Zealand’s west coast offers.

Natural systems recreate the role of an architectonic mentor, as six design experiments test how we can reconstruct architecture in the image of natural systems. In an initial exploration, these design tests are theorised as ‘architectural animals’, aimed to convey notions of ‘the wild’. Obsessed with movement, each ‘house’ explores and familiarises itself with the adaptable nature our living world employs. Subsequently, these design tests will interact in a cycle, reminiscent of breeding, where the architecture will be deconstructed and rebuilt. This process of evolution attempts to mitigate natural events and their consequences which are both unknown and unpredictable at the present point in time.

This thesis argues that by following a precedent of natural systems, a settlement will become native to the environment, working in agreement with its context and community. Through this environmental diligence, a robust system of architecture will challenge the detrimental effects of time.