Founder and a Director of MSc / MArch Emergent Technologies and Design; Head of Research

Michael Weinstock is an Architect, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is the Founder and a Director of the Emergent Technologies and Design programme in the Graduate School of the Architectural Association. Studied Architecture at the Architectural Association 1982/88 and has taught at the AA School of Architecture since 1989 in a range of positions from workshop tutor through to Academic Head. Over the last decade his published work has arisen from research into the dynamics, forms and energy transactions of natural systems, and the application of the mathematics and processes of emergence to cities, to groups of buildings within cities and to individual buildings. Whilst his principal research and teaching has been conducted at the Architectural Association, he has published and lectured widely, and taught seminar courses, studios and workshops on these topics at many other schools of Architecture in Europe, including Universities of Delft (TU), Rome (Romatre), Barcelona (Esarq, Elisava, Pompeo Fabra and IAAC), Vienna and Stuttgart; and in the United States at Berkeley, USC, Yale, Harvard and Rice, and at Calgary in Canada and Tokyo in Japan.

CURRENT RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

THE EVOLUTION OF SENTIENT CITIES- A long term interdisciplinary research agenda focused on the development of ‘metabolic’ and intelligent urban infrastructures that interconnect buildings, cities and conurbations with a special focus on the evolution of adaptive and responsive systems of existing cities and on developing new paradigms for sentient cities in extreme climates and ecological contexts. To be published as “The Architecture of Intelligence: The Evolution of Sentience and the City “, Wiley Academy.

DESIGN THROUGH PRODUCTION, RIBA Commission, to be delivered as Lectures in 10 UK schools of architecture.

THE CITY AND QUALITY OF LIFE – Urban Systems Collaborative

OTHER CURRENT/RECENT ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES

2012 – to date. Honorary Chief Academic Adviser, International Research Centre of Computational Design,Tsinghua University Beijing/The University of Hong Kong
2009 – to date. Director of Research and Development, Architectural Association.
2007 – to date. Editorial Board Member, Wiley Architectural Design Magazine.

PUBLICATIONS AND KEYNOTE LECTURES

2013 (Magazine)” SYSTEM CITY; INFRASTRUCTURE AND THE SPACE OF FLOWS”, Editor and Author, Architectural Design, Wiley. www.system-city.com
New ways of thinking about the city and new methods of design and making it are once again emerging, engaging both the means and the imagination of our culture. System Cities brings together scientists, architects and engineers from disparate fields whose work and thoughts converge on contributing to the societal endeavour of building the ‘future city’.

A radical shift is taking place in the way that society is thinking about cities, a change from the machine metaphors of the 20th century to mathematical models of the processes of biological and natural systems. From this new perspective, cities are regarded not simply as spatially extended material artefacts, but as complex systems that are analogous to living organisms, exhibiting many of the same characteristics. There is an emerging view that the design of the thousands of new cities needed for an expanding world population are to be founded on intelligent and inhabited infrastructural systems or ‘flow architectures’ of urban metabolisms. The physical arrays of the flow architecture of the city are intimately connected to the networks of subsidiary systems that collect and distribute energy, materials and information. They animate the city, and should therefore be intimately coupled to the spatial and cultural patterns of life in the city, to the public spaces through which people flow, and should unite rather than divide urban morphological and ecological systems.

2013 (article) “INTELLIGENT CITIES AND THE TAXONOMY OF COGNITIVE SCALES, AD System City
Michael Weinstock, with Mehran Gharleghi, -The article explores the possibilities of cognitive complexity in urban in urbanism emerging out of the interaction of sensory processing and behavioural responses to the world. Within the context of large Infrastructural systems, what might, for instance, rapidly developing machine conciousness have in common with human intelligence? What could be the preliminary conceptual schema be for an intelligent city that is sufficiently self-aware to synchronise its systems with climatic and ecological phenomena at regional and local scales?

2013 (article) “THE EVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS OF SENTIENCE IN CITIES”
Cities, and their component buildings and infrastructural systems, have developed rapidly in responsive and adaptive capacities. The evolution of systems that contribute to ‘Sentience’ is the primary driver of innovation in the urban environment; as the extended ‘nervous system’ of a city develops the potential to sense changes in the city’s flows, and in its internal and external environments.

2013 “Computation and Architecture, Systems and the City”, Keynote Lecture Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
2013 “System City – Infrastructure and the Space of Flows” – Keynote Lecture, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
2012 “Systems and the City”, Keynote Lecture, Yapı-Endüstri Merkezi, Istanbul,Turkey
2012 “Computational Systems and the City” Keynote Lecture and workshop, Tallin, Estonia
2012 “Architecture of Emergence”, Keynote Lecture and workshop, Elisava, Barcelona, Spain
2012 William Lyon Somerville Lecturer at University of Calgary, Canada (previous recipients include Peter Eisenman, Alejandro Zaero-Polo, Cedric Price, and Koen van Velsen). Design charette on integrative urban infrastructural and ecological system, with seminar series and public lectures.
2010/2011 Biodynamic Structures –San Francisco AA Visiting School in collaboration with SOM, CCA and UC Berkeley faculty.
2011 Keynote Lecture – ALGODE – International Symposium for Algorithmic Design, Tokyo, Japan- organised by Architectural Institute of Japan “Metabolism, Ecology and Morphology of Cities – Algorithms for Design.”
2011 Visiting Lecturer – Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, Barcelona (previous Lecturers include Hanif Kara, Toyo Ito, Ben Van Berkel, and Mark Wigley). Design seminars and public lecture on Advanced Digital Fabrication of Active Material Systems (pavilion scale), Evolution and Computation, and the Metabolism of the City – the architecture of flows.
2011 (article) “THE ARCHITECTURE OF FLOWS – integrated infrastructures and the ‘metasystem’ of urban metabolism”, Keynote Lecture at Acadia 2011 and Article published in the Proceedings.
2011 (article) “ECOLOGY AND MATERIAL CULTURE”, in ‘Systemic Architecture: -operating manual for the self organizing city’, Marco Poletto ,Claudia Pasquero Routledge 2012
2011 (article) ‘MATERIAL, FORM AND FORCE’ (with Toni Kotnik), in “Material Computation: Higher Integration in Morphogenetic Design, ed. Achim Menges, Architectural Design, Wiley 2012
2011 (article) ‘THE METABOLISM OF THE CITY: THE MATHEMATICS OF NETWORKS AND URBAN SURFACES’, in “Mathematics of Space”, ed G.Legendre , Architectural Design, Wiley, London
2010 (Book) “THE ARCHITECTURE OF EMERGENCE – the Evolution of Form in Nature and Civilisation” – Wiley, London. The book challenges established cultural and architectural histories by placing human development alongside ecological development. The history of cultural evolution and the production of cities are set in the context of the complex systems of the natural world. The dynamics of individual and collective metabolisms from which intelligence, social and spatial order emerge are related to the emergence of cities. The episodic and irregular expansions, consolidation, collapse and subsequent reorganisation of Cities and systems of cities is traced. The thresholds of critical stability in the natural and cultural systems of the world are defined, and the systemic changes that will cascade through all systems are outlined, and the likely outcomes from which new forms will emerge are delineated.
2010 (Book) “EMERGENT TECHNOLOGIES AND DESIGN – towards a biological paradigm for architecture”. Routledge, London. (with Hensel and Menges) – Author of: -“EVOLUTION AND COMPUTATION”, Computational processes derived from ‘Evo-Devo’ , combined processes of embryological growth and evolutionary development of the species.
2009 “CULTURAL EVOLUTION AND THE METABOLISM OF CITIES” – Keynote Lecture at the International Symposium ‘From Insect Nests to Human Architecture’, European Centre for Living Technology, Venice – and Article published in the Proceedings.
2008 “NATURE AND THE CULTURAL EVOLUTION OF ARCHITECTURAL FORMS”, Keynote Lecture at Acadia 2008 ‘Silicon + Skin- Biological Processes and Computation’ and Article published in Acadia 08 Proceedings.
2008 (Article) ‘METABOLISM AND MORPHOLOGY’ in ‘Versatility and Vicissitude: Performance in Morpho-Ecological Design’ AD Wiley, London, presents an account of the thermodynamics of mammalian, marine and plant metabolisms and their relations to morphology and scale, to behaviour and to the environment- A new model of Metabolism for buildings and cities is set out
2008 ‘(Article) MUTATIONS, MORPHOGENESIS AND MONSTERS’ Perspecta 40, Yale University Press – article exploring the role that mutation and speciation plays in Natural Systems and Ecologies.
2006 (Chapter) ‘DIFFERENTIATION AND HIERACHY IN NATURAL SYSTEMS’ in ‘MORPHO-ECOLOGIES’ AA Publications – explores hierachical organisation, morphological differentiation, energy and metabolism in natural ecologies, and design strategies and processes in Architecture.
2006 (Magazine Ed.)”TECHNIQUES AND TECHNOLOGIES IN MORPHOGENETIC DESIGN’ AD Wiley, London, (with Hensel and Menges) and Author of articles: -“SELF-ORGANISATION AND THE STRUCTURAL DYNAMICS OF PLANTS”, -“SELF ORGANISATION AND MATERIAL CONSTRUCTIONS” and “ADVANCED SIMULATION IN DESIGN”
2005 ‘EMERGENCE AND NATURAL SYSTEMS’ Keynote Speaker for New York Center for Architecture SOM/AIA Building Science and Design Research Symposium 05.
2004 (Magazine Ed.)’ EMERGENCE – MORPHOGENETIC DESIGN STRATEGIES’ AD Wiley. Magazine issue GUEST EDITOR (with Hensel and Menges) – and Author of
2004 (article) MORPHOGENESIS AND THE MATHEMATICS OF EMERGENCE” , AD Wiley