Code, design and adaptability

Design practices have looked at natural systems as source of inspiration for centuries, not only with the aim of emulating their formal aspects, but also their life and evolutionary complexity. Since the advent of the digital revolution and the technological innovation related to computation, this issue have become increasingly part of the design agenda. Today, thanks to the code-based generative tools and processes, design research is increasingly exploring the principles of biology and particularly the aspect of adaptivity. “Adaptive” is the ability of an organism to transform its original structure into a different one and relating to an environmental condition, and thereby designing a symbiotic relationship between body and surrounding context. As results, this kind of kinetic and adaptive matrix becomes strategies for designing and constructing emerging morphologies and elements of design as means of experiencing the creative possibilities linked to the relationship with the environment: a kind of artificial ecology as expression of a renewed alliance between design and nature. The paper proposes a conceptual framework for the topic’s exploration in the context of computational design, bringing together some key fields and aspects of design as the attitude to movement, behavioral programming, interactions between structure and morphology, and structures subdivision into autonomous and interactive subsystems. Moreover, the paper wants to encourage to rethink the project’s territories, viewed as growingly hybrid context, where design's disciplines boundaries (design, architecture, art, engineering…) can virtuously intertwine with digital computation, and therefore acquiring and increasing its value.