Unconventional Computing: Design Methods for Adaptive Architecture (Riverside Architectural Press, 2013), edited by Rachel Armstrong and Simone Ferracina, is an exploration of protocols for co-design between humans, nonhumans and matter. Here, spatial programs are regarded as acts of persuasion, cooperation and symbiosis—not at odds with nature but seamlessly entwined with its processes. Unconventional computing offers a platform for the coupling of matter and information. Rather than being an afterthought to geometry in the design process, materials can participate directly in design solutions. The book aims to expand tools and approaches for responsive and adaptable methods of architectural design and production. Contributors from the fields of science, design and computation suggest that unconventional computing can be a synergetic practice that integrates established methods including parametrics, digital prototyping, landscape design and cybernetics.
The book was also designed by Simone Ferracina, and includes his first articulation of the notion of exaptive design, reconsidering the term exaptation within an architectural context ("Exaptive Architectures," pp. 62-65).
ISBN: 9781926724249; 215 pages. With contributions by Rachel Armstrong, Simone Ferracina, Andy Adamatzky, Peter Suen, Andrea Graziano, Alessio Erioli, Federico Ruberto, Marc Miller, Elizabeth Anne Williams, Mitchell Joachim, Akshay Goyal, Danelle Briscoe, Reg Prentice, Santiago R. Perez, Robert Trempe, Sushant Verma, Tianchen Dai, Mike Christenson, Neil Leach, Branko Kolaveric, Mahesh Daas, Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, Martin Tanke, Dina El-Zanfaly, David Menicovich, Daniele Gallardo, Anna Dyson, Riccardo Bevilacqua, Jason Vollen, Nancy Diniz, Benedict Anderson, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Jordan Geiger, Carmina Sánchez-Del-Valle, Susannah Dickinson, Wendy W. Fok, Diana Quintero de Saul, Madalina Wierbicki-Neagu, Robert Woodbury, Sinisa Kolaveric, Halil Erhan, Jeffrey Guenther.
