Edward Short

Diploma level 4 – Computing and Design

January 2011

A Critical Reading of ‘An Evolutionary Architecture’ by

John Frazer

Figures 1&2: A device built by Frazer’s Unit at the AA and a model built for Walter Segal

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 Introduction

John Frazer is credited with being one the first architects to bring ideas from Artificial
Intelligence and specifically Evolutionary Algorithms into general architectural circles.
He was able to do this, through various mediums: firstly through his research at
Cambridge University and his teaching at the Architectural Association where he also
received his diploma, secondly through his collaboration with architects like Cedric Price
and Walter Segal, and finally through the publication of his book ‘An Evolutionary
Architecture’ which summarises his own research since 1970 and the work of his
diploma unit at the AA in the early 1990’s.

In this essay, I will examine the key concepts and proposals that Frazer puts forward in
the book, talk about how he arrives at the concepts of the evolutionary algorithm and
artificial intelligence, and makes these concepts accessible to architects. Frazer’s ideas
and methodology continue to be very influential in architectural education and theory
today. One area where he continues to have a lot of influence is in the work of
environmentally responsive and interactive architecture. Where through Frazer’s
influence and teaching, practitioners such as Jason Bruges Studio, now use interactive
devices and genetic technique applied in a commercial environment through the medium
of interactive art installations.

In the introduction to his own book, Frazer lists the key themes of the book as being:-
- A study into form generating processes in architecture, paralleling morphogenesis in
the natural world.
- Architecture is considered as a form of artificial life, subject to principles of genetic
coding, replication and selection.
- An aim to achieve in the built environment, the symbolic behaviour and metabolic
balance achieved in the natural environment.

The Book: An Evolutionary Architecture

Fraser describes that throughout work on his projects, it has been necessary to develop
his own tools; including own software, computer languages and sometimes hardware.
He notes that valuable lessons have been learnt from starting at first principles. And by
virtue of the technological limitations of computer technology at the time, the first steps

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into coding required a certain economy, meaning that they lead themselves well to the
highly efficient evolutionary technique that he was developing.

Alan Turing and John von Neumann

In order to position himself and his research in the history and development of
computational thinking and by way of introducing his own research into datastructures
and early investigations into CAD software, Frazer draws attention to Alan Turing and
John von Neumann and their interest in conceptual computers.

Alan Turing was famous for the invention of the Turing machine; a conceptual apparatus
which first described the concept of a programmable digital computer. He was also one
of the first scientists to investigate the idea of artificial intelligence. Frazer draws
attention to these parallel interests of Alan Turing as if to suggest some natural affinity
between the two topics. John von Neumann is credited with developing the logical basis
of the serial computer, which forms the basis for the computers we use today. He did
this by defining the three basic elements of the central processor, memory and control
unit. In addition to this, he worked on self-replicating autonoma, from which he
developed a theoretical framework for a self-replicating computer, a concept that Frazer
draws on extensively in his own work.

Computer Modelling

Central to the body of An Evolutionary Architecture is Frazer’s own research in the area
of computer modelling. Describing it as a form of ‘electronic prototyping’, Frazer remarks
on how his own involvement in the development of digital computer modelling
techniques, enabled him with a framework to generate and develop many of the
concepts central to his work. He goes on to describe the implicit and explicit limitations
of early computer modeller, some of which become areas of investigation in later areas
of his work. Frazer explains how three-dimensional and drafting software are made up
of datastructures; matrices of three-dimensional co-ordinates which contain base
information on geometrical entities, and transformations ; the operations that are applied
onto the datastructure, in order to alter geometrical entities in the program (extend a line,
rotate a shape, etc..).

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He also introduces the reader to ‘Shape Processing’, a graphics program first produced
in 1978. It was developed the same time as the ‘Shape Processor Language’, and was
able to group a series of commands into one defined program. This was a pivotal
software development for working on large complex amounts of data, and was used on
Frazer’s ‘Reptile system’. In order to fund these expensive developments, Frazer was
involved in the launch of several commercially available two-dimensional and three-
dimensional drafting programs.

Machine-Readable Models

Central to Frazer’s text are his own initial investigations into using physical models as
input devices that were able to explain some general principles of a system. Many of
these devices were able to relay information back to a central processor about their
position and orientation relative to other input devices. This allowed Frazer to build up a
one-to-one correspondence between a physical model made up of input devices and the
virtual model. By using physical devices to symbolically make up the components or
structure of a building, they could be interactively moved to alter the digital model in real
time. Frazer describes his first working models, as self-replicating.

This concept of self-replication, first introduced by John von Neumann, was the idea of a
conceptual computer that had the ability to replicate itself. Frazer’s early devices from
1980 and onwards showed the capacity to inspect themselves. The device ‘Intelligent
Mats’ was made of a series of connected cardboard mats which were able to detect
whether a mat was located either side of them. This model worked on the principle of
checking each edge of the mat to see if another device was adjacent and returns a value
back to the processor. At the same time, light emitting diodes were used to indicate the
search path and so the process of self-inspection could be made clear. This model of
self-inspecting devices was developed to accommodate more three-dimensional
versions of the same process. The electronics required were able to be streamlined
down to a very small size, so that bricks became smaller than the size of two sugar
cubes. These inputs were seen by Frazer as an alternative to the keyboard and mouse
as ways of inputting information into the computer.

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Figure 3: Cedric Price’s drawings for the Generator Project.

The Generator Project

The development of these techniques in electronic modelling formed the tools with which
he was able to collaborate with architects such as Cedric Price and Walter Segal. He
was a consultant to Cedric Price on the ‘Generator’ project, a full scale reconfigurable
series of modular timber pods and solar shading located in an open in a Forest. On
reflection on the Generator project, Frazer describes the “new ways of making
environments responsive to the needs and desires of their users”. Frazer states that
Cedric Price was able to introduce “response and change” into his work. Under the
lineage of Price’s work and taking into account the difficulties the press and other critics
had with the Fun Palace project, Frazer offers up Generator as a project which offers a
clear programme of how, and why, change is to be effected and what the variation in
resulting environment might be like. He goes on to describe the project as having a
complete resolved strategy for self-organisation, and demonstrating itself as an
‘intelligent building’ that learns from its own experience.

In texts on Price’s work, Frazer refers to Price‘s reception from notable architectural
historians. Aside from Reyner Banham and Roy Landau, Frazer believes critics to have
marginalised Price’s output. He talks about Price being branded along with Reyner
Banham and Archigram as ‘English revisionist functionalism’, and refers to Adrian Forty’s

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description of Price’s work as “formless” owing to Price’s affinity with the work of
Buckminster Fuller and Reyner Banham, who both expressed hostility towards form and
an enthusiasm for technological innovation. For Frazer, this tag of “formless” and
connection to Banham and Buckminster Fuller does put sufficient emphasis to Price’s
interest in flexibility and the flexible needs of the users.

In my view the Generator project was key contextualising Frazer’s research within an
architectural output. Although by his own admission he was a consultant to Generator,
and the structure was designed and facilitated by Price rather than Frazer, I think
importance of the user and the a building that is flexible to a user’s needs help to bring
Frazer’s input out of a purely theoretical domain and into an architectural one. Frazer’s
ideas about a responsive building that is able to re-organise itself according the user,
contextualise his work in a way that is easily understandable in terms of its social
function.

Figure 4: Gordon Pask with the ‘Universal Conductor’ at the AA in 1992.

The Universal Conductor

One area where Frazer influence is still very large is in the domain of architectural
education. Although we cannot credit him alone for starting new branches of
architectural research into morphogenesis and responsive environments, many the
devices that he made with Unit 11 at the AA school of architecture in the 1990’s still
influences work taking place in schools today. The project that he talks about mainly in
his book is the ‘Universal Constructor’. The device which took 3,200 LEDS and 5000

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integrated circuits, was a device intended to have a generality and universality of
function, meaning it could be used to generate different outputs responding to different
criteria. As an extension of the ‘self-inspecting’ devices made by Frazer, the ‘Universal
Constructor’ was made up of a base-board of electronic cubes which could be moved
and stacked in different location, that in turn related to a virtual model within a processor.
This device was able to facilitate the further investigations in genetic algorithms that
Frazer conducted with his unit.

By way of introducing the work using genetic algorithms that Frazer employed with his
unit Frazer talks about some key developments in the field of artificial life and self-
replicating autonoma.

Genetic Algorithms

John von Neumann had looked at the feasibility of automaton that could physically
replicate itself and proceed to develop even more complex forms. An automaton that
could do this that he did eventually end up designing on paper required 200,000 cells,
each with twenty-nine different states. In the 1960’s John Horton Conway developed the
‘Life Game’ whilst working in the mathematical laboratory at Cambridge University. The
intention has to simulate life like behaviour in a much simpler way than von Neumann
had attempted to. By using a simple two-dimensional, two state cellular automatons on
a simple grid, Conway was able to show some interesting emergent outcomes from very
simple rules. The behaviour that these models produced greatly excited the scientific
community by exhibiting life like characteristics. The ‘Life Game’ inspired a large amount
of speculation and research in the field of artificial life.

Frazer draws on this analogy, describing his model of architecture, as exhibiting ‘life like’
characteristics. And he gives metabolism, epignenesis, self-reproduction and mutability
as examples. To further his argument, he draws on John Holland’s theoretical
framework for an adaptive model. By equating the chromosomes as the structure for the
genetics and mutation and recombination as the operators, the model can put into an
environment that is defined for a system undergoing adaptation. The model measures
the performance of the different structures it develops, evaluates their performance and
selects the strongest structures. This approach has come to be described as the genetic
algorithm.

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In addition to the a comprehensive and detailed summary of the genetic algorithm that
Frazer provides in his book, Frazer brings in to consideration Richard Dawkins’ research
on ‘Biomorphs’ which favour artificial selection as oppose to natural, and ‘Classifier
Systems’, which are useful in identifying certain characteristics and trends in the
algorithm. Frazer blends and mixes different parts of these approaches to ‘evolve’
solutions to certain architectural problems. In the text mentions two of them: designing a
boat hull best suit aerodynamically and the evolution of a column system that follows the
generative rules of classicism.

The General Proposition

With genetic algorithms in mind, Frazer set out his proposal for an evolutionary model of
architecture. The evolutionary model requires an architectural concept to be described
in the form of a ‘genetic code’. The genetic code is then ‘mutated’ and developed by a
computer program to produce a series of models in response to a simulated
environment. The models are then evaluated in that environment, and the genetic code
of the successful models is used to reiterate the cycle until a model is chosen to
prototype in the real world.

In order to achieve the evolutionary model it is necessary to define the following 5

criteria: a genetic code-script, rules for the development of the code, mapping of the
code to a virtual model, the nature of the environment of the model, and the criteria for
selection.

Frazer describes that in order to create a genetic description, it is necessary to develop

an architectural concept in a generic and universal form capable of being expressed in
variety of structures and spatial configurations. Frazer notes that many architects
already work in this way, using a personal set of design strategies adapted to the site in
specific ways. It is also similar to way vernacular archetypes and successful prototypes
have been developed and adapted for different sites, environments and individual
requirements.

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Figure 5: Frazer’s designs for the ‘Reptile System’ from 1969.

Evolutionary Techniques

Through applying genetic algorithms, classifiers, and other evolutionary programming

techniques, Frazer was able to devise a coded version of the general model for an
‘Evolutionary Architecture’. The genetic code is then bred into populations which are
developed into abstract models suitable for evaluation in the simulated environment. As
Frazer admits that externalisation of the model may include transformations which
further affect the form or dimensions of the model.

This sort of evolutionary technique was used to code the Frazer’s ‘Reptile System’ first
introduced in 1966. The ‘Reptile System’ is a flexible enclosure system consisting of any
number of two identical folded plate structural elements that could be combined in a
range of ways to form a large number of shapes and sizes. In the process he describes,
the seeded datastructure is manipulated by a series of FORTRAN sub-routines enabling
the seed to be grown, stretched and sheared until the required building form was
produced. When published in Architectural Design in 1974, it offered a process

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orientated and biological approach. Built with Cambridge University’s Atlas Titan in the
1969, the Reptile system required an evolutionary technique in the form of a seeding
technique that allowed the units to be developed and manipulated without the input of
any further data.

The specific rules about the structure mean that the two folded plate units could be
orientated in eighteen different ways to one another. It also was compatible with
rectangular shaped enclosures, unlike geodesic structures. In many way the flexibility
and adaptability of the coding process is reflected through the form and nature of the
resulting structure. This biomorphic design would no doubt have had an immediate
impression on the readers of Architectural Design in the 1970’s and the biologically
informed design can be seen to have much influence to the great variety of parametric
structures we see today, both built and un-built.

Environmental Feedback and later Investigations

The Reptile system proposed by Frazer opened up new possibilities for ‘generalising the
process’ and further research. Notably in 1991/92, the device ‘The Universal Interactor’
was built under Frazer’s guidance at the AA. This further explored how environmental
factors could used to affect the main structure of the evolutionary program. A series of
investigations in Frazer’s unit were carried out and proposed devices that inputted data
from the environment in different ways and were able to shape complex responses to
their environments through the behaviour of the devices. Frazer was able to better
develop his handling of genetic code and the life like manipulation of that code.

Frazer see this work as reinforcing investigations first picked up in the Reptile system,
and demonstrating a refinement of his study into the genetic algorithm. Further work
focussed more on the structure of the datastructures that made up the data being acted
on, and lead to some of Frazer’s investigations into evolving an artificial life which bring
him full circle to von Neumann original ideas. In the final part of his book he relates his
ongoing method to ‘architect’s working methods’ framing his work as new design
methodology. He states his longer term goals as being to incorporate the building
process literally in the model, so that the resulting structures are self-constructing. It is
clear that he wants his model for ‘an Evolutionary Architecture’ to exhibit metabolism in

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both an environmental and socio-economic sense, presenting a direct analogy between
the natural world.

As a final note to his text, Frazer suggests that this model of an ‘evolutionary
architecture’ be considered as a from of ‘artificial life’ as it is able of anticipating the
outcome of its actions, and developing in the same manner as living things emerge from
certain conditions and constraints. It seems to be that through Frazer’s body of research
and the specific points where he reaches out to architects through his collaborations and
academic research, is able to build a platform with which to fully develop his thesis.
Although some of the resultant outputs from his structures do not always form a
consistent picture, he sets down a very robust series of instructions of how to construct
such a model.

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 Bibliography

John Frazer, An Evolutionary Architecture, Architectural Association Publications,

Themes VII, copyright John Frazer and the Architectural Association 1995.

Samantha Hardingham - Editor, Cedric Price: Opera, Wiley-Academy a division of

John wiley and Sons ltd, 2003.

J. Holland, Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems, University of Michigan Press

1975.

Dawkins, Richard . ‘The Selfish Gene’ Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1976.

Pask, G. (1968) An Approach to Cybernetics. Hutchinson & CO LTD, London

Dawkins, R.(1988) The Blind Watchmaker. Penguin Books, London

Hodges, A. (1983) Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence. Unwin Hyman Ltd,
London.

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