SG2010 Cluster: Nonlinear Systems Biology and Design

	This workshop situates itself at the nexus between architecture and systems biology to gain insight into dynamic living systems for the development of novel computational design tools and material systems that are at once natural and artificial. Generative design techniques emerge with references to natural systems, not as mimicry but as trans-disciplinary translation of flexibility, adaptation and complexity into realms of architectural manifestation. Systems Biology is a new field that focuses on the systematic study of complex interactions in biological systems, thereby using a new perspective (integration instead of reduction) to study them. This approach examines the nature of nonlinearities, emergent properties and loosely coupled modules that are cardinal features of 'complexity’. Design tools found useful in analyzing nonlinear biological systems provide new models for addressing contextual topics such as performance and change in architecture. Through the analysis of biological design problems in specialized 3D designer microenvironments, students will be exposed to new modes of thinking about design ecology through an understanding of how dynamic and environmental feedback specifies structure, function and form. This workshop will consist of two parts: 1) Scripting and Simulation 2) Fabrication and Production of a 1:1 physical structure composed of 3D printed components and connections.
	Jenny E. Sabin’s research and design practice investigate the contextual, material and formal intersections between architecture, textile tectonics and biology. She is the first non-scientist member of the Institute for Medicine and Engineering (IME), University of Pennsylvania, where she is collaborating with the Jones Lab, most recently initiating a research LabStudio (www.sabin-jones.com) between the IME and the School of Design together with Peter Lloyd Jones. She currently teaches design studios and elective seminars within the graduate Department of Architecture at PennDesign. She has exhibited internationally most recently at the Siggraph 08' and 09' Design and Computation Galleries and at Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria.
	Peter Lloyd Jones is a Cell & Developmental Biologist and Associate Professor of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a lecturer at PennDesign, and Director of the Penn-CMREF Center for Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Research at The Institute for Medicine & Engineering (IME). He teaches at the graduate level in the Schools of Engineering, Medicine & Design, most recently initiating a research LabStudio at the IME together with Jenny Sabin. Jones's research work on the molecular and architectural control of lung development, vascular disease, and breast cancer has been published in more than 50 peer-reviewed journals and books.