Fibrous House

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: 'Fibrous House' is an experimental project that speculates on the tectonics and affects of designing an entire project from a single geometric type, the strand. It explores the extreme application of multi-agent design strategies, where the entire building emerges from the interaction of strands or lines at multiple scales. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: 'Fibrous House' is a speculative project. Rather than attempting to design a viable house, it is an experiment in high-population algorithmic design. One key aspect of the project is a composite fibre prototype which is an experiment with the expressive, rather than performative, capacities of fibre composites. The project is part of a larger research trajectory by Snooks to develop and articulate a behavioural approach to architectural design that draws on the logic of swarm intelligence and operates through multi-agent algorithms. The major exhibition 'Naturalizing Architecture' (2013) at the FRAC (Orleans, France) - which his work was a part of - was an attempt to define this movement and "to illustrate the scope of this epistemological revolution, where architecture and science have entered into a dialogue within the computational field" (Frederic Migayrou and Marie- Ange Brayer). FRAC holds an internationally recognised collection of experimental architecture and contemporary art, which includes some of Snooks' works. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: This work was published in the New York-based architecture journal 'Log 25', July 2012, and included in 'Forward history: Practice beyond BIM' (Chris Knapp, 'Architecture Australia', Sept/Oct 2012), an essay on new frontiers in architectural practice. It was also presented and debated at symposia at Yale University (Digital Post-Modernities Symposium, Nov 2012) and the Venice Architecture Biennale (Aug 2012).