National Art Museum of China

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: This creative work (a design for an art museum) is part of a larger research trajectory by Roland Snooks to develop and articulate a behavioural approach to architectural design that draws from the logic of swarm intelligence and operates through multi-agent algorithms. This work is part of the architectural paradigm that has developed out of complexity theory, computation and a focus on emergent phenomena. The major exhibition 'Naturalizing Architecture' in 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, 2013). RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: The plan for National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) explores notions of diffuse or formless forms. An algorithmic design process was developed that draws from the turbulent behaviour of weather systems and fluid dynamics to generate a cloud-like form that nestles into the landscape. The cloud and its landscape are created from a single algorithm that inextricably ties the two parts of the project into a unified relationship. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: The museum project (unbuilt) was developed in 2011 for an invited architecture competition for the design of China's largest art museum. It was acquired by FRAC as part of it permanent collection - a unique heritage of experimental architecture of the last fifty years. It was exhibited in the Naturalising Architecture exhibition and published in the catalogue by Hyx Editions (ISBN: 9782910385828). The project was published in: l'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui (France), City Vision (Italy), Scripting the Future (China) and Architecture Australia. Snooks presented the project in invited public lectures at: MIT (2014), University of Pennsylvania (2014), Aalto University (2012), Tongji University (2011).