135 - Christina Cogdell - a podcast by Center for Energy & Environmental Research at Rice University

Cymene and Dominic talk surprising energy trends and how to make news more fun with games. Then (15:05) we talk with the marvelous Christina Cogdell from UC-Davis about her fascinating soon-to-be-published book, Toward a Living Architecture? Complexism and Biology in Generative Design (U Minnesota Press, https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/toward-a-living-architecture). We talk about how her background studying eugenics in the 1930s informed her interest in the interplay of architecture, biology and computational science in the emergent field she calls, “generative design.” We discuss what the growing interest in using living materials for architectural purposes might have to do with climate change, the relationship between complexity theory and eugenicism, the porting of natural systems models across the human sciences and why some in generative architecture actually oppose notions of “sustainability.” We turn from there to topics like eugenic algorithms, the idea that complexity is the key to the universe and living building projects from arborsculpture to bioprinting to genmod kudzu cities and beyond. Will buildings and other architectural objects need veterinarians in the future? Is Lamarckism making a comeback in generative design? This and many other questions will be covered in this week’s episode. Listen on! PS And check out Christina and her students’ amazing product life cycle website at: http://www.designlife-cycle.com

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