Critical Practice, a cluster of artists, researchers and academics hosted by Chelsea College of Art and Design has recently commissioned Ola Wasilkowska and Michal Piasecki to design a temporary spatial intervention for their Parade event. The event took place on 21-23 May, 2010 at Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground in London.

The structure, called Assemblage in Public compromises computational design strategies with a low-tech assembly of repeatable components on site. The project is rooted in an idea that a repetition of a few simple rules is able to construct complex geometry, which can host different functions.

The core structure of the intervention was obtained through multi objective optimization with genetic algorithms. The optimization was conducted with a purpose built software written in Processing. The goal was to distribute the components according to a predefined “shadow map” and to keep them structurally stable at the same time. 4320 crates where used in total. Below are some of the individuals from one of the middle generations.

After the core was erected according to the plans extracted from the optimized form, everyone was invited to contribute to the intervention by adding on furniture. These where meant to be integrated and dissolved in the structure, so that discovering them may be surprising, but at the same time when they start to be used, they always prove comfortable. For this part of components assembly, there was no pre-defined layouts, so the structure started to crawl in diverse directions.

The low-tech crate component enabled the mixture of an evolutionary search for an optimal form with collective intelligence to create an attractor intervening the everyday use of the public.

Images: courtesy of Marsha Bradfield and Neil Cummings from Critical Practice.