About Aaron Westre

My research is focused on building software tools for architectural design that employ the methodology of simulation. In science, simulation is used to test the validity of models of the world as it exists. In contrast, this this research investigates a reversal of this role; it seeks to use simulation to explore worlds as they could exist. It is a speculative endeavor that attempts to describe not Nature, but artificial natures - future, as yet unmapped, territories of potential. At a basic level, the software employs the logics of existing emergent systems such as movements in large groups of organisms, cellular differentiation, and molecular bonding. These processes are modified in an iterative fashion to arrive at a simulation that behaves less like the original system than a generator of novel architectures - less a scientific instrument, more an engine of alternative futures. The products of the simulations are fabricated two and three dimensionally, and at various scales. These physical artifacts are then subjected to interpretation, which further informs the use of the software. Once an instrumental, productive range of potential architectures is identified they are packaged and disseminated to the discipline and the public. This line of inquiry is situated in a space which assumes a role for the architect as actively producing possible futures that can inform decisions in the present.