Michael Hansmeyer

Lindenmayer Systems: Introduction
by Michael Hansmeyer

"For centuries, architects have been inspired by nature's forms and geometries. Their designs have been influenced by nature's structures, proportions, colors, patterns and textures. Architects have incorporated these influences in what has been primarily an empirical process.

It is only in the past decades that much of the underlying logic and mathematics of nature's forms has been better understood. In the late 1960s, the biologist Aristid Lindenmayer proposed a string-rewriting algorithm with which one can model plants and their growth processes. This theory is known as L-Systems.

More recently, advances have been made in architecture in the field of modeling and visualization. Specifically, the integration of scripting languages into CAD applications enables direct visualization of objects generated using algorithmic processes.

This project examines whether these two developments together open up new possibilities in the field of architecture. Can the logic of nature's growth processes function as a generator of architectural design? At what scale and at what level can L-systems be applied to the production of architectural form?"

http://www.michael-hansmeyer.com/