Formalising Harmony Seeking Rules of Morphogenesis

The 15 generative patterns of Alexander’s “Nature of Order” are descriptions of architectural structures that are seen in both buildings and in the natural world. We are investigating various aspects of complex systems, including those relating to structural patterns that may underlie those systems. Here we describe some experiments to generate 2D structures that incorporate those patterns that Alexander describes as Positive Space the voids that contribute to the overall pattern, and Levels of Scale a gradation in the size of the pattern’s components. We show some of the results, illustrating that these patterns can be achieved as emergent properties of simple placement algorithms with a generative component.