CUPUM/ECiD Joint Workshop - Call for papers

The Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management Conference (CUPUM) and the AHRB/EPSRC Embracing Complexity in Design (ECiD) Research Cluster are organising a one-day workshop under the title ‘Design out of complexity’ to be held in UCL on Saturday 2nd of July 2005, 9:00-5:00.

In a traditional view of complexity, the fundamental issue of interest is the emergence of global patterns out of the non-linear interaction of simple elements. Cities, organizations, policy networks, economic systems, or human-computer networks, all encompass the interaction of relatively simple (or not that simple!) components that at some level of abstraction might appear to have some order. The impact of abstractions like CA, multi-agent systems, networks, or co-evolution, in understanding and modelling reality and supporting decisions in complex worlds is overwhelming. However, it can be argued that patterns that emerge in cities, economies, or organizational structures, are not purely random (or self-organised) phenomena, because elements or agents of the system are taking deliberate decisions in anticipation of such patterns. The workshop wishes to explore epistemological and methodological issues addressing the problem of how complexity may produce order that has been designed to emerge or likewise how the emergence of such patterns might acquire a design value.

The objective of the workshop is to investigate the relationship between design and complexity under this perspective and disclose pertinent questions for future research. For example,
- How design(s) can emerge out of complexity? How do design processes and products exist within a self-organised world? What is the role of design?
- How complexity, taken both as an epistemological approach and as a (diverse) set of methodologies, has been and can be utilised to (computationally or methodologically) support design?
- How knowledge developed about design in different domains can inform the way we understand and define complexity?

Relevant themes include:
- design in self-organising systems
- design in evolutionary and cooperative processes
- design for emergence
- networks and distributed design
- anticipating design
- scaling effects in design problems and objects
- complexity methods as design support tools

The workshop will be organised as follows. Short position papers (2,000 words or up to 4-6 pages) are invited, from which around 6-8 papers will be selected. Each paper is expected to explicitly raise and discuss one (or more) questions/positions in relation to the above themes. The selected papers will be circulated ahead of the workshop so that participants are familiar with the raised questions. The workshop will be organised into two thematic sessions within which authors will be invited to coordinate in order to agree the format of the discussion. See the programme for a general timetable.

The papers and conclusions from the discussion will be published on the workshop website. We are currently in touch with different editors seeking publication of extended versions of the papers presented.

Papers can be submitted electronically at the following email address: a.alexiou@ucl.ac.uk.

The deadline for submissions is on the 15th of May. Acceptance will then be announced within the next two weeks.

Attendance is free but places are limited (30 max) and registration will be treated on a first-come-first-serve basis. To register e-mail us at the address above by the 15th of June.

The organising committee:
Elena Besussi
Theodore Zamenopoulos
Katerina Alexiou

Scientific committee:
Mike Batty
Jeff Johnson
Philip Steadman
Arnaldo Cecchini
Angela Barbanente