Urban Species

The physical world and our bodies act as constraints on the spaces we design, build and use. As process and product, the project underlying this paper is a human-imposed spatial design solution and environment. But as concept, it has some degree of independency or autonomy. It seeks for its own unique identity, crossing natural and man-made patterns. What kinds of space and place can code be designed to make? Or in other words, can the new computational technologies, interpreting the nature’s processes, significantly change the role of design in the futures of space conception? This paper will present an urban project proposed for Luanda city outskirts, dealing with specific geographic conditions, common in semi-arid climates,
contributing for the idea of a native functional urban development. This proposal intends to create a model able to translate social and cultural particularities of being African, using material systems inspired in singularities observed in African biological diversity as source of inspiring forms and shapes. The complexity of Nature’s shapes is built up by modulated repetition of a few basic types of structure. The exploration of biological entities, like the African Anophelines Larvae, as an information source from the viewpoint of evolution, differentiation and self-organization of geometries and shapes was used as a metaphor for the development of this “Urban Species” dwelling project.