HIDDEN SCAPES
隠された風景
Hidden Scapes explores the urgent need for a new civic typology within Tokyo’s highly efficient but emotionally unforgiving urban environment. Set in Shinjuku, the project questions how architecture can create space for pause, withdrawal and psychological refuge within a city designed almost entirely around movement. Through a research-by-design methodology, the proposal uses Physarum Computational Intelligence and dynamic relaxation to develop an architectural system shaped by natural and structural intelligence. The project investigates how science, technology and architecture can combine to produce spaces that are not only environmentally responsive, but emotionally restorative.
The Natural Design Principles: Structures as Organisms in an Ecosystem
Architecture - Technology - Neuroscience
Emma Sidey
This research explores the intersection of Variable Property Design (VPD) and Physarum Computational Intelligence (PCI), employing these concepts to guide the development of adaptive, responsive urban structures that connect with nature. The research argues how can the principles of Variable Property Design be applied to urban architecture through Physarum Computational Intelligence? Examining the underlying issues inherent in the current urban architectural design process: the standardised division of form, function, structure, environment, and materials, central to modernist design theory. This dissertation establishes the foundation for a new era of urban architecture that honours the symbiosis between humanity, nature, and technology within a rapidly evolving world.
ABOUT ME...
I am an Architectural Designer with a First-Class BA (Hons) Architecture RIBA Part 1 and a Master of Architecture RIBA Part 2, awarded with Distinction. My work explores the intersection of architecture, science and technology, with a focus on intelligent, responsive and emotionally considered design.
Architecture has never felt like a choice for me. It has always been an instinct, an impulse, and a way of understanding the world long before I knew its name. I was eight years old when I first discovered what it meant to design with intention.