Agile Prototyping

• Identify a building system or product that has or could address a current or emerging disciplinary problem in the architecture, engineering and construction industry.
• Identify the ‘phenotypic’ features of a building system or product.
• Reverse engineer the pseudo biological developmental stages of the system based on the identified features to transform the building system or product into an ‘Agile Prototype’ (AP).
• Model and traverse a phylogenetic tree of the features of AP to identify new solutions.
• Apply computational modelling techniques to model the evolution of the AP.
• Extrapolate the future features of the AP based on its evolution.
• Reflect on the APs genetic future trajectory.
• Define the three horizons of a future scenario and explore the future of the AP.
• Adapt the AP to the three horizons of the future scenario.
• Define an agile roadmap for the AP to solve the identified problem.
• Evaluate their proposed AP.
• Reflect on the process of developing the AP and communicate this for current and future students.

In the course, students use these tools to extend their view of the present towards Elise Boulding’s idea of a 200 year present. Working in groups, they develop an ‘Agile Prototype’ of a building system or product that includes 100 years of the building system or products past, as well as 100 years of its future.


The Agile Prototyping methodology used in the course synthesises agile design processes, computational design, biomimetics and future forecasting to provide participants with a future focused design, analysis and modelling skills in architectural engineering.

Agile Prototyping applies a biological science lens to the built environment to identify the ‘genes’ of the built environment. This will enable future architectural engineers to hack the pseudo genetic code of our built environment. To enable the fast (re)design and analysis of our built environment.

Agile Prototyping has four stages: A1 #FORECAST FUTURES: Define 3 future scenarios near, medium and far using the 3 Horizons Framework and Science Fiction Prototyping. Overarching concept for this assignment is the future concept of Forecasting with the purpose of guiding innovation by creating a target that you can use to test your agile prototypes later in the course.

A2 #WHATS NEEDED?
Overarching concept for this assignment is the future concept of Backcasting with the purpose of supporting codesign of solutions. The concepts are based in traditional in requirements engineering but they extended so that they can used in meta disciplinary analysis of the selected building system. This stage intorduces the design science research methodology (DSRM) so that students define their solution objectives, based on then problem identification in the previous stage.

(3) #DISCOVER GENES: Focus on the modelling of the agile Prototype using biodigital prototyping methods. Reverse engineer the features (genes) and pseudo developmental stages of the agile prototype (building system or product). Overarching concept for this assignment is the future concept of Pastcasting with the purpose of revealing biases. This applies the concepts of biological development to inform the development of our agile biodigtal prototype. This follows the design and development and demonstration stages of DSRM.

(4) #COMPUTE VECTORS: Model the history (evolution) of the prototype and use this to determine the prototype’s current future trajectory. This happens by applying the biological concept of evolutionary development to the
‘Overarching concept for this assignment is the future concept of recasting with the purpose of evoking imagination and in our case imagining the future trajectory of building system features based on their current ‘genes’ identified in assignment 2 and future needs. This follows the evaluate and communicate steps of the DSRM.

Lectures and group assignments.