Generative design is a design exploration process.
As a trend, it started being used in art projects by generating random algorithms for sounds or images for example. It moved into logo and design identity projects as a trend for non-static “boring” logos and creating a new language for traditional identity corporations.
Generative design is a big trend that revolutionizes the work of designers, engineers, and architects.
Nature explores all possible solutions that optimize performance in each environment. Generative design mimics nature’s approach to design – the way organisms evolve in the natural world – by starting with goals and then exploring all the best possible permutations of a solution through successive generations until the best one is found.
Many designers are experimenting with generative design to produce new forms and improve existing products. To see designs, evolve, we must stop thinking of computers as mere drawing tools and start thinking about them as portals to greater exploration.
“Problems can never be solved at the level they were created” — Albert Einstein
This technology uses algorithms to generate every possible permutation of a design solution. The designer simply enters a set of parameters and then chooses the best outcome generated by the software.
Until now, designers were using a computer as a passive machine, that delivers a limited set of design options. In this new approach, computer and designer/engineer unite as co-creators.
They input design goals and constraints, using a generative-design system like Project Dreamcatcher. They enter specifics such as material, type, weight, strength, and costs. The computer uses algorithms and its own reasoning to generate thousands of designs, running performance analysis for each. Then, they can produce prototypes, through milling or 3D printing.
The software can automatically make aircrafts lighter, stronger buildings and trainers more comfortable – with the designer acting as a curator, rather than making all the decisions.
The Generative Design Process.
Generative design is used in many areas nowadays:
- Airbus created a new cabin partition for its A320 plane;
- MX3D, a robotics company, uses generative design to create a bridge which 3D -printing robots will manufacture to span a canal in Amsterdam;
- Under Armour sportswear company, with a 3D-printed lattice* structure midsole;
- Autodesk’s Toronto offices, the first AI-designed offices of that stature.
*Lattice structure or crystal structure is an arrangement of atoms or molecules in a crystalline solid or a liquid.
How cool is that?
By London School of Design and Marketing
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