From the Stone Age to the Silicon Age, humanity’s relationship with materials has framed our scientific and cultural evolution. Despite recent scientific advances that open the laboratory doors to a future of material experimentation, the building industry remains stuck in the Concrete Age. The next material age is likely to be a Timber Age, as engineered timber finally comes into its own as a structural material suitable for multi-storey buildings.

The research and design methodology of our practice can be summarised as an essay in conflict and compromise; a continual infliction of self-imposed constraints that allows us to discover hitherto unimaginable paths through the available options. We achieve this by searching through a space of possibilities demarcated by the properties and performative logic of the material at hand. First, we create an abundant field of alternatives, then we often use evolutionary computations to find our way through this field towards a visionary and original design.

All design involves conflicting objectives. The best schemes offer the best compromise between desires. This article discusses how evolutionary solvers can be used as a tool for material-based architectural optimisation of geometries and structures, and how we have used them in designs for the imminent Timber Age. As one potentially conflicting objective is weighed against another, we move closer and closer to a tradeoff: the fitness of cooperating, opposing or unconnected variables.

A population of possible design responses is visualised as a ‘fitness landscape’. Inspired by the role of natural selection in biological evolution, we use evolutionary algorithms to perform a selection process in which the ‘most fit’ members of such a population survive, while the ‘least fit’ members are eliminated, with the selection process guiding the algorithm towards ever-better solutions. The resulting timber structures would have made Darwin proud.

In an attempt to make architectural education more relevant to professional architectural practice and as a response to increasing tuition fees, major changes to university curricula in the UK are afoot. This brings unprecedented opportunities to re-consider what and how universities teach - and to make architectural education more relevant to real-world challenges.

Last year, undergraduate design unit UG3 at the Bartlett School of Architecture completed an innovative project. The unit teamed-up with educational charity Global Generation to design and build a series of small buildings for a real client on a real site in King’s Cross. The article ‘Made in Architecture: Education as collaborative practice’ evaluates the emerging tradition of the live project as a vehicle for teaching architecture students about teamwork, collaboration and engagement. These skills - although increasingly significant to architectural practice - have until now been largely side-lined by university curricula.

Only if educators and practitioners together embrace new opportunities for architects to engage and empower communities can the profession reverse increasing marginalisation and re-define it’s remit in the face of new social and environmental challenges.