Phase(x) - Memetic Engineering for ArchitectureArchitecture
Florian Wenz, Urs Hirschberg · eCAADe proceedings · 1997
Phase(x) was a successful teaching experiment we made in our entry level CAAD course in the Wintersemester 1996/97. The course was entirely organized by means of a central database that managed all the students' works through different learning phases. This setup allowed that the results of one phase and one author be taken as the starting point for the work in the next phase by a different author. As students could choose which model they wanted to work with, the whole of Phase(x) could be viewed as an organism where, as in a genetic system, only the "fittest" works survived. While some discussion of the technical set-up is necessary as a background, the main topics addressed in this paper will be the structuring in phases of the course, the experiences we had with collective authorship, and the observations we made about the memes hat developed and spread in the students' works. Finally we'll draw some conclusions in how far Phase(x) is relevant also in a larger context, that is not limited to teaching CAAD.