Autopoiesis: Autonomous Assemblies of Matter & Machine

Bartlett School of Architecture
with Living Architecture Lab

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Autopoiesis is an experimental architectural research project that redefines how architecture can be designed and constructed through distributed robotic intelligence and discrete material systems. The project conceptualises architecture as a living organism—an adaptive system of modular matter and distributed robotics that regenerates and transforms itself—thereby challenging conventional notions of permanence in architecture.
It investigates how spatial organisation can emerge from local interactions between autonomous robotic agents, material constraints, and fabrication protocols.
At its core, Autopoiesis proposes a bottom-up production model in which reclaimed and residual materials are transformed into modular elements and assembled through networks of distributed robotic agents. Through processes of feedback, negotiation, and material interdependency, these systems generate adaptive, structurally coherent configurations that evolve over time.
By shifting architecture from a fixed object to an open-ended process, the project challenges extractive and optimisation-driven construction paradigms, proposing instead a regenerative, responsive, and continuously reconfigurable built environment.

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