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.