On Tuesday 15 January 2019, Michael Weinstock (Founder and a Director of MSc / MArch Emergent Technologies and Design & Head of Research) delivered the Digital Architecture Open Lecture at the University of Kent titled The Ecology of Intelligence, in Nature and in Civilisation.

It is commonly said that cities are complex systems, and exhibit many of the properties of living beings. The application of terms like 'Smart' or 'Adaptive' to subsidiary urban systems is ubiquitous but an exegesis of a model of intelligence specific to the city is more rarely encountered in the literature of complexity sciences. Successful living species have evolved sentience and responsive behaviour specific to the ecological system within which they exist. It follows that 'ecological intelligence' cannot be approached through models of 'general intelligence' but can only be approached through observation and analysis of the dynamics of inter-species and species- environment relationships across a range of spatial and temporal scales within each particular ecology. What is the significance of this definition of intelligence in understanding the evolutionary development of cities? Can a design paradigm for future cities be developed from this perspective?

Read more about Michael Weinstock on the Research Profile page