Created by Alisa Andrasek in 2001, BIOTHING is a cross-disciplinary laboratory of programming and architectural design, reflecting this young generation of architects that are experimenting with the potential of digital tools. Utilizing the computer to calculate and generate forms with codes and parametric data, BIOTHING’s experimental approach is based on genetic models and operates beyond form and geometry. Using the self-generating and evolutionary power of algorithms, Alisa Andrasek is working on scripting programmatic or contextual variables. Sequences of codes are developed, and then subjected to specific constraints and production variables, thereby making it possible to generate complex behavioral models. These sequences are compiled in an Open Source library called Genware that Andrasek has been building since 2001. This interface maps the main families of algorithms and also groups the methods for converting these algorithms into a common language. Offering a glimpse of the constellations of projects that can be adapted to the constraints of ecological and sustainable design, the research conducted by BIOTHING is focused as much on architecture and urbanism as design.
Alisa Andrasek was born in Croatia. She lives and works in London, where she has been teaching at the Architectural Association since 2008. A graduate of the University of Zagreb, she obtained a Master’s in Advanced Architectural Design at Columbia University in 2000. She founded BIOTHING in 2001, a laboratory where her research concentrates on the generative potential of physical and digital computational systems. In 2005, she launched the CONTINUUM collective, a research group specialized in software development. In 2004, she received the FEIDAD Design Merit Award and was co-winner of the Metropolis Next Generation Design Competition in 2005. Her work has been the subject of several exhibitions, notably at the Biennales of Prague in 2003 and Sidney in 2004, at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York in 2005 and at the Maison Rouge in Paris in 2007. In 2009, her work entered the collections of the Centre Pompidou and the FRAC Centre, which exhibited the results of her research in the show entitled BIOTHING [Alisa Andrasek] a_maze and published her first monograph.
