Kokkugia is an international design and research practice that operates in a range of fields including architecture, urban design and industrial design. With generative and algorithmic strategies, Kokkugia examines the emergence of architectural forms and urban space: An in-depth research of multi-agent-based systems, complex self-organisation, cellular automata and morphogenetic algorithms pairs with studies of human behaviour and urban development.

In the architectural practice, the results of their research and experiments are applied to elements such as façades, squares, or construction grids; like in their proposal for the Taipei Performing Arts Centre described below. Visually, their designs appear organic, rich and complex. In their hypermodern approach, architectural decoration escapes its negative connotation as it becomes part of the construction.

Kokkugia was founded in 2004 by Jonathan Podborsek, Roland Snooks and Rob Stuart-smith and operates in New York and London.

Swarm Matter, an ongoing project exploring the generation of ornamental geometries through agent based formation of non-linear hierarchies and emergent patterns.

Irapuato Bridge
Kokkugia in collaboration with Rojkind Arcquitectos

Kokkugia’s proposal for the Taipei Performing Arts Center open competition attempts to dissolve the normative conditions of spatial enclosure to create a performance venue and public space of spectacle. The flows of the 19th century water course of Keelung River provided the impetus for a process which erodes a monolithic base in the generation of a public space carved between the auditoriums.

The recursive subdivision which operates to erode this base fractally dissolves the monolithic block of program. This fractal technique is again employed in the auditoriums in the generation of emergent forms of ornamentation and articulation. Simultaneously responding to acoustic requirements while aspiring to generate a richness of texture and detail which is historically found in the worlds great theaters and opera houses.

The roof and spatial lattice are generated through a network of semi-autonomous agents, seeding design intent at a micro scale. A starting network geometry of the roof is explicitly modeled which then self-organises within various degrees of freedom, enabling parts of the roof to maintain their original geometry, while other parts radically reform both topology and geometry. This process generates a material behavior through the negotiation of the internal motivation of the agents and the force within the network connections.

The areas of the roof enclosing the auditoriums maintain their explicit starting geometry while the area surrounding the main circulation spine has a more complex set of requirements and reforms to negotiate these. The agents are programmed with a set of spatial imperatives while the material nature of the network creates a tendency toward equilibrium topologies that operate with a degree of structural efficiency. The network structure of the system generates both space filling lattices and continuous surfaces where the network connections are articulated as a web of veins.