Phase(x) - memetic engineering for architecture

Phase(x) was a successful teaching experiment we made in our entry level CA AD course in the Wintersemester 1996/1997. The course was entirely organize d by means of a central database that managed all the students' works throu gh different learning phases. This set-up allowed that the results of one p hase and one author be taken as the starting point for the work in the next phase by a different author. As students could choose which model they wan ted to work with, the whole of Phase(x) could be viewed as an organism wher e. as in a genetic system, only the "fittest". works survived. While some d iscussion of the technical set-up is necessary as a background, the main to pics addressed in this paper will be the structuring in phases of the cours e, the experiences we had with collective authorship, and the observations we made about the memes (2) that developed and spl ead in the students' wor ks. Finally we'll draw some conclusions in how far Phase(x) is relevant als o in a larger context, which is not limited to teaching CAAD. Since this pa per was first published in 1997, we have continued to explore the issues de scribed here in various projects (3) together with a growing number of othe r interested institutions worldwide. While leaving the paper essentially in its original form, we added a section at the end, in which we outline some of these recent developments. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.