Francis Bitonti

Bio [2008]
Francis A. Bitonti is an architect living in New York. He holds a Master of Architecture from Pratt Institute and a BFA (magna cum laude) from Long Island University, where he specialized in interactive and computational media. He has worked on a variety of high-profile architectural projects and has helped developed software that use artificial intelligence and genetic algorithms to design both lighting and structural systems.

Project Title
A New Kind of Architecture

Project
The research project will explore the space of possible programs that exist within a 3-dimensional, 2-color, 12-neighbor cellular automaton. The results will be visualized by being mapped onto a 3-dimensional space composed by tiling a rhombic dodecahedron. The research will then focus on the adaptation of these simple programs to the generation of architectural forms. Most generative strategies in contemporary architectural design rely heavily on deterministic models to meet various design criteria. This project will search the space of all possible programs for complex behavior that can be used to compute spatial organizations that satisfy a variety of design criteria.

Project Demonstration
Rhombic Dodecahedra Totalistic Cellular Automaton

Favorite Radius 3/2 Rule
Rule chosen: 22693

This cellular automaton, rule number 22693 k=2 r=3/2, is interesting because it seems to be capable of exhibiting a wide range of behaviors. When the rule is calculated with a single black cell as the initial condition it generates simple nested patterns. However, altering the initial conditions will promote complex behavior. This image uses three evenly spaced black cells as the initial condition, and as the automaton evolves both complex and nested behavior is generated.