Zero Carbon Lab

Deep Simplicity is complexity of system behaviour arising from simple rules deep inside the system. Zero is a ‘dangerous’ idea of a singularity and exception from the norm, and also of a state of balance between inputs and outputs or gains and losses. The talk investigates whether a combination of deep simplicity and zero balances could be used to spontaneously mimic nature. It explores buildings as they were, as they are, and as they could be.

Starting from vernacular architecture from pre-industrial age when buildings worked with nature, in the industrial age buildings became machines that disregarded climate. Deep simplicity inspired thinking can now take us in the direction of self-organising designs that not only work with nature, but that also create opportunities for making design embryos that can grow into full building designs of maximum efficiency.

In this lecture Professor Jankovic, director of Zero Carbon Lab, talks about a journey through different disciplines and explains how taking inspiration and ideas from seemingly unrelated disciplines helped him to solve hard problems in other disciplines. In this journey he connects the dots between emergence in nature, complexity science, computer science,

engineering, building science and architecture and explains how this informed his research into designing zero carbon buildings. He challenges the traditional top-down approach in science and explains how a bottom-up approach to problem solving blurs boundaries between disciplines and takes us further in our journey of discovery.