evolutionary search

Evolutionary search is what I reach for when a problem is too tangled to solve head on: describe what good looks like, then let a population of designs breed, mutate, and compete until something clever falls out. It's optimization with the humility built in, because you're admitting you don't know the answer, only how to recognize it.

On the Cappelletti pavilion it handed us two lattice topologies we'd never have drawn by hand, both stable, one noticeably lighter.

The catch is the fitness function. The search gives you exactly what you asked for, so the real design work is being honest about what you actually want before you let it run.