Deploying CAS dynamics within the Urban Fabric: A series of thought experiments that illuminate possible trajectories Sharon Wohl PhD Candidate, Spatial Planning and Strategy, TU Delft Assistant Professor, College of Design (Architecture and Urban Design) Iowa State University Abstract: This paper highlights a series of academic posters developed for an upper level Seminar Course entitled ‘Complex Adaptive Systems for Resilient Cities and Architectures’ taught in 2016 at Iowa State University. The course provides an introduction to principles of Complex Adaptive Systems Theory (CAS) and their potential application for making flexible, responsive, tactical and resilient spatial environments. The course introduces an array of complexity stances – including relational, computational, communicative and morphological strategies - and considers how these might be engaged to generate resilient urban environments in the absence of master plans. Each student in the class produced a research poster - a speculative design proposition - intended to illustrate how CAS dynamics might be activated in urban contexts to produce projects that evolve over time, leading to ‘fit’ emergent conditions derived from the bottom-up. Students considered the nature of actors within the system, the forces driving adaptation, the fitness parameters governing the systems, and the mechanisms whereby feedback loops could help steer the system. In each case, the works studied what mechanisms would need to be in place (how various environments could be ‘primed’), so as to provide the system under study the capacity to evolve over time, in responsive ways and in accordance with user needs and site dynamics. This paper discusses this body of work, reflecting on implications for advancing research in urban complex systems. The poster speculations are somewhat unique in urban studies engaging complexity, in that the focus here is upon how material artifacts might be designed to support the unfolding of complex processes. Introduction: In recent decades, research embracing complexity perspectives has become increasingly prevalent in a wide array of fields, including spatial planning discourses (Sengupta et al. 2016; Portugali et al. 2012). However, while the power of complexity, with its ‘bottom-