Papers are invited for a series of three special issues on Evolutionary Design, to appear in 1999 issue numbers 3 and 5 and 2000 issue number 1 of AIEDAM. This exciting new area of research involves the integration of Evolutionary Computation with many aspects of design, including: conceptual, creative, generative and optimization. The use of evolutionary search techniques allows computers to explore populations of designs in parallel and has shown to be highly successful in generating improved designs for an astonishing range of applications. Today computers are being used to evolve everything from architecture to spacecraft systems, and from aesthetic bridges to 'virtual creatures'.

However, despite the success of these methods, many questions remain unanswered. For example: should we continue to use evolutionary computation as generative tools, instead of simply optimizers? How can we convince designers of the fact that an unpredictable, unexplainable, stochastic method is of use to them? Can we use ideas from other fields, including biology, to increase the capabilities of our computational models? What are the best ways to interface evolutionary search with existing analysis tools? Is there a future in using Evolutionary Computation in design, or will its limitations (e.g. being unable to backtrack or 'undo' stages of evolution) ultimately prevent us from tackling unsimplified real-world problems?

Papers should contain original and unpublished material, describing the use of evolutionary techniques such as genetic algorithms, genetic programming, memetic algorithms, evolutionary strategies and evolutionary programming, for design problems. Relevant topics include:

• Evolutionary optimization of designs.
• Evolutionary generative design.
• Creative Evolutionary Design.
• Conceptual Evolutionary Design.
• Representations suitable for Evolutionary Design.
• The integration of aesthetics or techniques from Artificial Life in Evolutionary Design.
• Investigations of key aspects within Evolutionary Design systems, e.g. creation or interfacing of fitness functions, multiobjective optimization, constraint handling, variable-length chromosomes, epistasis.

Please notify the guest editor immediately via email of your intention to submit a paper.