This abstraction helps large and complex systems to be designed. However, details of the target medium must be taken into account at some stage.
Evolutionary algorithms seem well suited to the design of standard cells.
The cells are simple, so within the reach of contemporary evolutionary methods. As exotic media based on quantum physics or biochemistry are proposed, it is not immediately clear how best they could be used. In this experiment, there is a two-dimensional array of nodes, with components between them. This results in a circuit not needing wires, but not as constrained in architecture as a regular 2-D array. In other respects, the experiment was unrealistic.