Image credit: http://blogs.ethz.ch/girotmasla1213/tag/grasshopper/

Book by Neil Leach, David Turnbull and Chris Williams

Critical essay by Trinidad Gomez.

‘For how can the digital be tectonic? And how -for that matter- can the tectonics be digital?’ Neil Leach

In this book, Neil Leach explains the behaviour between digital and tectonics, and how nowadays we can see this popular topic as a new paradigm for thinking architectural culture.

This concept is developed since the first contributions in the field of computation changed architecture, how “Emergent” behaviour participated in the evolution of the digital and engineers system, and how the architecture has evolved, because of the participation of other disciplines, such as economics, programming, engineering, etc.

Steven Johnson developed the concept “Emergence”, explaining it as a system made of relatively simple elements, organized spontaneously and without explicit laws,  giving rise to intelligent behaviour. Computer programming is just a set of rules, where every of this set has only one possible interpretation and all these rules together can make a big result, but just if they work as a system, where in this book assumes that the design by algorithms works like this.

The interesting part is, that this system doesn’t need any kind of intelligence to make it a possible result, but of course they have the power of calculation. So in this part, it begins to have issues with this fact, because it appears that computers do everything, but at the end, designers are in charge to control all that they are designing.

Nowadays, the architectural process is linked with engineering more than ever, because of the facility of the control of the design and the ease to develop the complex shapes.

Everything has a method of design with a mathematical explanation, since Le Corbusier’s module has an algorithm process until now Zaha Hadid’s projects has a very complex programming code for obtain the unique shapes and surfaces.

In conclusion, a new paradigm of architecture related with digital tectonics has developed more complex digital platforms that helps to understand more closely all the details that are related to architecture whereby this results in the fact convert algorithmic language of part of architectural process nowadays. Engineer and architect’s relationship is now more than ever linked to the development of more complex structures and surfaces, converting architecture not just as space but a very complete detail process.

‘Architecture was born not of the algorithmic potential of computers programs, but the tectonics capacities of actual materials’ Chris Williams.

Intro
When a designer makes a machine that can solve problems, the designer gets credit. When a machine like this can find a method of finding a method of solution, the machine is the one who makes the answer. The machine may be more creative than the designer.

The evolutionary Machine
This paper is about machines that can learn about learning about architecture. These are called architecture machines. When an architect and an architecture machine can work together, this can make an evolutionary system. Computers are useful tools, which do everything that a human will command it to do. Why do we need a machine to be able to learn?
Most things that a computer does make things only work faster. If computers worked smarter as well, then things would be more efficient.
Two concerns in machine assisted architectureArchitects can’t handle large scale problems because they are too complex. But architects ignore small problems because they seem unimportant. Because of this, architects rarely get to see homes that they designed. 
To allow architects to be able to see the homes they design, it would be helpful to have machines that can learn. The machine would have to be able to respond to its environment.
 
The learning Machine
 
The 1943 theorem of  M and P states that a robot constructed with regenerative loops of a certain formal character, is capable of deducing any legitimate conclusion from a finite set of premises. Learning is can be done from several failures which can lead to success. Failure needs to be recognized.

To be able to recognize failure and learn, an architecture machine needs 5 things: 1) heuristic mechanism, 2) a rote apparatus, 3) a conditioning device, 4) a reward selector and 5) a forgetting convenience.
1) Heuristic narrows the search, or limits the search for a solution. When a problem is observed, the machine will recognize the problem and make sure it doesn’t do anything related to what it just did. Thus it limits even more possibilities.
2) Rote learning is the storing (remembering) of an event and associating it with a response.
3) Responses which are repeated become habits
4) a reward selector
5) unlearning bad habits is as important as learning. This way the machine won’t make the same mistake twice
The whole body (of the machine) will always be changing
One supercomputer could be connected to all the other architecture machines, allowing the machines and the humans who operate them to be able to 1) acquire large bursts of computing power, 2) to acquire stored information, 3) to communicate with other architects and other architecture machines
 
The Seeing Machine
 
Communication is the discriminatory response of an organism to a stimulus. The machine needs a stimulus – a way to sense or observe things that happen in its environment.
For a machine to look like its designer, 3 properties are needed: an event, an idea, and a representation.
In an architect-machine partnership the most important sense (out of the 5 senses: See, touch, hear, smell, taste) is to see. Computer graphics are used a lot.
Oliver Selfridge ‘s “Pandemonium” machine “saw” things and said what it was
It’s possible to build an architectural seeing machine that observes different models
This research helps to learn by focusing on visual stuff
Machine is more of a mannerist than a student but it reverses the fashionable role of computersFor eyes of an architecture machine, problem is the opposite. Given a form, generate the criteria… learn from the criteria and someday generate new forms.
Computers are usually used to store information, which is used to aid an architect in designing something which is then created and observed. An architecture machine could look at something that is created and observed, gather the information, and create something better and new.

Events can be seen, heard, smelt, felt, extra-sensory or a motor command.  In an architect-machine partnership the most important sense (out of the 5 senses: See, touch, hear, smell, taste) is to see. Computer graphics are used a lot. 

Oliver Selfridge ‘s “Pandemonium” machine “saw” things and said what it was.

It’s possible to build an architectural seeing machine that observes different models, and this research helps to learn by focusing on visual stuff.  
Machine is more of a mannerist than a student but it reverses the fashionable role of computersFor eyes of an architecture machine, problem is the opposite. Given a form, generate the criteria… learn from the criteria and someday generate new forms.
Computers are usually used to store information, which is used to aid an architect in designing something which is then created and observed. An architecture machine could look at something that is created and observed, gather the information, and create something better and new.

Summary.
This reading describes the behavior of ants, living cells, and people, and how their individual (inter)actions follow and provoke a global system behavior. Global behavior, local interaction.
There was a study which revealed a completely new way of understanding ant colonies and their behavior. The normal approach was to study several ant colonies, but instead they focused on one single colony over time. They discovered that colonies display a sort of an aging behavior, as a whole organism, through steps such as infancy, adolescence and matureness. Taking in count that colonies can live for 15 years and ants for 1 year, the question is how such simple organisms as ants can achieve a global result that far exceeds their live time and awareness.
It is assumed that ants wouldn´t be able to have an understanding of the colony as a whole or plan its development. So how is it that they know how to act individually, so that the colony survives? Local feedback, decentralized planning. This might be explained by noticing that ants have sort of tasks assigned. They just know they have to bring nutrients to the colony and defend their territory. Then their behavior depends on the interaction between the ants, sharing information about where is food, what nutrients they need, threatening and menaces, etc. The global behavior comes from this interaction between more simple activities of the basic units.
Code: nutrients=information
Similar behavior can be seen in the cell interaction of living organisms. The global actions begin with the interaction between the cells, and the transfer of nutrients (information) from one cell to the other through their membranes. In the embryo development, we can notice how cells define whether they will be heart cells, bone cells, blood cells, etc., based on the interaction and the information of the surrounding neighbor cells. DNA acts as a manual that indicates the cell how to become bone, heart, blood, etc., depending on the needs of their environment. As well as the ants, the global coordination depends on the exchange of information and a pre-established frame code of behavior for the basic units.
City simulation
Sims City is a good example of how a set of rules and units of interaction can evolved into apparently more complex systems. The video game depends on the exchange of information between the units of the city that, when enough, display complex global reactions depending on each unit´s feedback to/from the whole system. This is achieved by a logarithm and mathematics that act like an invisible operator that make thing happen.
Street view
Nature itself appears to have a code for doing things and solving problems, that also governs human behavior. We see behaviors in a galactic scale reflected in the atomic scale. Cities become with time into a huge organism of interactions. Humans of course we are more complex units than ants, cells, or computer bits. But the concept is the same. In this way city sidewalks are the spaces on which more of these interactions can take place. You have images, smells, sounds and exchange of information that keeps our brains active, and healthy. Nobody likes traffic jams, the interaction between people from one car to the other is poor compared to our capacity of information processing and interaction. Basically: it is boring and we don´t enjoy it.
Each space configuration that evolved in the cities like restaurants, plazas, parks, stadiums, offer a different code of interaction that we follow and under which things happen between people. This also happens with the recent virtual spaces which will be more and more important in the future. Complex systems offer the opportunity to fulfill our needs and even create new ones. When the interactions are encouraged, intelligence emerges from the exchange of information, so we can fulfill necessities more efficiently, enjoying the complexity.
The understanding of unit interaction is getting more complex through technology, so we can expect more complex and interactive technology in the future. It is just natural.

Personal Research Interest.
Information is the basis for interaction. Interaction defines intelligence. Emergent intelligence comes from the ability to read information and related it in different ways to obtain different results and more information.

Swarm intelligence is repeated throughout nature. We see can it in neurons, ants, shoals and bird flocks. Swarm intelligent systems show similar properties:

-Group of individuals.

-Relatively homogeneous individuals.

-Simple behavior of individuals, which act in response to local information from environment and other individuals.

-Overall behavior by the convention of the individuals.

The information is the element that promotes the action and interaction of the swarms. Information can be transmitted in different ways and channels like chemicals, physical interaction, movement…

Light for example, give us information in the way of color. But our intelligence is not limited to tell as that an apple is red. It tell us that it is ready to be eaten, and that it is going to be sweet. We get an idea of its flavor even before biting it. We already know its smell. The ability to record experiences takes intelligence one step further. New research is being done on how color and sound can relate to transfer information.

Can sound, music and color, be used as medium for information transfer, and what kind of intelligence can emerge from that?

By: Sebastian Alvarado Grugiel. Arquitecto.

Personal research

Is interesting how Deleuze try to explain that with the same process we can have different approaches. It would be very interesting if we try to understand the “virtual” line and factors that the architectures tend to follow, and in the end and start to analyze the “real” of the final form of every topologic on architecture.
If we talk about modernism, how are the virtual for get the result of the project like a modern house, and then compare with contemporary house and make a visualization between the different real or results that we can have just because of the different factors that we have thanks time.

By: Trinidad Gomez.

Six texts will inquire some of the driving theoretical forces in relation to informational concepts in architecture:

T1- Thompson, D’Arcy. “On growth and Form” (1917), Chapter XVII: On the Theory of Transformations, pp.1026-1095.

T2- De Landa, Manuel . “Deleuze and the genesis of form”, Extracted from: http://www.artnode.se/artorbit/issue1/f_deleuze/f_deleuze_delanda.html , pp. 1-6.

T3 - Deleuze, Gilles. “A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Squizofrenia”. Chapter: Rhizome, pp. 1-23.

T4 - Johnson, Steven. “Emergence: the connected lives of ants, brains, cities and software”, pp. 1-15.

T5 - Negroponte, Nicholas. “Toward a Theory of Architecture Machines” Journal of Architectural Education (1947-1974), Vol. 23, No. 2 (Mar., 1969), pp. 9-12.

T6 - Schumacher, Patrik. “Parametricism as Style, Parametricist Manifesto”, London 2008. Architecture and Digital Design Systems, London Met MA 2008, pp. 1-13.

Methodology: The analysis of the texts will be organized according to the methodology of the puzzle (or mosaic). This consists of active and cooperative learning, in four steps:

1) To read individually, and before to the session, one of the texts assigned by the professor;

2) In the classroom, in groups of experts, people who have read the same text, will compare the three main principal, and will solve the doubts arisen after the reading;

3) Also in groups of six students, in base groups, but this time by those who have read different articles, every member will explain to the others his/her comprehension and opinion of the text he/she have read;

4) Finally, every group will expose to the rest of participants, the content and their reflections on one of the texts, opening a debate between all in a public review.

Assignment: Summarize.

Every student will deliver individually a summary in writing to the professor (via IaaC-Blog). Students must explain the relationship between the text under study, with the topics exposed in the final debate, adding an image related to the post. Include a possible topic for personal research suggested in the reading of the text, explained in approximately ten lines.

Today in the Advanced Architecture Theory Course, with Manuel Gausa, Mathilde Marengo and Jordi Vivaldi, we investigated what exactly is Advanced Architecture.

The idea was to generate a comprehensive map of what the MAA 2013-2014 students consider Advanced Architecture, asking them to write 2 words that for them define this concept, on 2 different post-its. We then proceeded to stick the post-its on the wall generating a participative map, in which clusters of concepts, of a same conceptual field, emerged.

Once the map contained everyone’s input, diverse readings of said map were proposed, highlighting the different clusters, their extensions, and how they interrelate.

The outcome of the interactive exercise maps this years Advanced Architecture concept!

In addition, he/she will have to include a possible topic for personal research, that should have suggested the reading of the text, explained in approximately ten lines.

Deadline: After the puzzle activity, on Saturday, 9th of November 2013, before 10 p.m.

(1983 – ETSAB), PHD (2005 – ETSAB), by the Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya (European Mention). Principal Partner and Co-Director of Gausa+Raveau actarquitectura, office of architecture, landscape and urban design. From 1991 to 2000 Director of themagazine “Quaderns d’Arquitectura i Urbanisme”. Since 1994 Founding Member of Actar Architecture and Actar Projects Editorials. Honoured with the Médaille de l’Académie d’Architecture de France in 2000. Since 2006 Professor of Design Projects in the Faculty ofArchitecture, Università degli Studi of Genoa. Director of the ADD (Scuola de Dottorato in Architettura e Design - Università degli Studi - PHD Program) of Genoa. From 2006 to 2008, Director of the Master Program “Intelligent Coast” hosted by Fundació Politècnica deCatalunya. 2008- 2012 Vice-president of the Advisory Council for the Sustainable Development (CADS), Generalitat de Catalunya. Since January 2009 he is Director of the GIC-Lab, Urban Research Laboratory et territory, Universitá degli Studi di Genova. From 1998 to 2003 he was President of Metapolis and President of the Scientific Committee at the IAAC. Author of various articles and published works, such as “Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture”, “HiperCatalunya: Research Territories” among others.

RICARDO DEVESA

Ricardo Devesa is graduated architect by the School of Architecture of Valencia (ETSAV, UPV, 1999) and got his PhD from the BarcelonaTech (ETSAB, UPC, 2012). Currently he is editor-in-chief in Actar Publishers, professor of Theory at the School of Architecture of Barcelona (ETSAB, UPC), as well as at Elisava School of Design in the Master of Architecture and Environment (UPF). He was visiting scholar at Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP, Columbia University, New York). He has been a design professor and collaborator in several of the vertical workshops and seminars in the School of architecture at the International University of Catalonia (ESARQ, UIC, 1998-2005). He was a member of the editorial staff of the magazine Quaderns d’Arquitectura i Urbanisme (1997-1999) and member of the editors of the Basa magazine, (2004-2008), labor in which they obtained a mention in the FAD prize of Thought and Criticism (2009). He has been editor, together with Manuel Gausa, of the book: Otra mirada. Posiciones contra crónicas. La acción crítica como reactivo en laarquitectura española reciente (Gustavo Gili, 2010), and Barcelona: Modern Architecture Guide (Actar, 2013).

MAITE BRAVO

Maite Bravo obtained the degree of architect with honors at the University of Chile; a Master of Advanced Architecture at IAAC; and a Master in ‘Theory and Practice of Architectural Design’ at UPC. She is currently a PHD ‘European Doctor’ candidate at UPC (Architectural Design Department). Her research focuses on new design methodologies and concepts emerging from Parametric Digital Design and its immersion into architectural praxis. Her teaching experience includes the University of Chile, BCIT in Canada, and IAAC (Design Studio) since 2008. She was a lecturer at the First Parametric Design Seminar at HTWK Leipzig, the 2011 Festival of Architecture of Canada, and several Universities in Chile. She has over 10 years of experience practicing as an associate architect with GBL architects in Canada, where she later established her own firm.

2 ECTS credits

TUTORS: Manuel Gausa, Maite Bravo, Ricardo Devesa.

This seminar examines a series of seminal essays on architecture by key thinkers on the twentieth century, that will provide the bases to develop a relevant body of critical thought currently developing outside the prevalent mainstream architectural discourse.

The series starts reviewing a general overview of architectural culture at the beginning of the twentieth first century, considering the vast advancements in specialized knowledge, the impact of the information society and the pressing environmental concerns, which are deeply questioning the very basis of architectural practice. It examines how some key architectural practitioners are proposing solutions based on new design methodologies, new construction techniques, and novel materiality explorations.

This seminar explores new relevant architectural references in order to construct a critical body of knowledge that will serve as instruments to enable the exploration of current design methodologies in advanced architecture.

“Advanced architecture is to digital society what modern architecture was to the industrial society: an architecture bound up with interchange and information. With the capacity for displacement and modification. With the dynamic evolution of process and their associated spatial definition. Advanced architecture occurs, in fact, as an outcome of direct process of interchange; in synergy and flexible interaction with the environment which it acts. It is an act of active ecology that interacts decidedly with the environment, whether natural, artificial or digital. Advanced architecture is, therefore, a reactivating architecture to the extent that it strives to react with reality in order to restimulate it. Innovating it: at once reinforming it and recycling it. Exchanging information with and whitin it.”

From: “The metapolis dictionary of advanced architecture” by Manuel Gausa, Vicente Guallart, Willy Müller, Federico Soriano, FernandoPorras, José Morales, ed ACTAR 2003.

The program is structured around three Conceptual Frames— Advanced Systems / Informational Logics:

Frame 1- Systems/Strategies — Transversal Logics: information – cities. Professor: Manuel Gausa 

Frame 2- Systems/ Environments — Relational Logics: cities – natures. Professor: Ricardo Devesa

Frame 3- Systems/Process — Digital Logics: natures – information. Professor: Maite Bravo

The contents will be exposed as a theoretical frame, with some examples of projects/protagonists, a series of readings and finally, a workshop. In addition, some open lectures at the IaaC will be programmed during the course.