Econnected City, urban design for Damasco, Ergin Birinci & Rocky Merchant
http://complexitys.com/english/urbanparametric/#.UqD6cxbkpac

The 21st century has brought a different style of architecture. This is Parametricism, defined by avant-garde structures and the use of new tools and techniques to produce seamless fluidity in buildings. Not only do these tools aid to draft the models, but they also generate designs. Parametric design proposes an ordered complexity and at the same time the articulation of systems that compose a structure, such as facades, structure, circulation, etc.

Not only does parametric design apply to architecture, but it has started to play a role in urbanism. We are used to the modernist urban layout with straight lines and 90-degree angles, the style Le Corbusier acclaimed as order and organization. But in the last decade this concept has had a different outcome. Parametric urbanism simulates patterns that emerge from self-organization. Not only does parametricism apply to the geometry, but it analyzes the operations and systems that make up the city. The idea is to create a model of a city that could regenerate itself with the changes in society over time.

The main concern throughout the book is if parametricism and the new design tools can be used to model or reformulate cities.

Two examples of utopic cities are considered:

1. Chlorofilia, Los Angeles in a post-apocalyptic era where a new city has evolved. It is self-sufficient and regenerates when it needs to, as cells do in the human body.
2. An ideal neighborhood composed of a bio structure that builds itself through the Viab (its construction apparatus). Citizens have a stretch connection with the habitat itself.

These examples are just ideas of what the cities of the future should look like. The book suggests that cities developed in a laboratory can have positive results. On the other hand Manuel De Landa states, “Digital simulations used for these processes must be quite complex.”¹ A city will not develop merely by following rules imposed by a program. It needs agents that are able to make decisions and attribute these to others. And although the future suggests inter-disciplinary practices in terms of architecture and urban development, we need specialized planners to shape the city of the future.

I strongly support the advances being brought up in urban topics, and wish that these concepts could be applied to real cities. As for right now, I do not believe that parametricism or any other paradigm has the necessary foundations to determine the growth of a city and have a positive long-term result. Every city is different and has its own growth pattern.

Indeed I do believe that in the geometrical context, parametric design would have an asserted outcome. Although it seems to have a complex organization opposing orthogonal principles, a certain type of order can be achieved with well-articulated elements that imply direction and location.

In the meanwhile, parametric design has been successful in smaller scale environments, like buildings or single urban blocks.

¹. Leach, Neil “Digital Cities”; page 54.

Sandra Reeves http://www.moveintolife.com/thesis-pattern.html

Rhizome is a philosophical term used to describe the relations and connectivity of things. The authors Deleuze and Guattari, have assigned this term “rhizome” referring to a relation like that of roots. They spread underground with no direction, no beginning, and no end. They are dispersed. It is opposed to the idea of a tree which has a starting point, and from there branches out in a predictable path. 

When compared to the relation between things, a rhizome forms assemblages. An assemblage is a gathering and grouping of things.
D & G also talk about two planes of interaction. There is the plane of organization where things interact in a vertical form, with hierarchy and in a specific order where if one of its parts is missing, then the whole structure collapses. The second plane would be the plane of consistency. The rhizome takes action in this plane. It is a horizontal alliance with no specific direction where were all multiplicities that make part of it, interact with one another. Everything is connected in one way or the other, but in one plane.
To better understand the concept of rhizomatic connections, D&G have approached 6 principles.
The first principle, Connectivity, states that every part of the system is connected to another part in any possible way. Like in the real world, a person has a relation with another person who is connected to many more, hence creating a network.
Heterogeneity, the second principle, defines that a rhizome is a connection between things of different nature. The authors give the example of orchids with bees. Both interact in the reproduction system of the other, but each one belongs to a completely different environment.
The third principle is Multiplicity. As mentioned before, in a rhizome all the parts are connected to one another and then these to others, and these others to a greater number of others; as in a mathematical expression of n3. One is connected to three, these three to three other more and so on. It has no beginning or end.
Asignifying Rupture is the fourth principle of rhizome. It states that a rhizome can never be broken. If one of its parts is interrupted, it will continue in a different path, or be deterritorialized (change its function) but will always remain.

This concept brings up an idea of investigation. Relating to architecture and society, and similar to the concept of architecture and atmosphere, how do people react to a change of space? Whether it is changing or eliminating a part of their environment, or moving the people (deterritorialize), how do they embrace the change? Do they create their own atmospheres? Until what extent are they in control of this atmosphere? If society is a rhizome, then as suggested by the text, it will adapt to the change. We tend to believe it is an arborescent structure because of its organizational parameters, at the end, I believe every part of it has its own assemblage in a rhizomatic interaction.

Going back to the text and understanding the idea of rhizome, the last set of principles is Cartography and Decalcomania. Rhizome is like a map. You can enter at any specific point but you cannot trace it because it has no end.

In general, rhizome is defined as an interaction system applied to any division that follows no specific pattern or rules of organization.

Different atmospheres can be perceived in one same space. http://www.bloodandchampagne.com/2012/11/19/112/

Atmosphere is the space in which we inhabit. It is summarized to the intangible effects we perceive in a place. There is no architecture without an atmosphere. It goes beyond the constructed space. Atmosphere surrounds the space between the building and its surroundings.

There are architects that can disregard atmosphere and there are others that base their designs around the concept of atmosphere. Frank Lloyd Wright is the perfect example for an architect of atmosphere. He states that people are rooted to atmosphere whether they want to or not. For him atmosphere is created when every particle of the design focuses on one same idea. In his drawings the atmosphere can be clearly perceived as a set of effects, always producing an ideal atmosphere. Sometimes, the atmosphere and the building itself merge one into the other.

Architecture is compared to décor because it is the decorated structure in which atmosphere can happen.  Atmosphere does not need a building, but it is the building that gives it a location. Architecture is a mix of atmospheres. One passes from one atmosphere to the other.

Guy Debord, a situationist architect, believes architecture is pure atmosphere and we could change the way we do architecture by using the “radical potential of atmosphere”. By this, the building and the architect come out of the picture. He states that “the city is made up of an endless mix of atmospheres” and that these atmospheres should be clearly defined one from the other. By these means analyze each one and reconstruct the city and the society. He then figured out that society molds its own atmosphere and the architect’s role vanishes.

But architects will always try to take control of the atmosphere surrounding their projects even though they want to embrace it or not because it is the nature of an architect.

Stating Le Corbusier: “The daily life of an architect can create an atmosphere in which it can grow.” For him, atmosphere cannot be taught. One learns to design atmosphere from the experienced effects of a particular atmosphere.

Every project has its own atmosphere, which cannot be rejected. It is intangible and indefinable. It is the essential part of architecture. The architect’s role is to create the relationship between the building and its atmosphere and not embrace only one of the two.

An interesting research theme would be “the Situationist’s attempt to redefine architecture as pure atmospheric”; based on Guy Debord’s ‘Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography’ (1955). How are the different atmospheres in a society? What is the relationship between the people, the building and the atmosphere? At the end, figure out how significant is the role of the architect in the design of atmosphere and what control does he have over it.