“Branching Morphogenesis” is at Ars Electronica, a museum of digital and media arts, in Linz, Austria

‘… the form of an object is a ‘diagram of forces’… D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson

Thompson described growth and form in relation to the study of organisms. He emphasized the evolution as the fundamental determinant of the form and structure of living organisms. He asserts structuralism as an alternative to survival of the fittest in governing the form of species.

According to him Darwinism is not adequate explanation for the origin of new species. He regarded natural selection as a secondary to the origin of biological form.

The text is basically lays on the associated repercussions of environmental pressures and geometrical formations. He established mathematics and physics to map these repercussions. It is described as a means for deciphering an individual course of development or growth. The interpolation between multiple morphometric mappings was outlaid as a means to project potentials in form. This sets two fundamental branches of a conceptual framework for computational geometry. These are parametrics and homologies. A parametric equation is defined as a constant equation in which relational parameters vary. It results in producing families of products where each instance will always carry a particular commonness with others. Thompson defines these embedded relationships as homologies . The framework that emerges encapsulates, within formal rules for geometric organisation, the capacities of form, in physical stature and robustness, and their transformation through external influences.

Similarly, computer-aided design is capturing the geometric relationships that form the foundation of architecture, building upon now-established practices of form-finding and finite element analysis (which breaks down a continuous structure into many simple, linked elements in order to find optimal thicknesses and arrangements of supporting elements). New developments in parametric modeling permit control of design through models that can coordinate and update themselves. These systems can automatically update the entire model or drawing set based on changes as small as a joint or as large as the entire floor plan, offering flexible design of deeply nested relationships. In much the same way that mutations in nature generate biodiversity, individual variation in architectural components can be achieved economically. Parametric design practice employs ‘dependency’ networks similar to the complex process diagrams used to express relationships in natural systems, offering increasingly fine-tuned approaches to building component design. Using these tools, architectural disciplines are poised to work with increasing effectiveness in responsive, interactive systems.

I find this possibility really interesting. In particular I have always been interested in evolution, and the history of the Earth millions of years ago. Perhaps mathematical form is an element of the missing map, or perhaps this idea could be applied to filling in some of the gaps. It has exponential possibilities in the world of parametric design, and the possibility of the built form. We are increasingly interested in achieving organic form, and perhaps this better understanding of nature and mathematics will help us.

My possible personal research topic: How does the architectural discourse engage in a recovery of ecology in its original framing in the context of morphology? The Morphological Context of Environmental Architecture

 

Pompeii Garden; author: Karin.

Is Noth-America inhabitable? Is there an after-life? The answer for this questions is an answer of faith.

The text of Rudofsky starts describing the amenities of modern life of the human beings, how they think that they have conquered the inconveniences of the climate, but to tell the truth, there are only pre-arranged positions, never a complete control of the weather, because it is more than the air we breathe and the temperature that we feel, it is a random series of facts. He talks about that in the time of New England Settlers, the relation between men and nature was resuming into economic advantages, transforming into a hostile environment; and that they failed to produce anything revolutionary or particularly ingenious because they retreated into their houses and all of their efforts toward maintaining a tolerable indoor temperature. And that the modern men still doing today.

After a long weather talk, Rudofsky starts with his real main point: the garden. He talks about that humans do not see the garden as a potential living space, only as a space for parties; he says that domestic gardens are an essential part of the house and a ingredient for a happy environment. Rudofsky talks about how Roman gardens established a mood particularly to the most elaborate composure and they communicated a unique sense of comfort. The description of garden from Pompeii gave a better idea from what Rudofsky wanted to explain; the way of how they used the wall as an element that introduce a sense of order and its importance when they build it, because with this the human create space on human scale, he became a biped.

In the final pages of the text, the main idea is about how the modern garden has become  in wasted space, that front laws adds nothing to the looks of the house and that it belongs to the street rather than the house; and in this point is when Rudofsky combine the garden with the wall, explaining that the enclosing walls can be the answer to transform the garden from a wasted space into a personal space, giving the sensation of comfort and privacy that makes you feels like you have the control.

Rudofsky finishes the text with the idea that you do not need pre-arranged positions in order to have the perfect control of climate, that the perfect conditioned outdoor room can be achieved with the combinations of garden and walls, that allows variations of light, temperature, humidity with the help of sun and wind; only by this way the garden will became in a living space and in a nobler version of the house.

During the debate of the class and the talk with the other members that had read the lecture, there was several discussions about the main ideas of the text and in which of the 6 logics it fits; at the end we decided that the garden as an outdoor room of potential living space was the main topic, and that it belongs to a logic of system by illation and interaction, because of the relation and explanation between the climate, cultures and architectural elements with the garden.

Possible topic

One of the possible topic for my personal research that suggested from the reading of the text could be about how this ideas and theories can be applied in the contemporary era, the difficulties of how the garden could become into a living space because of the excess of population and the low amount of land in the world, the fight between economical facts and social convenience; inserting several new concepts like transversality actions, entropy systems, resilience spaces and optimization of resources into this ideas, the conditioned outdoor room could be a real fact for everybody and for the sake of the finite resources.

In Philippe Rahm’s thinking the architecture is therefore mold according to the climate conditions: heat, humidity, air flows shape the space and allow the functions and its users’ behaviours to find a place in it, while the simulation of the radiation, convection, conduction, evaporation and pressure aims to reproduce a natural environment into the architecture. Effectively, the climate assume the role of Architecture, while the Architecture, in its forms and functions, becomes the vehicle to create a climate environment. Eventually, his architectural approach doesn’t want to establish an open dialog with the Nature, investigating the blurry and unclear space between the black and the white as in Fushimoto’s research. He is not even creating a physical contoured space as for the Alison Smithson’s grotto, but rather an atmosphere of trascendence, a series of sensations, feelings and mapped motions borrowed from the Nature and enclosed in a timeless space.

Dealing only with the air and through the integration of invisible limits, Rham’s effort is an envelope of atmospheres, an invisible architecture of flows modeling the livable space. His sense of Architecture is a poetic and technological approach to the creation of  a comfortable space, made by undefined colors and different air densities.

Nevertheless, the Architecture is reduced to a filter- if not a wall- between man and Nature. It’s not the external climate that shape the Architecture in its forms and programmes, but it is rather a hi-tech and controlled reproduction of it. The need to control the climate derives from a modern society which is not anymore able to deal within an ‘unfriendly’ environment. The technology helps the human being to reach a better comfort level, but at the same time permits the growth of new and more sophisticated needs. Since the artificial environment is affecting the natural sphere, this relation is going to be an endless escape from a reunion with Nature. Perhaps, an advanced architecture should be even that one that forces the human being to have a natural- more than artificial- relationship of acceptance with the climate and its ‘caprices’.

PROTESTOR GUARDING HIS TREE /  POLICEMEN GUARD THE DESTRUCTION

WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM A PARK

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_protests_in_Turkey

Summer of 2013 something happened in Istanbul, the monetary system wanted to take the only green space left in Taksim, the GEZİ PARK, wich was the last public breathing point for the people and the reason to do so was to build a SHOPPING MALL

Like Toyo Ito says, the rapid economical growth was there, trying to reach every corner of the city, every valuable space was being occupied by big “bosses” to be sold. The park was tried to be destroyed with the help of police force. People resisted, the resistance spread to the country, that mall was not built. This shows if people themselves have the respect to the nature, we have a lot to learn from a tree, everything startet with a tree at gezi park but of course had political background.

 WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM A TREE

Toyo Ito mainly focuses on the idea of creating a connection between nature and human living environments “cities”. There is the example of the tree, which can grow vertically but also create harmony with his surroundings and in itself by sharing the sunlight with every leave democratical as neighbours living in harmony. He asks the question why humans today “lost” that connection wich he had with the nature in rural horizontal cities, what did we miss trough the inevitable proccess of going vertical in the city.

Ito runs his office for over 40 years and he talks about the different eras of arcitectural growth of the city, and for him the word city means “Tokyo”. The swimming in the sea of consumption, extreme fast economical changes influence architecture and create almost impossible relationships in the city texture. He and his colleagues ask the same questions in every era, even if  rules of the game changes in every 10 years period. Who is the architect, how much an architect can influence the world in this rules and for whom is architecture practiced and how can we learn from the nature.

He accepst and creates an anology with the rules of the game in the human world, in the the ecosystem “the forest”, when if only one tree tries to abstract himself form the system, gets eliminated, as this fight between spiecies creates their harmony. Harmony comes from the constant fight, which fight brought us to live worse. Instead of creating indusry for sustainability, we should simply learn from nature.

Modern times create so called fictional architecture, Ito states, as we architects fix on an image and miss the importance of building creation proccess and humanitary needs also naturality. His own Sendai Mediatheque building period is for him an example of, how reality changes the mind of an architect by time, the end product may vary from the idea or image, but get better qualities after facing reality. The imaginary idea dies, leaving huge amount of construction work behind. However your image is idealised, the building is real.

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.