David Castro taking a shot at an awesome courtship swarm of Bigeye fish at Cabo Pulmo, Baja California Sur, Mexico.
Caption provided by Octavio Aburto (via National Geographic Photo Contest 2012)

A critical analysis of the book Swarm Intellignece – Neil Leach, Roland Snooks

What to underline

The bee builds the next cell starting on the corner of other cells, wich are already have two walls built. This simplicity protects the natural growth of the hive,  the contuniuty is necessary for success. Mıcroscale generates simple inputs, wich collectively form the whole. As the organism gets bigger, the possibility to bring the whole information at any given moment to every individual becomes impossible. The set of simple rules and tracable information patterns allow the individual to make decisions. Ant body collectors are not able to sit on a desk and decide how many dead bodies should be carried in wich direction, they just follow little patterns and the job is done.

Relationship between a human and the city, a bee and an orchid, an ant and the colony, differ on many levels on scale and purpose. One thing that remains obvious is these relationships are consisting of feedback loops. The city gives inputs to the individuals and the individuals shape the city by their inputs. This mutual interaction is the key to growth and stabilitiy of the whole. A city grows on its small scale economic and behavioral rules of the neighbours.

“The whole is greater than the sum” , the mathematical addition of all entries create a statistic, but if the input of “interaction” is added creating the “whole” as a system including the intelligence. It is like the soul of the whole. Individuals are “stupid” and the whole has a intelligence. It is not possible to say, one neuron is intelligent, but the whole organism can generate intelligence on extremely complex levels. To generate an understandable model and usable in architecture, our tools are visualisation and computational techniques.

Data collection in microscale inputs is the key, that is what we can extract from the book. Instead of designing a whole, architects need to design  a system, wich can interact, evolve and update himself. The idea of having huge monumental buildings “perfect” as they are is going to be romantic and historic. Now the building, the city, the neighbourhood should be respectfull to the user, interact and collect data from the user, at any time. Generate solutions at the system to those issues wich can be solved by design. Respect and democracy found in nature should be coming back to the output of architecture. The City.

The swarm intelligence exeggerated:

“Greg Lynn, Blobwall”, taken from web “< http://www.tba21.org/collection/artist/681/artwork/560> accessed on 22/11/2013″

“Greg Lynn, Blobwall”, taken from web “< http://glform.com/environments/blobwall/> accessed on 22/11/2013″

A thousant Plateaus, Plateau 1; Rhizome, Gilles Deleuze – Felix Guattari, 1987

In this plateau, “Rhizome”, Deleuze and Guattari discuss about different ways of thinking and conception of knowledge in philosophical terms. The authors oppose two fundamental systems of thought; the arborescent and the rhizomatic.

Vertical hierarchies, binary logics, linear connections and biunivocal relations are formed from antiquity and all disciplines (biology, literature, politics, phycology etc.) have been based on these. Nonetheless, world has changed radically through the past decades and what we use to take for granted should be questioned. How can we continue thinking like our ancestors when connections in our society have become non-linear, multiple and complex?

And here comes the rhizomatic perception, which Deleuze and Guattari introduce as an intermezzo depicted by the mathematical function (n-1). They argue that a Rhizome is not a multiple derived from the One (1Xn) in contradistinction with the arborescent theory. It exists only when One belongs to multiple. Rhizomes are self-consistent aggregates. They are self-generated creating heterogeneous links on their own map. The term of “Rhizome” has a big effect on art and architecture since 90’s.

Nowadays, the flow of information is nonhierarchical. It does not follow rules of organization. Multiple networks have been introduced in our everyday life changing our “neighbors” in a non-topological approach.

In terms of form generation, nature follows the rhizomatic behavior, being created by itself. Conventional structures are based on points and their topological relations. Rhizomatic structures are made of lines that deterritorialize, changing the overall form. Thereby, a bottom up procedure is taking place. Units contribute to a transformable structure as individual interactions contribute to city, creating complexity by simple rules.

The questioning is how architectural forms should be created and what is the design procedure that the architect should follow? Taking into consideration the rapid flow of technology and materials and reconceptualizing the whole history of architecture.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari describe the space as a diversity of lines, which each get their identity from the environment. They describe the complete set of connections of particles as the Rhizome.

The rhizome is like a structure of roots, though it is different from the roots of a tree, because it is asymmetric and decentralized. It can be In that way the rhizome can be combined and connected in infinite. In a rhizome any given point can be connected to another (principle of rhizome 1+2; connections and Heterogenety). The rhizome has many entryways. Rhizome is based on multiplicities. The multiplicity should be treated as a substantive (principle of rhizome 3; Multiplicities).

The rhizome might be better understood if you compare it to the root structure of the grass or a potato – an unbounded structure which connects different units together and it grows in between and has no units, only dimensions. All points are always joined in a movement from one identity to another.

The rhizome is not tracing, but it is mapping. “The orchid does not reproduce the tracing of the wasp; it forms a map with the wasp, in a rhizome.”¹ (principle of rhizome 5+6; Decalcomania and Cartography) When you try to replicate the rhizome, it will only from new ramifications and relations (principle of rhizome 4; Asignifyring rupture). This means that nothing is rooted and no truth is given.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari questions the western worlds rational and logical approach to knowledge and make patterns/tracings of the mind (fx Sigmund Freud´s Psychoanalyze) and for example the planned cities. Is the most of the eastern world based on  rhizomes?

Concerning architecture the rhizome has many aspects. One is the multiplicity of interactions which might be made possible through architecture. Using the thoughts of rhizome can help  to erase borders and hierarchy in the structures of masterplans or building design. Architecture without starting and ending – the architecture of gradients (read Sui Fujimoto).  The reference to rhizome could be the internet (decentralized and infinite entryways etc.) and shanty towns or refugee camps (growing, decaying and spreading by the not planned events of necessities). But how can we “control” the rhizome? And where does this put the architect? It is more less the same paradox, that there were with the atmospherically machinery at “new babylon” (Constant Niewenhuys).

The hard task is to design a space that takes into account that all the elements of the spaces is combined and are defining the identity by the rhizome. The rhizome is like the “short term memory” and we plan our cities and understand them by our “long term memory”. It is easy to relate to the known realities in a city, but never the unknown factors of the city.

We should as architects try to understand the “strata” (homogenisis) as the inner process of the rhizome (like Manuel DeLanda). In that way we give our design the best condition to perform best, when learn about the virtual potentiality. But we should be aware of the rhizome, which I do not think we can control. The rhizome is the uncontrolled environment (selfconsistent aggregat), which direct the design in different directions. D´arcy Wentworth Thomsen was also aware that it not was only the evolution (Darwin) that were driving the evolution of the species. The environment (homology) and the rhizome had a deep impact of the growth and forms of for example branches and human faces.

A possible topic for my personal research could be to investegate, how architects over time have been using the digital logics to explore the rhizome in architecture. Like the “Blur” (by Diller Sciofidio Renfro) tries to deal with the rhizome, in a more or less controlled way. 

The next topic could be how we can learn our digital tools to use the “short term” memory and create more “real” rhizomes? But I think we should rise a very crucial question; are we destroying the rhizome by trying to understand it and program it? Maybe the rhizome is best without the definition.

¹ Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari  A Thousand Plateaus, – page 12

Picture: http://emptyencore.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/1219079139.jpg