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:

LOCAL INTERACTION + INPUTS OF GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE (THE PLAYER)

The video game Lemmings has the basic idea, lemmings have no brains, they have no decision-making mechanisms and for that reason the player has to assing the lemmings some tasks, as they walk constantly around. If there is a stair, they climb, if there is an obstacle they turn around, if there is a gap, they fall and die. The user input is to give them specific tasks to make them survive with no brains at all. Assign some task to some of them, sacrifice some of them for the good of the whole family.

LEMMINGS (VIDEO GAME) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_%28video_game%29

HAVE SOME FUN HERE http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/

LOCAL INTERACTION CREATING GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE

No brain single cell organism makes you find the best way may be?

the intelligent slime

The emergence of intelligence from little rules and local interactions, as happening on the street level in bigger organism like the “city” where people are living together occasionally or on purpose. The text from the book EMERGE from STEVEN JOHNSON makes the question appear: Where does the organism start and what is the motivation of the smallest element.

Is a forest an organism as a whole? Can we call a city or a human being an organism? Is every cell an individual organism or every person in a city? Single ant is an organism or every cell of an ant, may be the colony is the organism? The cell cannot survive without other cells around in a human body as a city can not survive without different groups of people accomplishing different tasks. So we have individual cells of individual human beings and individual people of the organism “city”.  The incredible network makes the sens of scale disappear and the uncountable interactions make the whole system work in a specific way which is not specified anywhere.

Ant colonies are not just a lot of tunnels underground, they are the ants behaviour. Ants, who cannot see the whole picture and make simple decisions about what they should do. They cannot count and calculate how many tunnels the colony needs or how many workers are in total required. They can never see a section or plan of the colony but the complex system of an ant colony succeeds with simple individuals making decisions according to their local vision and neighbour inputs.

Interaction with the closest ant. That is all it takes, without seeing the whole picture, ants track patterns of chemicals to do what they do even they do not understand the local cluster. You sense too much carrier ants? Go do something else. Too many ants digging the tunnels, you should try to protect them. No ant has a decision of “liking” the task. They just do it. This level of stupidity is necessary to make the whole system intelligent. Little reactions to little interactions make the whole system alive.

Changing the scale and looking at living organisms, as we call human bodies, as they grow up from one cell to two and four, the cells make decisions (wich are not decisions) according to the local part where they are, as they have the whole dna in them, cells choose what to read from the dna according to their position in the body. A cell on the fingernail cannot locate himself on the map of the body, but according to his neighbours, he can know what to do. Even every cell dies in your body and gets replaced by a new identical one, you are you whatever cells you are consisting of.

The scale changes, to the city, even the globe, little interactions change the whole.Even there are some inputs like laws and city planning, the little interactions shape the behaviour. There is no definition for “poor areas” or “ethnical neighbourhoods” in the plans, or a map of security problems, none of these are planned. Street level interactions on the sidewalk define all of these interactions.

The Example of the video game  Simcity shows the simplicity and mimicable nature of the whole. You put simple rules; people cannot live near big piles of garbage, business should be connected to the transportation then you leave the simulation work, the system goes on if every simple rule is working. The whole does not have an intelligence but just set of rules create the logic.

Another example can be thought as some web sites, yahoo answers, wikipedia, various forums and user content filled web sites. They have simple set of rules, and that defines their overall character, the users change but the character of the whole does not.

Final question comes to mind: designing the whole or designing the simple local rules and interactions? Which can create the whole? Applied to architecture, taking user input on the smallest scale as the possibility to have a whole design, with no end user knowing the final product while shaping it.

http://www.mrwong.de/myhouse/

“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

 

Where does the environment fit in our contemporary lives? 

In 2006 Andres Jaque Arquitectos were commissioned to build a house in Ibiza, Spain. The Ibiza of today is a result of a new social foundation that was created there in the 1960; it was a place of experimentation and recreation. The architects approach was two dimensional. First they wanted to link architecture to the intangible spheres of modern life. Secondly, they wanted to have a direct connection with the surrounding environment. These two dimensions were to allow the owners to simultaneously experience nature and the worries and indulgements of daily life. The house promotes a deep respect for nature. The design process started off by a mapping of all trees and shrubs and a decision to elevate the house from the ground was made. The result was a very little impact of the house on the natural environment. The unconventional distribution of space in house explores the role architecture plays in combining social spheres of modern life.

Philippe Rahm argues that its exactly this unconventionality that will help us achieve the modern architecture of the 21st century. In his essay “Form and function follows climate” he discusses that the concept of sustainability has been stuck in archaic mindsets about what architecture should contain and respond to.

“ sustainability = development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs”

There is a paradox in sustainable architecture. The most ecological type of buildings are completely sealed off from the natural environment. Rather than using whatever nature has to offer, we have hermetically sealed ourselves in.

Philippe Rahm states that if the process of designs starts off with an early recognition of the problems and how new technologies can provide solutions, then new and unexpected architectural forms can emerge. This type of approach can open up many more possibilities than we would have managed to achieve if we were trying to integrate new technologies into stale principles. He argues that a free interpretation of space and a deprogrammed architecture will help us adapt to the present and future faster and more efficiently; functions have become obsolete and act like a weight tied to progress. Adaptation is needed in the sense that we stop building our future on the foundations of our close past. We can simultaneously recognise what defines the present while we go back to the fundamental questions and try to rebuild our design principles.

Nature nurturing architecture and vice-versa 

In the late 19th century Louis Sullivan stated the famous, rational and functionalist “ Form follows function”. It was only later in the 1960s when Louis Kahn agued that “Function follows form” trying to free himself of the functional rigidity. I would argue that “follow” is a word that doesn’t describe the relationship I see ideal between human beings, needs, technologies, architecture and nature.  Maybe “coexist” or “symbiosis” are more appropriate words. Architecture and technology are slowly merging to their own singularity point. In this process we forget that the organic should take the first place.  In his book “Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life”, Albert Borgman states that technology creates a controlling pattern in our lives. This pattern, discernible even in such an inconspicuous action as switching on a stereo, has global effects: it sharply divides life into labor and leisure, it sustains the industrial democracies, and it fosters the view that the earth itself is a technological device. He argues that technology has served us as well in conquering hunger and disease, but that when we turn to it for richer experiences, it leads instead to a life dominated by effortless and thoughtless consumption. Borgmann does not reject technology but calls for public conversation about the nature of the good life. He counsels us to make room in a technological age for matters of ultimate concern—things and practices that engage us in their own right. Although his discourse is not directly related to architecture, his point can easily be extrapolated. Our definitions of things and concepts change because we evolve constantly. We are right now in a very important historical point. Technology has advanced more in the past hundred years then ever before, but it left behind humanity. I believe that people should change technology, not the other way around; technology should not change our identity. Evolution of architecture could probably include empathy towards nature and human beings and stop trying to build barriers between them. I would research on how technology can help us remove as many of those barriers between us and nature as it can. It is absurd to propose that we should go back to where we were 2000 years ago, when the environment chose for us. But integrating architecture and technology with more sensitivity can help us reconnect with nature. The architect is the driver of the fundamental principles; I propose designing for todays needs and taking advantage of todays possibilities to the maximum, but with nature and the concept of symbiosis in mind.

In his science fiction book “The Jesus Incident”, Frank Herbert deals with concepts such as genetic engineering, artificial intelligence and resource allocation. He described a world very advanced technologically but the built environment in the sense of dwellings and other programmes didn’t exist. The planet has a globally interconnected, sentient plant which all lifeforms on the planet are dependent upon. Just like in “Dune”, the inhabitants had to endure very harsh environments, but rather than building barriers between them and the environment, they learned to use technology to coexist and adapt very efficiently to the surroundings. These stories have more fiction than science in them, but I find the imagined utopias and distopias of science-fiction to be a good source of inspiration, because such products of imagination are completely liberated from the old principles.

To conclude, my point is that rather than using this tool, that is architecture and technology combined, to run away and seal ourselves in from our problematic environment, we could use them to face nature in all its force, beauty and inconveniences.

When we reach the ultimate singularity point, why not integrate nature into it?

Of Roots, Possibilities, and the Spaces in Between

Sou Fujimoto’s philosophy is defined that architecture and nature have this space in between – a space for people not to just live in but rather to explore and fulfill it by themselves; a space that creates a natural environment and a metamorphic reaction or movement created by human behavior; a space that mimics and creates a new world merging the soul of nature with the body of architecture, an opposing two that creates that melody and overall sense of the in-between space.

Architecture is about accidents leading to a metamorphic reaction that creates an environment where humans move along with nature in the most natural ways. Fujimoto explains that vibrant interplay between nature and architecture is continuously in harmony as blending the internal and external. And although its essence has manifested itself in architecture as many different forms, it is most complex precisely because it has not been realized. However wildly imaginative a project may be, it is important to believe that one day it will be built; believing that there is a nest in a cave, a space in between that merges architecture and nature as one, because such conviction can become a powerful source of energy for great architecture. Even if it is never realized, we must not fall victim to pessimism but continue to believe that our imaginative endeavors will bear fruit in one form or another someday in the future.

In Fujimoto’s “Primitive Future,” I was also able to conclude that Architecture is a constant contradiction. It requires you to look to the left, to look to the right, and not miss the important part: the in between.

First, you have to go back to where it begins: from dust, from the dark, from the roots, from when it was just an idea in somebody else’s head, from nothing that translates to everything. You have to go back, step back, to be able to appreciate and move forward.

Second, you have to be able to catch up with it [Architecture] and its’ continuous evolution; and not just catch up, but to master the art of innovation. You have to be able to recognize the “diversity of nature, the lucidity of artifice” and their significant role to serve and support each other. In Architecture, you have to be able to recreate nature without mere desperation and conscious effort to do so.

Third, we find that the grey areas, the undiscovered, the unexplored are equally, if not more interesting than the translucence of the more usual design; we find clarity between the logical and irrational—all of which can be explored in Fujimoto’s concepts of nest or cave, gradation, musical notation without the staves, house as city / city as house, nesting, prior to division, locale, architecture as cloud, garden, inside out / outside in, and exterior envelopes, among others.

 Possibilities:

Fujimoto, in the book’s essence, led me to the curiosity of what would it be like, if all space has this in between, a blurred space or a gradual space within a space.It led me to feed my curiosity and find ways to create a space that would be one with nature and materiality, being true to the materials and architecture led by nature, and true to nature; a space that attracts people to move naturally and freely; a space that goes through beyond in between, a space that would build harmony with the paradigm and anti-paradigm of nature and architecture… a space for the two in- between metamorphosis, A rationality of the unknown and opening up for the new possibilities.

The future of Architecture belongs to those who go back to its’ roots, and see the infinite possibilities from both the seen and unseen spaces in between; to those who simplify and convert complexities to functional design while still maintaining the artistic mystery behind them; to those who connect the dots, or create the dots when lacking, to make something beautiful out of it – regardless how simplistic or elaborate. The future of Architecture belongs to those who understand the correlation of things, the coexistence of various life forms; to those who see utter beauty in the damaged. The future of Architecture belongs not to those who think outside the box, but to those who think without the box. There is no box, no walls – just spaces and the limitless potentials they represent.

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.

Summary of T3-Wigley-Arch Atmosphere-Daidalos68-1998

The text by Mark Wigley deals with the atmosphere in the context of the buildings. The atmosphere is outside the buildings and the atmosphere occupies the space between a building and its context. The atmosphere activates your senses. The atmosphere can be physical as fx moisture and sounds, and gets psychosocial in the combination of components. There are infinite possibilities of combinations.

In the explanation of architecture, the architects uses the atmosphere to improve the understanding of their design concepts. For instance, Frank Lloyd Wright is using the nature and atmosphere active in his sketches. The skies is turned into geometrical horizontal lines in the project for the H.C. Price Company Büroturm 1952, Oklahoma, which is adding strength to the height of the building, and the horizontal slices in the building. The atmosphere becomes a part of the design.

In the history the architect has been turned into a “specialist” in special effects. The architects let the building (the architect) control the atmosphere rather than the atmosphere is controlling the atmosphere. But the fact is, that the atmosphere cannot be controlled, though many architects think that the can.

The situationist tried to control and analyze the atmosphere. They defined architecture as pure atmosphere – a redefinition of architecture.  The movement, in this topic led by Debord, was trying the make a new awareness of the atmospheric effect in the context of the city itself, by creating new varieties of emotional feelings and experiences, by using urban décors. The décors create and control the atmosphere.  The ideas is carried out in the project of the “new Babylon” a waste machine for producing atmosphere made by Constant Niewenhuys. The project placed the man before the structures, and the structures should facilitate the man to live a nomadic life. The world should be constructed by users. Constant were working for the project for 20 years, but left him with the paradocs, that the uncontrolled architecture displaces the architect.

Situationists 2013 and “one city”

Maybe Constant Niewenhuys project of New Babylon was carried out to early. Today we have  more tools to map, analyze and execute different décors, which can be used in the city. Maybe today it is the right time to execute the New Babylon with software and hardware tools as the Arduino to control new atmospheres and defining a new era of interactive architecture controlled by the user. But still, where does that put the architect and the depth of the architecture?

Toyo Ito mentioned (in learning from a tree), that the architecture in general is transforming more and more into “skin” architecture in for example Tokyo. The projects are made out of the value of the land rather than the value of the architecture. Toyo Ito says that we should learn from the nature to the nature and ask us self; what is architecture for?

The relation from the nature and the city has been a given parameters for many architects. But most architects focus on few elements of the nature, like the tree. To learn from the nature, I think that we should see the nature as a whole element as we understand and see cities. The nature is the whole world, so why not see the whole world as one city?

To see the whole world as one city can maybe help us to try to understand and control the atmosphere. To blend the city and nature as one element. Like the Sou Fujimotos N-house is like a city and make a metaphorical relation to the city, by having a structure like the city. The house erase the separation of a house and the city.  Sou Fujimoto mentioned in his reading (Primitive Future), that the best architecture arise from the gradiation (city/nature, in/out etc). Our buildings should not have strictly borders and the atmosphere should not stop at the facade. Imaging a city without borders, like the nature, where a space is another space. Where an atmosphere replaces another with a single footstep (like the situationists).

My research

My research could be on this topic; how to see the world as one city. But also with a more sustainable twist. I have noticed that each specific architecture in the different cities I have visited has an enormous impact on people’s lives. This has made me challenge myself to learn more about how buildings are constructed, and how they interact with their surroundings. In my opinion it is not the buildings in themselves that are the solutions to our problems of dealing with the changing climate. I feel more dedicated to issues around how buildings affect people, and I am particularly excited about buildings’ potential to influence people´s habits towards sustainability. Could the atmospherically relation to the nature, help to influence peoples habits? How is the relation between the senses (atmosphere) and peoples actions (habits)? And could the whole “city” be transformed into different zones as Philippe Rahm (Form and function follow climate)? These could be few of the questions to my research.

To visualize the “new city”, I have made a diagram/drawing of it.

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.