One of the most important constituent of architecture is the matter: architects always need to figure out a form though the design and think of its materiality to make them ideas come physical.

Through history, form-making was associated with different processes, for instance the Creationists believed that form began in God’s mind and it was fixed, from the outside till the molecules; a changing in this point of view was given by classical physics who analyzed the form-making as spontaneous behavior not self-generated but produced by some transcendental agency in the background.

Today one principle that we can use to study the form-creation is Deleuze’s theory, explained by DeLanda in “Deleuze and the genesis of form”, that underline the importance of matter as “inner receptacle for form”.

Referring on his research in genesis of form, Deleuze demonstrates that morphogenesis comes from one topological form that gives rise to many different instantiations. This base process is called Divergent Actualization.

Deleuze focuses his attention in the generative process of form which is more relevant than the proper final form’s result: as we can see in embryogenesis, the development of a complex organism starts from a single cell that is see as the space of energetic possibility in which dynamic processes govern the topological forms.

An improvement of Deleuze’s theory concern the existence of virtual forms: from the genesis’ research we recognize two structures: the strata (articulation of homogeneous elements) and the self-consistent aggregates (articulation of heterogeneous elements). In these processes there is a virtual form that underlies the isomorphism of the resultant form; for example a sedimentary rock pass through a process of ­strata of heterogeneous layers composed by different kind of pebbles which are distributed in groups with homogeneous properties by a process called Sorting machine.  Finally through consolidation the final “architectural structure” is given.

This virtual process, responsible of generation of form, is a real virtuality that constitutes the machinery behind phenomena.

According with this theory matter becomes the inert receptacle for external forms, then a challenge of postmodernism could be to work with material to enrich “conceptual reservoirs” of science and art.

We can bring the theory back to reality and focus our attention in a contemporary example of architecture, the Rolex Center by SANAA, a cultural center designed as landscape and composed by shells to define the floor of the building, and by a steel roof laid over all the building.

In that architecture we understand that form finding of shells play a fundamental role in the project which purpose was to create with shape a different and more flexible system of communication and mobility inside the building. Final form was the most important thing for architects to find, achieving it also trough complex technical solutions and the improvement of the structure system.

The concept that I would like to use and develop in future project is the use of process of form making as important generative part of the design, in which physics and math rules, material and composition take part to define new solutions.

To understand the relational logics that Advanced Architecture establishes with the environment I analyzed the Fujimoto’s N house and the Lally’s text The shape of energy.
Both of them clearly traduce the importance of the interaction that architecture has to develop with the ecosystem in order to design a spatial solution that has to be in harmonic relation with the environment.

Architecture, since times, has developed projects in contiguity relationship with nature but in most of those examples, the common task is the use of materiality as isolation among life-space and its surrounding.

Fujimoto develop the idea of continuity perception among the domestic space and its “outside” thanks to the interconnected layers designed using the idea of the nest. In order to create a gradation of domain Fujimoto applies the strategy of shells, three, one into the other, characterized by the decrease of atmospheric relation given by architectural strategies. For example the holed roof interacts with the changing light-intensity and the windows reflect and amplify the nature but at the same time, help to keep a more private space which looks to the outward.
The outermost part is an example of disturbing relation because is characterized by the alteration of the order of elements: this “semi-indoor garden” has trees which become domestic elements that build the spatiality adding new parameters at the architecture: Time.

In The shape of Energy, Lally, underlines that Advanced Architecture works with intangible relation of feelings that are able to design the ecology system without physical boundaries. The relation with space is flexible, architecture must amplifies the characteristics and the properties that it shares with the surrounding: it means designing with material composition to amplify the energy and make a shape detectable not only by visible spectrum but also through other sensory perceptions. The control of the energy is far from the geometry rules applied to the solid-state construction; if we work with the intangible, we must know that material energies change according to the atmospheric variation. Architecture achieves a new dynamic form, its boundary becomes the whole ecosystem.
Therefore, according to the examples analyzed, relational logics enable to connect the architecture with the multiple environments thanks to system that the design establishes with the elements of the surrounding. Architecture is most advanced if is able to generate a dense network of relations between the environments that are not only physical, they are emotional and sensory too.

The topic that I would like to develop in my future research is the use of existing and designed nature in architecture to generate different kind of relation between space and environment. The use of nature, indeed, can help to design flexible boundaries far from the concept of enclose and separation spaces and projected to the achievement of a filled perception of the outward.

Case Study_House N, Sou Fujimoto

Text Assignment_The Shape of Energy, Sean Lally