Deleuze also talks about two key structures, namely “strata” and “self-consistent aggregates” (or “trees” and “rhizomes”, respectively). A good example involves sedimentary rock, which is composed of highly ordered and homogeneous layers of pebbles, but the sorting mechanism that created this architectonic structure – flowing water and gravity – operated quite simply according to basic physical principles. Similarly, the formation of such strata can also be observed within the biological and social realms. To generalize, heterogeneous elements, when affected by a series of operators, or “intercallary elements”, organize accordingly and interlock locally, resulting in organized systems with decreased entropy.

For me, all of this translates simply to the idea that ecosystems (whether physical, chemical, or biological) always strive towards a low-entropy state – the path of least resistance, so to speak. In nature, material is expensive, but shape is cheap, and so forms will naturally evolve according to the most efficient process possible and ultimately arrive at the most efficient configuration possible. I have always been fascinated by how form is dictated by mathematics. In my mind, the human approach to design is often arbitrary, and based on aesthetics and stylistic considerations. When one looks at the amazing creations of nature, one realizes that evolution operates not according to a bigger picture, but based on low entropy mathematics which will always yield the most efficient (and often effective) result. For example, if one examines the ROLEX Learning Centre, designed by SANAA, one will realize that a lot of the design decisions are perhaps arbitrary. Why create a rectangular building with a 9 m x 9 m grid and then cut spheroidal openings into it? Why fourteen openings and not twelve or fifteen? Why this landscape pattern and not another version? However, many aspects have no doubt been carefully considered and efficiently calculated – for example, the curvature of the shells; the divisive effect of the contours, both physically and psychologically; the acoustics throughout the building; the penetration of light; the proportion of all the elements and furniture in the building; and so on. Of course, architects design buildings for people, and since people are capable of complex thought, bodily perception, and emotional experience, not to mention that our buildings must satisfy a wide array of programmes and functions, architectures for people must take these elements into account. Perhaps the mathematics of design for humans is not as simple or as objective as the mathematics of cellular morphogenesis.

Ultimately, I remain curious about developing both architectures and building processes that mimic morphogenetic qualities and remain as efficient and effective as possible throughout all phases of a building’s existence. This reminds me of Sean Lally’s “The Shape of Energy”, where architecture composed of “material energies” can change and adapt, appear and disappear instantaneously, based on climatic conditions and human needs. There is no waste and senselessness – only logic and responsiveness exist in such architectures. How can we accomplish this in the physical realm, with concrete materials? Can we transgress conventional design and instead act as guides for “self-consistent architecture”?

http://homebuilding.thefuntimesguide.com/2008/02/pooktre_tree_shapers.php

    Women Are Heroes, JR (2008) – Favela Morro da Providência, Rio de Janeiro – Brazil.

Deleuze and Guattari uses the roots as metaphor to define an open system, decentralized and compost by networks without beginning, middle or end, that implies the idea of infiltration, spreading like water and occupying all the empty spaces. The concept of a Rhizome is explained through six principles:

• 1° and 2° – Connection and heterogeneity: any point of a rhizome can be (and usually is) connected with another one with no order or symmetry;
• 3° – Multiplicity: the idea of unity is substituted by multiplicity, creating an open system that is always changing;
• 4° – Asignifying rupture: a rhizome can be broken, but never stopped, it will return to grow in a different path or maybe with a different function;
• 5° and 6° – Cartography and Decalcomania: the system don’t follow a model, axis or structure. It is like a map, not a tracing.

Related to the society relations of exteriority, in a Rhizome system each person is part of an organism, but still is unique and individual at the same time, and more than that, can start another system or join an existent one. It is a constant process of movement and self-organization that grows in all directions, creating many connection possibilities.

A modern example of a rhizome are the South American favelas. With no hierarchy or bounder, everything is connected, and overflowing the land they occupy, there are cultural exchange with the rest of the city and especially in individual relationships, creating a network much more complex than we can imagine. It never stops to grow (first horizontally then vertically) and in this case, who builds, expands and transforms are those who walk every day by these communities. Seeking survival in scarce conditions, they are their own urban planners, nothing more natural.

INTERNET
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Internet_map_1024_-_transparent.png

Blur Bluilding by Diller, Scofidio and Renfro for Swiss Expo 2002

This pavillion is an analogy to a cloud, with its uncertain and unpredictable boundaries. Solely made of its light tensegrity structure hidden by the fine water particles that floats in the air to create a fog mass through thousands of nozzles that project the water pumped from the lake on which the buildings sits on, or rather seems to be floating on. The water nozzles control its intensity through pressure and amount of water, regulated on a base of micro local weather state using digital sensors, either it is the wind strength or direction, temperature, air pressure, etc. to ensure the permanent yet ephemeral presence of the building as described.

Concept of rhizome by Deleuze and Guattari in the text “A Thousand Plateaus”
First, the concept of rhizome is the part of philosophical turning point, a shift in discourse of contemporary philosophy, with Deleuze considered as most important according to Foucault. Ontologically speaking, the choices are beyond binary and dualist; it is multiplicity. The openness to possibilites, attractions, influences and connection between these characterize the rhizome, as a complex map. Like a botanical rhizomatic system of roots with nodes, the concept of rhizome supports that there is no hierarchy, nor linearity, nor beginning nor end, it is always in a part of complex interrelated processes, often opposed to the tree system, where choices are linearly branched through linear ascension with clear cause as entry and consequence as exit.

The experience through this pavillion as a case study can be interestingly related to this concept of rhizome. The blurred limits of the building which statistic states are ephemeral, or rather constantly dynamically evolving based on its environmental influences. Once in this sensorial space, a visitor cannot visually and auditorily locate itself due to the dense myst and innumerable nozzles’ noise. Only the central system, as a third-eye can track the position of each individual. The smart raincoats, which respond in LED a color that corresponds to an affinity of one visitor to another based on a pre-input data from a questionnaire prior to the visit, can be related as a part of sensorial experience, as a social relationship. It is hence digitally mapped as a network of people, but also as one approaches another, there is social and psychological responses through attraction and repulsion between unpredictably approahing people meandering in a 3D space, resulting in a proliferation of senses, new encounters and further experiences. This evolving network of links and chains of reactive responses is clearly an analogy to the Internet, which reminds us of how the concept of rhizome is part of our life.

These ideas are right within our field of study. How does affinity between buildings and inhabitants, social context and existing environment within a micro context can impact its neighbourhood and building design? Mapping this relationship in a micro scale and macro scale to finally obtain a global tendency or evolution of city as a whole network can foster us architect in approaching better tools and assets to design a better builiding implementation within its context and multiple factors defining its area and the area within an urban area. It would be interesting to take advatage and full potential of digital tools to relate a new building design and its context, a node with its possible networks.

Case Study Rolex Learning Center, Lausanne | SANAA

Text Deleuze and the Genesis of Form | Manuel de Landa

Form is an intrinsic feature of architecture. Architects and theorists of different ages have been developing various principles in order to define the form-finding procedure. Gilles Deleuze, a French philosopher, has developed his own philosophy which we are trying to conceive through the work of Manuel de Landa, Deleuze and the Genesis of Form.

According to the essay, matter has its own capability to generate forms in a way that is immanent to the matter itself. This procedure is mainly directed by the rules of mathematics, thermodynamics and is completely natural. Unlike the modernistic perception of generalization and perfection of solids, what is important for Deleuze is not the final form/ shape but the processes of morphogenesis that take place until that form is obtained. The final form is achieved as a state of inner equilibrium of the matter/material and it does not need to impose itself onto the matter from the outside. This diagrammatic operation described by Deleuze is applied onto the fields of society, geology and evolution.

In architecture, this principle could possibly be applied by studying the inner properties of the materials used and by allowing them to influence the final form of the structures.

At the Rolex Learning Center by SANAA architects, this inner equilibrium is supposed to be found by the users of the building.  It is comprised of one single fluid space of 20.000sq.m. The roof and the floor slabs undulate gently in parallel creating an artificial topography of hills and valleys with no conventional visual or sonic barriers. In this single-storey space the uses and the occupation of each space is free and defined by the inclination of the floor.

According to the architects, the movement of people is not linear but curved in an organic way, unless it is defined by strict paths. The Learning Center allows complete freedom to its users to walk, sit and occupy the space the way they want. It is almost like a park, it encourages people to choose where to go, to communicate and to develop a whole new way of learning. Although the success of this project in this aspect is doubtful, as the area to be covered is much extended and the photos available do not reveal full occupation of the space, it is a very interesting approach to design.

If we try to apply this case study in the philosophy of Deleuze, the matter that tries to reach its balance is the users of the building. The architectural form of the building is being created by human movement and occupation and only the curved background has been designed by the architects. Again, what is important here, as a principle of the function of the Learning Center, is the procedure by which people are occupying the space in order to achieve the best formation for their purpose each time – sitting, reading, discussing -, in other words the form-finding process to the equilibrium of Gilles Deleuze.

As a further research line, and as a continuation of my interest on dynamic architectural boundaries proposed by relational logics topic, I would be interested in exploring the relation between different boundaries and the architectural form generated in existing case studies as well as the successfulness of this kind of projects in terms of functionality.

Image Source http://www.architectural-review.com/buildings/rolex-learning-center-by-sanaa/8621669.article

Photo: HygroSkin-Meteorosensitive Pavilion, by Achim Menges (2012)

http://www10.aeccafe.com/blogs/arch-showcase/2013/09/17/hygroskin-meteorosensitive-pavilion-in-orleans-france-by-achim-menges-architect/

Manuel DeLanda discuss the bases of Gilles Deleuze thinking of morphogenesis theory and some contributions of Spinoza and Guatarri to this theme.

DeLanda starts explaining the way of thinking of the western philosophers that matter is only defined by external agents and that matter is just a infertile element, a receptacle in which outside forces will construct it shape. According to DeLanda this way of thinking can be seen since the creationism thinking, in which God, an outside person, thinks a specific and final form in which later some matter will be applied. Classical philosophers and classical physics continued this way of thinking, although the last ones began a small but important break on this way of thinking, and endow matter with some spontaneous behavior, like Inertia for instance, but they still reduce the variability and richness of material expression to the concept of mass and studied simple material systems where spontaneous self-generation of form does not occur, and so, the self-generation of form continued to have a lower importance.

But not every western philosopher were not concerned with the transcendental agency that interfere on the morphogenism, and according to DeLanda, Deleuze was one of them. He starts giving some examples of self-generating forms that show that materials have a great importance on the final form that they will have, and that the stable state of matter is the simplest type of immanent action of morphogenesis, because material is organizing itself to become stable using last energy from the enviroment. The two examples are the bubble of soup which appears naturally when the molecules of soup find it minimal surface, or sharp edges polygons, which appear when molecules of salt find its minimal surface shape in an especific circustance. Deleuze uses the therm “Divergent Actualization” of the english philosopher Henri Bergson to explain this. Henri didn’t agree with the current philosophers that had this idea of time as a linear thing, and so the future would be determined by the past. Henri thought that the future is open ended. Deleuze aplied this on his theory saying that external agents continue to interfere in the final shape of matter (the size of the bubble or the dimensions of the rock), but matter itself has this form-finding tendency.

Deleuze applied his morphogenism and form-finding theory to other realms of knowledge. In the empryology he explain that the division of the egg occur because of the the augmentation of free surfaces, with stretching of cellullar layers and invagination by folding. These Thermo dynamics way of thinking could explain that the DNA actually does not act on a inertial matter, but tease the form from an active matter. In geology, mountais made of sedimentary rocks are formed by actualization of layers of small pebbles, in which they form homogeneous layers (sorting – the begining) and then by water activity became the rock (consolidation – the end). Granite is formed by cooling magma which organizes itself based on time of cooling and became strong. Species could be explained by the slow accumulation of genetic materials and Social classes could be explained by the self organization of different roles on the society.

DeLanda has a critic view od Deleuze also, and reminds that there are philosophers who thought a world that exist by itself and without humans, but our world is defined by language. According to him, deleuze is a realist who believes on actual and virtual forms. Also reminds that Deleuze didn’t have all the advances in thermodynamics at the 19th century to provide a reasonable foundation he needed for his philosophy of matter.

The Rolex Learning Center en Lausanne, builded in 2010 with architecture project of SAANA and the structural engineer project of Bollinger + Grohmann, Walther Mory Maier, and BG Ingenieurs Conseils.

The building consists of two shelfs connectec by steel collumns with spaces for libraries, work and cultural activities places. The difference of this project is that the architects designed those shelfs with curvatures sufficient big for a person to pass by and achieve patios where the user could access the new building, creating an architectural landscape with hills and valleys instead of using walls and floors slabs. The surface of those shelfs are the connection with Deleuze, since it was projected by the engineer using form fiding thecnics, optimising the curvature to become a minimal surface with the constraints given by the architect with the inside patios shapes. Although a minimal surface was achieved, the architects haven’t projected a smart building, being the ones that Deleuze would criticize, as they first thought of a final form and a material and later the engineers had to optimize the initial form that they designed to be less wastefull in therms of material and less weak in structural terms. The material is a minimal surface, but with all the constraints that the architects had designed.

In conclusion, as architects, we have to play a more intelligent and honest role in the design field. Maybe not be so drastic as Deleuze, that argued that: “The resources involved in the genesis of form are not transcendental but immanent to matter itself”, since we had to give an answer to different agents during a design process, but also, material matters, especially in a current world with scarce resources.

As an field of research, those swarm behaviours of single elements, the materiality of things, form-fiding process to achieve an already thought shape, or for achieving an form that takes the material to it’s limits are both a very interesting fields. One good example is the HygroSkin-Meteorosensitive Pavilion projected by Achim Menges, Oliver David Krieg, and Steffen Reichert, which consist of a wooden digital fabricated pavilion, which open some small wood windows with the variation of humidity of the environment due to the dilatation of the wood, cut in an specific direction of the fibers.

“Upon entering the fog mass, visual and acoustic references is erased, leaving only an optical white-out and the white-noise of pulsing nozzles. Blur is an anti-spectacle. Contrary to immersive environments that strive for high-definition visual fidelity with ever-greater technical virtuosity, Blur is decidedly low-definition: there is nothing to see but our dependence on vision itself.”

Diller Scofidio

Case study:                 Blur building, Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Critical reading:        G. Deleuze, F. Guattari, “Rhizome”, in a Thousand Plateaus, July 1980, pp. 3-25

The Blur is an unconventional building designed by DS+R, an American multidisciplinary firm that constantly swings from architecture to art.

The practice started its work setting temporary installations and at the beginning its attentions was closer to art and theory than to conventional buildings and constructions. This interest was carried on even after they started designing “real” buildings, so the practice has continued to investigate the art field developing media installations, sculptures, sets, and integrating these art researches in their projects, focusing on the consequences of architecture in the society.

The Blur is an installation designed for the Swiss Expo 2002 on Lake Neuchatel. It is an architecture of atmosphere, an ephemeral non-built construction that interacts with the users and the context, investigating the concept of evanescence. The pavilion was characterized by 31’500 high-pressure nozzles pumping the water from the lake to create a big cloud. A smart weather system was able to read the shifting climatic conditions of temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, processing the data and modulating the cloud’s shape.

“Upon entering the fog mass, visual and acoustic references is erased, leaving only an optical white-out and the white-noise of pulsing nozzles. Blur is an anti-spectacle. Contrary to immersive environments that strive for high-definition visual fidelity with ever-greater technical virtuosity, Blur is decidedly low-definition: there is nothing to see but our dependence on vision itself.” (DS)

This building was a sensorial experience. In fact, within the cloud the public could feel and “drink” the architecture in a media installation that involved all the human senses. Moreover, the pavilion tried to interact with the users establishing new relations between “compatible” users, thanks to the raincoats (brain coats), that visitors were supposed to wear. Indeed, before entering to the pavilion visitors were invited to fill a questioner about their character profiles, then in the brain coats were loaded the personal character data. Therefore the coats were used as protection from the wet environment as well as personality data storage. Communicating with the cloud’s computer network and using tracking location technologies, each visitor’s position could be identified and the character profiles compared each other. When visitors passed one another, their coats could change colour indicating the degree of attraction or repulsion.

The pavilion represents a changeable form, a dynamic system that processes data and establishes relations based on personal information. Moreover, the Blur symbolizes the construction of a building dissolution. This dichotomy (built – unbuilt) is not the only one that can be observed in this project: this architecture is at the same time solid and temporary, stable and in-stable, static and dynamic.

If the architecture is thought to reflect the humankind, I read many analogies between the cloud and the current society. The building, as our society is a liquid mass without any straight hierarchies nor univocal interpretation or conventional limits.

In my opinion, designing a good public building means understand and interpret the human behaviour. Personally I consider fundamental for my profession the works of sociologists and anthropologists such as Lévi-Strauss, Augé Latouche and Bauman. From this perspective I would be interested in analysing the Deleuze concept of rhizome and the idea of non-linear thinking, considering his works a key point for my personal and professional growth, as well as an interesting reflection on contemporary society and humans behaviours.

Image: Matteo Silverio