Tonight at IAAC, Alisa Andrasek, architect, curator and founding principal of Biothing gave us a lecture explaining how computational simulations could allow us  to access to behavioral tendencies of matter at a finer grain. Through several projects, Alisa showed the different uses that the new technologies can offer to architecture, not only in terms of visualization but specially in terms of production.

Because of architecture’s nascent tendency to synthesize myriad of agencies involved in the formation of design, it has the potential to play an important role within accelerated convergence of matter and information. While data visualization techniques widespread in other fields are productive for the communication and legibility of large data, they are not yet explicitly involved in production. Data materialization however, involves the direct activation of an abundance of data in the formation of other systems, via a connective hinge positioned within the domain of design. What could be called data materialization is opening up the potential for architecture to finally resonate with the complexity of ecology. While data visualisation exposes the hidden beauty, intelligence, and complexity of observed systems, data materialization can produce such beauty and complexity within new synthetic fields. Through recently expanded computational simulations within design, it is becoming possible to access behavioral tendencies of matter at a finer grain. Scientific discoveries and harvested data can now be incorporated into massive resolution material speculations via newly revealed algorithmic profiles of matter, increasing designability of matter and opening doors for enriched synthesis. Unlike the principles of total holism that characterized early ecological thinking, this kind of synthetic landscape offers resilience and redundancy of Increased Resolution Architectural Fabrics, with an enlarged capacity for interweaving contingent agencies.

Read More »