Computing self organization: environmentally sensitive growth modeling.

In biological systems, self organization is a process in which patterns at global level of a system emerges solely from numerous interactions among the lower-level components of the system. Moreover, the rules specifiying interactions among the system’s components are executed using only local information, without reference to the global pattern.
Aristid Lindenmayer: (November 17, 1925 – October 30, 1989). He was an Hungarian biologist, he developed a formal language that is today called L-systems or lindemayer systems. Using those systems Lindenmayer modeled the behaivour of cells of plants. L sytem’s are nowadays used to model whole plants.

Formal Grammar:
Lindemayer’s original L-system for modeling.
Variables: A and B
Constants: none
Start: A
Rules: (A --> AB), (B A)
Which produces
N = 0: A
N = 1: AB
N = 2: ABA
N = 3: ABAAB
N = 4: ABAABABA
N = 5: ABAABABAABAAB
N = 6: ABAABABAABAABABABA
N = 7: ABAABABAABAABABABAABAABABAABAAB

The aim of this technology is:
To develop designs and materials, inspired by nature, that are able to adapt to different external stimuli and can interact by themselves, in order to optimize their functions, and also capable to grow.
















http://archnet.org/library/images/thumbnails.jsp?location_id=3167
http://www.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek03/tw0131/0131tw5bestpract_termite.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastgate_Centre,_Harare

Photographer Courtesy of architect
Copyright Aga Khan Award for Architecture
Source Aga Khan Trust for Culture
Caption Plan for HVAC system


Designing for thermal control
The Eastgate Centre's design is a deliberate move away from the "big glass block". Glass office blocks are typically expensive to maintain at a comfortable temperature, needing substantial heating in the winter and cooling in the summer. They tend to recycle air, in an attempt to keep the expensively conditioned atmosphere inside, leading to high levels of air pollution in the building. Artificial air-conditioning systems are high-maintenance, and Zimbabwe has the additional problem that the original system and most spare parts have to be imported, squandering foreign exchange reserves.
Mick Pearce, the architect, therefore took an alternative approach. Because of its altitude, Harare has a temperate climate despite being in the tropics, and the typical daily temperature swing is 10 or 40 °C. This makes a mechanical or passive cooling system a viable alternative to artificial air-conditioning.

Passive cooling
Passive cooling works by storing heat in the day and venting it at night as temperatures drop.
* Start of day: the building is cool.
* During day: machines and people generate heat, and the sun shines. Heat is absorbed by the fabric of the building, which has a high heat capacity, so that the temperature inside increases but not greatly.
* Evening: temperatures outside drop. The warm internal air is vented through chimneys, assisted by fans but also rising naturally because it is less dense, and drawing in denser cool air at the bottom of the building.
* Night: this process continues, cold air flowing through cavities in the floor slabs until the building's fabric has reached the ideal temperature to start the next day.
Passively cooled, Eastgate uses only 10% of the energy needed by a similar conventionally cooled building.
Eastgate is emulated by London's Portcullis House (2001), opposite the Palace of Westminster. The distinctive giant chimneys on which the system relies are clearly visible.


Excerpt from: HENSEL, Michael
2006: “Computing Self-Organisation: Environmentally Sensitive Growth Modelling” AD 76/2 = 180; p.12-17.
Summarized by: Grygorii Zotov

Differentiation and Performance: Multi-Performance Architectures and Modulated Environments

In this article, Michael Hensel and Achim Menges argue for an ecological understanding of architecture that promotes the differentiation of environmental conditions through a morphological intelligence, which promises not only a new spatial paradigm for architectural design, but also a far more sustainable one that links the performance capacity of material systems with environmental modulation and the resulting provisions and opportunities for inhabitation.

This article introduces a take on architectural design that incorporates Banham’s varied and temporal spatiality into substantial yet equally varied structures, by shifting away from the homogenous and largely monofunctional material systems that make up the built environment today, and towards heterogeneous and multi-performance systems. The aim is to show how these systems can modulate and, in turn, be modulated by environmental conditions, and to suggest alternative spatial strategies based on gradient threshold conditions.

Architectural discourse in the last decades has largely moved away from universal space and declared a preference for heterogeneous architectures. This preference is evident in two distinct strategies. The first entails a two-step approach to varied space, commencing from generic shells that are subsequently tailored to the needs of their eventual inhabitants. The second strategy is the design of exotically shaped buildings that are, from the outset, varied in expression and spatiality.
Both strategies concur, however, in embracing standardized requirements for interior environments, such as statistically determined homogenous interior climates for public or office buildings, as well as the limited range of building systems.

Unfortunately, environmental design and engineering remains a question of post-design optimisation rather than informing the design process from a very early stage. Moreover, a homogenised interior environment simply cannot satisfy the multiple and contrasting needs of its inhabitants.

A remedy may be found in an understanding of architecture as ecology, involving dynamic and varied relations and mutual modulation between material systems, macro- and micro-environmental conditions, and individual and collective inhabitation.

Example:

Mambrane Canopy Project for the terrace of the AA,2007EmTech:Membrane Canopy
http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/Default.aspx?section=projectsreviewsite&projectEntryId=2010EmTech:Membrane Canopy
http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/Default.aspx?section=projectsreviewsite&projectEntryId=2010EmTech:Membrane Canopy
http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/Default.aspx?section=projectsreviewsite&projectEntryId=2010 image courtesy of AA in London
http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Markets/Building/GenerativeComponents/CaseStudy_AAComponent.htmimage courtesy of AA in London
http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Markets/Building/GenerativeComponents/CaseStudy_AAComponent.htm

AA Emergent Technologies and Design MSc / MArch Programme Architectural Association London
Source link: http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/Default.aspx?section=projectsreviewsite&projectEntryId=2010

http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Markets/Building/GenerativeComponents/CaseStudy_AAComponent.htm

Excerpt from:
Michael Hensel + Achim Menges
2006: ‘Differentiation and Performance: Multi-Performance Architectures and Modulated Environments’
AD 76/2 = 180, p. 60-69

Summarized by: Xinyu SHI

Self-Organisation and the Structural Dynamics of Plants

New models for engineered structures were made known by inspiration from examining the integrated morphologies of plants with assistance of George Jeronimidis and Nikolaos Stathopoulos at the Emtech masters programme at the AA, with preliminary phase of case studies of bamboos and palms.


Plants are self-assemblable. Their structure is strong even if it is mainly out of weak materials. This is what makes them different than the manmade structres.
The process abstracted and applied into principles of engineering is called biomimetics.
As the natural system is continously developing, complex and adaptive, influenced by external factors, the structure provides new models for the engineered structures.

The basic evolutionary strategy in biological systems is redundancy[superfluous, excessive, pleonastic], even if in the classical engineering is opposed to efficiency,
it is a essential strategy for biology. Redundancy doesn't mean only that the system has more cells available, but that the hierarchicalcells are arranged in that way that the system can adapt if it is necessary.

Robust systems, that persist through times, are produced by the stochastic process at the genetic level. This is a term for systems that can survive to big external variations and factors example natural disasters. *"The robust design of natural living systems is not produced by optimisation and standardisation, but by redundancy and differentiation."

If we look deeper into the natural systems we find the 3D patterns. These are like systems embedded within systems, of different geometrical shapes (in particular triangles,
pentagons and spirals) that assembles together complex structures even if they are small and simple components.
C Wall

2006
This project is the latest development in an ongoing area of research into cellular aggregate structures. Begun 2 years ago, this research has examined honeycomb and voronoi geometries and their ability to produce interesting structural, thermal, and visual performances. The voronoi algorithm is used in a wide range of fields including satellite navigation, animal habitat mapping, and urban planning as it can easily adapt to local contingent conditions. Within our research, it is used as a tool to facilitate the translation and materialization of data from particle-simulations and other point-based data. Through this operation, points are transformed into volumetric cells which can be unfolded, CNC cut, and reassembled into larger aggregates.

Andrew Kudless and Ivan Vukcevich with Ryan Palider, Zak Snider, Austin Poe, Camie Vacha, Cassie Matthys, Christopher Friend, Nicholas Cesare, Anthony Rodriguez, Mark Wendell, Joel Burke, Brandon Hendrick, Chung-tzu Yeh, Doug Stechschultze, Gene Shevchenko, Kyu Chun, Nick Munoz, and Sabrina Sierawski, and Ronnie Parsons

link : http://www.materialsystems.org/?page_id=229

In conclusion the meaning of redundancy, differention and complexity shouldn't be misunderstood, these terms refer to ways biological structures are efficient and optimal. The engineered structures should if possible eliminate the joints, or if not the need to be rethought.



Excerpt from:
WEINSTOCK, Michael

2006: “Self-Organisation and the Structural Dynamics” AD 76/2 = 180; p.26-33.

* quoted for text self organisations and the structural dynamics

Synthetics, Free Form and Sustainability

More and more resources are being used throughout the world in order to match the human want. For example each middle European is consuming up to 80 t environment per year. One third of this is being consumed by the way we build. Therefore there has to happen a change in the way we are using the resources, a dematerialization (this was settled during the 1992 environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro and 2002 Johannesburg Rio 10+ conference).

MIPS

The Wuppertal Institute for climate, environment and energy is doing research on environmental economy on international level. The Mipshaus Institute was founded in 2004 in order to research the raw material consumption. Friedrich Schmidt-Bleck and Ernst-Ulrich von Weiszaecken developed “MIPS – material intensity per service entity – which makes it possible to measure the ecological damage intensity (products, process, services).

Sustainable Development

The way sustainability is understood today is mostly wrong. The usage of wood or stone is not sustainable in the same way the usage of aluminum or synthetics is not. What determines the sustainability factor of a material is the way it is being used and the life cycle of that material. Through the usage of the MIPS database and calculation methods, economical ecological sustainable solutions can derive.

Specific material consumption (MIPS category "abiotic material") as to collectors and heating systems in kg/kWh net energy
Faktor 10 Institut Austria 2004 (Calculus: Dipl.-Ing. Christopher Manstein, Dipl.-Ing. Walter Leiler)
http://www.faktor10.at/Deutsch/mipsbeispiele/solarkollektor.htm

MIPS-values for different types of decking/year and usage period

http://www.faktor10.at/Deutsch/mipsbeispiele/gartenbau.htm

Excerpt from: New York: Springer; p 85-88,

Summarized by: Tudor Cosmatu