Towards Self-Organisational and Multiple-Performance Capacity in Architecture

-Self-organisation can be described as a dynamic and adaptive process through which systems achieve and maintain structure without external control
-Self-organisation promotes functions and properties of systems through an increase of order, how behavior and performance capacity arises from these processes, how materials and material systems can be conditioned accordingly, which manufacturing and assembly approaches can facilitate this, and how these processes and approaches can be harnessed for architectural design to achieve a higher level of performativity and, thus, ultimately a higher level of sustainability.
-This questions are pursued by Michael Hensel in ‘Computing Self-Organisation: Environmentally Sensitive Growth Modelling’: How do plants grow in relation to multiple extrinsic influences? How can environmentally sensitive growth be instrumentalised in architectural design? What are the available methods and tools, and how can they serve architectural design?
-Analysis and case studies reveal that the robust design of natural living systems is not produced by optimisation and standardisation, but by redundancy and differentiation.
-New cellular materials, such as foamed metals, ceramics, polymers and glass, are indications of a significant change in the design of materials, where the boundaries between the ‘natural’ and the ‘manufactured’ begin to be eradicated.
-Irritability facilitates systems with the capacity to adapt to changing circumstances.
-Conditioning refers to a learning process in which a organism’s behaviour becomes dependent on the occurrence of a stimulus in its environment.
-Recent developments in digital fabrication and CAM in the building sector have a profound impact on architecture as a material practice by facilitating a much greater and much more differentiated formal and material repertoire for design.
-In ‘Material and Digital Design Synthesis’, Michael Hensel and Achim Menges discuss the ramifications of integrating material self-organisation, digital morphogenesis, associative parametric modelling and computer-aided manufacturing into a seamless design process. They describe how the advanced material and morphogenetic digital design techniques and technologies presented call for a higher-level methodological integration, which poses a major challenge for the next generation of multidisciplinary architectural research and projects.


http://ds13.uforg.net

DS13 is a graduate design studio at the University of Westminster in London.
The studio is led by Andrei Martin, Andrew Yau and Anat Stern




http://architettura.supereva.com/files/20070312/index.htm

Architecture beyond forms. The computational turn

Philippe Morel

On February 22, 2007 the exhibition Architecture Beyond Forms - the Computational Turn opened in Marseille, at the Maison de l'Architecture et de la Ville. The event, organized with the support of FRAC Centre and Centre Pompidou, aims at presenting an updated view on computation and digital research in architecture. We are pleased to anticipate to our readers the introductory texts released by the curator, Philippe Morel, and the Director of the FRAC Centre, Marie-Ange Brayer.

The exhibition Architecture beyond forms - the computational turn is a modest follow up to several recent events (including Latent Utopia, Vienna, 2002; Non-Standard Architecture, Paris, 2003; Intricacy, Philadelphia, 2003; and The Digital Body, Tours, 2005) that aims to achieve a better understanding of "architecture in the age of the computer". Like all exhibitions, its final form is the result of a number of factors, consisting of both restrictions and possibilities.



Aranda/Lasch, Grotto and Crystal Basket. Photo: Jonathan Boussaert/FRAC Centre. Set design: © Elias Guenoun, Nicolas Simon, Max Turnheim.



From left to right: Aranda/Lasch, Grotto et Crystal Basket; DORA, Mesh Models; Xefirotarch, Busan Multipurpose Concert Hall, Collection du FRAC Centre. In the back: EZCT Architecture & Design Research, Chair Model Test1-860, Collection du FRAC Centre; Objectile, Panneau et objet sans titre, Collection du FRAC Centre; Gramazio&Kohler, The Informed Wall, Axel Kilian, Chair Project. Photo: Jonathan Boussaert/FRAC Centre. Set design: © Elias Guenoun, Nicolas Simon, Max Turnheim.

The exhibition, although defined by a specific sub-title, is not a thematic one. It is, rather, the result of a long-standing interest of mine in a subject which, on the contrary, tends towards the universal: computation. Nevertheless, because this subject is not just mathematical but also defines a culture, there has always been an underlying question involved: how can we consider computation without falling into the trap of an all-embracing analysis at a time when, from the point of view of computation and in light of the widespread use of computers in all areas of life, this same computation leads to the most global and radical transformations. Do we not now talk about computational biology, computational linguistics, computational geometry, computational chemistry, computational mechanics and computational economy? Have we not begun to see, here and there, the emergence of an entirely new situation in all areas of production, the same production that was once analysed in depth by Sigfried Giedion?



Servo, In the Lattice, Collection du FRAC Centre; OCEAN NORTH, Moroho-Ecologies, book, ed. Michael Hensel, Achim, Menges; YME, Hybrid Spacies, book and model STL, Kol/Mac LLC, meta_HOM Estouteville 2.0, Collection du FRAC Centre; Giorgios Artopoulos, The House of Affects. In the middle: Evan Douglis Studio, Helio-Scopes, Collection du FRAC Centre. In the back: dzO, Ghost Track, Collection du FRAC Centre. On the wall: TheVeryMany, series of studies Rhinoscript, Giorgios Artopoulos, YMA. Photo: Johnatan Boussaert/FRAC Centre. Set design: © Elias Guenoun, Nicolas Simon, Max Turnheim.

But whilst, in 1948, the Swiss historian gave a lucid and even glacial analysis of the effects of mechanisation on architecture and daily life, with Mechanization Takes Command, how can we now analyse computation defined by Jacques Stern, director of the computer science department at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, as the "mechanisation of abstraction"? This exhibition does not offer a response to a question whose importance we still underestimate, but presents visitors with a collection of objects, drawings and prototypes dating back to 1963, the year in which Peter Eisenman presented a doctoral thesis anticipating a number of current issues. This collection, which will also be analysed in the "Computational Architecture" catalogue, published by MAV PACA and Editions HYX -with contributions from several architects, researchers and academics including Benoît Durandin, Sean Keller, Philippe Morel, Francis Pisani, Caterina Tiazzoldi and Franck Varenne- will, I hope, allow everyone a fresh reading of these structures and this research, these conceptual and physical constructions.


Excerpt from: Hensel, Michael / Menges, Achim / Weinstock, Michael

2006: “Towards Self - Organizational and Multiple-Performance Capacity in Architecture”
AD 76/2 = 180, p. 5 - 11

Summarized by: Grygorii Zotov