METAPHYSICS OF GENETIC ARCHITECTURE AND COMPUTATION – KARL S. CHU

This essay discusses the ways in which our world is changing in response to the areas of computation and genetics.  Chu, writes about the evolution of life and how intelligence has reached a point where new concepts and ideas can prevail.  As we all know it, the computer has created a new way to experience the world.  As Antoine Picon mentioned in the article, Architecture and the Virtual: Towards a New Materiality, a ‘reevaluation of the architectural discipline will lead to an increased sense of moral responsibility, guiding us toward a future in which architecture plays a greater social and political role’. Chu refers to this reevaluation of architecture as genetic architecture.  Genetic architecture will become a complex building method, to which will change the meaning of architecture overall and therefore architecture too will reevaluate itself.  He also relays the message that technology, networking, genetics have developed so much and so fast, but still that the ‘universe’ has not explored its limits.

Genetic architecture is an exciting, promising, and highly conceptual field that suggests we can bridge the gap between biology, artificial intelligence, and architecture. Chu sees great potential for architecture to radically evolve along with its inhabitants and designers.  He views genetic architecture as an extension of the human being as an extension of the human genes combined with the power of technology, which he names the post-human.

Genetic architecture would consist of self-assessing, self healing and self-generated systems that are formed into spaces, design and buildings.   Perhaps genetic buildings could morph, react and adapt to its inhabitants by sensing the moods or health of its occupants and act accordingly.  They are buildings that are more than off the grid and sustainable, they would reach a much higher standard, which for now is unknown.

While all the development and progression with building technology is advancing, I can’t help but be a little cynical to this type of architecture revolution.  As Chu mentions the quest for the ‘Universal Language’ if feel like there are consequences and several things that are going to be lost and forgotten.  As the genetics evolution concept of life and architecture progress, I feel that this is going to form an even larger social-economic gap between cultures spread throughout the world.  As we are developing into architects and designers I think it is important to reflect and react to principal meaning of architect; and to fill the human needs and for spaces based on the interactions of people from one culture to the next.

ARCHITECTURE AND THE VIRTUAL: TOWARDS A NEW MATERIALITY

As Antoine Picon addresses the potential impact of the computer and computer-aided design on materiality, he proposes that the computer creates a new understanding and experience of materiality.  I believe that there is a separation between reality and the virtual world and therefore structure and materials are lost in translation.  This dissociation begins to disappear as processes occur and knowledge is developed.  Perhaps it is the lack of knowledge and understanding that creates this barrier.  From past readings and theory classes, I have come to think that true and strong design comes purely from nature.  Forms from nature can then be translated into shape, space and structure.  Nature ranges from the simple to the more complex of forms.  The key to diminishing the thickness between reality and virtual reality is found in the discovery of merging nature into these complex forms and ideas that the computer can be used to develop.

To link Picon’s ideas back into the design of my wine apparatus.  Hopefully I can create a form with the use of parametrics to design that is most complex within the virtual world yet can be simplified down into reality and correlate with concepts that are derived from a natural state and reality.  As I have started to develop a concept for my apparatus as I began to make my own wine and having toured several wineries to see the process of wine making on a first hand basis.

THE FOLDED, THE PLIANT AND THE SUPPLE – GREG LYNN

Greg Lynn outlines in the first portion of his book the principals of Architectural Curvilinearity and how this concept can relate to form and architecture.  “Pliancy implies first a flexibility and second a dependence on external forces for self-definition.”

The amount of wine that can be produced from different size vineyards, grapes and so on is interesting.  It takes 600-800 grapes to make one bottle of wine! Which i find a crazy ratio.  The home making process also catches my attention and I would like to make my own someday soon.  Perhaps as I learn more about wine, I will eventually start a batch myself. There are points and spaces which can be altered based on different theoretical, cultural reasons and variables.  Folding and other catastrophes for architecture and in the programs rhino and grasshopper as well.

Also Lynn outlines how these instances can be manipulated.  Manipulation in architecture terms links back to deconstructionism and how this principal applies to structure and skin of a form.   “Smooth mixtures are made up of disparate elements which maintain their integrity while being blended within a continuous field of other free elements.”

Wine and architecture have been based on the same principals since they each came about.  Wine is constructed and has been perfected and the same process has been used since way long ago.  However, there also have been many experiments with wine, the fruit used in the process and other elements that affect its principals [air, aging, climate and temperature].  The “smooth” instances have been created in the response to conflict within form and architecture.

Deborah Tanner, author of The Argument Culture: Fighting for Our Lives, sums up that our society as we know it is an argument culture.  The media has taken a position to insist that only battle and war are interesting and will inject the language of contention wherever possible whether or not it is true or relevant.  This culture is based on contradiction that therefore creates change and development.  Contradictions in traditional architecture with hard edges and lines have been controlled and manipulated by argument, therefore this is where abstract form and unique compositions of space have been manipulated from architecture in the past.

While exploring the world of 3d modeling and manipulation in the program grasshopper, it is simple to apply all of these ideas to unique forms.  Forms and spaces that one can create are individually triggered and when put together in the correct definition can create a smooth and pliable design.  The forms created all seem so unique but all do however relate back to nature.

There are things in nature that are constant.  However, then there is an evolution and part of nature that can adapt and change.  Nurture.  D’Arcy Thompson’s remarks as a biologist make these ideas clear.  The ideas of inherent design vs. evolution in design are so individual, however are both necessity in any situation.  These situations can be associated with a number of things, architecture, cooking, wine and so on.

ME ++

In Me++ William J. Mitchell details the relationship between boundaries and networks and how these two ideas are linked to one another.  The two concepts act hand in hand with each other as they have developed from a primarily physical state into a present and digital situation.  The author studies the effects of technology on a global scale and thus the outcome on oneself in things like clothing, architecture, space and time.

The Me++ article informs the reader that boundaries aren’t just physical due to the ramifications of technology.  Also it is argued that a world less governed by boundaries and more by networking and connections requires modernizing our environment to consider the principled aspects of space, design and secrecy.

When discussing the principals of connections.  Mitchell examines Georg Simmel who states, “connecting creature who must always separate and who cannot connect without separating.”  From a previous theory class that was based on dynamic theory of space, there were a few readings from George Simmel that he writes that pertain to the article Me++ and that I find interesting.

In the past I learned that George Simmel was a major German sociologist, philosopher and critic who was a major contributor to social science thought whose work offers important insights on the social construction of space.  In his press release, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, chapter three focuses on the notion of secrecy.  Georg’s writing of secrecy breaks the term down into five divisions all revolving around secrets.  The secrecy within people and space share similar principals that can be applied to architecture, design and in particular connections/boundaries that Me++ reveals. Secrecy is a theory that can be applied to design and form all which can make up unique situations.  Secrecy creates both physical and psychological boundaries.

Boundaries/Networks can be associated with secrecy that can be both intentional and unintentional.  As ones whereabouts become more linked into a network, the more powerful secrecy and our destinies become.  This connectivity condition of the twenty-first-century is becoming a more and more complex ‘virtual reality’.  The technical language is a challenging reality to enter for some.  Staying up with media and technology seems to becoming more and more complicated.  I think that at some point there is going to be a limit or a reversal.  Simplification actions will eventually need to be taken into consideration.

The rare understanding of the ways in which emerging network culture is changing the social, political, and economic structure as well as transforming the architecture of cities and the subjects who inhabit them.