Autopoietic-extended architecture: can buildings think? (original) (raw)
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Autopoietic Architecture: Can Buildings Think?
Digital-Botanic Architecture 3, 2015
Looking through a filter of autopoietic theory as it defines living intelligent systems, DBA3 Autopoietic Architecture: Can Building Think? asks questions of how AI, synthetic biology, and living tech- nology can merge with aesthetics, geometry, and plant research in order to visually and systemically aid extrapolation of generative procedural rules, geometries, and genetic forms to theoretically consider intelligent architectures. D•BA3 proposes architecture hy- bridized through algorithmic plant simulation, living bacteria, plant metabolism, computational simulation, and living technology. The text discusses and illustrates an induced evolution in one emerging method — autopoietic-extended design — for metablic architecture realized through software-simulated, plant-to-architecture morphol- ogy and biological intelligence. The resulting autopoietic generative architecture is manifested in prototype ideas, theory, structures, surfaces, materials, and systems documented with drawings, ren- derings, and STL models.
Autopoiesis + Extended Cognition + Nature = Can Buildings Think?
© Dennis Dollens *Correspondence to: Dennis Dollens; Email: exodesic@mac.com Submitted: 10/16/2014 Revised: 11/11/2014 Accepted: 11/13/2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.4161/19420889.2014.994373 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non- Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is prop- erly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted. To incorporate metabolic, bioreme- dial functions into the performance of buildings and to balance generative architecture’s dominant focus on compu- tational programming and digital fabrication, this text first discusses hybridizing Maturana and Varela’s bio- logical theory of autopoiesis with Andy Clark’s hypothesis of extended cognition. Doing so establishes a procedural proto- col to research biological domains from which design could source data/insight from biosemiotics, sensory plants, and biocomputation. I trace computation and botanic simulations back to Alan Turing’s little-known 1950s Morphoge- netic drawings, reaction-diffusion algorithms, and pioneering artificial intelligence (AI) in order to establish bio- architecture’s generative point of origin. I ask provocatively, Can buildings think? as a question echoing Turing’s own, "Can machines think?"
Frontiers of Architectural Research, 2021
Certain confusion may be observed in the field of biomimetic architecture, as it emerges at the crossroad of two disciplinary domains: architectural design and biological sciences. If biomimetics is defined as a science, once it is applied to architecture, biomimetic architecture should logically be defined as a science too. This assertion collides with the nature of architectural design, which may rather be defined as a technology: its aim is to transform the world, not to explain it. On the one hand, there is no obvious relationship between architecture and life sciences. On the other hand, the biomimetic approach tends to redefine the concept of science itself by seeking to avoid the excesses of scientism. Moreover, existing applications of biomimetic design show that it is difficult to observe a genuine biomimetic architecture; most cases are closer to engineering component or urban planning and sometimes they involve little or no life sciences. The aim of this paper is to describe this conceptual confusion through two movements called "forcings", occurring between design and science. These forcings are conceptualised as shifts between constructed scientific objects and given empirical objects. Models, used in biology as in architecture, allow these shifts by virtue of their double function. They are both tools for knowledge and for design, thus they may be conceptually forced into what they are not supposed to be, particularly in the field of biomimetic architecture where design process and scientific knowledge are said to meet.
Re-understanding Computation in architecture via its Biological references.
Computation can be considered as a vital field for architectural design because of its exploratory and problem-solving nature.. This paper suggests to understand computation for architectural design in a broader sense, by investigating its relevance in biology- which is one of the major fields, and that computation has also emerged as an integral part in the past experiences closed to date. In this point of view, involving similar approaches in biology and architecture, Biomorphism emerges as the field of intersection between two disciplines. From the point of architectural design, biomorphism is mainly about the search for biological references in form generation processes. Biomorphism can be traced back into many architectural design examples involving a computational design experience, namely two of them are: Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada familia completion project in which Mark Burry carried on the legacy of Gaudi's forms using computational tools and in Greg Lynn’s works which can be obviously deciphered to be based on direct biological references such as embriyology and growth and last the study will look into Lars Spuybroek book where he focused Miharu Morimoto’s carpet house which is another good example of a design that uses biological reference in form generation. Biology is one of the major fields in which computation is widely applicable, so by accounting and comparing the applications of computation in biology to that of architecture, it will give a better insight of its importance in the field of architecture. Keywords: Computation, architecture, Design, Biological computation, Biomorphism
ABSRACT: Design methodologies have radically shifted our conception of the design process, as well as our understanding of geometrical forms as a function of performance instead of finite positions in space. However, the materials perspective that digital technologies has not yet been explored on the basis of the new possibilities disclosed by these very same tools; material considerations have almost considered as a post-rationalization design input. So far, the materialization of formal expressions instigated by such processes is primarily based on techniques of assembly, which do not negotiate the advanced levels of material complexity that the tools put forward. This lack of materialism limits the value of the design tool and the exploration of the design space, resulting in a style driven or decorative computational form making processes. This work lies on the premise of investigating modes to address an emergent rather than imposed materiality of distributions, instigated by computer-generated processes. It introduces a sustainable design approach that draws on evolutionary concepts or 'Biogenesis' of natural forms, from their material properties and from their adaptive response to changes in their environment. Instead of looking at the macro level of a building (Formal expression), this paper investigates assemblies at the domain of Material microstructures as a function of structural and environmental performance that generates design form.