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Editing Staff
Production Team
Ready Writers
Masters of Photography
Design Druids
Soul Slingers
Alex Norton Patches O’Hulahan Rupert Turnbull Nate Lanxon Rachel Reidy Karen Allgood Talia Kaufmann
Evan Ebud Eagan Dalia Nassimi Tara Ebsworth Alber Read Mark Bergin
Harriet Wilson Nicholas Tufnell Olivia Solon Liat Clark Katie Collins Steve Peck Kaamil Ahmed Nicholas Colerdige Hazel McIntere Dan Smith
Ethan Blouin Keith Berry Cheryl Collins Art Garfunkle Taylor Gang
Chris Bowers Fiona Forsyth Allanon of Past Richar Packard Alex Pickard Jon Rankin John-Tyler Ahl
Ethan Norton Tyler Deehay
Above A common leaf. The spacial organization of the photosynthetic cells on leaves has inspired parametric designers to explore different type of space-packing algorithms.
Right Scate Chair, by Oleg Soroko. A convergence of design thinking. Form inspired by the natural motion of the ocean Scate, the chair was design using the Grasshopper plugin for Rhino. Issue 03 // Emergence Spring 2014
FROM THE EDITOR Emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems. Design Across Scales issue 03 is devoted to the exploration of emergent systems. This periodical features celebrated designers, scientists, and thinkers from across disciplines, working together to achieve incredible results. From self assembling systems, to neurons in space. The magazine is structured with 5 sections, Computation, Fabrication, Interactive, Architecture, and Exhibition. Each section is in effect its own micro-zine; a curated work that explores design through a unique lens. The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe.
The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. At each level of complexity entirely new properties appear. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. We can now see that the whole becomes not merely more, but very different from the sum of its parts. The plausibility of strong emergence is questioned by some as contravening our usual understanding of physics. The table of contents is also quite systematized. Articles are arranged by scale, as opposed to continuity. A central scale separates the articles by their relationship in scale.
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87 MIT Nano Wilson Architects
03-06
Villa Kanousan Yuusuke Karasawa Architects
07-18
Emergent Forms Alex Norton
88-90 Qatar Education City Arata Isozaki
19-34
Silk Pavillion Neri Oxman
91-94 Florence New Station Eso Studio
35-37
Lost Amid Algorithms Witold Rybcyski
95-98 Kakamigahara Crematorium Toyo, Ito
38-42
Genetic Stair Caliper Architects
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Above pg.28 Genetic Stair: a staircase completely designed by algorithms.
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43 43
Monument Valley Us Two Studios World Wildlife WWF Designers
43-44
Flappy Bird Dong Nguyen
44-46
24 Hours of Happy Pharrell Williams
98-101 Souvenir Precision Works
49 Critique_06
102-105 P5.Js Lauren McCarthy
106-107 Unity 5 Platform William Silversmith
108-115 On Generative Typography Type Directors Club 116-122 Slow Games Ishac Bertran
123-125 Wind is Blowing Thomas S.
Fabrication_03 47-48
3D Weaving Koroku Yosawa
49-53
Self Assembly Skylar Tibits
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Lin Pavilion Marc Fornes
55-58
ZipShape Simon Ostroski
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Out of Order Aranda Lasch
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63-68
TED 2014 Nicholas Negroponte
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Neurons in Space Amy Robinson
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Walk Again Hugh Herr
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Yii Julia Yee
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Simple Enter Solit Lew
SELF ASSEMBLING STRUCTURES OFFER NEW DIMENSIONS IN 3D PRINTING Above New Dimensions in 3D printing with Skylar Tibits looks like it might be interesting to read.
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The emergent systems featured througout this section could not be possible without the iterative power of the micro processor. Mimicing nature requires a highly robust, multidisciplinary approach.
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Playful Systems along with Kevin Slavin of the MIT Media lab have perfected the art of tangible research into applied interaction design through the lens of mobile gamification platforms such as Twenty Day Stranger.
SILK PAVILLION_ featuring Neri Oxman
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Stephan Keating of the Mediated Matter group is experimenting with 3D-printed foam-like materials which may facilitate fully automated high-rise shell construction in coming years.
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Exhibition_04 62-85
Amy Robinson exhibits a virtual reality experience at TED 2014. With the help of Microsoft Research and Oculus, Neurons in Space allowed the viewer to witness firsthand the complexity of our thought process.
Skylar Tibits a student of professor Meejin Yoon envisions a new kinetic architecture for printed materials which respond to changes in their environment. Complexity formed from the introduction of random energy.
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Caroline Jones wants to know where the boundary lies between science, art, and technology. How do art historians conduct meaningful interventions where there is little or no precedence?
24 The Silk Pavilion explores the relationship between digital and biological fabrication on product and architectural scales. “Our research integrates computational form-finding strategies with biologically inspired fabrication“, claims the ‘about’ page of MIT Media Lab’s Mediated Matter Group. Though this may sound like run-of-the-mill architectural boasting, you are unlikely to find any more exemplary combination of scientific research, digital design and biomimetic construction together.
Right Emergent Forms: (pg.12-16) An abstraction of form and space. Exploring the reciprocal relationships between negative and positive space.
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COM PUTA TION Parametric design, or generative design is a design method in which the output – image, sound, architectural models, animation – is generated by a set of rules or an Algorithm, normally by using a computer program. Most generative design is based on parametric modeling. It is a fast method of exploring design possibilities that is used in various design fields such as Art, Architecture, Communication Design, and Product Design. Some generative schemes use genetic algorithms to create variations. Some use just random numbers. Generative design has been inspired by natural design processes, whereby designs are developed as genetic variations through mutation and crossovers. In contrast to long-established concepts such as Generative Art or Computer Art, Generative Design also includes particular tasks within the area of design, architecture, and product design.
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Villa Kanousan
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Outwardly humble, The Villa Kanousan is truly a marvel of new modern architectural design. The internal space is subdivided a complex set of parametric algorithms used to optimize the internal space for uncompromising efficiency.
VILL A K AN OUSAN Y U U S U K E K A R A S AWA A R C H I T E C TS KIMITSU 2009
In Japan traditional architecture had demonstrated virtually no concern with threedimensional, solid spacial composition To be or not to be. Villa Kanousan is no ordinary weekend house but rather a fascinating experiment with space. The building lies on the slope of a mountain o the Boso Peninsula in the Chiba Prefecture and is based on a simple geometric form: the cube. The architect has subdivided it inside with walls and ceilings to create eight also cubic spaces. Precisely where the various building parts meet, this construction is penetrated by smaller cubes. The cubes, whose slight incline corresponds to the surrounding landscape, are subtracted from the basic form according to the rules of an algorithm. This results in hollow spaces that form the true character of the building. The strict grid determined by the walls and ceiling is partially broken down by the perforations, causing the spaces to enter into new relationships with one another and creating an enthralling structure. The cubic hollow spaces are placed at the same distance from one another but rotated fifteen degrees. As a result of the slightly deviating slopes of these “holes,” the order of the basic structure is at times scarcely recognizable. By contrast, the architect’s placement of the uses is relatively rigorous: both the living spaces on he ground floor occupy a quarter of the square floor plan, respectively. One exception is the bathroom, which could not be designed as an open space and hence is pushed, somewhat ashamed, into one of the corners of the upper floor. All the other rooms of the house - whether the entry, the kitchen, or the bedrooms - occupy more or less the same area. The floor covering on the ground floor is oak parquet: the architect chose a bright carpet for the upper floor. The white surfaces reflect the light and entire the living spaces are pleasantly bright, despite relatively small windows.
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Villa Kanousan
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Above A profile view of the Villa Kanousan depicting the outwardly humble residence on its hillside location. Note how the window follows the slope of the land to meld seamlessly with its environment.
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Villa Kanousan
The Fascinating constellation of interior space is scarcely perceptible from outside. For the exterior siding, the architect chose a type of mahogany that is primarily used to build musical instruments. This results in an outward appearance associated with sounds and music. This can be read either as a contrast to the rational conception of th interior or as a playful development of the basic idea: after all the well-thought out arrangement of the hollow spaces in a resonant volume also account for the quality of the sensory experience. “In Japan traditional architecture had demonstrated virtually no concern with three-dimensional, solid spacial composition and had instead preferred to sever time into instances and space into floor areas, and to organize these fragments with intervals (MA) among them.”-Arata Isozaki The sign [ma] actually means “in-between” and can be interpreted as an interval of time and/ or of space. In this definition, the term is used in all Japanese art forms, including No theater and painting (Tohaku Hasegawa’s painting Pine Forest is probably the most famous example). In architecture, ma was originally a unit of length or area, defined not by walls but by the supports common in wood construction (see also p. 60).
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The concept of ma indicates an understanding of space that is fundamentally different from the Western view. Arata Isozaki defines it as follows: “In Japan, theres two concepts [of time and space -Auth.] are blended together. Time goes across space, creating folds in it, [...] by comparison, the word ma does not differentiate between Western understandings of times and space. Rather it describes both time and space through a notion of interval. According to Isozaki, spaces are determined not by their external dimensions and boundaries but rather emerge “in-between” and in harmony with time - that is, by means of transient actions and moods. Only at the moment at which the empty spacial unit is “occupied” by something is it transformed into a space. Both the active effect of a user and the changes produced by wind, light, and shadows play a role in this. In any case, space is intensely perceived through the mediation of a sense of time (just as the perception of time requires space.) Studying earlier forms of the Japanese house shows that fixed spacial boundaries within the building were a late development: the shinden that emerged in ancient Japan were originally single rooms that could be subdivided with flexible partitions or curtains. Rooms were always temporar y and had no fixed use. The invention of suspended ceilings made it possible to improve the separation of the individual areas from one to another - the sliding par titions necessary to do this were fastened with square rather than round supports from the later Heian period (794-1185) onward. The installation of sliding partition elements necessitated supports at regular distances - a first step toward creating a modular system. In the Middle Ages, tatami
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mats began to be placed as a permanent floor covering, which established another module
Top The main dining room is quite open, allowing for an abundance of natural light to fill the room. Note the contrast achieved between the organic and geometric forms.
that could provide the basis for a definition of area. Whereas the Western interior is determined by the dimensions of the walls - the Japanese interiors is composed of units of area or space whose dimensions are determined by the scale of tatami mats of the sum of areas defined by four supports. The traditional residential forms since antiquity nearly always feature the so-called engawa: a kind of veranda which could often be closed in with amado, wooden folding or sliding shutters, transforming it into an interior space. This space between inside and outside provided the occupants with an elevated area protected from the elements by a projecting roof. It could be used without really leaving the house. The perception of space described above enables one to see the additional spaces, both present and of “emptiness” anchored primarily to Zen Budhism may have been another reason Japan has a tradition of designing with the absence of space or with elements that delimit space. Projects in the present volume such as Pilotis in a Forest by Go Hasewaga, the Villa Kanousan by Yuusuke Karasawa, and House H by Sou Foujimoto demonstrate the ability of Japanese architects to think of spaces in a different way.
Left A view of the interior of the Villa, note the simplicity of the curving stair, how almost no support is needed to maintain a truly functional form
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Villa Kanousan
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In Japan traditional architecture had demonstrated virtually no concern with three dimensional solid spacial composition
Above The view from the second floor of Villa Kanousan reveals an open space with plenty of natural lighting. Because of the generally mild climate, Japanese architects are not so limited by sustainability requirements.
S AWA KO K A I J I M A | A L E X N O RTO N | 2 0 1 4
FOR M FINDIN G SYSTEMS With Localized Variation
Emergent forms was inspired by my work at Seung Lab, a computational neuroscience lab where we utilize connectomics to understand the role that the retina plays in motion (coincidence) detection. We work with 3D reconstructions of a number of types of cells that you would find in the retina. The cell forms resemble the branches on an old Oak tree, moving out in all directions from axon, or “trunk.� The form of the project may be inspired by the structure of neurons, but the overall shape of the sculpture is informed by input from an audio signal. The form branches out with respect to specific frequency range, and the branches respond locally by conforming to the waveform of the frequency. Because of math, and physics, the individual segments share a nearest-neighbor similarity. When placed alongside one another they create truly diverse volumes, convolving and rearranging. This project takes cues from the neurons in the way that the super structure for the branching system was developed. I used an implementation of a DLA (diffusion limited aggregation) algorithm to simulate natural stochastic growth.
Left Tendrils: An abstration of the form reveals the convoluted nature of the individual parts to the sculpture.
Simplexity is a term in system science which describes the emergence of simplicity out of intricate and complex sets of rules
In recent years there has been an increasing trend in architecture to exploit the ability of algorithmic design to produce complex forms by implementing relatively simple and easy formulas. This often results in the addition of unnecessary layers of complexity to a project just for the sake of production of seemingly more complex forms. This in turn can degenerate to computational decoration and after taking into account all the layers of information, the resulting algorithms seem little different than a complicated random number generator.
well as some way to refer to and operate on the totality of the system. This implies that the designer needs to have a more or less clear idea as to what she wants to achieve and in addition take full responsibility of the choices made. A deeper understanding of the system on which operations are carried out is required. A lot of these algorithms are hidden within commercial software packages that designers employ in order to realize their projects in the first place. They are the little workers that do not produce spectacular results but guarantee consistency.
In contrast there is a whole class of algorithms that deal with simplification which are usually more complex and difficult to implement. This is partly the result of the fact that multiplication and proliferation can be easily implemented via iterative function calls and local simple operations over parts of a system. However simplification in a way that produces meaningful results and renders the complex system more accessible to human thought an intuition or more efficient is harder to achieve. This is because omitting elements, filtering, reduction, selection and abstraction are procedures that require intelligent and responsible choices as
Let’s take for example an algorithm that iteratively copies a set of points applying some transformation matrix. If the matrix is a contraction this results in the often organic looking Iterated function system imagery. The amount of elements increases exponentially but the algorithm just applies the same transformation mechanically over and over. On the other hand an algorithm that will take a vast amount of points and attempts to reduce them to extract the information like density, shape, or skeletal structure will be a rather more complicated story. It will have to scan the totality of the system over and over and then compare,
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Above The finished form from the program. Each of the branches represents a different frequency. Where the branches split, the signal is propogating in a different direction.
02
(501-750)
03
(1501-1750)
01
(000-250)
04
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A simulation of Diffusion Limited Aggregation
DLA_SIM
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compare, classify, seek spatial relationships like clusters, implied bouncaries etc. It will probably require the introduction of more complex data structures both to partition space and to hold derivative elements that describe implied or imposed relationships within the point set (lines, clusters, areas, boundaries, etc.). So while the first algorithm only needs to know one type of object, a point as a triplet of numbers, the second algorithm will have to describe points and their relationships using objects of a higher level of complexity. Another way to see this contradiction is through decision paths. A proliferation algorithm will try to follow all possible paths and avoid making any choice betwen them. A simplifcation algorithm with try to find a single more or less complicated path within the constraints of the problem. This implies also that the second requires a well defined problem and hence a better understanding of both the problem and the algorithm’s behaviour on the part of the designer. As we will demonstrate in the following examples simplexity is not just a simplification of form.
Left The beginning of a DLA simulation. The program begins in the center of the display window, growing outwards in a stocastic pattern related directly to observed audio. The algorithm tends to mimic the growth structure of many natural systems, such as frost, bacteria, or electricity.
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Below The translation from conception and modeling to realization through production is in itself a unique medium. An expertly conducted transition allots for these nuances appropriately. This representational sculpture was fabricated using Âź inch stainless steel square-rod hand smithed into precise form.
Simplextity is not just a simplification of form
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Omitting elements, filtering, reduction, selection and abstraction are procedures that require intelligent and responsible choices. In contrast there is a whole class of algorithms that deal with simlification which are usually more complex and difficult to implement. This is partly the result of the fact that multiplication and proliferation can be easily implemented via iterative function calls and local simple operations over parts of a system. However simplification in a way that produces meaningful results and renders the complex system more accessible to human thought an intuition or more efficient is harder to achieve. This is because omitting elements, filtering, reduction, selection and abstraction are procedures that require intelligent and responsible choices as well as some way to refer to and operate on the totality of the system. This implies that the designer needs to have a more or less clear idea as to what she wants to achieve and in addition take full responsibility of the choices made. A deeper understanding of the sysem on which operations are carried out is required. A lot of these algorithms are hidden within commercial sofware packagesthat designers employ in order to realize their projects in the first place. They are the little workeres that do not produce spectacular results but gaurentee consistency.
Top A close-up of a bending portion of the sculture, showing how the system is flexible enough to accomodate sharp bends without losing its essence or form.
Bottom A close-up of a bending portion of the sculture, showing how the system is flexible enough to accomodate sharp bends without losing its essence or form.
Fabrication Explode Parts Diagram
Above A collection of segments from a section of branch. Note the relative complexity of the individual forms with respect to the overal piece.
Above A custom fabricated spacer. In order to achieve the proper volumetric form, it was important that we designed a spacer that would not only seperate, but also self orient the segments perpendicular along the branch. This form was capable of doing both these tasks.
shape
function
form
Starting with the circle we were given a perfectly symetrical form to begin with, completly unlimited exploration in any direction
We the applied a set of transformations to our circle shape. These transformations were derived from audio wave forms collected in our studio. The analysis was done in the Processing language.
Synthesis of the shape and form was carried out to reveal totally new form that takes hints from the symmetry of the circle and the input of the waveform.
+
=
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Above Final forms for the set of branches in the emergent forms sculpture.
classify, seek spatial relationships like clusters, implied boundaries etc. It will probably require the introduction of more complex data structures both to partition space and to hold derivative elements that describe implied or imposed relationships within the point set (lines, clusters, areas, boundaries, etc.). So while the first algorithm only needs to know one type of object, a point as a triplet of numbers, the second algorithm will have to describe points and their relationships using objects of a higher level of complexity. Another way to see this contradiction is through decision paths. A proliferation algorithm will try to follow all possible paths and avoid making any choice between them. A simplification algorithm with try to find a single more or less complicated path within the constraints of the problem. This implies also that the second
requires a well defined problem and hence a better understanding of both the problem and the algorithm’s behavior on the part of the designer. As we will demonstrate in the following examples simplexity is not just a simplification of form. The simple might arise in different invisible layers of the design and formal regularity or any other extraneous system (repetitiveness, symmetries etc.) Might actually decline as a result of the application of such algorithms. Another point we will try to make is that simplexity algorithms are not only employed in the post processing of a given geometric object (rationalization, quantization etc.) but also can be the generating mechanism as well.
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IM AGINED PAR A METERS ORGANIZED AND CONSTRUCTED ON A GR AND SCALE WITH DYNA MIC, REAL– WORLD RESULTS Above A beautiful and elegant form that uses digital technology to create a number of surfaces – both on top of and below the table resulting in a marriage of form and function.
Right A collection of the segments laid out to be stained. Note the square hole which gives the piece more stability than a round hole would have.
Above A beautiful and elegant form that uses digital technology to create a number of surfaces – both on top of and below the table resulting in a marriage of form and function.
The second algorithm will have to describe points
compare, classify, seek spatial relationships like clusters, implied bouncaries etc. It will probably require the introduction of more complex data structures both to partition space and to hold derivative elements athat describe implied or imposed relationships within the point set (lines, clusters, areas, boundaries, etc.). So while the first algorithm only needs to know one type of object, a point as a triplet of numbers, the second algorithm will have to describe points and their relationships using objects of a higher level of complexity.
and their relationships using objects of a higher level of complexity and accuracy
Another way to see this contradiction is through decision paths. A proliferation algorithm will try to follow all possible paths and avoid making any choice betwen them. A simplifcation algorithm with try to find a single more or less
complicated path within the constraints of the problem. This implies also that the second requires a well defined problem and hence a better understanding of both the problem and the algorithm’s behaviour on the part of the designer. As we will demonstrate in the following examples simplexity is not just a simplification of form. The simple might arise in different invisible layers of the design and formal regularity or any other extranous system (repetiveness, symmetries etc.) might actualy
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Above Over 1000 custom wooden spacers were fabricated for this sculpture to ensure that the larger piece set perfectly tight. The spacers do double duty, not only spacing out the shapes but also keeping them upright and secure.
Right An endpiece to a single branch from the sculpture, showcasing the custom joint application created by welding a threaded bold to a lenth of steal sqaure rod.
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Feature Neri Oxman (21-32)
The Silk Pavilion explores the relationship between digital and biological fabrication on product and architectural scales. “Our research integrates computational form-finding strategies with biologically inspired fabrication“, claims the ‘about’ page of MIT Media Lab’s Mediated Matter Group. Though this may sound like run-of-the-mill architectural boasting, you are unlikely to find any more exemplary combination of scientific research, digital design and biometric construction than their recently completed Silk Pavilion.
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Silk Pavilion
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3D We think of printers as desktop machines, stagnant workhorses used to generate piecemeal shapes for humans to relocate in the real world. But a new, stunning piece of architecture by the Mediated Matter Group at MIT Media Lab brings all of those assumptions into question.
Above Two micrographs depicting first a Silk Worm cacoon shown whole, and below the same cocoon bisected to reveal an internal structure. 25X magnification overview SEM micrograph of a domesticated Bombex mori cocoon. Image: James Weaver, Wyss Institute
It’s called the Silk Pavilion, and while a robotic arm laid the basic hexagonal framework, 6,500 live silkworms extruded the pavilion’s hauntingly gorgeous shell. It’s what researchers call a “biological swarm approach to 3-D printing,” or what may be the most epically named piece of fabrication technology since the blowtorch. You see, while silkworms have been used for millennia to give us our beloved silk, that process has always required a level of harvesting--boiling cocoons to generate silk filament. MIT has discovered how to manipulate the worms to shape silk for us natively. “The silkworm embodies everything an additive fabrication system currently lacks,” Mediated Matter’s director Neri Oxman tells Co.Design. “It’s small in size and mobile in movement, it produces natural material of variable mechanical properties, and it spins a non-homogeneous, non-woven textile-like structure.” Why would you want the printing to be non-homogeneous? That’s a good question. Imagine if you were constructing a building, but you wanted to leave room for a window. Or imagine you were sewing a shirt, but you wanted the elbows to be more flexible than cuffs. By exploiting biological hacks--tweaking light, heat, and basic geometric scaffolding--researchers can guide the worms to create the intricate and varied patterns necessary to complex creations. The most immediate implications may be in the potential for a “templated swarm” approach, which I picture as a factory producing a line of clothing just by releasing silkworms across a series of worm-hacking mannequins. The silkworms’ greater potential may be in sheer scale. “Imagine the future of additive manufacturing outside of the printer’s gantry, imagine a swarm
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THE SILK WOR M EMBODIES E VERY THIN G AN ADDITIVE FABRICATION SYSTEM CURRE NTLY L AC KS
Above A cross sectional micrograph of the cacoon of a Silk Worm Note the varying density and woven character of the structure. 40X magnification isometric view SEM micrograph of an equatorially bisected domesticated Bombex mori cocoon. Image: James Weaver, WYSS Inst
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Above 2300X magnification polychromatic SEM micrograph of the silk support scaffold of a domesticated Bombex mori cocoon. Image: James Weaver, WY
of small-scale printing units collaborating to ‘print’ something bigger than themselves,” Oxman writes. “Future research aims to unite 3-D Printing with Artificial Intelligence to generate printing swarms operating in architectural scales depositing structural materials.” In other words, a biological swarm can break outside the bounds of even the largest 3-D printer, building structures in their actual environments. Now combine that idea with another discovery the researchers made when producing the pavilion: The 6,500 silkworms were still viable after finishing construction. They actually pupate into moths (on the structure), and those moths can produce 1.5 million eggs. That’s enough to theoretically supply what the worms need to create another 250 pavilions. In this sense, the silkworm fabrication process becomes self-propagating, like a 3-D printer that can print itself with all the virulence of an insect colony. And while that may sound a little
horrifying, do try to keep in mind: At least MIT isn’t working with spiders. On the ground floor of MIT’s Media Lab, a most unusual cocoon is being constructed. Several feet in height, it consists of 32 polygonal panels of silk threads laid down by a computer-controlled machine and then hand-sewn together into an airy three-dimensional scaffold. Though made of separate pieces, it is based on a design that uses a single line to weave the shape, much the way a silkworm constructs a cocoon out of a single kilometer-long thread. In another part of the building, thousands of gray silkworm larvae are being fattened on crushed mulberry leaves. When the worms are ready to stop eating and start spinning, they’ll be turned loose on the scaffold to fill in the spaces with their own feverish knitting, transforming the carefully designed structure into a living construction site. Artist and designer Neri Oxman, PhD ’10, who leads the Media Lab’s Mediated Matter Group, (Continue on page 28)
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Interview + Words A N D R E W H . D EN T M AT ER I A L CO N N E X I O N Neri Oxman is an Israeli designer and architect. She is best known for her work in environmental design and digital morphogenesis. She currently teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab as Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, and founded the Material Ecology design lab.
Neri Oxman The very nature of matter is being re-engineered as new sciences of design erode our orthodoxies. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work of Neri Oxman, whose research initiative MATERIALECOLOGY and projects for the MIT Computation Group is transcending genres, fads and boundaries. Hers is a unique blend of architecture, computer science, material engineering and art that has her simultaneously commissioned to create medical devices for Boston’s Museum of Science and pieces for MoMA's 2008 exhibition Design and the Elastic Mind. Here a dynamic and hybridized vision of matter cuts through the inertia of convention. A former medical student at Hebrew University and the Technion Institute of Technology, Oxman made a final stop at the renowned Architectural Association in London before joining MIT as a presidential research fellow and PhD candidate in Design Computation in 2006.
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HERE FOR M
Andrew Dent: Why do you feel that your area of expertise and investigation has garnered so much interest from such a wide audience? Neri Oman: Thank you, this is humbling. Public interest is motivated by zeitgeist, but it also creates it. The ideas that I have promoted – often through small physical case studies- are evocative of an idealistic ambience in which emerging science and technology becomes a hopeful and hum anistic medium for broad cultural transformation. In this context, I think my work is communicative on several levels. I try not to take on new work unless it potentially contributes to a general understanding of the way in which to create it. That is for me where all the fun is. So the work touches upon issues in design process that are applicable not only to architectural and design practice, but also to emerging areas in material engineering and digital fabrication. When exploring an integrated design approach that seeks to overlap with, and operate across, multiple fields design becomes innovative, richer, and more capable of broad impact. Design, ultimately, is about an ability to work through constraints. In the case of MATERIALECOLOGY these constraints are geared towards recreating the tools and technologies that are inherently related to the
type of product at hand. In this way, the very instrumentality of design becomes a frontier of innovation.
FOLLOWS FORCE
For example, with Beast – a prototype for a chaise lounge – the aim was to completely rethink the Modernist project and consider physical behavior, not form, as the first article of production. Beast relates material properties to a general loading profile that would be exerted on the chaise when in use. Stiff and soft polymers are distributed in areas of high and low pressure respectively, and the height of each cushioning bump, as it appears on the surface area of the chaise, corresponds to our body’s pressure map, providing for comfort and support. The design process in this case was completely tailored to a new way of thinking about design and full scale digital fabrication, an industry still in its infancy. Imagine Mary Shelley’s mythical creatures; like them, Beast is an organic-like entity created synthetically by the incorporation of physical parameters into digital generation protocols. It is a Performative Chaise. It exploits and advances technological frontiers to create a form of responsive architecture. Here form follows force not unlike the way Mother Nature has it.
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Secondly, I believe the work advocates a new approach to the culture of green; let me explain. So-called sustainable design standards relate to architectural functional components that are somewhat old-fashioned in their construction methods: think bricks, or the hegemony of metal. In the future, composites are going to occupy a much broader portion of the building industry and concrete will be something of the past. Currently, there exists a separation between materials used for structural engineering and materials used for environmental comfort. In my work I attempt to invent ways in which to integrate between the two. Monocoque is a good example in which material properties are modified according to specific structural and environmental constraints. French for single shell, Monocoque, stands for a construction technique, which supports
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structural load using the object's external skin. Contradictory to the traditional design of building skins that distinguishes between internal structural frameworks and non-bearing skin elements; this approach promotes heterogeneity and variation of material properties. The project demonstrates the notion of a structural skin using a Voronoi pattern, the density of which corresponds to multi-scalar loading conditions. The distribution of shear-stress lines and surface pressure is embodied in the allocation and relative thickness of the vein-like elements built into the skin. The model was 3-D printed using the Poly-jet matrix technology which allows for the assignment of structural properties to multiple 3-D printed materials. This technology provides for an ability to print parts and assemblies made of multiple materials within a single build, as well as to create composite materials that present preset combinations of mechanical properties. Now imagine printing muscle that way. Another significant aspect of the work lies in its capacity to translate physical phenomena into art or to express form-generating formulae as building prototypes. My contribution to Paola Antonelli’s Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition at MoMA provided for such an opportunity. A series of four projects entitled Natural Artifice examined the relation between physical material properties and performance criteria such as structural load, heat transfer and insulation. All models were, in essence, expressions of forms front-loaded with data emulating their behavior a-priori to fabrication.. Raycounting for instance, examines the relation between light and geometry. A computational algorithm determines the curvature of the artifact for shading purposes depending on the location of one or multiple light sources relative to the desired location of shading.
Above Due to the generative nature of the algorithm it was possible to create a wide range of wearables that adapt to the human body for pre-visualization and design iteration.
Finally, I hope the work opens a new scale between architecture and material science. Designers should not always accept off-the-shelf materials but realize that they have the power to design and manipulate material behavior. This shift points towards a new way to classify materials and a whole newly dynamic notion of the idea of a materials library. A: Do you feel that we are currently in a renais-
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sance of material processing with the development of rapid prototyping? To what extent will the evolution of this technology change the way we approach design? N: Certainly. We have witnessed the outcomes of the information age affecting so many aspects of our lives. I am positive that such a renaissance of material processing will take us into the next material revolution, post the industrial revolution and post the information age altogether. In the future, materials will be data-encapsulating-energy-managing agents built into the fabric of clothes, products, buildings and cities. No circuit boards needed, only physics. I am also positive that within a decade we will be witnessing significant transformations not only in design, but also in the construction industry. Buildings will be printed “file-to-fitness” on-site. Granted, the complexity of implementing new technologies in societies structured around old ones are a major problem. But in the long run, transformative technologies will redefine the way we think and make. Novel technologies start out as art forms, using the sciences creatively to reverse engineer the ancient skills of craft forms, still struggling to be born. So we are working against technical difficulties but also cultural barriers. With regard to Rapid FAB, Recent initiatives in such technologies combined with innovative work into composite materials are now enabling designers and engineers alike to rethink the functions and potential features of products and buildings as affordances directly and selectively promoted through their making. Assemblies of stiff parts tightly held together using joins and bearings slowly wither as we make room for the biological paradigm in which the product becomes a generic medium of response, amplification, growth and repair. The future is that close: printing building tissue as continuous strands of stiff and elastic matter operating seismic dampers will become a matter of hitting the power switch. A: There has been much interest in ‘bio-materials’ – those that can be grown or manipulated using biological processes. Are we yet at a stage where this can be done reliably and functionally, or is it still at a development stage? How do you see this area progressing?
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Biomimicry is not a method; it is a philosophy, an intellectual disposition, and a mentality with which to perceive the natural world around us.
Above: Prof. Neri Oxman and her team are working on bluring boundary between the environment and ourselves. The aim is to embed living matter within fabricated 3D structures that augment environment.
N: Biomaterials make up an interdisciplinary science merging elements of biology, chemistry, material science, tissue engineering and medicine. Many exciting applications of such materials include the production of bone plates, artificial tendons and ligaments, blood vessel prostheses, coronary valves, and joint replacements. Such materials are comprised of living tissue or a device that augments natural functions. As such, these materials must be compatible with the human body; they are predominantly used for medical applications. But the processes by which they are engineered and developed can shed much light on the design process of products and building parts that respond to their natural environment. So in my view, the development of biomaterials in the medical industry is overwhelmingly inspiring to us designers. I believe it is just a matter of time till we implement such methods in the built environment, and we are not the first. Many generations before us have used the stuff of life in the design of artifacts: ancient kayaks have incorporated bone parts to increase stiffness, cellular plant tissues are known to have been used in the design of swords etc. The combination of these age-old crafts with rapid technologies will bring us into a new age of a Rapid Craft.
In my work I seek to shift the discourse of design production from a form-centric approach to an environmental-centric approach where form is motivated, represented and defined by its structural and environmental performance. Unique form, much like nature, is triggered by natural forces and by material behavior. This line of thought promotes a new kind of aesthetics, and indeed a new ethics – a new way of thinking about design. X, Y, Z, S, S, T (pronounced: EXIST: On the Nature of Coming into Being) attempts to explore the notion of reconstructing material behavior. The piece investigates how environmental conditions can inform material organization. Tissue engineering in construction not only encourages greater attention to material formation, it may facilitate the emergence of a new materialism in architecture and design. An object-oriented finite element application determines the material’s behavior according to parameters such as stress, strain, heat flow, stored energy and deformation due to applied loads and temperature differences. The resulting model is six dimensional and includes 2-D information (X, Y), out of plane deformation (Y), elastic stress (S), strain (S) and temperature flux (T). The tissue is then
reconstructed using a CNC mill and metal/ steel and wood composites. A: Is biomimicry the only way in which we can really achieve true sustainability? Are there areas where you feel that human-developed processes trump those of nature? N: Biomimicry is not a method; it is a philosophy, an intellectual disposition, and a mentality with which to perceive the natural world around us. It is the study of age-old design solutions to problems in the natural world as potentially relevant to contemporary design and engineering. The use of renewable energy sources is a good example of sustainable methods that take more time to infiltrate the market, but are very efficient in the long run. So I think we have a huge responsibility as designers not only to express problems in a meaningful way but to act upon them with creativity.
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SILK PAVILLION Creation Process
M ED I AT ED M AT T ER M I T M ED I A L A B / 2013
Above 3D reconstruction of the moving pattern of a single Silk Worm during the process of a creating a cocoon. Left X-ray photograph of a dried Bombyx mori pupa in a completed silk cocoon. Image: James Weaver, WYSS Institute
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HELPERS The primary structure was created of 26 polygonal panels made of silk threads laid down by a CNC (Computer-Numerically Controlled) machine. Inspired by the silkworm’s ability to generate a 3D cocoon out of a single multi-property silk thread (1km in length), the overall geometry of the pavilion was created using an algorithm that assigns a single continuous thread across patches providing various degrees of density.
is masterminding the project in collaboration with Fiorenzo Omenetto at Tufts University and James Weaver at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. This living scaffold, which was dreamed up and executed by members of the Mediated Matter Group, is the latest in a series of experimental structures that Oxman has created to challenge the status quo in design and production. As a doctoral student at MIT and now as an assistant professor of media arts and sciences, Oxman has garnered accolades for objects she has designed on a computer and produced on
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a 3-D printer; they have been displayed at the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the 2010 Beijing International Art Biennale, and they are part of the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou museum in Paris. She worked with designer Iris Van Herpen and the 3-D-printing company Stratasys to create a 3-D-printed dress for this year’s Spring Fashion Week in Paris. “A recurring theme for her work is something that’s creepy and beautiful at the same time,”
HELPERS Overall density variation was informed by the silkworm itself deployed as a biological “printer” in the creation of a secondary structure. A swarm of 6,500 silkworms was positioned at the bottom rim of the scaffold spinning flat nonwoven silk patches.
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02 Oxman’s works look both strange and eerily familiar because of the way she plumbs nature’s repertoire
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R E S E A RC H As they locally reinforced the gaps across CNC-deposited silk fibers. Following their pupation stage the silkworms were removed. Resulting moths can produce 1.5 million eggs with the potential of constructing up to 250 additional pavilions.
says Craig Carter, her close collaborator and a professor of materials science at MIT. Oxman’s works look both strange and eerily familiar because of the way she plumbs nature’s repertoire. The objects bring to mind dappled pelts, porous sponges, cushioned wombs, and gaping jawbones, but they’re made entirely of synthetic materials jetted out of a 3-D printer. Though designed on a computer, they seem almost perversely alive. For Oxman, the process of design is more
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A season-specific sun path diagram mapping solar trajectories in space dictated the location, size and density of apertures within the structure in order to lock-in rays of natural light entering the pavilion from South and East elevations. The central oculus is located against the East elevation and may be used as a sun-clock.
MODELING Affected by spatial and environmental conditions including geometrical density as well as variation in natural light and heat, the silkworms were found to migrate to darker and denser areas. Desired light effects informed variations in material organization across the surface area of the structure.
important than the finished products. “They’re thought of as artworks, but in fact I see them as expressions of processes, or expressions of ways of thinking about making,” she says. The goal of her group is to revamp the way designers create products. She believes that nature can offer strategies for making multipurpose buildings and objects that perform better and can be produced with less energy and waste. She has coined the term “material ecology” to describe this approach. Her hope is that just as traditional ecology examines relationships between living organisms and their environments, material ecology will examine how products interact with their environments—as well as with people and with other products—and look at the processes by which they are manufactured. Today’s designers, she believes, should be more active in designing those processes rather than simply the finished forms. Products could behave more like systems she sees in nature: complex structures that are created to perform multiple
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IF WE CAN PRINT M ATERIAL S CAN WE WEAVE M ATE RIAL S? Materials have become increasingly programmable, in part because of digital
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fabrication techniques like TOOLING The above tool was developed by researcher Markus Kayser. The tool is attached to the end of a six-axis Kuka robotic arm, allowing for rapid development of the silk super structure
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functions efficiently. “Neri Oxman’s work looks like beautiful sculpture, but it is much more,” says Paola Antonelli, senior curator at MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design. “It represents the future of architecture and design. She is doing what we have been trying to do for millennia—capturing the secrets of nature to learn how to build, organize, and generate.” Oxman launched the Mediated Matter Group in 2010. The name implies that just as in nature all matter is “mediated” by its environment— plants and animals must adapt to it in order to survive—design should take the environment into account. “I also believe that materials are the new software, hence the ‘media’ within ‘mediated,’” she says. Materials have become increasingly programmable, in part because of digital fabrication techniques like 3-D printing, in which objects are designed and modeled on a computer and then translated into physical form. Unlike more traditional fabrication techniques that cut or remove material, 3-D printing adds material in layers, making it possible to rapidly build structures with micrometer-scale resolution factors. Nature, she believes, offers new ideas for fab-
06 FA B R I C AT I O N Parallel basic research explored the use of silkworms as entities that can “compute” material organization based on external performance criteria.
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Above a team of researchers is seen applying the swarm of silk worms to the surface of the pavilion.
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A SS E M B LY Specifically, we explored the formation of non-woven fiber structures generated by the silkworms as a computational schema for determining shape and material optimization of fiber-based surface structures.
ricating products. Today, most are assembled from discrete parts designed for a singular purpose. (A car, for example, is built by joining together components as diverse as the stiff steel chassis, a protective shell, transparent windows, and comfortable padding.) But Oxman is more interested in constructing integrated objects that are strong, soft, supportive, breathable, light-absorbing, reflective, opaque, or transparent where needed. She uses the analogy of skin: though it is one continuous “part” of the body, its properties vary gradually, so that it can include both callused heels and tissue-like eyelids. In the same way, product designs could specify the precise—and perhaps varying—performance requirements of the materials. The result could be smarter, more streamlined designs that have serious practical benefits. Typically, 3-D printing uses a single material to create shapes with uniform properties, which limits their range of performance. Creating objects with varying properties requires a different approach. A project called Beast, from
her PhD work, uses a cell-like pattern of both soft and stiff acrylic materials in the printing of a chaise lounge, creating one continuous undulating surface that varies in thickness, stiffness, curvature, flexibility, and pattern density in order to offer structural support and comfort where needed. Oxman envisions someday constructing buildings using swarms of 3-D-printing robots. For now, her team has been developing new printing methods. In one, a robotic arm functions as a 3-D printer but can move freely in space to add materials outside the bounds of a printer gantry, the movable frame that places the printer head in position. Others in her lab, including mechanical-engineering grad student Steven Keating, SM ’12, are “printing” with fast-curing foams that can be left in place as molds for other castable structural materials like plastics. Oxman is also exploring 3-D printing techniques that depart from the conventional method of laying down sequential layers of materials. In research parallel to the silkworm pavilion, her group uses a robotic arm fitted with a head that can extrude plastic materials in a thread. By using a magnetic motion sensor to track the figure-eight movements of a silkworm, the group is hoping to program those movements into the robotic arm in order to create a large-scale cocoonlike structure for observation. Oxman says printing methods that build with threads or fibers rather than layers could achieve more sophisticated structures, more like the ones found in
Left Perspective view of the completed Silk Pavilion and the Basic Research exhibit focusing on fiber density distribution studies (far right). Image: Steven Keating.
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Patrik Schumacher and devotees of parametric design have embraced this new methods stunning capacity for futuristic formmaking. But its real potential—to improve building performance—remains unrealized.
Above Fall Off is a computer generated table in which surface density is defined by the placement of objects on a virtual table through a web interface.
What began as an investigation into surface, support, and density, originated from my knowledge of soft selection within the program Autodesk Maya, and the corresponding fall off. Once upon a time, schools of architecture displayed plaster casts of Ionic capitals and Renaissance portals for the edification of their students. Visit any school today and you’re likely to encounter, either in one of the corridors or standing outside the building, structures resembling giant three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles made of interlocking pieces of laser-cut plywood. Such constructions, no less iconic than the old plaster casts, are the pwroduct of classes in the academy’s current architectural obsession—parametric design. Google parametric design and the first site that you will find is not a Wikipedia entry but a blog, Rethinking Architecture. The author, a Polish architect named Jaroslaw Ceborski, is rather vague about definitions, but he writes enthusiastically: “It’s quite easy to distinguish something designed using parameters and algorithms from the rest, so it gives us a message, ‘I’m contemporary, I was rethinked.” Tangled grammar aside, Ceborski captures
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ALGORITHMS
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IDEA
Abstraction
ALGORITHM RULE
Formalization (starting parameters)
Modify rules
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Modify parameters
Interpretation (by computer)
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Left The table utilizes a voronoi pattern, which is a mathematical way of dividing a space into a number of regions.
Designer judges output
These regions are then able to be controlled by the user through an interface with different variables.
the preoccupation with parametric design to create new “contemporary” forms, as evidenced regularly in student projects, and less frequently in the façades of trendy boutiques, edgy condominiums, and upscale department stores. One of the largest built examples is Foreign Office Architects’ cruise ship terminal in Yokohama, Japan, a pier whose sinuous walking surface is said to have been inspired by traditional wave paintings. According to a primer on parametric design by the AIA California Council, this project proves that “complex building forms correlated to a series of imagined or perceived parameters could be organized and constructed on a grand scale with dynamic, real-world results.”
Copyright Hartmut Bohnacker, Julia Laub, Benedikt Grob, Claudius Lazzeroni (2009) Book, Generative Gestaultung”,www.generative-gestaultung.de
“Imagined or perceived parameters” sounds pretty arbitrary. Indeed, the algorithms that underlie parametric modeling are altered seemingly at will, and can rapidly churn out a variety of forms from among which the de-
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signer can choose. Perhaps that’s why parametric design is so popular with students. Renzo Piano, Hon. FAIA, once told Architectural Record, “You know, computers are getting so clever that they seem a bit like those pianos where you push a button and it plays the cha-cha and then a rumba. You may play very badly, but you feel like a great pianist.” Even in experienced hands, parametric programs can produce alarmingly undisciplined results. The 2010 Guangzhou Opera House by Zaha Hadid, Hon. FAIA, is a poster child for the caulking industry. The Harvard University historian Antoine Picon, author of Digital Culture in Architecture, observes that “the capacity of the computer to transform almost every formal choice into a viable constructive assemblage reinforces the possibilities offered to the architect to play with forms without worrying about their structural implications too much.” The disadvantage of this play, which he also points out, apart from elevated construction costs—and caulking issues—is that the morphological forms produced are oblivious to the past. This gives parametrically designed buildings an up-to-the-minute quality. Although they look sci-fi futuristic, they are also curiously one-dimensional, for nothing ages faster than yesterday’s vision of the future. Just ask Jules Verne. Not all parametrically designed buildings are “architecture rethinked.” In the hands of Nicholas Grimshaw, AIA, and Norman Foster, Hon. FAIA, computational tools are used in the service of mainstream Modernism, as with the curved structure of Grimshaw’s Waterloo International Terminal in London, or Foster’s undulating courtyard roof of the American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery in ye Olde Washington, D.C. The spherical geometry of the ArtScience Museum of Moshe Safdie, FAIA’s Marina Bay Sands in Singapore is based on a series of spiraling and converging arcs. The first parametric studies were done on the graphics software Maya, according to Safdie principal Jaron Lubin, Assoc. AIA. “The team built the model such that one could adjust isolated geometric parameters to test different design options very quickly.” Later, the architects shifted to Rhino, to share 3D information with structural engineers at the global design firm Arup, which pushed the information into GenerativeComponents, a parametric program that integrates with more Building Information Modeling.
E VEN IN E XPERIENCED HANDS, PAR A METRIC PRO GR A MS CAN PRODUCE AL AR MIN GLY UNDISC IPLINED RESULTS Above A beautiful and elegant form that uses digital technology to create a number of surfaces – both on top of and below the table resulting in a marriage of form and function.
C A L I P ER A R C H I T E C T U R E N E W YO R K 20 0 9
GENETIC STAIR
Designed as the centerpiece of a much larger apartment renovation for art collectors on Manhattan’s Upper West Side
Designed as the centerpiece of a much larger apartment renovation for art collectors on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, this stainless steel stair represents the culmination of a fully integrated generative design process which exploits advanced digital design techniques from the earliest conceptual stages, through performative analysis and onwards to fabrication.
Left As seen from the more private bedroom level above, the stair is an almost minimal composition of white translucent treads, stainless steel fittings and low-iron glass. The stair’s rectangular landings have no direct support.
In the search for a final form that inhabits the fecund territory between exuberance and rationality, custom code was developed to marry the generative potential of 3D architectural modeling with the analytic power of structural design software. In an entirely automated evolutionary process, populations of stairs were created in compliance with strict fabrication constraints and then rated for structural performance. Following genetic principles, new generations were produced in which individuals showed stronger and stronger properties until a final design was deemed structurally adequate to connect two floors with no intermediary supports while making three ninety degree turns.
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Left The table utilises a voronoi pattern, which is a mathematical way of dividing a space into a number of regions.
Right Top These regions are then able to be controlled by the user through an interface with different variables.
These regions are then able to be controlled by the user through an interface with different variables.
The table utilises a voronoi pattern, which is a mathematical way of dividing a space into a number of regions.
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Right Bottom A bit of a change in the text here, for good measure, which is a mathematical way of dividing a space into a number of regions.
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THE DESI GN USED GENETIC individuals showed stronger and stronger properties until a final design was deemed structurally adequate to connect two floors with no intermediary supports while making three ninety degree turns. Materially, the stair embodies a restrained palette of polished stainless steel, white translucent Corian and low-iron glass. The genetic stair was designed to be the centerpiece of a renovated apartment and art gallery in New York’s Upper West Side. The goal was to create a slender stair that would only be supported at the bottom and top, and that would turn three times to climb 4.6m. The design required a rethinking of both the design process and the role of the architect. At the beginning of the process, agreed design details and their limiting factors become the driving geometric constraints for the stair’s overall parametric model. Custom software was create and integrated with McNeel’s Rhinoceros 3D software to generate potential arrangements for the stainless-steel hollow pipes and solid rods that formed the structural latticework under the stair. the candidate solution was then passed, as a series of entrees, to a structural finite element analysis (FEA) system. The customized software used the FEA results within a genetic algorithm to ‘breed’ strong members and remove weaker ones. The final form of the stair was reached after several iterations of this analysis of the structural performance of members, which selected strong ones and eliminated weaker ones while adhering to strict fabrication constraints. With this process, the architectural team was able to remove the design and fabrication of the stair from the purview of the contractor
ALGORITHMS TO BREED STRON G MEMBERS AND REMOVE WEAKER ONES Right Section perspective drawing of the digital model used during design and fabrication.
With this process, the architectural team was able to remove the design and fabrication of the stair from the purview of the contractor a rarity in traditional architectural projects. More importantly, however, and in a reversal of traditional design process, the fabrication team collaborated on the details of the stair from the outset of the project, and the designers were actice throughout the fabrication phase. In order to build the complex framework panels were digitally derived and fabricated to guide the placement of pipes and rods. Intricate intersections between pipes and rods were unfolded from the 3D model and printed on paper templates, which were hen wrapped around the steel members to act as guidelines for hole and edge cutting. This resulted in very accurate and clean joinery of the structural elements.
The result is a beautiful, free-standing structure, which integrates parametric, material, structural and aesthetic concerns. As Caliper Studio’s Nicholas Desbiens explains, the Genetic Stair is made of ‘48 unique stainless steel pipes with 1,400 angled holes, 253 connecting steel rods cut to length, 22 translucent Corian treads, 18 plates of glass and over 250 miscellaneous connecting components. The tubular-steel frame is punctuated by varying densities of diagonal struts as it turns its way unsupported through 270 degrees in a visual language that speaks to a controlled complexity inherent to the process by which it was designed.’