Undergraduate Thesis Research

EMERGENT NARRATIVE

AUSTIN WALKER | UNDERGRADUATE THESIS RESEARCH | FALL 2013

ABSTRACT

5

CONCEPT STATEMENT

6

INTRO TO EMERGENCE DEFINITION

MORPHOGENESIS & FORM

SOCIAL SYSTEMS THEORY

8 9 10 12

LANGUAGE AS EMERGENT PHENOMENON

14

EMERGENCE & MORPHOGENESIS IN ARCHITECTURE

CASE STUDIES

20 23

RESEARCH DIAGRAM

36

BIBLIOGRAPHY

38

CONTENTS

Through a framework of emergence, this project will utilize the design of a pavilion for the 2014 Venice Biennale as a means to explore new techniques and methodologies for redefining the “inevitable� elements and material interrelations of architecture using concepts of morphogenesis, hybridity, and interconnectivity.

The same framework will provide a basis for developing and elucidating an understanding of architecture’s evolving role in an increasingly modern and global social environment, specifically its ability to retain variability and heterogeneity in the face of a perceived movement towards universality.

How can an understanding of morphogenesis and biological structure formation allow us to fundamentally rethink the design process as a synthesis of form, performance, and materialization? How can architecture continue to exhibit variation and diversity in the midst of increasingly rapid modernization and globalization? An understanding of emergence offers insight into both questions, and a new framework for reassessing architecture from multiple perspectives...

In the call for the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, curator Rem Koolhaas put forth the framework of Fundamentals, a theme concerned with a focus on histories and the so-called “inevitable elements” of architecture, as well as on the perceived erasure of national characteristics during the past century in favor of the increasing adoption of a near universal architectural language. The call views the First World War and the subsequent rise of modernization as the starting point for a wide range of socio-cultural narratives, with the resulting shift towards a “single modern language” arising from a complex process of cultural interaction, technical innovation, and imperceptible ways of remaining “national”. Ultimately, the framework refers to the contemporary condition as a “flattening of cultural memory,” and positions the future of architecture at the forefront of resurrecting and exposing the diverse narratives and unique national mentalities that continue to exist and flourish within the broader trend of globalization.

However, the increasing complexity and interconnectivity of social systems within the contemporary global setting necessitates not simply a reflection upon histories in an attempt to piece together found fragments within the narrative of modernization, but a new framework for understanding the dynamics of interaction and exchange that have served not only to shape a socio-cultural environment that is becoming increasingly global, but also to provide the fundamental variations and conditions that allow for such localized diversity and intricacy to emerge, agglomerate, and continue to flourish. Architecture, despite its perceived movement towards a state of increasing universality, remains rooted within a framework of social systems that has become increasingly defined, both internally and externally, by principles of emergence, hybridity, and interdependence...

In response, this project will utilize the design of a pavilion structure for the exposition as a way to situate principles of emergence within the larger framework of modernization as a means of not only understanding complex social, cultural, and scientific relationships and phenomena, but also as a strategy for rethinking and designing fluid relationships and conditions of hybridity and connectivity among architecture’s “inevitable” elements. The design strategy will elucidate architecture’s continuously evolving and increasingly complex and interdependent role within the larger social system, taking emergence as a model for the dynamic interactions and communications that the architectural field inherently shares with other realms of the social environment as it continues to develop and self-organize as an autonomous, autopoietic network. In doing so, the project will draw from explorations done by architects and designers such as Achim Menges, Michael Hensel, and Neri Oxman into the potential of emergent concepts, biological systems, and digital methodologies in driving the development of complex architectural forms optimized for structural and material performance as well as formal qualities.

Within the proposed framework of emergence, the pavilion design will be imbued with content derived from the work of Manuel de Landa and others on language as an emergent phenomenon, particularly the ability of language to evolve and transform – phonetically, syntactically, and semantically – into a number of dialects or hybrid conditions as a result of spatial, geographical, and socio-economical separation; subsequent variation and invention on the part of individual social groups; and seemingly emergent processes of pidginization and creolization that result from cross-cultural interaction and exchange. Ideas regarding the combinatorial productivity of language and the morphogenetic patterns that characterize the emergence and transmission of combinatorial constraints that govern language and allow it to diversify will be explored, as will notions of the broader nature of language as an essentially heterogeneous, decentralized entity comprised only of a multiplicity of dialects, patois, and hybrids. The design strategy will explore ideas of narrative within the larger framework of language, potentially deriving information from a specific work in a manner similar to Neri Oxman’s material exploration and fabrication work “Imaginary Beings.

EMERGENCE

“We are everywhere confronted with emergence in complex adaptive systems - ant colonies, networks of neurons, the immune system, the internet, and the global economy, to name a few - where the behavior of the whole is much more complex than the behavior of the parts.”

John Holland, Emergence from Chaos to Order, 1998 “The movement from low-level rules to higher-level sophistication is what we call emergence...a higher-level pattern arising out of parallel complex interactions between local agents.”

Steven Johnson & Allan Lane, 2001 “Emergence is a classical concept in systems theory, where it denotes the principle that the global properties defining higher order systems or ‘wholes’ can in general not be reduced to the properties of the lower order subsystems of ‘parts’. Such irreducible properties are called emergent.”

“The spontaneous creation of an ‘organized whole’ out of a ‘disordered’ collection of interacting parts, as witnessed in self-organizing systems in physics, chemistry, biology, sociology...is a basic part of dynamical emergence.”

Francis Heylighen

EMERGENCE DEFINED

Morphogenesis: the biological process that causes an organism to develop its shape

Living organisms can be regarded as systems, and these systems acquire their complex forms and patterns of behavior through the interactions, in space and over time, of their components. The dynamics of the development of biological forms, the accounts of growth and form, of morphogenesis, have become increasingly central to evolutionary theory.

Initiated by the work of D’Arcy Thompson, a mathematical analysis of biology offers an understanding of material forms of living things as a diagram of the forces that have acted on them.

Form and behavior have an intricate relationship: the form of an organism affects its behavior in the environment, and a particular behavior will produce different results in different environments, or if performed by different forms in the same environment.

Form and behavior emerge from the processes of complex systems.

Processes produce, elaborate, and maintain the form of natural systems, and those processes include dynamic exchanges with the environment. Forms maintain their continuity and integrity by changing aspects of their behavior and by their iteration over many generations.

The complex is heterogeneous, with many varied parts that have multiple connections between them, and the different parts behave differently, although they are not independent. Complexity increases when the variety (distinction) and dependency (connection) of parts increases. The process of increasing variety is called differentiation, and the process of increasing the number or strength of connections is called integration. Evolutions produces differentiation and integration in many ‘scales’ that interact with each other, from the formation and structure of an individual organism to species and ecosystems.

- Michael Weinstock, “Morphogenesis and the Mathematics of Emergence”

“Emergence is of momentous importance to architecture, demanding substantial revisions to the way in which we produce designs. We can use the mathematical models outlined for generating designs, evolving forms and structures in morphogenetic processes within computational environments.

Criteria for selection of the ‘fittest’ can be developed that correspond to architectural requirements of performance, including structural integrity and ‘buildability’...”

- Michael Weinstock, “Morphogenesis and the Mathematics of Emergence”

An understanding of emergence and the principles of morphogenesis as they relate to the development of biological forms and natural systems offers a new framework for rethinking the optimal functioning and performance of architectural structures and the urban environment. Digital technologies and methodologies provide the resources necessary to design and simulate form and behavior in order to optimize structural systems in response to a number of different criteria and constraints. Material properties and environmental influences can be integrated into an evolutionary process of design that defines form and behavior simultaneously, and that can offer a variety of iterative solutions for a wide range of performance criteria in order to create “intelligent” architectural structures and spaces...

Architecture exists as a self-producing, self-referencing, and self-governing subsystem within the larger environment of a decentralized, functionally-differentiated society...an autonomous network (autopoietic system) of communications composed of artefacts, knowledge, and practices that generates components of which it consists through communication itself; autopoiesis of architecture is the ongoing communication process that occurs in practices, publications, education, theory, drawings, digital models, discussions, and discourse all creating a “swarm formation of cross-referencing elements”

Architecture functions within a modern society - conceptualized as a system of communications - that operates on the basis of a series of important autonomous subsystems: political, legal, science, art, economy, education, medicine, and mass media. The result of this societal and functional differentiation is a society without center and without unified self-description. As a result, architecture has no external guidance, but must instead define its own tasks and values.

Such development operates via a combination of hidden internal mutations that incorporate new experiences to erode current selfdescriptions, and the adaptation and transposition of influence and “irritations” from other social systems, which exist and co-evolve in a system of interdependency characterized by the ability of each system to exhibit both cognitive openess and operational closure in their interactions with other functional spheres.

Autopoietic systems are composed of operations (ongoing individual communications), processes (typical communication episodes that collectively form the design process), and communication structures (guide and order communicative operations) that interlock in a system of mutual constitution that also involves the larger social environment.

- Patrik Schumacher, Autopoiesis of Architecture

Concepts of emergence, operating within an understanding of social systems theory established by Niklas Luhmann and expanded

by Patrik Schumacher and others, offer a new means of understanding architecture’s role in society - specifically its relationships with other functional systems within an increasingly interconnected social environment. Conditions of interdependence, hybridity, and intertextuality define the complex interrelations and exchange that have begun to emerge and flourish in an increasingly global environment.

While globalization and modernization have seen architecture move increasingly towards a perceived universality, the conditions of interconnectivity and mutual dependence that have emerged from the functional differentiation of modern society offer a new framework for understanding architecture both in terms of how it continuously develops and redefines itself and of how it transposes and adapts influence from other communication systems.

In order to truly resurrect and expose the narratives of modernization written over the past century, architecture must elucidate and understand its own dynamic and continuously evolving role within the functionally-differentiated social environment that has emerged during that period, and that continues to develop and redefine modern society as an emergent system...

LANGUAGE AS EMERGENT PHENOMENON

“There is no language in itself, nor are there any linguistic universals, only a throng of dialects, patois, slangs, and specialized languages.

There is no ideal speaker-listener, any more than there is a homogeneous linguistic community. Language is an essentially heterogeneous reality…”

Deleuze and Guattari

Language, in both its functioning and it development, represents an emergent phenomenon.

Human languages consist of collections of “sonic matter” (sounds, words, grammatical constructions) that accumulate over centuries, with these cultural materials being structured both internally - elements affect all others through changes - and socioeconomically - sounds accumulate following class or caste divisions and form an integral part of the system of traits that differentiate social strata.

Geographical, sociocultural, and communicative isolation transform accumulations of linguistic variations into separate entities, resulting in meshwork-like collections of heterogeneous elements connected within dialect continua and vertical hierarchies. The same structure-generating process that result in meshworks and hierarchies account for the systematicity that defines and distinguishes every language. Every vowel/consonant, semantic label, and syntactic pattern can be viewed as a replicator that passes between generations as a norm or social obligation. The variety of social and group dynamics that emerge due to various geographical or sociocultural factors provide selection pressures that sort these replicators into homogeneous accumulations, while other social processes and institutions provide the “cement” that hardens these deposits into stable, structured entities.

- Manuel De Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History

“You will never find a homogeneous system that is not already affected by a regulated, continuous, immanent process of variation...”

- Deleuze & Guattari Language as a system of variable rules: internal, systematic changes, sources of variation coupled with external processes and sources paints a picture of language as a heterogeneous mixture of norms in constant change. Command of a real language involves the ability to deal with great amounts of heterogeneity...

Combinatorial productivity: words carry with them certain “combinatorial constraints,” information about their frequency of co-occurrence with other words, so that, as a given word is added to a sentence, this information exerts demands on the word or kind of word that may occur next. Language exists in constant change, with the strength of constraints varying along a continuum from optional to obligatory at rates of change that are different from dialect to dialect.

By making combinatorial constraints more rigid, we can generate strings of inscriptions like those belonging to systems of logic or mathematics; by making them more flexible/variable, we can generate structures like those found in musical compositions (“many varied relations exist between a longer musical line and its subsegments”) - Manuel De Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History

Behind any uniform set of linguistic norms there must be a definite historical process that created that uniformity.

Opposes the postulation of a “universal core” of language, as it relegates social processes (pidginization, creolization, standardization) to a secondary role. Instead, gives historical processes a more fundamental role by modeling the abstract machine of language as a diagram governing the dynamics of collective human interaction.

Pidginization & creolization: development of transitory “contact” languages through military or trade encounters in order to allow different linguistic groups to communicate with one another

Hybrid conditions that greatly simplify the set of norms from which they arise (those of the dominant group), often becoming more dependent on context and behavioral acts which, in turn, become part of the “grammar” of the new language. Represent creative adaptations of linguistic resources rather than simply devolved forms.

Focus on these processes as having more than two stages: prepidgin continuum, crystallized pidgin, de-pidginization (reabsorption), creolization, creole, de-creolization, etc...

The expanding of vocabulary and multiplying uses of language that begin to characterize transitioning creoles also observed as part of evolution of dominant languages.

- Manuel De Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History

Language is a thoroughly historical product (the cumulative result of restrictions in the occurrence of words relative to one another), and combinatorial constraints are truly morphogenetic - as new constraints emerge from conventionalization, changing the probabilities that words will occur, language structure self-organizes as a process involving successive departures from equiprobability in the combinations formed by replicating norms.

Emergence of language is the result of a “double articulation�: an accumulation formed by a sorting device consolidated through an act (or succession of acts) of conventionalization or institutionalization.

- Manuel De Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History

This project began with a focus on linguistic systems and their current relationship to the architectural field. While it has since evolved to encompass an understanding of emergence as it relates both to design methodologies and architecture’s role in society, the nature of language as an inherently emergent, morphogenetic phenomena in both development and function makes it a topic of continued interest for this proposal. Given its dynamic nature and its tendency to evolve both internally and along socio-cultural and geographical lines, language offers a unique insight into how certain cultural materials can retain characteristics of distinct variability and fluidity in the face of globalization and the perceived movement toward universality.

While the Biennale posits architecture as progressing towards a “single modern language,” it is language itself that endures as a thoroughly heterogeneous entity that differs not only between nations, but among a variety of cultures, ethnicities, regional and local communities, socio-economic classes and castes, and even isolated groups within a community. By developing an understanding of how language is able to endure - and even flourish - as a uniquely variable part of an increasingly modern and global social environment, it may be possible to more fully understand the continued - yet unseen perseverance of “national” characteristics and complex narratives of interaction that have characterized architecture in the past century...

EMERGENCE & MORPHOGENESIS IN ARCHITECTURE

“A key distinguishing trait of nature’s design is its capability in the biological world to generate complex structures of organic or inorganic multifunctional composites such as shells, pearls, corals, bones, teeth, wood, silk, horn, collagen, and muscle fibres. Combined with extracellular matrices, these structural biomaterials form microstructures engineered to adapt to prearranged external constraints introduced upon them during growth and/or throughout their life span...Nature’s ability to distribute material properties by the way of locally optimising regions of varied external requirements...is facilitated by its ability to simultaneously model, simulate, and fabricate material structuring...”

- Neri Oxman, “Structuring Materiality”

“Natural morphogenesis...generates polymorphic systems that obtain their complex organisation and shape from the interaction of system-intrinsic material capacities and external environmental influences and forces. The resulting, continuously changing, complex structures are hierarchical arrangements of relatively simple material components organised through successive series of propagated and differentiated subassemblies from which the system’s performative assemblies emerge...formation and materialisation processes are always inherently and inseparably related...”

-Achim Menges, “Polymorphism”

Contemporary trends in morphogenetic design focus on two main concepts: the inseparability of formal, structural, and material properties in the design process, and the use of digital design, simulation, and fabrication technologies and methodologies in the creation of structures optimized for various performance criteria. The works of architects and designers such as Achim Menges, Neri Oxman, Michael Hensel, and others offer an extensive catalogue of experiments in simultaneous formation, materialization, and performance optimization through a variety of scales and means of production and fabrication.

Utilizing concepts of developmental biology and biometric engineering, these morphogenetic approaches offer a new understanding of material systems not as derivatives of standardized building systems or elements facilitating the construction of predesigned schemes, but rather as generators of the design process. By extending the concept of a material system through embedding its material characteristics, geometric behavior, manufacturing constraints, and assembly logics into the design process, it becomes possible to derive and elaborate a design through the system’s intrinsic performative capacities. This promotes an understanding of form, materials, and structure not as separate elements, but rather as complex interrelations in polymorphic systems resulting from responses to varied input and environmental influences and derived through the logic and constraints of advanced manufacturing processes.

The following projects offer a survey of various techniques and technologies used in morphogenetic design. A collection of experiments by ACHIM MENGES illustrates the use of different material systems (wood, tensile fabric, paper), formal morphologies (honeycomb, membranes, fibrous strips, evolutionary geometries) and design methodologies (parametric association, differential actuation, dynamic relaxation, algorithmic definition, digital growth) in the iterative design of structural components and performative systems.

Works by NERI OXMAN explore the structural design and optimization of cutting-edge digital materials and complex morphologies, utilizing concepts of morphogenesis as a tool for developing material systems optimized for structural performance based on environmental influence criteria. Her projects often utilize “functionally-graded materials” that exhibit spatially-varying compositions and microstructure systems that mimic those prevalent in biological and natural structures, resulting in a fabricated “anisotropy” (directional dependency) of interdependent material systems. In particular, her“Imaginary Beings” works also draw inspiration and content from narrative and mythology, specifically Jorge Luis Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings.

OCEAN North, a design research group led by prominent emergence and morphogenesis researcher Michael Hensel, explores techniques and technologies involved in morphogenetic design, often creating projects that strive for material, structural, or performative optimization through the use of digital methodologies and fabrication. The group’s Jyväskylä Music and Arts Center, commissioned by the 2004 Venice Biennale, offers a key precedent for this project in terms of both scale and methodology...

CASE STUDIES

Polymorphic & Morphogenetic Systems|Achim Menges

MATERIAL ECOLOGIES & “IMAGINARY BEINGS”| NERI OXMAN

Design and Mythology are both media for storytelling that represent general cultural truths and their human meaning. Like design, mythology is a universal language by which to decode human culture; and as in design, myths often employ the augmentation of human power in expressing the super-natural...

It is not surprising then, that mythological ‘beings’ are often portrayed as personifications of natural forces. Indeed, the myths that tell of these earlier gods fulfilled the role of explaining the existence of nature. The collection includes 18 prototypes for the human body inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings...

Situated within and against the forces of nature, Borges’ bestiary provides the site for coupling the ‘cultural’ with the ‘natural’ in design, by designing a collection of nature-inspired human augmentations. Imaginary Beings: Mythologies of the Not Yet postulates that futuristic design afforded by technological advancements, is rooted in fantasy and in myth: from the Golem of Prague to robotic exoskeletons, from Daphne’s wings to flying machines, from Talos’ armor to protective skins; mythemes - the design kernel of the myth as defined by Claude Levi-Strauss - provide us with eternal archetypes of the super-natural and its material expressions.

Each ‘being’ in this series encapsulates the amplification and personalization of a particular human function such as the ability to fly, or the secret of becoming invisible. What was once considered magic captured by myth, becomes actuality as design and its material technologies offer more than meets the skin: spider suits, wing contraptions, and ultra-light helmets; these are all what one may consider mythologies of the “Not Yet”. In projecting the future, this work makes use of new and innovative material technologies enhancing both the physical and environmental properties of these wearable myths and habitable contraptions. A library of algorithms inspired by form found in nature informs the design and fabrication process. Novel multi-material 3-D printing technologies along with new design features such as bitmap printing and property textures have been developed to support material performance and expression. Revealing nature’s design language, this collection of objects represents a library of design principles inspired by nature suggesting that the ancient myth and its futuristic counterpart unite where design fabrication recapitulates fantasy.

- Neri Oxman, on Imaginary Beings: Mythologies of the Not Yet

M-Velope | OCEAN North

MM Tent - “Membrella” | OCEAN North

Jyv채skyl채 Music and Arts Center | OCEAN North

From Techniques and Technologies in Morphogenetic Design (p. 6869):

“The project aimed for a differentiated event space and an extension of the landscaped town square into an acoustically animated interior landsccape that caters for formal symphonic and orchestral events and art exhibitions, as well as informal cultural activities. The lattice structure and surfaces that articulate the interior provide for ad-hoc stages, and seating and exhibition areas, while creating a dynamically articulated space of acoustic and visual intensities, with the lattices being locally sound-active...�

“OCEAN North employed an iterative growth process that articulates the lattices, informed by rules pertaining to 1) the location, orientaton and density of the struts that make up the lattice systems, 2) structural, sonic, and luminous performance requirements, and 3) spatial design guidelines. The resulting lattice systems inform the geometries of the terrain, structure and envelopes of primary and secondary spaces and surface areas, circulation pattern and the sound-active system.”

“While the iterative growth process is informed by performance requirements, the synergetic impact of the various systems working together needs nevertheless to be analyzed in stages...”

“From the differential density and angular variation of the lattice systems, and the varied distribution of sound-active elements, evolves a spatial and ambient differentiation of the scheme: a heterogeneous space in which augmented spatial and ambient differentiation provide for choices between microenvironmental conditions that can provide for the timespecific individual requirements of inhabitants.”

As Model LANGUAGE

AS EMERGENT SYSTEM Narrative

EMERGENCE/MORPHOGENESIS

DYNAMICS

MATERIAL SYS

METHODOLOGI

STEMS

IES

Eisenman/Libeskind

Michael Weinstock Architecture/Design

Michael Hensel Patrik Schumacher

Manuel de Landa

Fabrication

Digital/Analog Hybrid

Structure Performance Case Studies

Achim Menges Michael Hensel Neri Oxman Cordula Stach

“Tree City�/Blur Building

Bedau, Mark, and Paul Humphreys. Emergence: Contemporary Readings In Philosophy and Science.

Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008.

De Landa, Manuel. A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. New York: Zone Books, 1997.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

Hensel, Michael, Achim Menges, and Michael Weinstock. Emergence: Morphogenetic Design Strategies. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Academy, 2004.

Hensel, Michael, Achim Menges, and Michael Weinstock. Emergent Technologies and Design. Oxon

[U.K.]: Routledge, 2010.

Hensel, Michael, and Achim Menges. Morpho-ecologies. London: Architectural Association, 2006.

Hensel, Michael, Achim Menges, and Michael Weinstock. Techniques and Technologies In

Morphogenetic Design. London: Wiley-Academy, 2006.

Labov, William. Principles of Linguistic Change. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1994.

Labov, William. The Social Stratification of English In New York City. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2006.

Oxman, Neri. “Programming Matter.” Architectural Design, Special Issue: Material Computation:

Higher Integration in Mophogenetic Design. 82.2 (2012): 88-95. Print.

Oxman, Neri.“Proto-Design: Architecture’s Primordial Soup and the Quest for Units of Synthetic Life.”

Architectural Design, Special Issue: Protocell Architecture. 81.2 (2011): 100-105. Print.

Oxman, Neri. “Structuring Materiality: Design Fabrication of Heterogeneous Materials.” Architectural

Design, Special Issue: The New Structuralism: Design, Engineering and Architectural

Technologies. 80.4 (2010): 78-85. Print.

Schumacher, Patrik S. The Autopoiesis of Architecture: A New Framework for Architecture. Hoboken:

Wiley [Imprint], n.20.

Weinstock, Michael. The Architecture of Emergence: the Evolution of Form In Nature and Civilisation.

Chichester, U.K.: Wiley, 2010.

BIBLIOGRAPHY