COMPREHENSIVENESS, INTEGRATION

Design 6 invites students to re-evaluate the role of systems in the increasingly complex field of architecture by reconsidering the cartesian mode of thinking where systems tend to become reductive, thereby counterproductive to our creative endeavours. Instead, if we align ourselves with the trans-disciplinary ambitions put forth by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in his more fluid General System Theory, novel outcomes could emerge when several apparently isolated parts/ sub systems interact to form more complex unexpected behaviours as a collective .

Folding this back into architecture, we see parallels with Christopher Alexander’s “Systems Generating Systems”, where he urges us to consider two ideas embedded in the word “System”.

1) A System as a “whole” is not an object. Rather it is a holistic and abstract way of looking at an object as an emergent system.

2) A Generating System is a kit of inter-scalar parts/sub systems with rules governing how they may interact. These parts/sub systems could also be located on the periphery of design and in our case, beyond the normative tangible considerations of architecture.

Concluding these two ideas, Alexander suggest that a novel piece of design can never be reached through a summative process of solving design problems in a procedural manner. Neither can it be achieved through a comprehensive knowledge of its parts without the knowledge of how they interact.

The final and perhaps the most intriguing point in this piece of writing is Alexandar’s proclamation that every “System as a whole” is generated by a Generating System. Therefore, if we wish to design things as “wholes”, it is imperative that the creation process involves the invention of Generating Systems. This not only suggests a move beyond the categorical thinking and stratification of building systems, it implies a transformative scope for Architects where we depart from a mere manipulator of form/passive organiser of apriori systems to a designer of Generating Systems for emergent systems. This recalibration forms the launching point for Design 6.