Swarm City: An emerging transdisciplinary Architecture

Swarm City: An emerging transdisciplinary architecture.

By Sinead Cameron

AbstrAct:

The city is changing, it is moving away from traditional notions of being a purely aesthetic creation, which relies heavily on a top-down approach to design. An approach that proceeds to try to dictate how cities ultimately function, ignoring site-specific conditions and focusing primarily on defined spatial arrangements, density and form. In order for design to evolve, it must understand that cities, much like any static natural organism are defined by how it responds to its context and the environmental conditions that this context exerts. Cities should be seen as a system of energy distribution between the ever-changing climate and the inhabitants that use them. The way we see cities should shift towards the understanding that they have an intrinsic metabolism and that they are living, breathing super organisms that match natural organisms in both depth and complexity. The ecosystem that we inhabit has had millions of years to develop intricate strategies of self-organization that are resilient to environmental change. Emerging discoveries drawn from how natural biological systems employ strategies of self-organization and adapt to their environment could prove immensely significant to the architectural profession, and in particular how this emerging knowledge that understands the ways in which natural structures swarm and organize themselves can be applied to the design of cities. This idea of combining natural and artificial principles of design and organization has the potential to possibly produce architectural systems that are as harmonious and responsive to their context with that of a living biological system.

CHAPTER 4: Amalgamations of technology And biology.

Fig 12: Occupying and connecting.

Frei Otto. (2009). P.51.

4:1 Slime network

Numerous networks found in the natural and artificial realm create similar patterns As is apparent in fig 12 from the book ‘Occupying and connecting’ (Otto,2009).This image supports his notion that spontaneous networks of urbanity follow similar patterns to ones formed in nature through the structures of leaves, insect colonies or soap bubbles. (Otto, 2009, p51).

This is because these networks perform under similar constraints and generate transport that allows for energy and information to travel efficiently. All networks including transportation systems are fundamentally spatial networks. Sharing the common goal of optimal efficiency and speed. They operate under the same environmental conditions which in turn influence the overall organisational pattern. Consequently, patterns and formations arise within these disparate systems, due to these physical constraints that we perceive as observable regularities (Valverde, S. and Solé, R., 2013). The rapid increase in the number of cities means that the potential solutions for designing cities using top-down methods grow exponentially. Consequently, the problems associated with addressing the scope of problems that can arise and the intrinsic difficulties in predicting how a city will evolve and eventually grow also increases. It is extremely difficult to systematically test every possible solution. However, the undeniable similarities between biological networks and their artificial counterparts suggest that there is a potential in harnessing biological principles to address the limitations expressed in top-down planning (Ibid).

Fig 13: Strangely beautiful.

Norbert Hülsmann, (2014).

A remarkable possibility has emerged as a result of recent experiments with the slime mould - Physarum Polycephalum - (mentioned earlier in chapter 3:1) Here researchers led by Atsushi Tero of Hokkaido University looking for ways to improve the transport networks of Tokyo exploited the simple swarming techniques used by this single-cell organism, as a way of discovering optimal transportation paths and efficient formations ( Sanders, 2010).

Fig 14: A slime mold maps out train routes around Tokyo

SCIENCE/ AAAS, (2010).

Fig 15: slime mold maps out train routes around Tokyo 2.

SCIENCE/ AAAS, (2010).

Fig 16: A slime mold maps out train routes around Tokyo 3.

SCI- ENCE/AAAS, (2010).

The experiment was conducted by distributing a piece of food (in this case an oat flake) that correlated with the specific location of the cities that surround Tokyo. The Slime mould was then deployed and allowed to explore and search its new territory freely, at first dispersing evenly around the oat flakes. Every time the slime discovered a ‘city’ it grew there. While simultaneously generating hollow tubes that ferry nutrients between neighbouring cities or oat flakes. (Valverde, S. and Solé, R., 2013). A dynamic process of creation and destruction is observed. As the living organism explores its surrounding space it creates a living web of networks that encompass all available routes within hours the slime mould begins to continually refine this pattern the optimal tunnels between oat flakes are strengthened at the same time as other links are gradually destroyed. Over the course of 24 hours, a network of strong resilient tunnels transporting nutrients between connected centrally located oats had been constructed by the slime mould. The resulting pattern observed was extremely similar to that of the rail system surrounding Tokyo.

The researchers then employed the simple self-organising properties from the slime mould to develop a biology inspired mathematical translation of the network formation. That behaves like the slime mould by initially generating a fine mesh that encompasses the entirety of the space, and continually refining this mesh to create a network in which the tubes carrying the most matter grow stronger while detaching the redundant tubes. ( Sanders, 2010). By investigating the slime moulds natural behaviour a computer algorithm was created that allowed for a dynamic model that implements complex biological phenomenon to offer solutions for the optimisation of transport systems. The simplicity and elegance of this practice has the potential to be applied to a disparate array of spatial systems that would greatly benefit from cost minimisation while maintaining an efficient flow of communication. This method has yet to be translated into systems beyond road maps, however, its efficiency shown in this case study as well as a variety of others is already defined and could be a catalyst in alternative approaches to network design at different scales. The seemingly insignificant slime mould, a single-cell organism that has the amazing capacity to establish optimal transportation paths connecting to specific locations could potentially offer us us some valuable lessons as to how to escape from our own design traps (Valverde, S. and Solé, R., 2013). Thus in taking inspiration from life itself. Understanding nature’s remarkable ability to adapt to its surroundings, and Applying the principles of swarm theory to our built environment, has the potential to revolutionise the current architectural paradigm and even fabricate dynamic infrastructures that are more resilient and adaptable to change.