PLAT 1.5 has just been released, and with it my critical essay entitled Algorithmic Abuse, which I’m sharing below. It’s a short attempt to raise awareness towards several gaps in computational architecture’s theory as well as practice.

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A recurring concern among the practitioners and promoters of what we shall refer to generally as “computational architecture” is the oft-mentioned (but rarely justified) “crisis of complexity” in which the world and its architects apparently find themselves. This condition manifests itself as an information overload, which is seen as the natural consequence of an ever-larger pool of numbers and decimals vying for our attention.[1] In response to this crisis, computational architecture is in a rush to dictate a paradigm shift by promoting the assimilation and implementation of concepts and theories emerging from science and philosophy – which, in combination, are intended to help us to navigate the confusing world described by chaos theory.

Naturally, given the epistemological and ontological framework in which the architectural discourse defines its crisis, “information” and its attendant verb “compute” become the most critical terms of the design process. Information, rationalized as pure numeric data, becomes the driving morphological force not only for the natural world, but for architecture.

Information is processed through the act of computing. Though it is most often used in the context of digital media, “computation” can denote any kind of process or algorithm. Here we must distinguish between two types of computation: material and digital. Material computation refers to the processes that manifest nature’s way of shaping the world around us. These processes primarily drive toward the structural optimization of matter. For example, we can look at the way a soap bubble negotiates (“computes”) the complex relationship between air pressure, gravity, and surface tension to find a shape of minimal energy which balances these parameters. Digital computation, on the other hand, concerns the comparatively rudimentary simulation of such processes within silicon chips. Despite the relative simplicity of the latter method, recent technological advancements have greatly increased our ability to simulate – and thereby explore – different natural processes. More and more complex behaviors and phenomena can be digitally approximated using new algorithms, allowing science to advance in its quest to discover the rules that make our world tick.

It is this trend, however, which brings into question the relationship between the built environment and science. Architecture’s use of scientific images is not new, but, as Antoine Picon notes, this meeting is productive only when there are similarities between the realities upon which both operate.[2] Contrary to Picon’s conditions for productivity, current relations between science and architecture are often based on superficial similarities or metaphors, necessitating a skeptical review.

As an example, we only have to consider the (in)famous Voronoi algorithm. Though it appears in nature at a variety of scales,[3] it makes few (if any) natural appearances at the architectural scale. Critically, “scale” concerns not only (or even primarily) physical dimensions, but with the forces that define the organization of matter at a given threshold. There is a huge difference between the electrostatic-, pressure-, and tension-based factors that operate at the microscopic scale – where the effects of gravity are almost negligible – and the way these forces operate at the scale of the architectural design process.[4] Yet the Voronoi algorithm is often advertised as a generator of organic, natural, efficient designs, which, needless to say, is not inevitable: a Voronoi-pattern facade is not necessarily more environmentally friendly than one using prefabricated elements.

This analogical relationship to natural phenomena – this mimicry – is also problematic because of its failure to acknowledge the legitimacy of the built environment as an inherent part of nature.[5] Architectural products are already part of the natural world as a manifestation of material computation. This acknowledgement eliminates modernity’s two distinct ontological zones – the human, cultural regime and the non-human, natural regime – and paves the way for an understanding of architecture as a hybrid system in which social forces and natural mechanisms blend. We don’t need to abuse digital computation in order to “fake it” – this only leads to a suppression of the ecological conflict between them. By replacing the dialectical relationship between the built environment and nature with one of inclusion, we discover a better framework for tackling the complexity and subtlety of the environmental issues confronting architecture.

Furthermore, there is a significant theoretical base supporting these experiments in computational architecture that attempts to legitimize the architecture as meaningful and usable. Yet, more often than not, these jargon-cluttered texts are little more than rhetoric carefully disguised as unbiased theory. Links to abstract datasets are used to justify the claims of legitimacy and performance of a given design. The results, however, amount to nothing more than disembodied data[6] – un-rigorous translations of information by arbitrary rules and subjective algorithms into geometric forms. The speculation that the diagram becomes reality and that reality becomes a diagram, while valid from a philosophical standpoint, is limited in practice – and certainly in architecture – by the precision of our measurements and our bounded predictive capabilities.[7] In short, computational architecture is far from being able to devise a Deleuzian abstract machine pertaining to itself.

To sum up, I would like to advocate for a more considered assimilation of computational tools. Rushing to repeat history and promote radical shifts has a high chance of failure and of improper application, and architecture is a realm in which mistakes are difficult and painful to fix. Speculating on the raw power of generating novel formal language is something that should be looked upon with caution. The desire to make the new scientific and philosophical paradigm legible through metaphorical translation of its ideas into architectonic expression is problematically and uncannily reminiscent of postmodernism’s failed formal project. Arie Graafland has argued that “The computational universe turns dangerous when it stops being an [sic] useful heuristic device and transforms itself into an ideology that privileges information over everything else.”[8] Coupled with the natural limitations of a systematic approach, this warning denies computational architecture the convenient “unbiased” arguments often employed to justify its design process. The apparent objectivity of computational techniques cannot mask the subjective, authorial aspects of the design process, still less erase the social, political, and cultural responsibility of the designer. Whatever methods and tools we use, we still play a critical role in the decision making process out of which the built environment emerges.

Bibliography:

1. DeLanda, Manuel. 2000. A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. London: Zone Books.

2. Stewart, Ian and Jack Cohen. 1995. The Collapse of Chaos. Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World. London: Penguin Books.

3. Picon, Antoine. 2003. Architecture, Science, Technology and The Virtual Realm in Architectural Sciences, Princeton: Princeton Press, p.292-313.

4. Graafland, Arie. 2010. From Embodiment in Urban Thinking to Disembodied Data. The Disappearance of Affect. Delft: TU Delft.

5. Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

[2] A. Picon. 2003. Architecture, Science, Technology and The Virtual Realm in Architectural Sciences, Princeton: Princeton Press, 294.

[3] From the way cells are organized and shaped to the veins on a dragonfly’s wing to the scales on a crocodile’s skin  to the way matter is distributed in the universe, the principles of the Voronoi diagram fundamentally shape matter at completely different and surprising scales.

[4] For a more in-depth description of this phenomena, see Dimitrie Ștefănescu, “f* Voronoi.” Last modified October 28, 2010.0. http://improved.ro/blog/2010/10/f-voronoi.

[5] This is probably the biggest change in thinking we, as architects, have to assimilate. Ever since the Roman rituals for founding a city by removing a plot of land from the chaotic influence of nature, the artificiality of the built environment has been conceived as existing in opposition to the natural world. The critique of this dichotomy is an important element of contemporary architectural discourse, and deserves a longer discussion than can be provided here. An extended and incisive treatment of the subject can be found in Manuel de Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. London: Zone Books.

[6] Graafland, Arie. 2010. “From Embodiment in Urban Thinking to Disembodied Data.” The Disappearance of Affect. Delft: TU Delft, 42.

[7] We will never be able measure to the last significant digit – therefore, whatever the accuracy of our predictions, they will still have the seed of a design. Coupling this with Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, which states that for any system there will always be true facts within it that cannot be proven to be true using the rules of the same system, we can clearly see the inherent limitations of any systemic or structuralist approach.  For example, for all the advances of technology and science, weather predictions more than five days in advance have had the same accuracy rate since the 1950’s.

[8] (Graafland 2010, 46).

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Assembly: Bogdan Badila, Vlad Pop, Georgiana Hlihor, Denisa Lula, Robert Veber, Zoltan Vaida, Imre Vekove, Ciprian Colda, Mihai Pascalau, Calin Negret, Bogdan Borbei, Iustin Nechiti, Dan Ioanici, Razvan Luca, Stefan Grosariu, Ioana Suceava, Alexandra Man, Andreea Darac, Irina Mates, Oana Bogatan, Andrei Varga, Radu Badila, Elza Sandor, Alex Greceniuc, Oana Matei, Alex Vladovici, Marcel Oprean, Ioan Pop, Vlad Rusu, Ioana Tomoioaga.

Location: Cluj, Romania Date: 4-7th May2011

Photographs: Patrick Bedarf, Georgiana Hlihor, Daniel Bondas, Georgeta Macovei Text: Dimitrie Stefanescu

Intro

The project started out as an ambitious student-powered endeavor to design and fabricate at a 1:1 scale the flagship pavilion for the ZA11 Speaking Architecture event in Cluj, Romania. While at the same time integrating into its historically-charged context, the design (which was elaborated to a concept stage during a week-long workshop) boasts a strong representational power which was much needed in order to fulfill its main goal: attracting passers-by to the event. At the same time, the object, through its tectonic characteristics, tries to make legible the new ontology which is slowly defined by computational architecture and thus becomes a showcase for the design processes empowered by digital tools.

Process

The design was elaborated during a week-long parametric design workshop (CLJ02) specifically geared towards its production which, in theory, was seen as a continuation of the previous event (CLJ01: Parametric Desing Workshop, organized by Ionut Anton and myself). We were faced with the harsh requirements of creating an actually working design with just the material and tools available from sponsors (over which we hardly had any choice) while at the same time fitting costs inside a budget dwarfed by its expectations. Subsequently, the creative exploration agenda was constrained to a relatively limited approach which, most importantly, was scalable in terms of materials and fabrication techniques. The realization of the design was made possible by advanced use of parametric design techniques (using Rhino+Grasshopper), with the help of which the whole process was controlled from exact geometry generation to piece labeling, assembly logic, actual fabrication (CNC milling) and, of course, cost control.

SuperConnect in action. We have plans for releasing the whole Grasshopper definition and Rhino file used for the project – stay tuned!

Here’s a time-lapse video of the assembly process:

As an educational exercise it completed the design phase and proved to be invaluable in terms of actually understanding and working with the constraints encountered in real-life. Varying material thickness (and subsequent extra flexibility and less joint stiffness), rain and wind posed many challenges which had to be resolved on-site as quickly as possible so as to meet the assembly deadline.

Conclusions

The ZA11 Pavilion emerged as a powerful urban attractor which managed to engage the local society on all levels. Interest was aroused in both young and senior citizens, both professionals and non-architects by the completed pavilion as well as during the act of its construction, thus proving to be more than an indifferent temporary shelter. Furthermore, it successfully provided a flexible and comfortable space for the different events pertaining to the event (temporary bookshop, open-air cinema, tea party, jam sessions and a small concert + sleeping in the sun) to unfold.

The first of its kind in Romania, the ZA11 Pavilion can be definitively called a successful architectural experiment. Designed and assembled only by students (with little preliminary outside help), it successfully met all expectations and proved to be an invaluable experience in blending avant-garde design techniques on a relatively large scale with a low budget and a skeptical professional context.

construction

construction photos

Special thanks to: Mircea Stefanescu, Dan Brasoveanu [Graphtec], Nejur Andrei, Rares Dragan [Atelier RVD]
Sponsors: Graphtec, Holver

COMP{M}UTATION: Parametric design workshop @ Faculty of Architecture, Brno (CZ) for architecture students, starring Patrick Bedarf, Dimitrie Stefanescu, Rhinoceros and Grasshopper. Thanks to Thomas for the invite!

Check here for more information on registration (Czech only).

Paper written for the Fragile Conference. This is a rough draft, but comments are appreciated. PDF version.

You can not reduce the city to merely the sum of its parts – its nature escapes the deterministic world we, until recently, thought we lived in and goes on to manifest itself in the realm of the unpredictable, where it is said that a flap of a butterfly’s wing here can cause a thunderstorm half a globe way. This new way of seeing the world, in which interaction of complex systems yield results of such extreme richness and fragility that even the most minute decimal of a number can propagate changes of vast and striking nature is not as chaotic and random as it seems at a first glance. Though essentially unpredictable, this world is all but devoid of pattern. Up to a few years ago, we were perceiving nature in a deterministic way – that is, we thought that we were smart enough to be able to fully comprehend and elaborate its rules in formulas that would ultimately hold the whole truth and would be capable of describing it in its whole richness and lushness of detail and dynamism.

This approach proved to be a folly – formulas got so complicated you needed several pages to write them down[1]. The quest for a Theory of Everything is essentially flawed. Systemic theory seemed to be pushing towards a blind dead end, as Gödel elegantly proved in 1931. In short, Gödel first theorem of incompleteness states that for any system there will always be true statements about the system which are unprovable within the respective system. This led us to look for other mechanism to more efficiently describe the complex behavior of systems. Chaos theory was born and alongside it different concepts evolved which would help describe all the new found detail and richness we found after humanity dropped its deterministic glasses. By far the most comprehensive and elusive (from a mathematical point of view) is the concept of emergence. In a systemic theoretical context, this term describes the unexpected[2] appearance of novel features of a system, features which either enrich the respective system or transform it into a new one. Furthermore, it is necessary to introduce the notion of self-organization, which became a crucial tool of comprehension for today’s complex world. In short, self-organization is the process by which structures or patterns appear without a central authority or external element imposing them through planning or specific design. Furthermore, it has been proven that emergence is the rule rather than the exception (Stewart & Cohen, 1995).

All these changes coming from the world of sciences have prompted parallel developments in the philosophical world. Space is no longer perceived as flat and linear but as being a striated medium, folding upon itself and demarcated by gradients (or intensities) of values, with no “deterministic” boundaries. Manuel DeLanda argues for a perception of reality as a flow of matter-energy animated from within by self-organization processes (DeLanda, 2000). Cities thus become mineral exoskeletons which crystallize out of this flow, while at the same time performing themselves operations of stratification, destratification and restratification on the flows that transverse them. Henri Lefebvre describes this organic aesthetic of the flows of life in a city and its continuous restlessness and unpredictability as rhythms with as having a “maritime” quality: ”There on the square, there is something maritime about the rhythms. Currents traverse the masses. Streams break off, which bring or take away new participants. Some of them go towards the jaws of the monster, which gobbles them down in order quite quickly to throw them back up. The tide invades the immense square, then withdraws: flux and reflux.” (Lefebvre, 2004). In the study of emergence, emphasis is put on the two ways it operates or manifests: how complex systems emerge from simple rules[3] or, on the other hand, how complex systems produce simple patterns. Through the study of such phenomena and their workings we easily deduce that large scale structures emerge from the actions of individual decision makers (DeLanda, 2000).

We can now state that cities – furthermore, we can extrapolate to the whole sum of the built environment without going amiss – can be seen as an emergent system, the result of a crystallization process provoked and sustained by humanity (which, in turn, evolved from similar processes). It gains legitimacy in itself, not to the point of a conscious entity but as phenomena which presents all the qualities of a natural organism. Its independent animation and continuous reproduction[4] are qualities which determine us to accept their independence from planning and design endeavors and our subsequent limited operational power on them. The following statement challenges a tradition deeply rooted in the psyche of humankind, which preferred to identify itself and, even more so, its acts of building as acts opposing nature – opposing the natural chaos with the order of creation[5]. In my opinion, one critical aspect of the  radical shift which now takes place in architectural theory and practice alike, or one reaction to emergence, is accepting the legitimacy of the city as a living and evolving process which does not oppose nature, but is inherently part of it.

These theoretical advances have been directly supported and translated into urbanism through the use of new digital tools which have emerged and are now becoming accessible to the practice. We can now simulate to amazing degrees of accuracy highly complex phenomena, generating self-organizing patterns that act as a base for the understanding of the formational processes in urban conglomerations. Parametric design, coupled with algorithmic design, provide the main tools with which a new urbanism is now created. Why is there this drive towards this direction? One way of looking at this fact is through the understanding of the relationship between science and architecture/urbanism. Antoine Picon argues that both share the ambition to interpret and transform the world (A.Picon, 2003). Going further, he states that both science and  architecture/urbanism are the primary educators of vision of the world – that is, through their transformation and interpretation of the world they are changing the observer as well, observer which in turn goes on to create new architecture/urbanism. So we can now clearly state that since the way we perceive the world has changed through scientific advancement, now architecture and urbanism are struggling to keep up with those changes and re-create a miniature version of the cosmos as we understand it[6].

The integration and use of emergent behavior and other self-organizing processes in the planning process we are at the point of eliminating the gap between vernacular architecture, or the natural growth of unplanned settlements and the planned, top-down designs. This, up to now, clear distinction between two different types of design, one pertaining to the sum of individual actions of each decision maker involved in the process and the other to one central author, has been at the root of our interpretation of the built environment. The previous statement is based on the supposition that our use and handling of emergence is reaching such a level of preciseness that what we design with the help of computers and the algorithms run by then is reaching a certain level of accuracy where the results become indistinguishable from the reality they are designed to describe, or simulate. In this sense, we might be tempted to boldly announce that we were able to create an abstract machine, or we finally deduced the diagram describing the structure generating processes of cities, or, even more, the built environment. Reality becomes a diagram, and the diagram becomes reality.

Science has been advancing in its reductionist path and has unraveled more and more rules which make our world tick. More and more complex phenomena are now being well approximated by new algorithms. This use of scientific images in urbanism and architecture is not new, as we have previously shown. Yet this meeting of science and urbanism is a treacherous one – A.Picon notes that it is productive only when there are similarities between the realities on which both operate (A.Picon, 2003). This leads us to a what might prove to be a rather polemic point of this paper: the sudden onset and assimilation of numerous nature-derived algorithms in urbanism[7] must be looked upon with a certain degree of caution, since most of these adoptions are based on superficial similarities which only rhetorically speculate some qualities associated with the respective phenomena which led to the assimilated rule. There are numerous examples where the organic pattern-generating properties of different algorithms are used to generate whole “ecological” masterplans which, if built, would prove to have the same inflexibility and suffer from the same disadvantages as other, non-algorithmically generated plans. There is a simple reason regarding this, which I have mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph as a fore-warning: the reality at which the respective algorithm works in nature is completely different from the reality on which a master plan operates[8]. This leads to a quite dangerous situation, which is similar to that of the Modern Movement. To elaborate on this, we have to acknowledge the fact that, even though derived from parametric or algorithmic techniques which are infused with a variety of rules stolen from science or biology[9], the resultant designs, when confronted with a clear mind, present us with a static, fixed image which is imposed as a design. For all the talk of emergence and the possibility of anticipating the natural growth of the city, these designs, when enforced, collapse the space of possibility to one single possible outcome. As well, are they not contradicting themselves – is it not that they have one central author, whilst natural growth stems from the sum of actions performed by each agent, which is oblivious of the whole? Furthermore, we would argue against the subversion of algorithms derived from previously studied patterns in nature and applying them to urban scale projects without a good cause. If the built environment is an inherent part of nature, as we have shown previously, we should not try and forcibly adapt laws and rules which are not originally part of it and instead try and devise the algorithms which make cities tick with the same scientific rigor used in devising the physical rules of the universe.

One might argue that this is not true. There is no clear “master planner” role anymore, not at least in the classical sense. There no longer is an author, since his role has been transferred to each agent in his simulation. But we must not forget that simulations are still a design tool. To support this statement, we must refer to the beginning of this paper, where we summarily sketched chaos theory and the fragility of the world it proposes in relationship with our inherent limitations regarding measurements. We must be conscious of the fact that the act of measurement influences the measurement itself and changes reality minutely, but critically[10]. In the context of chaos and the non-linear world we so suddenly found ourselves in, even the most minute and insignificant decimal of a parameter can propagate huge critical changes in the respective system, with completely different outcomes. There is thus this transcendental barrier between simulation and reality. Simulations, as a means of objectifying the design process, are still design tools due to our inherent incapacity of measuring all detail. Predictions results will always be designs, regardless of the precision with which the algorithms used are describing the system[11] as well as the amount of accuracy of the measurements used as input. As Neil Leach notes, “the complexity of material computation[12] within the city far exceeds anything that we might be able to model as yet through computation” (Leach, 2009).

Faced with these facts, there is a need to emphasize the theoretical and practical gaps within the computational world. As Arie Graafland notes, “The computational universe turns dangerous when it stops being an useful heuristic device and transforms itself into an ideology that privileges information over everything else” (Graflaand, 2010).We can argue that this obsession with Algorithmical approaches to urbanism has led to a planning process which is dominated by information, or data. An algorithm left by itself is completely inert in the absence of input. In the case of urban design, the most meaningful input is hard, even impossible to quantify or rationalize in terms of abstracted datascapes. In turn, this has led to the primacy of other input sources which, though more easily quantified, are less relevant to the quality of the urban space they help shape through the algorithmical design process. These planning methodologies thus risk ending up most of the time producing “disembodied data” (Graflaand, 2010), or information which is restratified in such a manner that it becomes meaningless from an urban point of view[13]. Quite often, subjective authorial biases – which are inherent to any design process, as we previously stated – are completely forgotten and masked by a seemingly objective algorithm, which does not suffer from the weaknesses of humanity. Yet one can argue that this is the same mistake which was made some time ago by the Modern Movement. Both fail to take into account the fact that sensorial capacities and precision limitations have always been a driving force of urbanism and architecture. Relinquishing control is not yet[14] possible: we have yet to reach the point in computational power and algorithmical finesse where we will be able to hand in consciousness to the city itself.

A different question now arises with respect to the role of the designer, for his presence is still required both theoretically and practically. How will we take our cues and act? We can now state that urbanists and architects are part of the critical class of decision makers whose actions lead to the self-organization of the structures making up the built environment. In our current world, there is little which escapes the rigorous scrutiny and planning of authorities, and this trend seems to be increasing – leaving little and less to unplanned directions. Parametric design techniques have indeed helped by allowing an increasing number of different complexities be handled by the designer, which in turn makes for better designs only due to the fact that we are no longer constrained by a limited geometrical vocabulary. Sola-Morales criticized the systemic structuralist approach for its superficial renewal by shifting its technical jargon (Sola-Morales, 2008) and its implicit alienation from the true realities and sensibilities through overcomplexification with the subsequent failure to reach the sublime, or a comprehensive holistic understanding of the city as described in Lefebvre’s book on rythmnanalysis (Lefebvre, 2004). We believe that emergence, self-organization and their related theoretical constructs are the ways through which the structuralist approach reaches its moment of sublime, empowering it with an animating force which extends beyond its previous limitations. Regarding the role of the designer, what matters most is that we reach a level of understanding where our mental negotiation between being part of the whole and retaining our capability of independent action coexist and allow us to continue to design.

To sum up, the main goal of this paper was to put forward a few self-critical questions regarding emergence and its associated implications in both theory and practice. I would like to emphasize that urban planning, as a science, has not ever been in a better position to accept and act upon the inherent fractalic fragilities of the city or, by extension, the urban environment. The tools now available can become the conduit to extend into reality of theoretical concepts whose very goal is to explain and describe beyond impersonal formulas the delicate nature of a city. I have tried raising a cautionary tone regarding direct applications of this new-found digital power and its inherent limitations, whilst we end up repeating mistakes of the past. While accepting the built environment as being an inherent part of nature, we must deduce its own, proprietary parameters and rules governing its existence if we are to properly design and create the spaces needed to allow for a harmonious growth of society.

Bibliography:

A.Picon. (2003). Architecture, Science, Technology and The Virtual Realm. Architectural Sciences (pp. 292-313). Princeton: Princeton Press.

DeLanda, M. (2000). A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. London: Zone Books.

Graflaand, A. (2010). From Embodiment in Urban Thinking to Disembodied Data. The Disappearance of Affect. Delft: TU Delft.

Leach, N. (2009, July/August). Swarm Urbanism. AD: Digital Cities , pp. 56-63.

Lefebvre, H. (2004). Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life. London: Continuum.

Sola-Morales, M. d. (2008). A Matter of Things. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers.

Stewart, I., & Cohen, J. (1995). The Collapse of Chaos. Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World. London: Penguin Books.

Notes:

[2] “Unexpected”, in a deterministic context, should be read as “unpredictable”.

[3] To give some examples of this behavior in nature, we only have to look as far as, for example, a school of fish and their way of organizing themselves and presenting a coherent behavior stemming from the actions of each member of the respective group, without a central intelligence imposing patterns.

[4]For example, cities grow and as well they sprout new cities when local limits (in terms of geography, resources, etc) are met.

[5] For example, one can look at the Etruscan rituals performed when founding a new city, rituals which were later maintained by the Romans. The main goal of this act was that of removing the respective plot of land destined to become a new settlement from the chaotic and violent influence of natural elements, and nature itself, and placing it under the order and protection of benevolent deities. The space was ordered through a rectangular grid dominated by the North-South and East-West axes.

[6] Probably the most literal translation of this is found in Charles Jencks late landscaping works. His book, The Jumping Universe (1995, London: Academy Editions) best describes the relationship between aesthetics and the way we understand and perceive the world around us.

[7] A few examples which come to mind are cellular automata, the infamous Voronoi diagram, swarm simulations, diffusion-limited aggregation, etc. and their subsequent variations and materializations.

[8] Take, for example, the Voronoi diagram: it appears in nature at a wide range of scales (from microscopic to macroscopic levels) yet it fails to show up in architectural scales completely and seldom in urban scales (where it appears more due to the unconscious desire of enforcing patterns rather than reality).

[9] Here we can talk about swarm behavior and collective intelligence, basic manifestations of emergence witnessed in the behavior of ant colonies and other similar hive-centered creatures.

[10] This is explanation is best left for a quantum physicist, but I will give it a try as well. In layman’s terms, the most trivial act of measurement requires bouncing light off an object – yet precisely this affects and pollutes the measurement. It is thus easily understandable that we can not accurately measure the speed and position of an object, because by measuring one, we’re influencing the other. This holds true at all scales, though the effects are invisible, but not irrelevant, at scales bigger than an atom.

[11] Here we must mention the fact that the laws of nature are merely the best approximations of observed behavior we have so far. They are not by far universal truths (Stewart & Cohen, 1995).

[12] Material computation is performed by matter. One straightforward example is Gaudi’s famous hanging chains experiments, by which he employed a physical system to compute the optimal shape of catenary arches.

[13] There is a rather blunt saying amongst those familiar with the ways of programming and scripting, which would describe the situation quite well: “Garbage in, garbage out.”. More to the point, whatever the qualities of the algorithm used, its proper function depends on it receiving the right kind of input. An interesting variation of the aforementioned saying, which is just as relevant sounds like this: “Garbage in, Gospel out.”. It makes reference to the way incorrect results from over-trusted algorithms often find themselves advocated as truth.

[14] We have yet to achieve what Ray Kurzweil describes in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines as being the singularity.

A few weeks ago CLJ02,  the second workshop centered around parametric design, happened in Cluj. Setting it alongside previous similar events in Bucharest and Iasi, we can clearly see an increasing attention being dedicated to this ever expanding side of architectural practice and theory in Romania. Though still yet to be adopted in the official curricula of the local architectural schools, the response we got was quite staggering – while last year for DTAL’s CLJ01 workshop we barely filled up the 20-odd places, this year we had to stop counting around 60 and were forced to disappoint one third of the applicants.

The event itself was organized by ASTA Cluj (by Bogdan Hambasan and Anamaria Androne) as an integral part of the Zilele Arhitecturii 11 event which will take place at the beginning of May. It was tutored by Patrick Bedarf and myself, both of us being heavily involved in the computational architecture scene since its early days. The main goal of the workshop was to produce a working design for the ZA lounge pavilion. This assignment with its inherent very strict feasibility requirements was mainly the key to the success of the workshop. It is said that creative ideas sprout from constrained freedom and we didn’t prove the saying wrong. To elaborate on the feasibility requirements mentioned before, I would like to start by first saying that parametric design or, more generally speaking, computational architecture can prove to be an architecturally treacherous space. The creative freedom allowed by computers and subsequent software packages is immense and, left to itself, can generate results which, though aesthetically pleasing to the eye, are unbuildable architectural objects. On the other hand, we were faced with the harsh requirements of creating an actually working design with the material and tools available while at the same time fitting inside a budget dwarfed by its expectations. Therefore we constrained the creative exploration agenda to a relatively limited approach which, most importantly, is scalable in terms of materials and fabrication techniques. I won’t go into technical details, since “adaptive surface subdivision”, “diagrid-based deep facet” or “multiple facet intersection connectors” would probably start to bore a few people, and usually I try not to beat people into submission by using complicated jargon. Suffice to say, we enforced and detailed some effective parametric techniques which would have the highest chances of producing manageable projects. Participants gained the knowledge to create their own tools to manage complex geometry from a design phase all the way to fabrication phase – or what is called a file-to-factory process. This implies that you create the design which is then directly fabricated using different CNC machines and digital crafting techniques. Assembly becomes thus a giant 3D puzzle. These techniques scale up from models to the most innovative airport designs and have basically reshaped the construction industry throughout the world and, on a theoretical level, have prompted some to state that reality becomes a diagram and the diagram becomes reality (Deleuze) due to the seemingly free of interference translation from a digital, virtual, product to a real, material object.

Computational techniques have been and still are undergoing a serious settling-in process inside architectural practice and education. Though still in a “volcanic” stage, both theoretically and practically, parametric design has been widely adopted throughout the world and almost all universities consider it an essential part of architectural education. Romania can now benefit from all the advantages of a late adoption of these practices – essentially skipping out several steps in the formation process and embracing the already proven and tested ways. Furthermore, the statement mentioned above regarding reality as a diagram and vice-versa, has to be treated with caution – more often than not we see projects which amount to little more than disembodied data. Given the local “no-bullshit” economic and social scene, where better to start finding meaningful computational approaches than here? As a final word of wisdom, with which I would like to conclude this text, I will mention a phrase coined by Douglas Rushkoff regarding the current information age in which we seem to be: “program or be programmed” – extrapolating from this we can say that, as an architect, you can either let yourself be controlled by the software you use or you can control it to your own ends.

Dimitrie Stefanescu, Delft, 2011

During the 15-17th of December I will be tutoring at the automatic architecture event at the TU Delft. Here’s some info from the official site:

Automatic-architecture is a three-day workshop (15th-17th December 2010) open to architects and students in order to show the use of computational design for architectural development by cross-fertilization of knowledge. The cases for the workshops has been collected from a real estate developer and, in cooperation with the University of Delft this case has been translated into workshop material.

Costs: Euro 75,- for three days.

Automatic-architecture offers room for thirty participants. The workshops will be held at the Technical University of Delft starting Wednesday December 15.

A symbolically critical pamphlet

For the hip architectural public, there surely isn’t any need of introducing the (in)famous Voronoi diagram. If there is, then you probably shouldn’t be reading this text and you’re better off doing something else.  Nevertheless, I find myself under increasing pressure to express my thoughts regarding what I find to be a shallow, often completely mis-interpreted and un-justified use of what started out to be a mathematical “toy”. The practical applications of the Voronoi diagram are quite numerous highly fascinating. However, they are beyond the scope of this article – I want to focus mainly on the (mis)use of the aforementioned algorithm in architecture and urbanism.

I think it is quite safe to state that voronoi diagrams have now probably become the “golden mean” of computational architecture. However, I am quite surprised that it took this long for people to notice this – and, what’s even more surprising, there seems to be a severe lack of constructive criticism regarding this quite common and recurrent space-partitioning algorithm. Before moving forward, I would like to clarify the fact that I am not against using voronoi in architecture or urbanism whatsoever – there are clearly numerous meaningful uses, both in generating actual geometry and, probably more, in analyzing and visualizing data on an urban scale. What I am trying to criticize and draw attention to is the mental lock that this catchy algorithm has imposed, and, even worse, the common and frequent misconceptions induced by its strong affiliation with natural phenomena.

There are many reasons for the constant abuse of Voronoi cells (be they two-dimensional or three-dimensional) in architectural and urbanistic projects (the majority of which, by a lucky turn of events, are yet to be built). Crucial to this point is the association of voronoi patterns with organic structures found throughout Nature (living and non-living as well). The unmistakable silhouette can be found in numerous instances: you can see it under a microscope in almost any compact tissue like skin, you can see it in the way cells are distributed in a tree trunk, you can see it in the wings of a dragonfly; the list can carry on for quite a bit more. Taking into account the respective system’s constraints, voronoi cells can provide the most efficient structure or spatial routing paths for matter to organize itself into. This frequent recurrence in nature elevated the voronoi algorithm to the same status as that of the Fibonacci series and the golden mean  was enjoying before. On top of this, its organic and apparently random appearance made it the perfect candidate for a wide range of good-looking geometric experiments. Furthermore, its close ties with nature somehow transcend the barriers of reason and magically attach organic, eco-friendly, pro-environment qualities to any product designed by using this technique.

For example, one common misconception is the fact that generating structure via a three dimensional voronoi diagram would automatically create a super-efficient, really optimized and, on top of this, organic looking structural system. This quite big confusion is probably caused by the numerous natural structures that resemble the output of a voronoi algorithm. There is however a quite obvious missing link in the association which should pop up instantly to any attentive observer. The structures generated by the voronoi algorithm are to be found at microscopic scales, starting off from somewhere near 1*10^-5 m and continuing to decrease. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that architecture begins somewhere around 10¹ m. There’s quite a big difference in scale, and due to symmetry breaking, physical laws (which, as any scientist worth his pay would tell you, are not universal truths, but the best approximations humankind has found for the way things work) rarely transcend through big scale jumps[1]. In the present case it’s quite obvious – the predominant force in a living tissue at 10^-5 m is a uniform pressure exerted on a cell by surrounding cells – and nature’s elegant response is a complex three dimensional voronoi structure which can be said is roughly indifferent to the main constraint which has shaped structural systems in architecture – namely Gravity. If you do a simple FEA analysis on a voronoi cell grid, you will see you’ll probably need more steel than a simple orthogonal grid to support the same loads, you will double production and building costs[2], besides getting less flexibility in terms of interior organization (spaces restricted to unique, bulky but flexible-looking cells). On the other hand, when used in straight-forward metaphorical approaches, and when this status is recognized and clearly expressed and not masked by a multitude of seemingly objective attributes, the approach can be considered to be “fair use”[3].

Another type of misuse of the Voronoi algorithm can be found throughout large scale urban projects – masterplans, local developments, etc. Cities are not composed of living “cells” in the literal sense – that’s where voronoi works. Cities are living organisms, but the rules behind the dynamics of city growth and crystallization are something completely different from a two-dimensional petri dish[4]. You can use the voronoi diagram to compute the shortest possible paths around a set of point-like obstacles, but this argument is insufficient for justifying its direct transformation in a street network[5]. Actually, street networks never had anything to do with the forces found generating voronoi cells. What you can often see is actually the same dangerous attitude and way of thinking behind modern urbanism clothed and presented as the exact opposite – naturally grown, organic urban lattices etc. – while in the end, if you start to rationally question and compare both approaches you can find dangerous similarities: both are lacking the same links with reality and are somehow strictly imposing their vision. This discrepancy noted here is actually, I believe, part of a bigger and much more comprehensive issue relating to digital and computational architecture[6].

What I find most distressing is the fact that there is a lot of cover-up work being done – voronoi diagrams, be they in three dimensions or two, always stand for some deep underlying natural phenomena whose efficiency and environmental-friendly qualities are automatically transferred to the respective project through a few rhetorical loops empowered by sophisticated jargon. The Voronoi algorithm does generate beautiful patterns and structures – which, when carefully used in the right places, are completely justifiable, sometimes even by aesthetic principles only. To conclude, I strongly believe that a certain level of sincerity should be (self)enforced when employing voronoi diagrams in architecture. While the manner in which this article is written might seem to some to be a bit too vehement, I am deeply concerned about the ease and nonchalance with which the voronoi algorithm is used – in the manner of an architectural recipe which can be applied anytime and anywhere, regardless of any other considerations. That’s why I have tried to raise awareness about the creative abuse taking place and its philosophical idiosyncrasies which, on a broader scale, do not restrict themselves to just this algorithm.

Dimitrie Stefanescu, 28 Oct 2010, Delft

Notes:

[1] The most straightforward example of this is probably the duality of gravity and quantum forces. While at a large enough scale, space is dominated by gravitational fields. The smaller the space gets, gravity loses influence in the favor of electrostatic forces, in the end becoming a negligible factor. The analogy is quite relevant – voronoi-like patterns are found mainly at microscopic scales, whilst architecture operates on a completely different level which can be said to be under the strong influence of gravity.

[2] I am acutely aware of the advances in fabrication technologies and related sciences which might render this argument useless in the possible future. I am trying to argue that, given the sensible ecological context of our current world, we should look for more sensible uses and applications for the tools and techniques that science makes available.

[3] As any ego-centric person would do, I can’t help not to throw in a reference to one of my early projects: http://dimitrie.wordpress.com/2007/12/03/77/

[4] For more in-depth knowledge of this, I strongly recommend both Manuel DeLanda’s much praised  A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History, as well as his interview with Neil Leach in the Digital Cities issue of AD (June 2009, p.50).

[5] I am not afraid to admit that I know this from personal, first-hand experience of the mentioned trap: http://improved.ro/blog/2010/01/urban-developement-proposal/

[6] To be more specific, an overall observed trend is that of employing computational geometry algorithms, often with spectacular visual results followed up by an active effort of fitting architectural qualities in the resultant shapes which usually ends in projects which are, for lack of a better word, fake.

DTAL is very pleased to announce a new workshop taking place at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism in Cluj during 17-20 May, which is very nicely timed with Neil Leach’s conference there (20 May). It all happens under the umberlla of the +/- Cluj Center of Architecture. Thanks to AStA Cluj for the invitation.

I will be tutoring alongside Ionut Anton.

Watch this space for more details regarding participation and the workshop schedule and theme.

_unde: Universitatea de Arhitectura si Urbanism “Ion Mincu”

_scop

introducere in specificitatile proiectarii parametrice si in logica functionala a softwareului - Grasshopper +Rhino

testarea unor tehnici parametrice pe baza unei teme date - suprafete parametrice reactive

testarea si prototiparea la scara redusa a unor metode si tehnici dezvoltate - fabricatie digitala la scara redusa a prototipurilor

exportarea grafica si post procesare a materialului prezentat ca solutii de proiectare - prezentarea solutiilor si expozitie

More info on the gig here.

Initial explorations: Culture Cracking.

Bucharest never had a coherent image in any point in history. Its only true comon denominator would be the highly despised disorder generated by the struggle between
western rigor and local chaotic impulses. It is one city where conflict is strikingly out in the open, little existing in maters of interface between old and new, poor and rich, highrise and low-rise. This project taps into these conflicting energies, drawing strength and geometry from them while at the same time exposing them and becoming an icon of their formative power.

My vision concentrated on issues relating to the poor visibility/readability of the overall area (and the necessity of a landmark) and the lack of “free” public urban space. The functional program was mainly derived from the observation that most historic centers (Lipscani being a prime example in this) loose their initial cultural and traditional economic value in favor of the over-dominant bar/cafe. This leads to a certain repetition of fluxes (economic, cultural, pedestrian) which harms the respective area.

Geometry-wise, my proposal respects local aspects of the area, namely its porosity and the way the urban tissue coagulated around narrow winding streets and small interior courtyards in a constantly surprising lattice.

In respect to this approach, i considered the lot as a solid volume on which forces are applied in respect with the openings and general director lines of the site. Performing a “structural” analysis on the site revealed the patterns by which these forces would naturally flow towards given points of rest (namely the designated openings of the courtyards).   Using topological optimization techniques these patterns were transformed into geometry which was later subtracted from the original body thus giving the overall shape of the building.

By following this design method I ensure an optimal circulation flow through the built site, encouraging interaction and furthering the development of the local urban tissue in a manner very close to its characteristics (gained by spontaneous evolution) thus fully integrating the new implant.

That’s wrapper of the last month, give or take.

Deprecated. Here’s the new version.

More as a scripting experiment, when i was mucking about trying to make the delaunay triangulation work in grasshopper i somehow found the wonderfully complex qhull library which i promptly set to push and pull to get it to work with grasshopper. As advised on their website, the best way to do it is to call it as an external program, which is exactly what i’ve done:  no files are written or read, no dos windows pop up, everything’s smooth.

Given that you don’t have many complex operations in grasshopper after the solution is generated, you’ll be able to handle quite an impressive amount of points (say 200 on my three-year old toplap) in real time. If you add the simple planarSrf operation, then say 60-70 and it gets sloppy.

What you’ll need to do to get things rolling:

0. Download the 3dvqhull definition and example file, and remember not to use it for commercial purposes, share-alike whatever you do with it and take the time to give the proper credits: 

1. Download qhull, and unzip it in a folder of your choice.

2. Get going and search for “System.dll”. What you’re interested in is the 2.0 version which you’ll usually find in here: “C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.5[...]\”. If you can’t find it, I’m amazed grasshopper works for you. Anyway, you can find and install it from here.

3. Add the newly found System.dll version 2.o as a referenced assembly of the qhull component in the definition file.

If it turns orange, it’s cool.

4. Write in the panel that is linked to the “path” input the full path to the qhull program qvoronoi. You don’t need to add the .exe extension, but you can do it if you feel confortable.

5. There’s just one more thing you should know: facets that contain the infinite vertex are omitted altogether, without remorse. So as to have as little facets tending towards infinitum, I always add the corners of the points bounding box to the input sites.

You can scale the bounding box in respect with its center, or you can just call the whole thing off – it’s your choice.

I think this just about covers everything. Take care and have fun.

didi out.

PS: Qhull does more than voronoi. So if you have the time to explore and test, please do – the package is very powerfull and it can be used for more than this.

Our solution proposed the creation of several interlinked interior and exterior courtyards that both encouraged interaction with the surrounding busy streets while at the same time offering an intimate place to retreat to. Various social and commercial functions requiring different visibility/exposure levels can occupy this space at ground floor level.

The space-partitioning algorithm we used (Voronoi), though a cliche, provided us with the ability to fill-out the space alloted for the project in a coherent, integrated manner without the urbanistic disruptions created by bar-type blocks (or modernist urbanism and its present refinements). Through the parametric approach used (see previous post) we were able to continualy search for the best solution (regarding geometry, overall&floor height/number of stories, surface areas, access at pedestrian level, acces towards the apartments) within a fluent design process. This allowed us to strictly respect the main given restrictions (POT, CUT, etc.) of the assignement while at the same time keeping and fostering the added benefits of continous and easy experimentation.

I get to speak on the 2nd of April there about parametric modelling and show off some projects. Suggestions are more than welcome.

We are using the excellent space-partitioning properties of the Voronoi algorithm to create a lattice of interior and exterior courtyards that progressively make a transition from public space to semi-public, semi-private, and, in the end private space. This way we propose the creation of a coherent urban lattice encouraging interaction with the busy city outside while in the same time offering various degrees of protection/”cosiness”. We are not proposing a new type of urban tissue in itself, but merely adapting and reinterpreting some qualities of sponaneous developement and local tradition(“fundatura”) in a flexible (yet highly accurate) digital framework.

As I was saying at the begging of the post, this is just a technical showdown – everything you see rendered above is far from what the end product will probably be  (since also the way the assignement was formulated forms that evade from some general bar-variation are quite difficult to fit in the judging criteria). Yet it indeed demonstrates the versatility of parametric/generative architecture and the capabilities of the digital framework proposed to control and manipulate with accuracy all aspects of the project (from raw geometry and algorithm to technical: floor height, floor areas, built/unbuilt ratio, sun exposure and so on – the possibility to expand the definition to apartment level details is definitively there).

That above graphic  is a watered down version of the grasshopper definition (I will not release it under any license for now).

Here’s the link to download the grasshopper .wrm file.