Daily Archives: February 11, 2013

Pulsing City

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Manuel DeLanda recognizes in the book “Nonorganic Life” that the practice of studying and perceiving phenomena in science is changing culturally (1). We have new technologies and have clearer and flexible views on the possibilities of nature that previously were not possible to see or to comprehend. At one point, all of western civilization thought the world was flat and there was no convincing otherwise, yet now we are capable of traveling to outer space and view the planet as a sphere. With the improvement in technology and more open conception of the world around us, we are recognizing science at a more biological level, rather than a physical level. Even in a controlled and constructed environment, there are factors which are unseen at one moment in time which can shed light on how a city grows and pulses as an organism.

 

On YouTube, you can find time lapse videos of the city of Vancouver (2). Although this city is a contemporary city, there are many systems and networks interacting that are clearly visible through a sped up video. It is clear to see the oscillations of the sun, tides and fog as they cause the city to light up or be hidden at certain times of day. At the same time, there are networks through the street grid which act as patterns and connections similar to neurons in the brain. It acts as a pattern that pulses with the flow of traffic. At the same time, lights in the buildings are switching on and off due to different reactions constantly. As DeLanda explains, these reactions are not counterintuitive and can be caused by several factors that are likely not to be represented in a linear model (3). Vancouver is constantly beating with life.

As architects, it is imperative to understand buildings as in the “Emergence in Architecture”. The Emergence and Design Group acknowledges that,

“Emergence requires the recognition of buildings not as singular and fixed bodies, but as complex energy and material systems that have a life span, and exist as part of the environment of other buildings, and as an iteration of a long series that proceeds by evolutionary development towards an intelligent ecosystem.”(4)

Although buildings are controlled and constructed objects, the effects to itself from the surrounding networks and systems as well as the effects of itself to the surrounding networks and systems are deeply imbedded in a higher organization.

 

There is a hierarchy in the city that links individual structures and beings together in a larger overarching institution with many layers of information. As more individuals link to the institution, it becomes more complex at one level of understanding, yet more refined at the higher level of understanding (5). With the technology and perspective society uses today, the complexities of organisms are revealed as sophisticated and clear systems.

 

 

  1. Nonorganic Life
  2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xMz2SnSWS4
  3. Nonorganic Life
  4. Emergence in Architecture
  5. Nonorganic Life

The Social/Political and Emergence

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What I find most compelling about the framework set up by emergence is that their implications can cross over into the social/political.  After all, are not legal systems and social systems capable of creating new inputs that generate measurable change in the world of architecture?  Emergence should not only be understood in terms of technology’s ability to generate inventive and environmentally responsive forms.  Architecture can also be informed by changing social understandings.  For example, the nuclear family and racist legal structures facilitated the rise of suburbia in the United States and the notion of the “American Dream.”  In this case, social inputs generated specific formal outputs such as the division of land along (generally patriarchal) family lines, etc.  As a result, suburban spatial configurations and developments look similar across the entire United States, without too much differentiation based on geography.

The exciting potential lies in architectural speculation based on social change.  A queer architecture that rejects the heterosexual nuclear family as a given would most likely generate a wholly different spatial experience that is itself queer.  Of course, to have a “queer emergence” would require massive social upheavals that are more involved than changing a parameter on a computer screen or observing the social organization of ant colonies.  Such historic changes are possible when one considers the civil rights movement of the 60s, the Arab Spring or the Occupy movement.  Nevertheless, if emergence can be applied to the complexities of urban life, it can also comment on social transformations.  Rather than viewing form as the primary subject of emergence in architecture, maybe social conditions can inform program or overall spatial layout.

Studying emergence in relation to architecture and urbanism also has the potential to blur boundaries between understandings of class and other social divisions.  While whitewashing the demographics of a city would have disastrous political consequences, viewing urbanism in its entirety along the lines of emergence could demonstrate how seemingly separate social systems manage to intersect or interact.

A class analysis of emergence could draw from the contradictions outlined in Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England, specifically his descriptions of “mixed-used” industrial/agricultural quarters in working class neighborhoods.  Here, Engels outlines the interaction between high-density housing which included courtyards for pigs where the residents were forced to dispose of waste.  Emergent issues of oscillation could be applied to changes in environmental qualities for residents.  Engels inadvertently observed what can be understood as oscillation when he states, “The couple of hundred houses, which belong to old Manchester, have been long since abandoned by their original inhabitants; the industrial epoch alone has crammed into them the swarms of workers whom they now shelter,” (Engels 80).  With the impending climate crisis and massive inequalities in wealth distribution, we may be able to recognize emergent patterns in human migration, especially on an urban level.  This could suggest that informality will become not only widespread but the urban cultural norm.

 

Engels, Friedrich. The Condition of the Working Class in England. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2013. <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/condition-working-class-england.pdf>.

Self-organizing Cities

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When we try to understand architecture and the rules behind, it’s usually helpful to look at some universal rules applied on different aspects of the world. Emergent system, as a broad concept, provides an idea of forming and production in natural science as well as architecture. Under the explanation of “emergence”, cities start to be treated as models with organization and learning abilities, similar to brains and Web.

 

The human civic settlements usually form certain patterns when looking at them in helicopter view. And it’s possible to use inbuilt redundancy and multiple load paths to build models for complex city patterns and its behavior that are relatively stable in time scale of hundreds years. Reading “the pattern match” introduces three types of cities based on its emergence: traditional cities, imperial cities and organic cities. In organic cities, the patterns are shaped in time not only by physical structures with certain durability (like cathedrals and universities) but also community and business clusters with self-organizing ability. This ability can be understood as the inner force within clusters driven by information sharing (like Florentine silk weavers).

 

The self-organizing ability is another way of “learning”. The word “learning” is defined as “storing information and knowing where to find it”. So when a city learns, it recognizes and responds to changing patterns. At the same time, when it needs to respond the patterns, the system is able to alter and adjust itself without consciousness. It’s a new way to look at cities as a living organ that can respond to human activities instead of a static object any more. The learning process allows cities to record activities and form their own patterns like an emergent system in time.

 

Force of history keeps “lashing” the city pattern once it formed. While the balance between kinetic impact and static physical city structure creates a self-organizing structure and more over, develop the city. In reading “the Pattern Match”, the author raises the point that “a linear increase in energy can produce a nonlinear change in the system.”      Cities can form a self-developing loop once energy or forces are added in. Here is a diagram showing how this loop works for European cities around 1000AD with the push of soil-based technology.

Similar energy increases in the society include later exploitation of fossil fuels and the information era that form self-organizing loop resulting with city development.

Mumbai, another example of this equilibrium of kinetic city and static city develop after the social and economic change in neoliberal era in late 20th century. The static part of Mumbai remains in its shape and creates new patterns with temporary housing and practices of kinetic city.

 

Michael Hensel , Achim Menges , Michael Weinstock. “Emergence in Architecture”

Stephen Johnson “Pattern Match”

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