EMERGENT FORM: History, Tools and Practitioners

ABSTRACT:

Emergence: The way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity.

Currently there seems to be a trend in architecture leading towards the development of complex systems based upon biology, engineering and complex geometries. Within this style there are different methods used to generate form such as algorithms, proximity variables, angle analysis, and biomimicry. This method which we will investigate is described as Emergent Architecture.

This idea has evolved considerably since the original idea of L- systems and biometric form was discovered over 50 years ago. There have been a variety of methods used to investigate this topic. The most prevalent of these methods was created by a group called the Emergent Design Group based out of MIT. They have mixed people from different disciplines to develop a toolbox that creates form which responds to its environment and other influences of the world that it is part of.

For architects this field of study offers the possibility of form that is more a product of its environmnet and purpose than that which could be created with specific intention. Emergent shape relates to the nature and necessity of form, such as the way an ant colony will create a complex geometry simply by functioning. Or the phenomenon of water in which hydrogen and oxygen which are not especially interesting in themselves nor do they
possess any physical properties that are similar to water. But when combined they form an extremely interesting and essential compound.

"Key to the work is the phenomenon of emergence which offers insight into the way
apparently isolated bodies, particles, or systems exhibit group behavior in coherent, but unexpected, patterns. The animated beauty of emergent organizations, such as in swarms or hives, points to a range of real architectural potentials where components are always linked and always exchanging information, and above all, where architectural wholes exceed the sum of their parts." ⁽¹⁾

KEYWORDS:

Emergent Form, Generative Processes, Evolutionary Algorithms

You can download PDF presentation from the link.

Emergent Form

1.1Emergent Form-definition and purpose

Looking at the definition of emergent form we can find it related to all different kinds of fields and sciences, from computation to design biology and mathematics.

Emergent phenomena are the result of interactions between elements of a system over time, often being unexpected results of simple interactions between simple components. An emergent property or behavior is shown when a number of simple agents operate in an environment, forming complex behaviors as a system, that the things themselves do not have. For instance, consider water (H₂0): hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) are extremely light gaseous substances at room temperature, while water, the effect of their combination, is a heavy liquid. Liquidity is therefore one of the emergent properties of the system of hydrogen/oxygen. There is nothing about the property of liquidity- its wetness, hydraulic dynamics, Brownian motion, and potential for heat exchange- that can be predicted by examining the properties of either H or O.

When it comes to architecture, such kind of processes are used to create forms based on structural pattern formation and emergent behavior. This way of production is part of a larger contemporary movement in architecture referred to by Detlef Mertins in 2004 as ‘Bioconstructivism’, where biology, mathematics, and engineering combine to produce an architecture characterized by its variability and performance. This is not something unknown in nature of course. Nature is filled with variation and complexity that architecture has only started to explore. There are differences between architecture and biology as in nature it is all about iteration, mutation, and feedback through fitness testing, in order to produce both elegant and durable species and formations, but it is exactly the study of the process of random mutation and natural selection in nature that provides a model for how a dynamic feedback between excesses and efficiencies can create innovation and elegance in design process.

Another part of this research is called Biomimicry, also known as Bionics. By that we mean the use of methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology. The transfer of technology between life forms and synthetic constructs is desirable because evolutionary pressure typically forces natural systems to become highly efficient as well as formally elegant. Biomimetics can be relavent to architecture in terms of design, systems, and processes and can refer to both morphological and behavioral characteristics.

1.2 Tools

These kind of generative processes are carried out through the use of evolutionary algorithms. The regeneration of complex formal and behavioral patterns exhibited by organisms in the laboratory have been enabled by non-linear dynamics and computation using both generative and analytical algorithms and design techniques. Such algorithms have been applied to an ever increasing variety of design domains, for which they have achieved human competitive results on small design problems. In order to improve the applicability of such systems, fundamental research must be undertaken to discover how to construct increasingly more sophisticated designs. Many different design tools and software have been developed during the past years in aid of this study. A great proportion of them are the outcome of the research carried out in the Emergent Design Group of MIT, such as Gener8, Weaver, Agency, germZ and Moss. Also one can find the widely used Top Solid and Generative Components, and other ones such as Rhinoscript, Max script, Mel scripting, Perl and Processing.

One of the most commonly used software is GENR8. Genr8 is a plug-in for Alias/WavefrontMonday, December 3, 2007s 3D design tool Maya and it was developed by the Emergent Design Group at MIT in 2001. The Emergent Design Group was an interdisciplinary group that developed new ideas in architecture by bringing together researchers in Artificial Intelligence and architects. The purpose of this innovative surface design tool was to provide architects with access to creative surface design by giving them influence over generative processes. As they explain, a generative process is the activity of iteratively executing some encoding that creates and then modifies an artifact. So, during creating this tool they chose the thing that was most intriguing and of use to architects, which is modeling cellular growth interacting with an environment. GENR8 is an design tool that combines many different kinds of powerful growth languages with evolutionary search. The software combines 3D map L-systems that are extended to an abstract physical environment with Grammatical Evolution. Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) typically adapt 'on-line' but GENR8 is designed to accommodate the back and forth control exchange between user and tool during on-line evolutionary adaptation. Users may interrupt, intervene and then resume GENR8. This allows for interactive design evaluation and computational multi-criteria search. The investigative software is written in C++ as a plug-in to Alias|Wavefront Maya.The technical power beneath GENR8 has more than one implications: evolutionary search and HEMLS (Hemberg Extended Map L-Systems). A HEMLS, the generative process, is interpreted by GENR8 to generate a surface. GENR8 uses evolutionary search to discover its own HEMLS that adaptively evolve towards surfaces with features the user has specified.

Mel Scripting on the other hand is a Maya Embedded scripting language that is used to simplify tasks in Autodesk's 3D Graphics Software Maya. Through Mel one can achieve most tasks that can be done through Maya's GUI, as well as certain other that GUI doesn’t offer. MEL gives the opportunity to accelerate complicated or repetitive tasks and it also allows users to redistribute a specific set of commands with others.

2.1 Emergent Form Practitioners

The people that are behind much of this research are not only researching form its self but all of the social economic and environmentally conscious branches of emergent culture that are part of what is emerging from the newly possible fields of practice in engineering, building technology and construction. Peter Testa, Tom Wescombe and Martin Hemberg are just some of the architects/engineers/computer programmers/economists/etc. that are starting to drive this part of architecture that is being called emergent.

Peter Testa is a researcher in the field of emergent design, not only as part of the emergent design group but as a practicing architect. Currently he is working on a carbon skin, solid state tower that would be the lightest and strongest building of its type. This building is currently more of a design theory rather than an actual design proposal at this point but potentially has the ability to create a shift in the way that building technology and material manufacturing is currently recognized and used. He is proposing that this building could be completely manufactured on site with essentially the use of two materials and the robots to actually do the construction. This process would entail the use of wood, which is readily available from renewable forests and carbon fiber, which would be quite expensive (but less so in this process) and he claims that the high costs of carbon fiber would be offset enough by the use of wood and the manufacturing process to make this project not only feasible but cheap in comparison to a similar building constructed using traditional building techniques. This process is described as having robots on site which essentially lay in wood and weave/cure an interwoven surface of carbon fiber over the wood, similar to the way that a hockey stick or a ladder is made. This practice would be cheap, efficient and most of all environmentally friendly.

Martin hemberg is a bioengineer and scientist interested in the organization of biological systems. He has recently published a paper on the properties of scholastic genetic oscillators in which the chemical master equation is used as a starting point in an investigation into the difference in a time series between the chemical master equation and the stochastic differential equation. Martin Hemberg is essentially the architect who designed the program GENR8 as his masters thesis at the imperial college of London in association with MIT and the architectural association this program is based on the ideals of evolving plant structures and behaves as if it were growing a surface that strives for optimization an efficiency, similar to a plant. This type of thinking and this type of influence has rarely been seen in the past as part of the architecture and building community. This view on architecture has the potential and seems to be heading in the direction of creating the possibility for super efficient, strong and lightweight building skins. Plus the idea that this type of system will not only be seen in radical and rare buildings but in and increasing number of buildings that are more along the lines of an average project.

Tom Wescombe in a way is combining the ideas of both Hemberg and Testa and implementing them in a more technical engineering based approach which utilizes the type of research that hemberg dose with the implementation more similar to that of Testa. He has developed a computer program that can look at the various forces acting on a system and can reduce the system to be the most efficient yet stable system possible. This results in unique unconventional systems that would be impossible to produce without the advent of computer aided manufacturing. He bases his theory around the idea of emergence its self(the name of his firm as well as the name of is theory) that with the sum of many parts there can be a whole that would otherwise have been impossible. This theory also revolves around the idea of bioengineering and the discovery of the mathematical systems put in place that are able to create the forms that are only found in nature(for now).

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES

http://projects.csail.mit.edu/emergentDesign/genr8/index.html

http://projects.csail.mit.edu/emergentDesign/genr8/hemberg_chap8.pdf

Architecture, Virtuality, User Manipulated Spaces

When thinking about virtuality and architecture, virtuality or virtual objects in architectural case should be questioned. Because if virtuality is only kept as an idea in imagination, it describes a potential that is actually impossible to come true. Virtuality in architecture however, has the opportunity to go beyond these boundaries, as it starts to describe “existence” in virtuality, as we can see examples like “Liquid Architecture” and “Trans Architecture”.

With the effect of information technologies, today’s architecture isn’t only described by form-function relationship. Interaction, interface and the idea of creating living surfaces forces architecture to change constantly. Now, form and function don’t have to stable. Information isn’t only replying the “how” question of materials anymore, it is an indispensable part.

The combination of architecture and virtuality takes materials beyond their physical properties, giving them except from “touch” also changeability and fluidity.

Interactive architecture can be changed by the user. One of the example is “Hyper surfaces” which are liquid architecture applications (media layers) that are attached to architectural object’s topographic surfaces. Ron Arad designed the borders of a space by screens at his “lo-rez-dolores-tabula-rasa” design. Borders aren’t only working as limits, describers, surroundings, they are also moving structures, getting closer, going far away, giving reactions, enriching experiences as information surfaces like Decoi’s hypersurface application “Aegis Hypersurface”.

Another example can be Oosterhuis’s “Muscle Body” project. At this project, the object is designed as a whole architectural body. It reacts in different ways depending on the user’s body movements (the user is placed inside the design) with the help of vir-tool software. This introduces users to a constant movement experience.

Material property isn’t the only thing that is changing. All these developments effect the design time and tools used by the designer: digital design technologies, parametric design tools, productive systems that are based on structural grammar, diagram based information collection systems, evolutionist systems that are annotating genetic algorithms, animation techniques combining design and production and personally developed mass production integrated systems are commonly used.

New technologies let users experience multiple dimensions of artifacts whose objectivity can be changed. This situation makes the aim more important than the result; is the aim idea a temporary or variable representation or the design of a consistent object that has rules and laws? Remembering Goethe’s words: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it”.

POWER GLASS-light and electricity

The ideas of sustainability, self-sufficiency and energy saving are nowadays in the basic vocabulary of current architectural production world-wide. However, one of the greatest problems architects face when using photovoltaic panels is the formation of building facades, as the specific form of these extremely useful elements affects radically the design process. The launching of new materials gives way to the better integration of sustainability and energy saving in everyday architecture. One good example is Power Glass, produced by XsunX, which makes it possible to manufacture windows that generate electricity and still allow 70 percent of light to pass through.

Power Glass is made using amorphous silicon, the non-crystalline form of silicon that can be deposited in a very thin film and remains flexible. If we are going to compare the non-crystalline silicon and the crystalline silicon we see that the crystalline silicon used in conventional solar cells is a thousand times thicker, requiring more silicon. And crystalline silicon must be deposited on a rigid substrate that can withstand high manufacturing temperatures. The applications of amorphous silicon thus far have been primarily in liquid-crystal displays and thin-film transistors; its photovoltaic applications have been limited by its relatively low power-producing efficiency compared to crystalline silicon.

XsunX company is using a cassette system that allows high-volume production of thin films with low risk of contamination. Solar cells are applied in a thin layer - about 0.2 microns thick - onto large rolls of supporting material. The process happens at 150 °C, low enough to use plastic or polyester substrate. Multiple cassettes or film are processed simultaneously and the result is rolls of photovoltaic film. The flexible film is then applied, like low-e coating, to the surface of a multi-plane window. The film allows edge-to-edge coverage. This system makes the entire window an active energy conversation area.

Of course there are other materials that are aiming to perform the same function, like Scheuten Solar’s product. This product is consisting of opaque solar cells in glazing, separated by clear spaces, but it is resulted in visible mosaic or stripes, actually changing the way light enters the building. Power Glass- on the other hand- looks more like tinted solar glass, without a pattern. It blocks 30 percent of the incoming light, uniformly across the window opening.

What encourages Power Glass to fly economically is that it doesn’t only look like a tinted glass, but it works like one and at the same time produces electricity. The primary electrical energy cost of a large building is air-conditioning (A/C) and lighting. Using Power Glass to transform 4-5 % of the solar energy into electricity instead of using conventional tinted glass, the lighting and the A/C load decreases. So the annual energy consumption in a building that would normally be huge is much smaller having Power Glass performing both functions.

Links:

http://www.xsunx.com/advanced-celldesign.htm

http://www.hollandtrade.com/vko/zoeken/showbouwsteen.asp?bstnum=1464

http://www.scheutensolarsystems.nl/

Complex Geometry: Theverymany

THOUGHTS ON COMPLEX GEOMETRY

The potentials of the human mind are unlimited.

They have been proved through the centuries by the progress we humans have made in science.

The time has come though, that one of mans creations can actually produce the complex calculations men would need centuries to carry out. Computer science has managed to bring non-Euclidian geometries close to each one of us, and to make their use a part of our everyday life.

And of course, the more our tools expand, the more our thought flies towards the unknown and incomprehensible.

That’s exactly the way complex mathematic sequences and calculations have entered the contemporary fields of architecture. The progress of computers has allowed us to approach forms that some years ago seemed unbelievable to design. We can now produce a form from algorithmic sequences and we can actually create them. The human mind and hand is now merely the coordinator of the whole process that is carried out through specialized software. Thus, architects are asked to think in a different way, always using their digital tools from the very beginning of the concept.

Were this process is going to lead, we don’t know. Is there an end to it all, we cannot answer. All we can do is to learn the tools as well as possible, so as to control them better on the one hand, and to be able to use their potentials on the other hand.

“combinational processes”

Putting different input in one code or even the same input at different times can give us totally different outcomes

The person who programs the whole thing is supposed to have the actual control of things, but not even him can imagine the whole range of results.

Of course it demands huge software power for these procedures to be carried out. As computation proceeds and becomes more complex, technology must follow-or vice versa.

With the increasing use of scripting and automated processes complex systems and analytical processes are possible. For instance at the ever many there are many examples of the ability to use comparative algorithms to produce systems that are similar to those found in nature or in theory ones that build on them selves to increase complexity while still referring to certain consistencies through out this provides for structural systems that no longer relies on individual members but all the members as a whole building onto themselves.

This we believe is not only the future of architecture but of complex systems in general. This will be seen in geometries, physics, mechanics and of course structural dynamics. This site is mostly an experimental system of working in which geometries and scripts are presented and offered to be improved upon and used theoretically.

G04 Erik Thorson / Georgia Voudouri / Nazli ILgit Yucel

References:

Theverymany: http://www.theverymany.net/

Reconstructivisim: http://www.reconstructivism.net/

Visual Complexity: http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/