Recombinant Architecture

Recombinant Architecture examines the deep cultural impact of biotechnologies, including genetic, genomic and transgenic engineering, on the architectural imagination. Recombinant architecture is multiple, and Benjamin Bratton divides it into three different indexes:

a. Algorithmic Bio-morphology, the conception of architectonic forms in the image of genetic, biomorphic corporeality (architecture as physiognomic index of the posthuman),
b. Post bodies, the deliberate fashioning of recombinant bodily forms (genomic entities in the image of architecture) and
c. Genomic spatial systems, the application of artificial biomaterials in the construction of the built environment (architecture as the result of genomic design) - from bodies to buildings and back again.


Algorithmic Bio-morphology
the conception of architectonic forms in the image of genetic, biomorphic corporeality
(architecture as physiognomic index of the posthuman).

Genetic architecture elaborates the epistemic centrality of a now genomically self-concious body as a methological index of structural investigation. The genetic body is considered to name and contain multiple and incongruous animate forms to be given architectural expansion. Each one of those is a figurative principle that could be used so as to extend purely biological processes into more comprehensive bio-technical systems.

According to Karl Chu: "Genetic space is the domain of the set of possible worlds generated and mitigated by the machinic phylum over time. This is the zone of emission radiating out from the decompression of reality, a supercritical explosion of genetic algorithms latent with the capacity to exfoliate out into genetic space. This is not a passive receptacle but an active evolutionary space endowed with dynamical properties and behavior of the epigenetic landscape." In his theory of hyperzoic space, laws of physics that ordinate the play between genotype, phenotype and environment, are themselves evolving, and are condensations of multiple manifest and virtual modulations of genetic-algorithmic enunciation.

Greg Lynn’s Embryological House is considered by Benjamin Bratton “likely the most publicly appreciated genetic architectural project”. It re-imagines dwelling according to genetic form as a first principle of iterative animation. The House adjust itself, reacts and anticipates sunlight and environmental variables according to data received. Bratton believes that not only the Embryological House, but also Genetic Architecture itself, remain beholden to traditional architectural problematics. The House is a genetic metaphor in architecture and although there have been used bodily forms and human morphologies, it remains allegorical of genetic processes. As he comments about it: “It is undecided whether Embryological House is yet genetic architecture, or rather still architecture about genetics.”


Post bodies
the deliberate fashioning of recombinant bodily forms
(genomic entities in the image of architecture).

Recombinant architecture looks to the figure of the artificially designed body (genomically, surgically or otherwise realized) as a cyborgian measure of both structure and inhabitant, while genetic architecture infers or applies genetic grammars into the moment of creating formal architecture. The body is the first architecture: the
habitat that precedes habitation. Architecture looks toward the body for its telos, its image of unified singularity, its continuous historicity. “The condition of embodiment and its material poetics of scale, temperature, solidity and pliability, reproducibility and singularity have located the horizon of design from Vitrivius to Virilio.” (Benjamin Bratton)

Bodies are now imaged as genomic territories, as cities of DNA events, due to the fact that they are sliced into component subvariables and statistical predispositions. Bodies could be considered not only as the first architecture, but also as the first digital architecture. DNA is a binary code which produces forms, the bodily forms produced are themselves architectonic in the highest order. Like all the other naturally occurring architectures these genomic manifestations are incredibly perfect as they are and available modifications.

Bodies could be considered as machines, and machines as bodies, therefore they can be used for new design practices and modifications. A spatial example could be the ear-mouse, in 1995 Dr. Joseph Vacanti, a transplant Surgeon at Harvard, who cultured a human working ear under the skin of a mouse, which was then removed, without harming the mouse. Additionally, the extreme body modification and plastic surgeries could be considered as “a deliberate renovation of the first habitat (of the Self), and of the public production of performative space (of the singular Other)” (Benjamin Bratton). Although in the fields of primary mechanics the ultramodern Body is a highly recombinant form, the ultimate realization of genomic digital auto-fabrication, it is unlikely to happen for legal and ethical reasons.

Recombinant architecture understands the primary figure of bio-materiality, the body, as itself an architectural event, therefore re-designs the built environment both as and with artificially derived biomaterials. ”As ever, buildings become bodies only as bodies become buildings”. Because of the fact that it looks at architecture as genetic bodies, it look at genetic bodies as architecture.


Genomic spatial systems
The application of artificial biomaterials in the construction of the built environment
(architecture as the result of genomic design)

Every day growing database of structural biomaterials, genetic and genomically designed fabric systems, is nowadays widely being explored and finds a lot of applications in medicine, agriculture, military and even conceptual art. At the same time the application of genetic material engineering to the design of physical habitats quite often collapses literal gaps between body and architecture.

First conclusion for creating a durable human habitats might be just a replacement of traditional materials with new artificial biomaterials in the formation of traditional forms, spaces, and programs (box, room, dwelling, house.) But some architects are not satisfied with 'biomorphic chairs,' nor even chairs made of genomically designed materials and try to redefine the shape of the architecture created out of biomaterials. As for example Benjamin H. Bratton from SCI_Arc is describing in his article “The Premise of Recombinant Architecture: One” that “recombinant architecture” gives the premise “ to explode the sitting-machine into new bodies of spatial narrative, new modes of habitat-circuit, new questions, and not just new answers. This redefinition of program 'from the DNA out' will undoubtedly result in several recognizable forms. Buildings, like bodies, have membranes, and the vocabularies of 'skin' should only become more pronounced. Buildings, like bodies, have orifices, and the materialities of interiorization/ exteriorization should likewise become further pronounced, even as bodily-programmatic conventions based on them (kitchen/ bathroom, for example) mutate beyond recognition.”

But the form of architecture based on biomaterials is most probably going to be an outcome of the way this materials will be used which will be based on their specific characteristics. So far biotechnology research is mostly focused on medicine and agriculture which is due to interest of science on fulfilling the fundamental needs of humanity. As a result most of nowadays money is putted on modifications of native plants into improved food crops and findings for miracle drugs. This industries are hopping to have the fastest benefits. That might be a reason why there is so far no specific research in finding biomaterials which could be applied in the construction of human habitats.

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http://www.rizoma.net/interna.php?id=151&secao=anarquitextura