Note: I’m using the term “code” for current lack of better term- I’m not limiting the architectural system to code scripting yet. I’m using “code” to refer to the developmental rules in the system, like genetic code to an organism.
I may refer to a conceptual connection between biological and architectural as an “analogy” or “metaphor.” However, this system does not artificially mimic biology. It takes advantage of nature’s billions of years of superiority in design knowledge and experience by applying its evolutionary adaptation strategies to the development of human- generated design.
Need to figure out transition between research and species idea. I want to keep the format of biology: architecture for each topic, but I think the species should go after all the research and comparisons. But the species ideas make more sense directly following the architectural comparisons and serve as clarifying examples…
Key research resources:
Biological evolution topics
Charles Jencks
Evolution of Designs
John Frazer
Main goals:
Translate all important research into architectural ideas in this format
Add these ideas & key topics to timeline and diagrams
Define & draw/ diagram species
Film & page layouts
EVOLUTION
Evolution is the process of change.
Architecture can be used to plan and deliver change.
Changes in evolution occur due to: mutations, natural selection, and genetic drift.
SPECIFY & ELABORATE:
Changes in architecture can occur due to: spreading development or destruction and reconstruction because of structural and material decay, changing needs and styles, and new developments in technology outdating the preexisting ones.
Biological organisms leave behind fossilized data of their physical structure, habitat and diet, and relationships with other species. Most importantly, the geological layering of fossils form a physically manifested literal timeline showing a population’s progression as the fossils are buried over time, with the most adapted organisms above the surface.
Human society leaves behind discarded waste and depletion of natural resources. Most populations not only act as parasites on our environment, but build barriers to keep it out. We adapt to these artificial habitats, and as we burn resources to keep the world out our accumulated waste brings its environmental conditions even further from our comfort zone.
I am not proposing that we abandon the technological and architectural advancements of our society and live in lean-to’s until nature remedies our damage, but rather use our technological advances to make our architecture interactive with the outside world. We should work with the “great outdoors,” improving its conditions and our buildings’ adaptations to these conditions, instead of barricading ourselves from the effects of our destruction and digging bomb shelters as we wait for an apocalypse.
GENES
Genes contain the hereditary codes that dictate their organism’s growth and development of physical attributes and behavior. During reproduction, the offspring receives genes from each parent randomly. These random combinations create diversity even without mutations. Diversity within a species’ population can also be greatly increased by reproducing with a member of the same species from a different population .
The genes of architecture dictate its construction, appearance, and performance. Architectural diversity is produced by the mixing of characteristics from the diverse, growing set of designers, architectural styles, cultural influences, environmental strategies, materials, and technology.
MUTATIONS
Biological mutations are caused by new genes created by random gene changes during reproduction.
An architectural mutation that could produce random variation could be an “error” in a code, or conditions which somehow unexpectedly alter the building. However, computer errors are less frequent than biological errors. To compensate, I propose a micro-scale digital module whose self-replication produces mutations in the architectural code. Contrary to random biological mutations, these technological mutations bring an opportunity to surpass natural evolution by only synthesizing adaptations that it hypothesizes to be beneficial.
I) These mutations be proposed by architects, scientists, and even members of the community.
II) Mutations could also be generated by the simulator itself based on the site’s existing conditions:
1) Mutations based on input data from the module’s receptors including local conditions:
a) Sunlight, temperature, weather/ climate patterns
b) Availability and condition of resources: air, water, and solar availability and quality
raw building material
c) Availability and condition of space which it can inhabit, limited by:
- Existing structures and machines (necessary mechanical equipment on rooftops)
- Property ownership and local laws
- Local and global populations’ needs, preferences, desires, and satisfaction/ approval
2) Mutations developed using information from the communication network across the system:
a) Copying and modifying existing successful mutations, especially ones with similar conditions
b) Global conditions input data (1.a – 1.c)
c) Trends and projections
d) The function and extents of global system connectivity in relation to resource availability and prioritization of areas to be developed
NATURAL SELECTION
Although the genes responsible for mutations are generated randomly, if the mutation is beneficial to the organism then the organism will survive longer and produce more offspring who inherit the genetic mutation. Depending on the mutation’s degree of usefulness and the size and isolation of the population, this spreading pattern could continue into an exponential growth of the percentage of the population with the mutation. These small changes accumulate over time into greater ones. This process is called natural selection, and is responsible for the evolution of a population and its adaption to its environment and lifestyles. Consequently, nonrelated species with similar environments and/or functions often develop the same mutations. Also, species with the same ancestor may develop homologous structures from an ancestral feature, such as forelimbs being adapted for flight, evolving into wings, but retaining similar bone structure to its relatives.
Natural selection has a larger impact on smaller populations and geographically isolated populations because it takes less generations for the same mutation to spread throughout. Much like human societies, populations of organisms are structured by the principle of competition. Given enough time, a population will always grow as large as its environment’s resources can sustain. Once it reaches this maximum, a population enters equilibrium and remains roughly the same size every year given the same environmental conditions. At this point of high occupation, resource competition is at its highest. This is when the most adaptations occur because the increased fitness of an organism due to a mutation quickly spreads throughout the population as they outlive their competition.
Natural selection is the main force behind evolution. It is largely responsible for our own existence. According to Darwin, all living things are related because all life has descended from a few common ancestors. Like the first life forms on earth, we will likely continue to evolve indefinitely to adapt to our constantly changing environments.
However, the process of natural selection takes a very long time, and it takes even longer, if it occurs at all, for obsolete structures such as human wisdom teeth to disappear.
The “natural selection” of architecture can be interpreted as evolution due to increasing competition within education, economy, design, and depleting resources. According to Charles Jencks, “The main narrative does not belong to any building type, movement, individual or sector. Rather, it belongs to a competitive drama, a dynamic and turbulent flow of ideas, social movements, technical forces and individuals all jockeying for position. Sometimes, a movement or an individual may be momentarily in the public eye and enjoy media power, but such notoriety rarely lasts for more than five years and usually for not more than two.” Each architectural species only inhabits the top of the chain for a short time, and very few make it to the top more than once due to the difficulty of adapting to the constantly evolving architectural environment. It requires frequent reinvention, even for such top organisms as Mies, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Aalto.
For instance, Corb was arguably one of history’s most successful architects at adapting to such a tumultuous environment. The book Le Corbusier and the Continual Revolution in Architecture describes how he has been a leading mind of five different movements, the Heroic Period, new urbanism, CIAM and mass housing after the war, Post-Modernism, and the High-Tech movement.
According to Jencks, the success of Corb and the others of the “big four” was largely due to the instability and intense competition of the 20th century’s architecture environment, necessitating constant reinvention for an architect’s survival. This was not only due to the volume and ingenuity of competing architectural works, but also constant advances in related fields such as technology (especially the internet), business, culture, social forces, style and trends, ideology, and world wars. (add to diagram) As in biological evolution, the more rapid the environmental changes, the faster a species must evolve in order to survive. However, as in biological reproduction, these hasty developments attempting to thrive in chaos may not be as proficient as those given ample time to develop and adapt, lacking depth and resulting in “errors.” (elaborate in another section- critical modernism)
More analogically, the evolution of architecture is due to mutations- ideas. Every time a designer produces an innovative design, they are reproducing a work with a unique trait. The design enters the competition of architecture, being tested against its environment and culture. If the idea is “fit,” (in longevity, efficiency, and appropriateness within the population) others will begin to implement it in their designs, spreading the mutation throughout the population. If it is “unfit” with respect to the forces of its environment and culture, it will likely be modified or replaced. As the design community creates and observes failures, those ideas become extinct.
GENETIC DRIFT
In biology, genetic drift is the changing ratio of the different alleles (genotypic traits/ variations of genes) within a population. This process occurs due to the randomness of genes an organism inherits during reproduction. If one allele is dominant, it will most likely dominate the ratio of the population over time. Even the ratio of equally dominant/ recessive alleles will usually change over time because of random sampling statistics.
Over time, genetic drift can cause extinction of a specific allele. However, this is uncommon in large populations because there are more copies of each allele, and the randomness of gene inheritance tends to balance out the ratio of alleles.
Genetic drift is more random than natural selection because usually the traits affected by genetic drift don’t affect the fitness of the organism. However, if there a gene has very few different alleles, random drift can counteract natural selection because of drift’s indifference to the benefits/ disadvantages of the traits affected by natural selection.
A population bottleneck occurs when a large portion of a population is wiped out by an event or rapid drastic change in its environment. If all the population’s different alleles don’t affect their organisms’ ability to survive the event, the survival rates of the different alleles will be completely random.
A parallel that could randomly reduce variety in architecture could be restrictions such as laws, codes, homeowners’ associations, etc. Also, performance, cost, efficiency, development and availability of materials and technology determine their popularity, which could become very monopolized in the future as our knowledge and abilities grow. Likewise, certain architects, styles, etc. could also come to wipe out their competitors as the economy evolves. Some developers and designers also copy and paste their designs throughout a project and into their next project. Other limitations could be changing cultures, budgets, and environments, as well as funding for community projects.
One way to prevent this monotony is design education. By providing designers with an innovative mindset, institutions increase the ratio of creative designers to mindless machines. This ensures that there will always be people striving to improve design and create new movements.
INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS
Darwin believed that organisms inherited their parents’ genetic and learned/ developed attributes. For instance, an animal that became exceptionally strong during its lifetime would pass its strength onto its offspring.
Although this theory has been scientifically proven incorrect, it has notable applications within architecture. It is common for buildings to be upgraded or otherwise altered, and although these projects don’t get as much attention within the design community, significant ones may spawn ideas for future designs. Also, the improvement of one building often provokes a competitive cultural response, inspiring its neighbors to update.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
Although our society’s constant revolutions can be attributed to rapidly evolving the architectural ecosystem, it certainly took a toll on our planet’s physical environment- increasing pollution, resource depletion, and destruction of natural habitats. This in turn fuels the need for change as architects need to (rather, should…) adapt their designs to survive in the changing physical environment, these forces dragging each other into an exponential cycle of destruction.
According to Amory Lovins, leader of ‘natural capitalism,’ “Nature and capitalism can walk together in the twenty-first century. He argues, counter to stereotypes, that so many efficiencies and savings can be made that economic and ecological growth can occur at the same time – at four times their current rate! – if only we can think through all systems at the start.”
However, this notion may be a bit naïve; both nature and government are severely vulnerable on their own, and “reconciling these heretofore opposed forces is going to take more than a pose, that is, a raft of tax incentives.”
CLASSIFICATION
Jencks classified the movements of 20th century architecture “based on the assumption that there are coherent traditions that tend to self-organize around underlying structures. These deep structures, often opposed to each other psychologically and culturally, act like what are called, in the esoteric science of nonlinear dynamics, ‘attractor basins’: they attract architects to one line of development rather than another. Why? Not only because of taste, training, education and friendships, but because of type-casting and the way the market forces architects to have an identifiable style and skill. In a word, specialization.” Although architects resent being categorized, insisting they are multi-talented and unique, “Enough forces conspire to keep the architect ‘on message’, even when they seek, like Post-Modernists, to be pluralists.”
However, several different species of architect may follow the same movement; for example the Green Building Movement is contributed to by activists, classicists, and several postmodernists.
REGULATION
According to Jencks, roughly 80% of architecture is by “non -architects, or at least the result of larger processes that are, artistically speaking, unselfconscious: building regulations, governmental acts, the vernacular, planning laws, mass housing, the mallification of the suburbs, and inventions in the technical/industrial sphere. Le Corbusier in the 1920s, Russian disurbanists in the 1930s and Richard Rogers today try to affect this inchoate area, but like globalization it is mostly beyond anyone’s control.” If current trends continue, the future will likely be even more regulated as the governments attempt to control the economy and repair environmental damage.
However, governmental pressures in architecture often accomplish the reverse of their intentions. As in the Facist, Nazi, and Stalinist architectural styles, architects not only resist governmental limitations, but are motivated to develop their own rebellious alternatives. “The diaspora of Modern architects and the waning of other approaches are clear from the diagram: like evolutionary species whose habitat is destroyed they went virtually extinct (or emigrated from Europe and the USSR).” Jencks calls these ‘Reactionary Modernists,’ who used technologic and economic developments to undermine oppositional architectural styles. Their relationship to politics can be seen in their views on culture, power, and mass production.
This is an example of the economy’s control over architecture. Corporate Modernism, known for its stark plainness, came to monopolize the architectural field after the Second World War. “The corporate forces of production and patronage favour an impersonal, abstract, semi-Classical sobriety. Giedion’s notion of the ‘ruling taste’ is usually pulled towards this attractor basin.”
SPECIES
SELF – REPLICATION
The process of replication creates an additional module on every free side of the parent. This causes exponential growth; one nanomutator could eventually become a massive system spanning across an entire city.
ARTIFICIAL SELECTION
Every time a nanomutator self-replicates, it has the opportunity to mutate. Whether it does or not depends on the factors in the Mutations section. Therefore, their small scale provides the opportunity for extreme specificity in adaptation with respect to the large distances the system can span.
Any nanomutator that becomes damaged beyond its ability to reproduce will automatically result in local extinction of that unsuccessful genotype.
Any nanomutator deemed unfit by human intelligence can be remotely terminated.
Any nanomutator that is performing better than its competitors will reproduce more often, as in natural selection.
Any nanomutator deemed exceptionally useful by human intelligence (or one that needs further testing) can be programmed to reproduce faster and to pass its genotype to existing modules.
Beyond emulation of natural selection, this infectious nature of the nanomutators improves their own evolution by allowing them to spread digital genotypic information to modules across the entire system. In this way they are constantly automatically upgrading themselves and spreading their success to their neighboring modules and to their future “offspring”.
This constant evolution also allows the system to quickly sense and adapt to changes in external environment. The system also recognizes
Cite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_drift