Abstract finally reached, after a week of refinement and a lot of reading, we have a more concise view of where we want to go with our topic.
Abstract_
The Metabolist movement attempted to link the expansion of space in a city to the architectural scale, however, it was limited by the economic and social constraints of its time. Current projects addressing this issue have high levels of geometric complexity, but often lack programmatic significance relative to its environment. Through careful examination of case studies focused on developing cities and their unique morphologies, patterns of design strategies for adjusting to urban growth will be extracted. Analysis of an existing urban fabric through space syntax will serve as a basis for a generative computational system capable of addressing programmatic functions of transport centers as well as social, cultural, and environmental characteristics of its urban context. This system will have the potential to be applied to multiple scenarios within a city and develop different architectural conditions.
Keywords: Urban Expansion, Transportation Infrastructure, Social Relations, Evolutionary Computation, Generative System, Urban Tissue, Complex Spatiality
Domain_
“The conflict between the improvisational construction and the reliance of [the metabolist movement] on a durable and fixed system has yet to be overcome to address the increasingly flattened world.” (Lin, 247) Typologies such as Mat-Buildings and movements such as the Metabolists attempted to link the natural expansion of space in the city to an architectural scale, but were limited by economical and cultural factors of their time and place. Current projects that attempt to address this issue are able to achieve high levels of geometrical complexity, but this is mainly linked to their method of creation, rather than spatial, social, cultural, and environmental parameters of the surrounding urban context. Neglecting these factors, causes the architecture to lack programmatic and infrastructural definition. We see this disconnect as an opportunity to develop a programmable system that not only reaches spatial complexity but also addresses site specific parameters as the urban context evolves.Our research will focus on the implementation of programs that are both dispersed throughout, and integral to the city such as transport centers that are not only programmatically functional but also address these parameters.
Methods_
Case studies of developing cities will be examined in order to evaluate design strategies that were successful or unsuccessful in adapting to urban growth. We will investigate whether or not developing morphologies respond in terms of programmatic, spatial, cultural, and environmental parameters and further study the development around successful examples. To quantify the levels of connections existing and possible outcomes, space syntax software will be used in order to analyse the spatial configuration and connectivity of the current pattern of the target city and create a feedback loop by re-evaluating the newly generated system. Structural, geometric, spatial, and contextual responsiveness will be introduced as parameters for evaluation. We will employ the use of genetic algorithms to explore an array of options with different adaptations to the urban growth and link them to the development of a single piece of architecture. The advantage of genetic algorithms is the quantity of varied solutions they are capable to producing. The challenge is clearly defining evaluation criteria in order to filter out irrelevant results and keep the process from becoming too computationally heavy. It may also be necessary to break the process into smaller algorithms and then find the best way to connect them rather than employing one master algorithm.
The Metabolist movement attempted to link the expansion of space in a city to the architectural scale, however, it was limited by the economic and social constraints of its time. Current projects addressing this issue have high levels of geometric complexity, but often lack programmatic significance relative to its environment. Through careful examination of case studies focused on developing cities and their unique morphologies, patterns of design strategies for adjusting to urban growth will be extracted. Analysis of an existing urban fabric through space syntax will serve as a basis for a generative computational system capable of addressing programmatic functions of transport centers as well as social, cultural, and environmental characteristics of its urban context. This system will have the potential to be applied to multiple scenarios within a city and develop different architectural conditions.
Keywords: Urban Expansion, Transportation Infrastructure, Social Relations, Evolutionary Computation, Generative System, Urban Tissue, Complex Spatiality
Domain_
“The conflict between the improvisational construction and the reliance of [the metabolist movement] on a durable and fixed system has yet to be overcome to address the increasingly flattened world.” (Lin, 247) Typologies such as Mat-Buildings and movements such as the Metabolists attempted to link the natural expansion of space in the city to an architectural scale, but were limited by economical and cultural factors of their time and place. Current projects that attempt to address this issue are able to achieve high levels of geometrical complexity, but this is mainly linked to their method of creation, rather than spatial, social, cultural, and environmental parameters of the surrounding urban context. Neglecting these factors, causes the architecture to lack programmatic and infrastructural definition. We see this disconnect as an opportunity to develop a programmable system that not only reaches spatial complexity but also addresses site specific parameters as the urban context evolves.Our research will focus on the implementation of programs that are both dispersed throughout, and integral to the city such as transport centers that are not only programmatically functional but also address these parameters.
Methods_
Case studies of developing cities will be examined in order to evaluate design strategies that were successful or unsuccessful in adapting to urban growth. We will investigate whether or not developing morphologies respond in terms of programmatic, spatial, cultural, and environmental parameters and further study the development around successful examples. To quantify the levels of connections existing and possible outcomes, space syntax software will be used in order to analyse the spatial configuration and connectivity of the current pattern of the target city and create a feedback loop by re-evaluating the newly generated system. Structural, geometric, spatial, and contextual responsiveness will be introduced as parameters for evaluation. We will employ the use of genetic algorithms to explore an array of options with different adaptations to the urban growth and link them to the development of a single piece of architecture. The advantage of genetic algorithms is the quantity of varied solutions they are capable to producing. The challenge is clearly defining evaluation criteria in order to filter out irrelevant results and keep the process from becoming too computationally heavy. It may also be necessary to break the process into smaller algorithms and then find the best way to connect them rather than employing one master algorithm.
Architectural ambition_
For cities and towns themselves must be understood as amalgams of ‘processes’, as spaces of vectorial flows that ‘adjust’ to differing inputs and impulses, like some self-regulating system. (Johnson, 27)
We aim to investigate programs that act as transportation nodes within a city that have been adapting to its changing architectural, cultural, environmental and economical landscape and propose a generative system that adapts to these parameters. The system will be tested in different settings within a particular urban context that will lead to different possible arrangements of the system where not only the functionality of the programmes, but also the relationship with or impact on the immediate environment determines the resulting design. The system will be parametrically defined, so that certain parameters may be weighted more heavily than others to produce different spatial, environmental, and programmatic conditions. It will not only aim to optimise itself structurally and spatially, but also to optimise its impact on its immediate urban context.
References:
Johnson ,Steven, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Cities and Software, Scribner (New York), 2002.
Lin, Zhongjie, and Kenzo Tange. Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement: Urban Utopias of Modern Japan. London: Routledge, 2010. Print.
For cities and towns themselves must be understood as amalgams of ‘processes’, as spaces of vectorial flows that ‘adjust’ to differing inputs and impulses, like some self-regulating system. (Johnson, 27)
We aim to investigate programs that act as transportation nodes within a city that have been adapting to its changing architectural, cultural, environmental and economical landscape and propose a generative system that adapts to these parameters. The system will be tested in different settings within a particular urban context that will lead to different possible arrangements of the system where not only the functionality of the programmes, but also the relationship with or impact on the immediate environment determines the resulting design. The system will be parametrically defined, so that certain parameters may be weighted more heavily than others to produce different spatial, environmental, and programmatic conditions. It will not only aim to optimise itself structurally and spatially, but also to optimise its impact on its immediate urban context.
References:
Johnson ,Steven, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Cities and Software, Scribner (New York), 2002.
Lin, Zhongjie, and Kenzo Tange. Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement: Urban Utopias of Modern Japan. London: Routledge, 2010. Print.
Now, we are attempting to decide our site, the methods of evaluation for spatial conditions of the city, and case studies that reflect different attitudes of how cities will grow. In an attempt to situate our argument, we found this article, Interface and Implementation: negotiating the boundaries between physical landscape and figital territories for architectural design, by Nick Dunn.
"the nature of what we may consider to be urban has not dramatically changed in reality (manuell castells)
"certainly, as we experience a period during which digital technologies appear to be dematerialising increasing amounts of the objects and environment that surrounds us, the question as to what impact they have on the materiality of buildings and cities appears inevitable" Dunn.
" As has been evident in various digtial architecture projets to date, simple translation from data to form does not satify the schema or acknowledge the complexity of the city despite the complexity of the model or the process" dunn
"He also emphasis's that it is only by putting the data into a human context that it gains meaning since it is tethered to real lives, enabling us to get a better understanding of ourselves. It is through building visual tools for sharing and communication that such interfaces will contribute to our understanding of urban systems and features." Jer Thorpe
"Until quiet recently we relied up on human recording of these motions- on histories which inevitably incorporate the perceptions, fallibilites and limits of ourselves as observers." Michael Batty
Mapping as a process therefore provides instrumentality to reveal latent characteristics, many of which are both fleeting and in flow. As has been evident in various digital architecture projects to date, simple translation from data to form does not satisfy the schema or acknowledge of complexity of the city despite the complexity of the model or the process.Dunn
"In order to make sense of this endless amount of information, it is apparent that the manner with which we engage with it is primary if we are to identify relevant phenomena and sustain meaningful relationship with it. This necessitates us to consider the design of interfaces.
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