published in Design Ecologies Volume 4 Issue 1-2
Editor: Shaun Murray, ENIAtype
Publisher: Intellect Ltd., London, UK – 2016
ISSN 20430698
Pages 62-91
Keywords: code,systemic mesh,cybernetic urbanism,socio-ecological systems,robots,tactile architecture
Abstract
Architects who apply their generative modelling and scripting skills for creating virtual and prototypical spaces through the usage of algorithms and bespoke coding are increasingly confronted with an application in the real material world. The article suggests computational design strategies leading to architectural and urban for an era in which intelligent material, robotic assistants, smart geometries and changing human habitat converge with demographic, cultural and natural earth data to govern a global rethinking of socio-architectural ecologies. Since the beginning of humankind, our planet Earth has served as feeding ground and shelter. Civilization and industrialization have triggered a verification of territory, ownership, economic wealth and power. Henceforth, ethical rules, societal regulation and intuitive values were partly overridden and replaced. Long-distant transport vehicles such as cargo ships and trains allowed for accelerating the mixing up of goods and technologies. Architects solved industrial and infrastructural problems with new ideas and emerging building types, shaping urban and peripheral environments. A great idea manifested through extensive exchange of cultures and knowledge, however strangely enough climaxed in an ultimate exploitation of our natural resources – a situation we can hardly understand or handle. As a result we are facing a situation of re-scripting our human, urban and architectural ecological system. Thus the article touches upon this very shift starting in the eighteenth century, traversing through the implementation of the Internet, to regulate our physical world and data-autobahns filled with informing bits and bytes. The question is, which questions to ask for the best solution we can offer.
“Liss C. Werner, ‘In quest of code’, sources a critical tipping point in the source of code and design
of architecture. Through architects who apply their generative modelling and scripting skills for creating virtual and prototypical spaces are increasingly confronted with an application in the real material world. The article suggests computational design strategies and two different architectural and urban prototypes for an era in which intelligent material, robotic assistants, smart geometries and changing human habitat converge with demographic, cultural and natural earth data to govern a global rethinking of socio-architectural ecologies.” Shaun Murray, editor
