From Formal to Behavioral Architecture: Few Notes on the Abstraction of Function

With the advent of information theories, contemporary architecture is approached in terms of the energetic formations of memorization, association and connection. The former architectural diagram becomes a concretization, an instance, one possibility, of an operational code. Memorization refers to the ability of architecture to embed information within the deepest composition of matter. Architectural performance has always been revealed by the integration, or association, of multiple parameters. Connections are vectors which fuse the knowledge of heterogeneous symbiotic human environments. In the “C-chair”,  a project by our laboratory Open Source Architecture, abstract objects such as points, lines, and surfaces act as memorizers of information. As the codified system reacts to external forces, an association of two distinct graph structures is developed and connections are formed as the architectural object emerges

Degrees and Switches

In recent years, evolutionary biology has been the focus of post-Darwinist theories superseding the mere notion of variation with a concept called evolutionary development. The theory of evolutionary development, commonly referred to as evo-devo, follows a series of observations on the nature of organic developments and natural morphologies. Its main contribution rests on an evolutionary model that considers the similarities of genetic material forming organisms and their differences in morphological development due to switching mechanisms between the assigned genes. As observed by the American biologist Sean Carroll, evolution follows regulatory sequences of selector genes that are similar and can be found across various species of insects, plants and animals. This observation represents a counter-proposal to the old-modern evolutionary theories that looked at processes of adaptation as a function of the emergence of new genes. Evo-devo, on the contrary, recognizes that morphological differences are triggered by recombinatory switches that re-arrange genes in manifold ways to produce numerous characteristics of adaptation. From a design point of view, evo-devo has tremendous implications because it suggests that generative design protocols may induce sets of similar operations, yet stimulate a wide range of morphologies according to their sequential arrangements and activities. These generative design strategies include, among others, computational methods such as structural shape annealing and object-oriented analysis and design. While these methods are now integrating computing design practices, it is here proposed to review these two computational design methods in the context of three research projects