Actuating (Auto)Poiesis

This paper claims that the use of the computer as generative methodological tool for designing urban and building scenarios (when perceived systematically) is a misnomer, because the typical approach does not account for the incompleteness of computational processes. We will argue that the computerisation of architectural and urban scenarios with autopoietic and/or artificial life simulations does not account for what Edsger W. Dijkstra called “radical novelty”; and Gilles Deleuze termed “line of flight”. Typical computational methods do not open up genuine alternatives that produce radical morphologies. Our argument is predicated on the dominant notion of computation as opposed to a critique of computation per se. A critical analysis of the perception of novelty is made to support our view, and its connection with the incompleteness of axiomatic systems is explored in relation to three phases of cybernetic enquiry. Our argument draws on the ontologies of Alfred North Whitehead and Gilles Deleuze, which we utilise to reorient computational design to emphasise the potential of generating radical novelty and identify the inherent locus therein a matter of nonhuman decision-making

Hacking design: novelty and diachronic emergence.

The concept of emergence has had a significant effect on architectural theory, instigating a paradigmatic change in design and affecting the way buildings are perceived. In practice the practicalities of building procurement to satisfy necessity renders engagement with the concept largely academic. Otherwise, the physical properties of a building tend to limit engagement with emergence at the synchronic level. In this paper we consider how we might engage with the creative capacity of emergence at the diachronic level. As an artificial system a building may be perceived at different scales. Through computation we can conceive a systemic whole, which we may hack to explore the spatio-temporal capacities of the system, bending and leveraging behaviour in order to discover new tendencies of space and form