everything is greener and gold-tinged - the ladies look into the distance, eyes squinting against the sun - the building is a backdrop in a field. a set for tea.
also...
there are 26 sets of windows, counting from water street east towards ainslie, which are nearly identical and match the "old galt" photo from cambridgeweb .
after the original style there are seven sets of windows of a more decorative style then five more of the old style, then...
the first 26 window sets are held in walls of stone...a combination of a number of separate buildings, several of which have been rebuilt. a variety of commercial additions adorn the back lane - their roofs are patios for the apartment-dwellers above.
design that couples the relationship of spatial configuration and society to the computational ability to analyse and respond to the environment (this is great!) embodied embedded cognition - intelligent behavior emerges out of the interpay between brain, body and world processing 1.0The MSc Adaptive Architecture and Computation aims to give students a comprehensive understanding of the practical skills required to create generative, emergent and responsive forms, through exposure to real programming environments. In order to achieve this goal, the course team comprises both architects and experts in artificial intelligence. Programming is taught through the Processing language, which was created to teach computation to designers with no prior experience of computing. Time is dedicated to studio sessions with experienced tutors who have a track record of research into architecture and computation.
Alongside the practical classes, the MSc AAC offers a unique theoretical framework. We believe that the true power of the computational methodology is only realised through an understanding of its interaction with the social, environmental and spatial context in which it operates. To this end, the course team are embedded within UCL Bartlett's 5*-rated SPACE research group, which specialises in, and originated, the field of space syntax. Two lecture series present both the process side of the generation of environments, as well as the social implications of the product. Lectures from the course team are balanced by guest lecturers from the forefront of practice and research. The central theme of the lectures is one of how to create embedded, embodied and adaptive design. That is, design that couples the relationship of spatial configuration and society to the computational ability to analyse and respond to the environment.
Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is an alternative to proprietary software tools in the same domain.MIT Media Lab
Object-Based Media How to create communication systems that gain an understanding of the content they carry and use it to make richer connections among users. Computing Culture How artists and engineers can refigure technology for the full range of human experience. Changing Places How new technology and strategies for design can make possible dynamic, evolving places that respond to the complexities of life. Viral Communications How to construct agile, scalable, collaborative systems. Society of Mind How various phenomena of mind emerge from the interactions among many kinds of highly evolved brain mechanisms. Smart Cities How buildings and cities can become more intelligently responsive to the needs and desires of their inhabitants. Human Dynamics How social networks can influence our lives in business, health, and governance, as well as technology adoption and diffusion.architectural association school of architecture: emergent technologies and design http://www.emtechlog.net/
core studio The core studio begins with an intensive period of knowledge and skill-building sessions. Studio discussions focus on concepts such as morphogenesis, emergence and self-organisation, while a first module focuses on skills in Rhino NURBS modelling and scripting. This is followed by the introduction to material self-organisation and form-finding as design methods that lead to performance-oriented design. This year the studio will focus on vector-active and form-active structural systems, culminating in the design, detailing and construction of two structures. Before the design charrette begins, an intense module introduces concepts and methods of analysis and simulation. The designs are then further elaborated in the manufacturing and assembly module, which emphasises the relevance to low-tech (construction) contexts of the designs evolving from the research of the Emtech programme. The characteristics and behaviour of materials, together with manufacturing and assembly logics and the behaviour and performance of the designed system, are key elements of the integral design approach introduced in the core studio. This strategy deploys the inherent properties and behaviour of materials in material assemblies that respond to the specific stimuli of their context. Modelling and analysis of natural and manufactured systems are introduced to provide the techniques necessary for the development of morphological complexity and performance in designs for the built environment.
emergence and design ‘Emergent’ is defined as that which is produced by multiple causes, but which cannot be said to be the sum of their individual effects. It has been an important concept in biology and mathematics, in artificial intelligence, information theory and computer science, and in the newer domains of weather and climatic studies, the material sciences, and in particular biomimetic engineering. Commonplace terms such as ‘self-organising structures’ and ‘bottom-up systems’ have their origin in the science of emergence, and are encountered in fields as disparate as economics and urbanism. The seminar course will commence with a survey of the origins of the science and technologies associated with emergence, commencing with D’Arcy Thompson and Alfred North Whitehead, through Turing’s work on cryptographic analysis and on the mathematics of biological development, to the development of evolutionary algorithms. The conceptual structures and philosophies of Emergence in Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life will be reviewed, and the course will conclude with a series of digital experiments in algorithmic design.
a little history:
"In 1784 the British Crown granted to the Six Nations Indians, in perpetuity, all the land along the Grand River six miles deep on each side of the river from its source to Lake Erie. The Indians, led by Joseph Brant, had the land surveyed in 1791 and divided into Indian Reserve lands as well as large tracts which they intended to sell to developers. One such developer was the Honourable William Dickson who, in 1816, came into sole possession of 90,000 acres of land along the Grand River which was later to make up North and South Dumfries Townships.
Mr. Dickson intended to divide the land into smaller lots to be sold, primarily, to Scottish settlers whom he hoped to attract to Canada. In the company of Absalom Shade, Mr. Dickson immediately toured his new lands intending to develope a town site which would serve as the focal point for his attempts to populate the countryside. They chose the site where Mill Creek flows into the Grand River and in 1816 the settlement of Shade's Mills was born. The new settlement grew slowly but by 1825, though still very small, it was the largest settlement in the area and was important enough to obtain a post office. Mr. Dickson decided that a new name was needed for the Post Office and consequently the settlement and he chose Galt in honour of the Scottish novelist and Commissioner of the Canada Company, John Galt. Settlers resisted the introduction of the new name preferring the more familiar Shade's Mills. After Mr. Galt visited Mr. Dickson in the settlement two years later, the name "Galt" received more wide spread acceptance.
In its early days Galt was an agricultural community serving the needs of the farmers in the surrounding countryside. By the late 1830's, however, the settlement began to develop an industrial base and a reputation for quality products that, in later years, earned the town the nickname "The Manchester of Canada". Galt was the largest and most important town in the area until the beginning of the 20th century when it was finally overtaken by Kitchener. The town continued its steady if unspectacular growth and reveled in its reputation as an industrial town whose products reached around the world." (http://cambridgeweb.net/historical/galt.html, april 23, 2009, 10:40 pm)
also...could this be my building?
this one definitely is (the building on the right):
(historical images from http://cambridgeweb.net/historical/oldpostcards.html)
(the drawing still needs a lot of work: the crop/layout needs more consideration, a highlight of some sort needs to be applied to my site, and something mysterious needs to happen to make this mean something to my proposal)
and here:
an artist's impression of this event:
i know i like the landscape images better, but i wonder which one is "truer"?
(the diagram still needs a lot of work: i have layered a few sources which need editing/confirmation, more source material is needed, and the crop/layout needs more consideration)
philip has asked me to consider re-naming my thesis...he's made a compelling argument: that emergence is too imprecise a term with which to define my work and that the imprecision and popularity of the term leads to a lack of engagement on the part of casual critics with my actual interests in favour of their own biases on the topic. not to mention that i need to be much more precise in all the research, writing, and presentation of my thesis. this is a challenging question...Juliet: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet."
- Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2) In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be. - Hubert H. Humphrey (1911 - 1978)
the block the south block of main street between main and ainslie streets, cambridge ontariothis is frustrating...i'm going for a walk. another day has passed and still i am lost...and panicking. today is mx reviews, and i haven't even got a title.
"Not all crowds (groups) are wise. Consider, for example, mobs or crazed investors in a stock market bubble....According to Surowiecki, these key criteria separate wise crowds from irrational ones:
how can it go wrong? "Surowiecki studies situations (such as rational bubbles) in which the crowd produces very bad judgment, and argues that in these types of situations their cognition or cooperation failed because (in one way or another) the members of the crowd were too conscious of the opinions of others and began to emulate each other and conform rather than think differently. Although he gives experimental details of crowds collectively swayed by a persuasive speaker, he says that the main reason that groups of people intellectually conform is that the system for making decisions has a systematic flaw. Surowiecki asserts that what happens when the decision-making environment is not set up to accept the crowd, is that the benefits of individual judgments and private information are lost and that the crowd can only do as well as its smartest member, rather than perform better (as he shows is otherwise possible). Detailed case histories of such failures include:
"The editorial page of a newspaper is an opinion on any certain topic. Articles appearing on a newspaper's editorial pages represent the views of the newspaper's editor and/or it's editorial board." (wikipedia, april 12, 2009, 10:01 pm)i'm straddling the line, at the moment: i have a problem - which is wishing to increase the agency of the have-not residents of galt. i have a theory - that the collective intelligence of a group of people can be enhanced by architecture (i have some hunches as to how). i also have some ideas about robert venturi's work as a starting point for thinking about architecture as emergent, rather than top-down (executive?). i think my problem came from a desire to find an application for my interest in theory so... if i have to pick a side: i'm going with cognitive, for now. of course that raises another issue: if what i am doing is watching, acting as participant-observer, then i am by definition in the middle of this work, which, as noted above, risks warping the argument. hmmm...
"there is a fundamental problem with the way that many perceive design - it's not funny shape-ism. it's about giving form, framing the way that we live...in a way that gives greater meaning, greater depth, that shapes the way we behave, that shapes the way we interact, that changes our values around our experience..." -ilse crawford
"design and support human computer interaction...understanding interactions between people and technologies" "whole environments: what we really do in them and how we coordinate our activity in them"ethnography:
"a genre of writing that uses fieldwork to provide a descriptive study of human societies" (wikipedia, april 12, 2009, 5:12 pm)
*"a system's properties cannot necessarily be accurately understood independantly of each other" (dr. michelle addington, from arriscraft lecture during living large colloquium)a vocabulary: 1. distributed cognition (david kirsh, ed hutchins): think about a navy ship as a cognitive system - no one person knows everything that needs to happen to dock a navy ship, but it happens. 2. situated action: ski -> tree -> avoid (no plan required) 3. ecological cognition (j.j. gibson, donald a. norman): affordances - the properties of an object afford actions (i'm currently reading "the psychology of everyday things" by donald a. norman) the oracle of delphi and affinity diagrams: mark suggested this as a method of drawing out "rules" 1. ask a question to a group and have each person write out an answer on a post-it 2. group similar answers according to semantic domains 3. summarize each group to one paragraph/post-it 4. group... 5. summarize... 6. repeat until only one post-it is left a method for feedback: the orbs from UCSD are a set of simple lamps which are set to glow or dim in response to the number of occupants/power levels/etc. in the building. the simple act of feeding back information to building occupants gives them the opportunity to respond by going for a walk to see who is around/turning off a light/etc. *(i couldn't find a reference for this...though i did plug "orb feedback building occupants" into google and found several articles on energy conservation and "using feedback to influence occupants"). a method of collaboration: barcamp
"BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants. The first BarCamps focused on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. The format has also been used for a variety of other topics, including public transit, health care, and political organizing." (wikipedia, april 12, 2009, 8:57 pm)a method of classification: the music genome project (see my soundtrack post) this method of classification (analysis of attributes/expert classification) is in contrast to a preference-based system such as iTune's genius function. pandora (which is only available in the u.s. at the moment) uses 30 musical analysts who analyze 400 distinct musical attributes, described by mark as the "primary colours" of music, with which they classify music - the goal is to expose a listener to music from a wide range of styles which have similar attributes to the user's stated preferences. an example of the attributes analyzed: the voice has 30 attributes - bravado, range, ornamentation, pitch, tamber... *i just found the pandora blog - curious that they have recently added more weight to user feedback to correct faults in the "genome" system... a (very important) question: ***can space respond differently to different people at the same time?*** (thanks mark...that's a brilliant question!) thalience: from sci-fi writer karl schroeder - entities are considered "thalient" if they succeed in developing their own categories for understanding the world. could architecture become thalient???
(very) basically: termite mounds are tuned to resonate with turbulent air movement in order to exchange heat energy and O2/CO2. not only are these structures tuned to turbulent air movement as opposed to prevailing winds (a constant as opposed to variable phenomenon), they exchange gasses and heat energy use the same three phase "gas exchange mode" as our own respiratory system.
during the q&a after his lecture dr. soar mentioned very briefly that he was working with agent-based modeling, so i approached him later that day to pick his brain. he was very patient with my questions and incredibly generous with his time.
agent based modeling:
the agent-based modeling he mentioned is a part of an Army Research Organization funded development of nano-robots to construct shelters in warzones. the basic principles of the project are: continuous construction (construction that extends into maintenance), containment (a nano-robot 'dies' when it leaves the structure), and natural selection (a system must 'die' if it not fit). this system is inspired by and draws from the project TERMES research.
the termite nest:
a termite nest is an emergent system - "emergence: complex systems and patterns (which) arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions" (wikipedia, april 12, 2009). there are are only seven or eight "rules" which form this complex system:
1. random walk (no stimulus = walk)
2. response to local pheromone (#1) field: pick up material
3. response to decaying pheromone (#1) in local pheromone field: deposit material
4. response to local pheromone (#2) field: remove material
5. response to decaying pheromone (#2) in local pheromone field: deposit material
(pheromone #2 is present in and drives the form of the "root ball")
the result of rules 4 and 5 is that a balance in pheromone intensity = balance in O2/CO2 exchange whereas an imbalance in pheromone intensity = construction/deconstruction the nest until the nest is in tune.
the mali mud mosque - deconstructing the concept of longevity:
longevity: the mosque is trampelled down by the community and rebuilt yearly - if one were to ask the age of the mosque, the locals would answer "2500 years" - the umber of years the community has been celebrating this ritual.
learning from termites: cooling cups on the roof of the mosque mimic the function of the structure of termite mounds found within the vicinity of this tribe.
continuous construction: construction extends into maintenance.
emergent form and material:
(i'm a little fuzzy on the details of this argument...but i was intrigued by it so i have included the parts that i can remember here...)
architectural style: gothic v. classical. the architectural style of the gothic era was that of a single material (stone) used in many forms (eg. the cathedral: stone as structure, finish, enclosure...). in contrast, during the classical period, form was defined by the material used.
dr. soar suggested that the use of a single versatile material like stone (gothic) or gypsum (contemporary) is necessary in order to build an emergent structure. (termites, ants, etc. use soil).
Human agency is the capacity for human beings to make choices and to impose those choices on the world. It is normally contrasted to natural forces, which are causes involving only unthinking deterministic processes. In this respect, agency is subtly distinct from the concept of free will, the philosophical doctrine that our choices are not the product of causal chains, but are significantly free or undetermined. Human agency entails the uncontroversial, weaker claim that humans do in fact make decisions and enact them on the world. How humans come to make decisions, by free choice or other processes, is another issue.
(...)
In certain philosophical traditions (particularly those established by Hegel and Marx), human agency is a collective, historical dynamic, rather than a function arising out of individual behavior. Hegel's Geist and Marx's universal class are idealist and materialist expressions of this idea of humans treated as social beings, organized to act in concert.
what i think: a sense of agency is fundamental to an individual's ability to participate in the world around them. i see a lack of a perception of personal agency on the part of a significant portion of galt's population... i feel like i am wading in to dangerous territory here...so i will try to tread carefully... around the block of buildings that i am studying, there are often confrontations between the haves and the have-nots. there is a not-so-subtle belief on the part of the haves that the have-nots have no place in the city, that they drag it down and that life here would be better if the have-nots were somehow eliminated from the downtown. reading the wisdom of crowds gave me scientific evidence that everyone has a piece of "the puzzle" and that collectively a diverse group of people can come up with a more accurate answer to a particular question than the most expert person among them. perhaps i reach too far when i make the next assumption (i know for a fact that there are people within this school who think so!): that this phenomenon of collective intelligence extends beyond the ability of a group to correctly guess the number of jellybeans in a jellybean jar to - solve isn't the right word - to negotiate much more complex issues. i suppose that i am arguing fundamentally for the intrinsic value of all human beings to the human race as a whole. not so much because it is morally correct, but because it is scientifically proven. and because i believe that if we can tap into this collective intelligence, if we can act to enhance its mysterious inner-workings we can...i don't want to say "make the world a better place" because i don't think i actually believe that...it would likely change the human race in a pretty fundamental way...it could be an evolutionary leap for human beings...it would offer insight into humanity as a whole...mostly, though, it would increase the agency of the non-expert individual (and maybe bring the "experts" down a notch or two).
i made a bunch of green balls which randomly "walk" around a space (in 3D, though they only move horizontally in this version). then i set loose a virus which "infects" some of the balls and turns them red. when a red ball bumps into a green ball, the green ball is "infected" and turns red. there is an immunity function which turns a certain percentage of balls blue - when these balls bump into red balls, they do not become infected. there is also a recovery function which allows a red ball to turn green again after a specified period of time.
for all of these functions, i made sliders which can adjust the rate of recovery and the percentage of immune balls. once i populate the space with balls and set them "walking", i can play with these sliders and watch as the rate of infection in the population changes, too. sometimes the entire population is red (dead!) and sometimes there is a balance between infection, recovery, and immunity where most of the population is green with the odd red or blue ball.
what does an epidemic model have to do with my thesis?
its not so much the epidemic that interests me, of course, but the ability to model emergent systems in three dimensions - spatially. StarLogo has the ability to give any entity modeled a set of rules which it applies independantly in reaction to input received during the execution of the program.
there are two ways which i could use this software:
first, i can create an architecture (modeling the block of buildings i'm watching) within which i set loose a set of agents (people modeled after the the users of the building). the goal will be to first produce a system which simulates reality - people reacting to one another and to the architecture in a way which is "normal" based on my observations and research. (there's a pretty serious issue regarding the complexity of human beings which i need to address here.) next i'd like to play with the system - tweaking the architecture to see if i can enhance the characteristics of adaptive emergent systems within the group of building users.
second, i can try to simulate the emergence of the vernacular form. i'll argue that architecture is modified over time in much the same way as a termite nest or ant hill is formed - people modify a building based on a set of rules, which in turn modifies the nature of the group using the building.
the bullshit is setting in, so i'll stop now.
my next few posts will discuss the phenomenon of emergence, the method of agent-based modeling, and what other people are doing in architecture/emergence.
