http://www.walterthomasbrooks.com
Searching for the Genetic Code of an Architecture....
The idea that an Architecture, could, like the natural organism, design itself, may appear to be a highly presumptuous assumption. For although organisms like the shell do appear to construct themselves in a sort of a “deliberate”,“pre-determined” manner, what one doesn’t observe is the long term process which was needed to set this growth in motion, of the generations of code building necessary to establish this “so determined” shell construction process. Because for that shell, it is “Time” which has already set the genetic, the “theme” of its eventual form, and although that theme can be disturbed, even mutated, by the environment which surrounds it, for the majority of species the process will continue through its inner coding system, on its seemingly predetermined course. Nevertheless, it is the genetic that does the work.
The same can be said of an architecture. The greatest influences on an eventual architectural form happen in the earliest moments of that structure’s conception process, not only the establishment of its “theme’, but the parameters which limit the arrangements of its parts. These early moments of the design process are, in every sense of the word, “genetic”. For once that Genetic has been set, the design can be a highly deliberate process, one accreted, like the shell, by slow tedious incremental adjustment of the structure to its environment. But it is the architectural DNA, which guides the boundaries of those incremental adjustments, suggesting that the most significant aspect of any architecture will be established by the postulates of its genetic code. It architecture, this is rightly called the “Conceptual” process.
Perhaps the best way to arrive at a “Genetic” base for an architecture would be through the observation and understanding of some of the mechanisms which Nature has used through time to guide the forms of organisms. Just for a moment let us think about how the natural process works based on observations, many of them taken from Darwin’s “Origins”.
1. An organism’s growth is determined by a
“guiding principle”.
2. Mere quantity does not insure existence.
3. The greatest amount of life can be supported by
the greatest divergence of structure, not by the
greatest number of structures.
4. Sometimes the most significant organism can be
shaped with the accumulation of small
discontinuous mutations.
5. The best structure is determined by
improvements through time.
6. Organisms in Nature grow from the inside out!
7. The best Selection Procedure is the one that
considers only the variation that is beneficial to
the total organism.
8. Death and Decay are part of the Creative
Process. It is called “Regeneration”
9. There is beauty in decay, just as there is beauty
in birth. They are connected. Until one can
find beauty in the compost heap or the dung
pile, one cannot truly understand Nature.
10. Ninety-degree angles and straight line occur
in Nature in relatively small numbers.
11. It is the natural selection process, which allows
variations to accumulate.
12. Isolation can sometimes be important if an
organism seeks change.
13. Variety is the true measure of excellence
whereas complexity is not.
14. The better solution survives and procreates.
15. Simple Mechanisms can produce results more
complex than their starting conditions.
Complexity can be formed within simple
Rules (Wolfram)
16. Asymmetry is a higher form of order than
Symmetry but harder to achieve.
Before a natural architecture can be generated, a genetic code must be in place, one constructed through the observation of those postulates and principles, which will best generate its form
17. When symmetry is eliminated, complexity
appears but Nature always attempts to
eliminate unnecessary structure
18. Chaos may well be the highest form of order.
19. Contingency and Change are Laws of Nature.
20. Change is the Ultimate Law of Nature.
It is remarkable how many of these postulates, gathered from the writings of
Architecture, especially in the earliest moments of its formation process, is constructed with genetic information just as is the Shell or the Elephant, a process, which is generated by and within an already inherited gene bank. As that process is initiated and carried forward to assume both growth and form as a social geometry, thousands and thousand of modifications, mutations and adjustments will take place- throw always, trials and errors, erasures, redraws, tear downs, substitutions, replacements. But, in the end, the totality of those adjustments which occur at the later stages of the process, will never have as much influence on the eventual form of that architecture (or organism) as do the influences of those concepts established in the first few moments of conception, the seed of the idea, the architectural genetic. For it is this DNA conceptual code which will set the framework within which all subsequent changes and modifications, subject to environmental influences, will be established. Not unlike the birth of a child, more eventual building form and substance is established just in those first few moments of conceptual formation than in the years of design and construction, which follow.
Like that tiny human, Architecture, in those first few minutes, assumes the earmarks of a code, a set of instructions which will eventually govern the major aspects of a particular structure’s overall design, modifications and explorations which will have essential and eternal significance on the eventual building form a process, which as Frank Lloyd Wright suggests, “moves from the general to the particular in a most inevitable way”. For not unlike the DNA of a biological species, those changes which follow in the aftermath of the establishment of the Code, will turn out to be mere incremental adjustments to an already established theme, either adding to or subtracting from an already established motif.
The point is that it appears that even at the most incremental of stages, at the very DNA level of the design process, the forces which determine growth and form within a building structure seem to emulate the workings of the coding systems which determine growth and form in the natural organism, perhaps not that surprising when one considers the source- the human brain which has been structuring itself for eons simply as a survival mechanism.
This, of course, is the proposal presented within this writing, the suggestion that nature opens up access not only to the forms of its own individual organisms but to the use of those forms to create potential architectures; that perhaps, if one were to study the vertebra, the petals and the coiling shells, one might, within that awareness, capture that essential substance through which they create their physical traits, that variety of form and that knowledge of structure which caused them to take the shape that they did,, so that one could then almost intuitively and instinctively put building material where it is wanted and needed, even come to think of a building structure, regardless of its purpose, as an organism not disconnected from the land.
Nevertheless, despite the similarity of generation methods, the difference between the genetic codes of Nature and those which set form in the architectural organism are far apart when one considers the time element involved. For whereas the period required to make change within the Code which establishes human form will take perhaps centuries, the Code which establishes architectural form is determined by the moment. Of course, therein lies the importance in understanding Architecture as an evolutionary growth, one that structures a substantial portion of their eventual forms through the establishment of an early Coding process and that it is precisely within that Coding process that the Designer will find the great flexibility in determining significant form. If there were a postulate to be derived from this simple understanding it would be this:
If one wishes to establish a Natural Architecture, then one might best put the major design effort into establishing, in the very beginning of the design process, the Architectural Genetic.
If one were to examine that premise as demonstrated in the work shown within this writing, one would find that each structure, constructed or not, attempts to establish, in the very early stages of its inception, a “Theme”, a visual code, as it were, which takes into account the functions of the space, the environment surrounding the space and the needs of those occupying the space. And it will be the balancing of these considerations, along with the Architect’s inherited knowledge of form, which will eventually establish the genetic.
This all takes place within the that very earliest stage of the project, a stage which is accompanied by pen and pencil sketches, rough models, computer graphics or whatever medium assists the process of arriving at form. But no matter what form this code structuring process assumes, it will always be considered as temporary. For there will be other themes and codes established parallel to it, where, after a good amount of consideration, a number of themes have been arrived at, a gradual selection process will narrow the ultimate genetic down to one.
Of course, the way a building materializes varies from project to project, but they are share this formative stage where the architectural genetic is established. Not unlike Darwin’s Theory of
Continuance “diversification through selection”- it is variation, divergence, differentiation and speciation and above all experimentation, which constructs the significant architecture, the same processes which determine form in the natural world.
Experimentation is trial and error, cut and paste,
a modification process in which it is so often the eraser which takes precedence over the pencil or the computer. For perhaps, as we understand from the philosophers, sometimes it is far less important what there is, than what there is not.
As one begins to examine and attempts to understand the great sweep of processes which have created the Universe and its conditions, the processes which have generated a body of Architectural work may appear of little consequence. For as powerful as any architecture can be as a symbol of human values, even a Sphinx or a Pyramid, sometimes a single quiet unassuming scientific revelation can be of far more significance in presenting the true proportion of things, more influential than a political movement, more powerful than a belief system, more revolutionary than a crusade or jihad. The revelation by the Geologists and Naturalists of the Nineteenth Century, of a process called “Evolution” was precisely such an idea.
The extension of this idea into the Twenty-first Century was to produce even more revelations- evidence that our Planet did not arise within a week of thunderbolts in 4004 BC. but that the human lineage alone is perhaps six million years old, that our own Sapiens branch has occupied fifteen hundred centuries of that and as the Geneticists have recently revealed, the Human as a Species has ninety-eight percent of the DNA of a chimpanzee, fifty percent of the DNA of a banana and that a banana has fifty percent of the DNA of us. Now that is some revelation, in fact, what one might call: the “Mother of all Revelations”
Yet, today, as the Author looks back at the substance of this book, at its suggestions that the directions which an architecture assumes in its lifetime are part of an evolutionary process, any comparison between that process and the evolutionary processes which have structured the Universe is, in the words of the wise old Farmer, “small potatoes”.
Nevertheless, barring the divine intervention of asteroids, one might hope to see change in the architecture of our time. For in an environment being largely constructed with the seeding of Condos and McMansions into the growing fields, we still find no truly “American” environmentally conscious architecture, and even if and when it were to come about, one hopes that it will be constructed on organic and earth related principles. And if that means burying our buildings under the earth, so be it. If an asteroid can interrupt the evolutionary growth of natural organisms, then perhaps a metaphorical one might do the same for the unnatural organisms.
But we must be careful what we wish for. We cannot read Life’s Book backwards nor use tomorrow’s asteroids to wipe out present day dinosaurs. For although we may live for the moment and learn as we go, sooner or later we will realize that the shapes and forms which our architectures assume in their current environments extend forward to present even greater ramifications in their future environments.
The New Architecture, when it arrives, will be generated in the petrie dishes of our architectural schools by environmentally oriented students with visions of and demands for a more natural architecture, one probably to be shaped not so much by their observations of nature’s outward forms, but rather by its inner processes, the images of those processes which they have been seeing on their computer screens and through the lens of their classroom microscopes, especially down there, where at a more visible depth of discovery, the architectures of the natural organism can be examined, where one finds those internal networks which boot up that organism’s operating systems, those hidden codes which structure its life, that genetic staircase which joins all its incrementalities within a single process, which, because it works within the same rules, is guided by the same process, sets in motion all those expected and unexpected instructions which come to exist and coexist between the parts of an organism, which allows it to take the shape that it has, to live as it must, as it assumes its inevitable movement through life.
But then, even Nature doesn’t always get it right at first try. There is no manifest destiny for the natural organism. Life and Death have been built into the process, a contingency system, which produces a million, seeds so that one will survive. Improvements, advancements, if they truly exist, if they are truly possible, must be constructed in time. That is the great understanding that comes with the process, that there are choices and connections (and mishaps) built into the creative effort. And it will be that observation which will eventually connect Nature with Architecture. We are, after all, the quintessential Observers and Measurers. We record the Universe. We magnify and classify and we bring into focus, through the geometries of our lenses, the nature and substance of existence. Just because we suddenly understand ourselves as being assigned to the position of a small twig on a remote branch on the fourth limb of a grand tree or as possessing 50% of the DNA of a banana, does not mean that our position has been reduced to the insignificant.
The idea that an Architecture could be connected with a natural process is, indeed, a new way of thinking.
Walter Thomas Brooks, “The Evolution of an Architecture”
