arch 503 spring 08 final syllabus

7/21/2019 Arch 503 Spring 08 Final Syllabus

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ARCH 503Spring 2008

CONTEMPORARY TOPICS IN COMPLEXITY &

NON-LINEAR SYSTEMS

Eric Ellingsen, MARCH, MLA, MASenior Lecturer

[email protected]

OFFICE HOURS:

Thursdays, 1-5pm: Metals Building, second floor

The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation. Hume, 1739

The world lies under the spell of the phantom style-architecture. It is hardly possible for people today tograsp that the true values in the building-art are totally independent of the question of style, indeed that aproper approach to a work of architecture has absolutely nothing to do with style. Muthesias, Style-

architecture and the Building Art, 1902

The historian of architecture must be in close contact with contemporary conceptions. Only when he is

permeated by the spirit of his time is he prepared to detect those tracts of the past which previousgenerations have overlooked. Siegfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture, 1941

What is crucial in these developments, though also powerfully obscured by them, is that in our culture theprocess of making and the process of knowing are no longer separate. Sanford Kwinter,Architectures of

Time, 2001

The new architecture will not be about style, but rather about substanceabout the very methods andprocesses that underlie making. Kiern, Timberlake,Refabricating Architecture, 2004


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Linearity is a trap. The behavior of linear systems is far from typical. If you decide that only linearequations are worth talking about, self-censorship sets in. Your textbooks fill with triumphs of linearanalysis, its failures buried so deep that the graves go unmarked and the existence of the graves goes

unremarked. As the eighteenth century believed in a clockwork universe, so did the twentieth believe in alinear one. Ian Stewart, The Mathematics of Chaos, 1990

With the recent triumph of the far from equilibrium paradigm, we may be about to witness a change in

engineering practices, a change that may place at their disposal the full self-organizing powers of matter.Manuel Delanda,Domus, 2006

The problem of modern architecture is not a problem of rearranging its linesit has nothing to do withdefining formalistic differences between the new buildings and the old ones. But to raise the new-build

structure on a sound plan, gleaning every benefit of science and technologyThe art of building has beenable to evolve through timeas have the discovery of natural laws, the perfection of technical methods, the

rational and scientific use of materials.Antonio SantElia,The Manifesto of Future Architectures, 1917

No ideas but in things. William Carlos Williams, 1946

DESCRIPTION & OBJECTIVES

What do soap bubbles, snow crystals and architectural modules have in common? What is thedifference between intensive and extensive thinking? What do philosophers and scientists meanwhen they use concepts like multiplicity, singularity, emergence, productive difference andintensive gradients when describing matter and nature? What does the virtual mean other than asa reference to the computer? Morphogenesis, epigenesis, phylogenesis? What does it mean toassert that there has been a shift from a mechanistic understanding of the world to a pluralisticunderstanding, from linearity to the non-linear? What is the plane of immanence vs. thetranscendental? What do tendencies have to do with technique? And why in the hell does any

of this matter to architecture?

At the break of the 20th century Muthesius claimed that architecture was going througha teething process, where a truly new conception of art is about to unfold. Can the samething be said about architecture now, as many contemporary theorists and designers assert? Isthere in fact a new building art taking place today?

The 90s witnessed a critical shift in applied thought, particularly influenced by radically newassumptions springing from the biological and physical sciences. The foundation of this shiftrests on a process-driven understanding of the world; a process of interrelated, intensive opensystems exchanging energy and information with their environment. Architecture is one of thesesystems. And now the twenty-first century is in the midst of what many scientistsIlya

Prigogine, Roger Sperry, Brian Josephson, Stewart Kauffman, to name a feware deeming as anew paradigm shift, a shift fundamentally changing our understanding of the world and ourrelation to it including how it could be and should be designed.

Architecture, constantly on the prowl for new ideas to defend or define its new trials, trends andassertions has been permanently and, I believe, positively influenced by these new paradigms ofthought. In fact, architecture has been appropriating them--as more than mere metaphors--throughout the end of the last century up to the present. This seminar will thus attempt to identifywhat these assumptions are, when they started, what might have influenced them, and theninvestigate the useful and productive breadth and range by which they can and are being applied


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to architecture. It will give actual architectural and structural examples around which the classwill base its discussions, discussions which will facilitate, as Manuel Delanda says, know howrather than aknow whatapproach to these topics. The methodological intention of this seminaris therefore oriented to explore and critically formulate relevant questions between design and acontemporary scientific understanding of matter, rather than presumptuously impose categoricallypre-existing fixed answers.

The semester will be divided into three Deleuzian components:

I: Population thinking from the biological sciences,II: topological thinking (or differential thinking) from mathematicstopology in particular andrates of changeIII: thermodynamics from the material sciences.

Themes within each model of thinking are the following:1) Intensive differences drive processes2) process rather than products3) multiplicities replace essences

4) immanence replaces transcendence (time replaces timelessness)5) disequilibrium replaces equilibrium6) measurement: intensive and rates of change is added to extensive7) totalities are contraband8) ordinal is added to cardinal9) material and organization as an assemblage filled with capacities rather than inert receptacle ofform10) difference which makes a difference11) THE RE-ENCHANTMENT OF MATTER

REQUIREMENTS

Each class session will consist of a lecture by the instructor of the philosophic and

historic context of the topic (covered in the recommendedhighly recommended,

encouraged readings). The lecture will be followed by short student presentations, one

on the scientific context, and the other on an architectural context of the topic. Each

student will be required to give two 20 minute presentations, one in the scientific

category and the other in the architectural category. Students will be allowed to pick

which topic most intrigues them from the list provided in the syllabus. In addition to the

two presentations, each student is expected to complete the required readings for the

week and participate in the discussions. Though small in size, these readings arechallenging. Each class will end in a discussion prompted by the readings and

presentations. A short paper or project, not to exceed 6 pages, will be required near the

end of the semester. Each paper/project topic will be chosen and developed in

coordination and consultation with the professor.


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GRADING

weekly: 20%

students are required to attend all classes, complete all required readings an participate

regularly in discussionspresentations: 30%

1) 15% : research and presentations of topic

2) 15% : respondent

model : 30%

paper:20%

BOOKS REQUIRED to PURCHASE:

>A Thousand Plateaus (capitalism and schizophrenia), Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari,

trans. Brian Massumi, University of Minnisota Press, 1987.

>Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, Manuel Delanda, Continuum, 2002.

>Atlas of Novel Tectonics, Reiser and Umemoto, Princeton Architectural Press, 2006.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED:

>Informal, Cecil Balmond

>Phylogenesis: foas ark: foreign office architects, Actar 2003>Self-Organization in Biological Systems, Camazine, Deneubourg, Franks, Sneyd,

Theraulaz, Bonabeau, Princeton University Press, 2003

>A thousand Years of Non-linear History,Manuel Delanda, Zone Press

READINGS outside required texts ARE AVAILABLE AT:

http://www.box.net

LOGIN: [email protected]

PASSWORD: crownhall


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RED = Ellingsen lecture

YELLOW = student presentations & respondents

GREEN = no class

PINK = model project reviews with Balmond

________________________________________________________

WEEK 1 : (Jan28): INTRO: 3 models of intensive thinking:

Populations (biology) , Topology (mathematics), & Thermodynamics (physics)

essences vs. multiplicities, transcendence vs. immanence, being vs. becoming

>Manuel Delanda, Material Expressivity,Domus, Matter Matters, May2006, p.57.

Kwinter intro

>Richard Dawkins, Bar Codes in the Stars, from Your Lighthouse, Olafur Eliasson,

Works with Light 1991-2004.

>Sanford Kwinter, Introduction,Zone 1/2 .

Lecture : Post-Plato & Partnering with the Expressivity of Matter

Architecture examples: Frie Otto

scientific examples: soap films

________________________________________________________

WEEK 2 : (Feb 5): POPUATION THINKING: ecology, evolution & variation

The type is an abstraction, only the variation is real. Ernst Mayer (quoted in Delanda)

Required:

>Manuel Delanda,Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, pages: 56-63, 72-76,

119-127, 9-10, 14-16, 21-22, 26-27, 30-33, 39-41.

>Michael Weinstock, Emergence in Architecture, Morphogenesis and the

Mathematics of Emergence,AD Emergence: Morphogenetic Design Strategies, Vol.74,

p. 6-17.


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Lecture 1: Processes not Products:Ecology, Morphogenesis, and Evolutionary

Processes

Lecture II: Self-Organization and the AUTO Selective Importance of Variation

Architectural examples:

Metabolists, Louis Sullivan, Walter Netsch, Moshie Softie

Scientific examples: windmills, slime-molds, blue-gills and swarms

Recommended:

>Louis Sullivan, System of Architectural Ornament, The Inorganic and the Organic, p.

1-15.

>Raoul H. France, The Plant as Inventor(Stuttgart: Jung and Sons, 1923), p.5-23.

>Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species, Variation Under Domestication, VariationUnder Nature, p.71-114.

>Frie Otto, "Finding Form: Towards an Architecture of the Minimal"; Edition Axel

Menges; 1995.

>Eric Bonabeau, Self-Organization in Biological Systems, What is Self-Organization?,

How self-organization works, Princeton University Press, 2001, p.7-15.

_________________________________________

Week 3 (Feb12): Mapping the Field

Presenters: Ewa Guzek, David Rochlen, Bridget Oconnell

Defendants:Marilyn Musgjerd, Adriana Rios, Patrick Fagan

Required:

>James Corner, The Agency of Mapping,Mappings, ed. Denis Cosgrove

>Stan Allen, Field Conditions,Points + Lines, p.92-103.

>A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 1: Introduction: Rhizome, Gilles Deleuze

Presentation: Field Operations (Highline, Freshkills, Downview) + Stan Allen +

Bernard Tschumi (la Villette Park)

required readings for presenters & respondents :

>Stan Allen, Infrastructural Urbanism,Points + Lines, p48-57.


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>James Corner, Not Unlike Life Itself,Harvard Design Magazine, 2004, p.1-3.

Recommended:

>H.P. Berlage, Foundations and Development of Architecture, The Western Architect

vol.18, no 9 (Sep 1912), p.96-99.>Joseph Rykwert, Organic and Mechanical, RES 22 (Autumn 1992), p.11-18.

_________________________________________

Week 4 (Feb 19): Propagating Organization

Presenters: Edward Eichten, Trudy Smaistrla, Heiki Kumpf

Defendants: Marco Veneziano, Katie Hart, Matthew Lacey

Required:>Detlef Mertins, Same Difference,Phylogenesis: foas ark, p.270-279.

>Manuel Delanda, Non-Organic Life, Zone 6, p.129-167.

>A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 15: Conclusion: Concrete Rules and Abstract

Machines, Gilles Deleuze

Presentation: FOA (Foreign Office Architects) : Yokohama + Southeast Coastal park


>Farshid Moussavi/ Alejandro Zaera Polo, Types, Style and Phylogenesis,AD

Emergence, p.34-39.>Alejandro Zaera Polo,Phylogenesis: foas ark, p.6-17, 57-82.

>Stewart Kauffman,Investigations, Propagating Organization, p. 81-109.

Recommended:

>Steven Johnson,Emergence: the Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software,

2001, p.11-23.

_________________________________________

Week 5 (Feb 26): NOMADS-BY-CHOICE

TOPOLOGICAL thinking , symmetry & rates of change

The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choiceare essential to the intellectual welfare of

the settled disciplines. Benoit Mandelbrot


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Required:

>Cecil Balmond, New Structure and the Informal,Lotus International 98, p.70-83.

>Manuel Delanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, pages: 10-18, 22-26, 80-85,

186-188.>James Gleick, Chaos, p. 82-113

>Gyorgy Darvas, Symmetry and Asymmetry in our Surroundings, Olafur Eliasson:

Surroundings Surrounded, p.136-149.

> watch: Glenn Gould: http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=qlCgz4wbreM&feature=related

Lecture I: Difference which makes a Difference, or The symmetry of the Pattern

which ConnectsLecture II: The Games of Life, Algorithms, and Architecture

architectural examples:

Buckminister Fuller , Jorn Utzen, le Ricolt,

scientific examples: Darcy Thompson, wasps, L-systems

recommended:

>Manuel Delanda, Deleuze and the Use of the Genetic Algorithm in Architecture,

Phylogenesis, foas ark, p.520-529.>Gregory Bateson, Introduction,Mind and Nature, p.3-20.

>Aristid Lindenmayer, The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants, Graphic Modeling Using L-

Systems, p. preface, 1-50.

>Mark Wiggley, Planetary Homeboy,ANY 23.

>Martin Gardner, Mathematical Games: the Fantastic Combinations of John Conways

Game of Life, Scientific America, 223, Oct, 1970.

>Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science, Implications for Everyday Systems, p.

363-432.

>DArcy Thompson, On Growth and Form,On the Theory of Transformations, of the

Comparison of Related Forms, p.1026-1095.

>Ian Stewart and Martin Golubitsky,Fearful Symmetry, What is Symmetry?, p.26-53.

>Detlef Mertins, Transparencies Yet to Come,A + U, 325 (Oct 1997), p.4-16.

>Peter McCleary, Robert Le Ricolaiss Seach for the Indestructible Idea,LOTUS 99,

p.102-110.

>Reinhold Martin, Crystal Balls,ANY 17,p.34-39.

>Sanford Kwinter, Fuller Themselves,ANY 17, p.62.

>Reiser + Umemoto,Atlas, Some Notes of Geodetics, p.132-135.


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_____________________________________________________________

Week 6 (MARCH 4): ******NO CLASS******

>Kevin Kelly, Hive Mind_____________________________________________________________

Week 7 (Mar 11) : Survival Patterns

Presenters: Marilyn Musgjerd, Matthew Lacey, Patrick Fagan

Defendants: Megan Lawler, David Rochlen, Stephen Claeys

Required:

>A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 14: 1440: The Smooth and the Striated, Gilles

Deleuze

>Cecil Balmond, Survival Patterns, MODELS, 306090, p. 26-32.>Chris Williams, Design by Algorithm,Digital Tectonics, p.79-81.

>Aranda, Lasch,Pamphlet Architecture 27: Tooling, p.8,9, 22-31, 52-91.

Recommended:

>Robin Evans, The Projective Cast, Intro, p. xxv-xxxvi.

>Douglas Hofstadter, Parquet Deformations: A Subtle, Intricate Art Form,

Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern,p. 191-212.>Stephen Wolfram,A New Kind of Science, The Crucial Experiment, p.23-50.

>Akira Asada, Beyond the Biomorphic, Tokyo Bay Experiment, p. 21-27

Presentations: Balmond (Serpentine with Ito+ V & A ) & Terraswarm (Tooling)


>James Gleick, Chaos, A Geometry of Nature, p.81-118.

>Cecil Balmond,Informal, Fractal, p. 219-227, 243-263, 267-272.

>Cecil Balmond, Geometry, Algorithm, Pattern,Digital Tectonics, p.128-135.

_________________________________________

Week 8 : (Mar 18): ******SPRING BREAK *******


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_________________________________________

Week 9 : (Mar 25): MODELS Exercise assigned;

>Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 12: 1227: On the Treatise of

Nomadology, Gilles Deleuze,p.380- 387.

> Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 10: 1730: becoming-Intense,becoming-Animal, Becoming- Imperceptible, Memories of a Haecceity, p.260-265.

> Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 2: 1914 : One or Several Wolves, p.

30 (bottom) -34.

_________________________________________

Week 10 : (April 1): Geometry in material, Geometry in mind

Presenters: Hang-tang Tu, Smita Vijaykumar, Katie HartDefendants: John Castro, Bridget Oconnel, Trudy Smaistrla,

Required:

> Van Berkel & Bos, Interactive instruments in operations diagrams Olafur Eliasson:

Surroundings Surrounded, Essays on Space and Science, p. 79-88.

>Reiser and Umemoto,Atlas of Novel Tectonics, p. 38-69.

>Bernard Cache, A Plea for Euclid,ANY 24.

>Lindy Roy, Geometry as a Nervous System,ANY 17.

Presentations: UN Studio : Mercedes Museum & Mobius House


>Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, Live it/Love it,Digital Tectonics, p. 137-141.

>Peter Saunders, Nonlinearity: What it is and Why it matters,Architecture and

Science, 2001, p.110-115.

Recommended:

>Morris Kline,Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, Non-Euclidean

Geometry, p. 861-924.

>Stephen Barr,Experiments in Typology, What is Topology, p. 1-5.

>Morris Kline,Mathematical Thought From Ancient to Modern Times, The Beginning

of Typology, p.1158-1181.

>Stewart Dickson, True 3D Computer Modeling: Sculpture of Numerical Abstraction,

LeonardoVol 25, p. 281-288.

>Manuel Delanda,Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, p.14-18, 56-76.


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>Mark Wiggley, The Hyper-Architecture of Desire, Constants New Babylon, 1999.

>Friedrich Kiesler,Friedrich Kiesler: Endless House 1947-1961.

_________________________________________

Week 11 : (Apr 8): INTENSIVE THINKING : thermodynamics and the Model

Disguising process under product Delanda

Required:

>Manuel Delanda,Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, pages: 10-22, 24-26, 68-72,

104-110, 171-178.

>Manuel Delanda, Extensive and Intensive,Domus, Matter Matters, May2006, p.57.

>Lee Smolin, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, The Universe is Made of Processes, not

Things, p.49-65.

> James Gleick, Chaos, 121-153.

>Sanford Kwinter,Architecture in Time, p.22-31..

Recommended:

>Reiser + Umemoto,Atlas of Novel Techtonics,Intensive and Extensive, p.71-77

>Reiser + Umemoto,Atlas,p.150-153

>Martin Gardner, Kline Bottles and Other Surfaces, The Colossal Book of

Mathematics, p. 227-239.>Manuel Delanda,Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, p.14-18.

>Greg Lynn,Animate Form, p. 9-25, 29-35.

>Bernard Cache, Digital Semper,ANYMORE, p. 190-197.

>Mark Burry, Virtual Gaudi,Digital Tectonics, p.23-33.

Lecture I : Models: the PLANE Difference, examples in associative design

Lecture II: Critical Thresholds in the Body Without Organs

Architecture examples: Antontio Gaudi, REM Lagos, Smart Geometry Group

Scientific examples:ice crystals,chemical clocks, soap films, catenaries curves, weather

patterns, pendulums, law curves, associative geometry

_________________________________________


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Week 12 : (APR 15): reschedule for Saturday, APRIL 19 : Animate Your Form

Presenters: Isaac Plumb, Goran Radulovic, Jacklyn Bookshester

Defendants: Ewa Guzek, Edward Eichten, Carmille Yu

Required:

>A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 6: November 28, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself a

Body Without Organs?, Gilles Deleuze

>Greg Lynn,Animate Form, p. 8-41.

Presentation: Greg Lynn

required readings for presenters & respondents :>Greg Lynn, Architectural Curvilinearity: the folded, the Pliant and the Supple,AD:

Folding in Architecture, p.24-31.

Recommended:

>Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,Monadology.

>Alan M. Turning, Can a Machine Think? The World of Mathematics,Vol 4, p.

2099-2123.

>Gregory Chatin, Irreducible Complexity, web, p.1-15.

>Gregory Chatin, The Limits of Mathematics, web, p. 1-8.

________________________________________

Week 13 : (APR 22) : Anexact and Intense

Presenters: Adriana Rios, Mahdieh Salimi,Marco Veneziano,

Defendants: Heiki Kumpf, Goran Radulovic, Isaac Plumb

Required:

>Detlef Mertins, Bioconstructivism,NOX, p. 360-369.

>Manuel Delanda, Materiality: Anexact and Intense,NOX, 370-377.

>Lars Spuybroes, Machining Architecture, The Structure of Vagueness, NOX, p.

6-13, p 352-359.

>A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 10: 1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming Animal,

becoming Imperceptible, Gilles Deleuze


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Presentation: NOX


Recommended:

>Ilya Prigogine,Exploring Complexity: an introduction, p.5-14, 217-219.

>Manuel Delanda,A thousand Years of Non-Linear History, Sandstone and Granite,

Geological History, p.57-87.

>James Gleick, Chaos, p.9-31, 121-153.

>John Gribbin,Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity, 2005.

>James Gleick, Chaos, p.307-314.

_________________________________________

Week 14 : (Apr 29) : The Total Model: Associative Design, Associative Geometry,

Presenters: John Castro, Stephen Claeys, Carmille Yu

Defendants: Smita Vijaykumar, Hang-tang Tu, Mahdieh Salimi,Jacklyn Bookshester

Required:

>Johann Sischka, Manufacturing Complexity,AD: Emergence: Morphogenetic Design

Strategies, p. 74-79.

>Michael Weinstock, Self-Organization and the Structural Dynamics of Plants,AD:

Techniques and Technologies in Morphogenetic Design, p. 26-33.

>Achim Menges, Instrumental Design,AD: Techniques and Technologies in

Morphogenetic Design, p. 42-53.

>Bernard Cache, Towards an Associative Architecture,Digital Tectonics, 102-109.

>Sanford Kwinter, Architectures and the Technology of Life,AA Files, 1994, p.3,4.

.

Recommended:

>Gilles Deleuze, What is Philosophy, The Plane of Immanence, p.35-60

Presentations: Foster and Parners : British Museum Great Court Roof/ Swiss Re

Headquarters; Reichstag


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>Robert Aish, Extensible Computational Design for Exploratory Architecture,

Architecture in the Digital Age, p. 243-252.

>Hugh Whitehead, Instrumental Geometry,AD Techniques and Technologies in

Morphogenetic Design, p. 42-49.>Hugh Whitehead, Laws of Form,Architecture in the Digital Age , Design and

Manufacturing, p.83-93.

_________________________________________

Week 15 : (May 6) : Your Surroundings Surrounded

Required:

>A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 11: Of the Refrain, Gilles Deleuze> Olafur Eliasson, Models are Real, MODELS, 306090

lecture : Experiment in Architecture

Architecture examples : Olafur Eliasson

arch 503 spring 08 final syllabus

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