In my previous post, I explained the traits with which I will analyze my study population of architectural details, drawn from the buildings shown below.
My original taxonomic analysis reveals a wide array of expressed specifics across the breadth of my investive realm --- indeed, the variability in my sample population is almost too much to understand using the phylogenetic representation from the last post. In an effort to more carefully unpack my analytic system, I simulated the movement of each project through a three-dimensional Cartesian grid described by the three genes within each of the investigative quadrants. One of the axes (corresponding to the Z-axis) I defined as the major axis, the traits which act as positive and negative belonging to the gene most defining of the investigative quadrant; the other two directions (X- and Y-axes) are the other two genes, less significant but still important. The projects flow through this constructed realm, with the built location of the project on each analyzed gene indicated by the terminal point’s x, y and z values.
Within my simulation of Force genes, the excess gene is primary with efficient being the baseline (-) condition and excessive the extreme (+); contextual relationship and dynamism formed the x and y axes.
The array of projects within the simulation begins to uncover with more legibility the patterns which emerge in the phylogeny. For example, the swirl which appears at the lower right reaches of the simulation is the efficient and isotropic cluster of expressed traits (phenotypes), including Utzon’s Opera House in Sydney, SANAA’s New Museum, Candela’s Los Manantiales, Atelier Bow Wow’s Tower House and Van Der Rohe’s Crown Hall. Higher up and to the left is the excessive yet standardized swirl of projects, in this case including R&sie(n)’s I’m Lost in Paris, Otto’s Zurich Olympic Stadium, OMA’s Seattle Public Library, Herzog & Demeuron’s Allianz Arena, Hadid’s MAXXI and Studio Gang’s Starlight.
What also becomes quite obvious is which trait sets are under-expressed. In this field of investigation there is only one anisotropic and differentiated project, Renzo Piano’s Tjibaou Cultural Center. That these traits are just as interesting in terms of expression is definitely the case — in fact, De Landa’s eloquently argued case for anisotropy is one of the calls for a return to specificity in design which reverberates with Allen + Foster + Frampton’s “viable, progressive project.”
Moving on to physical resultants, I chose sign / symbol as the major axis, emblematic as that gene is of how organization finds manifestation in the physical realm — through materially transformative progressions in which “the form emerging...will be a mixed result, one that expresses its primordial type and all stages of modification that preceded the last formation;” or symbolically, relying instead on a conceptual derivation from widely-held societal memes. The secondary axes are information location and stability in this analysis.
The first trend noticeable in this diagram is the dearth of projects terminating in the left hemisphere of trait expression; this lack indicates the inability of many reified architectures to explore anything other than exact solutions to load flow. The efficacy of this approach is clear: given the reality of litigation, less than perfect exactitude is often too much a liability to consider.
At the top and the bottom of the vortex are clusters of projects expressing symbolism and asignifying signage, respectively; both of those phenotypes were well expressed in my sample.
A small few projects showed inexact solutions (Otto’s Olympic structure and its movability is a good example); the number of projects identifying an anexact solution, with movability on the detail level to allow aggregated freedom on a larger scale, was very small, however.
The first of the social hemisphere, Event is defined by the autonomous / collective trait set, with technological deployment and identity type making up the secondary axes.
In the analysis of this arena, two major whorls appear: one is a loop in the center top of the diagram; the other is a precipitous drop of projects down to the lowest reaches. The loop represents the cyborg collective phenotypic cluster, those projects in which the mediation of technology allows the authorship to become truly collective and the social nature of the project collapses into a singularity lacking significant individually traceable elements — OMA/LMN’s trans-national, multi-agency Seattle Public Library is a very good example of this project type, with Grimshaw’s Waterloo Station exhibiting a similar organizational partÃ.
The sheer drop indicates the one-way movement of projects once they have been taken over by an firm with a desire for autonomy in architectural practice. The imposition of this self-referential format creates ultimately individualistic objects, “all varied, all isolated,” and all moving quickly away from the iterative loops of cooperative practice.
Though many of the projects are tactical with their deployment of technology or transinstant in identity, there are no projects within my sample which fall into both categories at once. This alignment speaks of an expressive alignment lacking from contemporary practice: tactical use of technology, that is digital tooling deployed to design the local connection and its many variations as dictated by the requirements of the project, but then dissipates and allows the final space to be defined not by its meticulous technology at the smallest scale but by the mindset of the end user. Imagine if the technological specificity of Grimshaw’s Waterloo station were to be obscured or shrunk, made less impressive and all-defining as far as the architectural identity of the space is concerned.
The final vortex is focused on Performance, in which the discreet / ambiguous trait pair is primary while stylistic adherence and patterning make up the secondary axes.
Near the rear right hand side of the diagram a whorl appears, representing the movement of referential projects from discrete to ambiguous and back again in the process of parsing the design concept through existing cultural identifiers present in the social arena of the designing organization. If these are engineering-oriented designers, ambiguity might be the structural diagram while discrete is the construction drawing; for architects, abstract might be a grasshopper model while discrete is the joinery detail.
Lower center within the vortex is a cluster of projects discreet and expressive — the Seattle Public Library, Hong Kong Bank, the Zurich Olympic Stadium, Waterloo Station, Shiba Memorial Museum, Oakland Arena-Coliseum and Crown Hall all express this phenotypic pair — a combination of features which speaks of a engendering organization which embraces the restraint of modularity while still trying to legibly articulate its constructions as best as possible.
Also visible in the mid center is the impressive mutant cluster; this set of projects is in some ways the performative opposite of the last, designed by those endeavoring always to set themselves apart by creating new and ever more unique structures which create a lasting impression by simulating or appropriating a social identity which is not necessarily the reality of the building at all.
In this area of research, ambiguity emerges as the one trait least explored. It is alluring territory, inhabiting “a rigorous description of uncertainty” --- one which is more and more useful as the structure of social interaction becomes less continuous and more variable with each passing year.
My original taxonomic analysis reveals a wide array of expressed specifics across the breadth of my investive realm --- indeed, the variability in my sample population is almost too much to understand using the phylogenetic representation from the last post. In an effort to more carefully unpack my analytic system, I simulated the movement of each project through a three-dimensional Cartesian grid described by the three genes within each of the investigative quadrants. One of the axes (corresponding to the Z-axis) I defined as the major axis, the traits which act as positive and negative belonging to the gene most defining of the investigative quadrant; the other two directions (X- and Y-axes) are the other two genes, less significant but still important. The projects flow through this constructed realm, with the built location of the project on each analyzed gene indicated by the terminal point’s x, y and z values.
 |
| Expression Animation: FORCE |
Within my simulation of Force genes, the excess gene is primary with efficient being the baseline (-) condition and excessive the extreme (+); contextual relationship and dynamism formed the x and y axes.
The array of projects within the simulation begins to uncover with more legibility the patterns which emerge in the phylogeny. For example, the swirl which appears at the lower right reaches of the simulation is the efficient and isotropic cluster of expressed traits (phenotypes), including Utzon’s Opera House in Sydney, SANAA’s New Museum, Candela’s Los Manantiales, Atelier Bow Wow’s Tower House and Van Der Rohe’s Crown Hall. Higher up and to the left is the excessive yet standardized swirl of projects, in this case including R&sie(n)’s I’m Lost in Paris, Otto’s Zurich Olympic Stadium, OMA’s Seattle Public Library, Herzog & Demeuron’s Allianz Arena, Hadid’s MAXXI and Studio Gang’s Starlight.
What also becomes quite obvious is which trait sets are under-expressed. In this field of investigation there is only one anisotropic and differentiated project, Renzo Piano’s Tjibaou Cultural Center. That these traits are just as interesting in terms of expression is definitely the case — in fact, De Landa’s eloquently argued case for anisotropy is one of the calls for a return to specificity in design which reverberates with Allen + Foster + Frampton’s “viable, progressive project.”
 |
| Expression Animation: EFFECT |
Moving on to physical resultants, I chose sign / symbol as the major axis, emblematic as that gene is of how organization finds manifestation in the physical realm — through materially transformative progressions in which “the form emerging...will be a mixed result, one that expresses its primordial type and all stages of modification that preceded the last formation;” or symbolically, relying instead on a conceptual derivation from widely-held societal memes. The secondary axes are information location and stability in this analysis.
The first trend noticeable in this diagram is the dearth of projects terminating in the left hemisphere of trait expression; this lack indicates the inability of many reified architectures to explore anything other than exact solutions to load flow. The efficacy of this approach is clear: given the reality of litigation, less than perfect exactitude is often too much a liability to consider.
At the top and the bottom of the vortex are clusters of projects expressing symbolism and asignifying signage, respectively; both of those phenotypes were well expressed in my sample.
A small few projects showed inexact solutions (Otto’s Olympic structure and its movability is a good example); the number of projects identifying an anexact solution, with movability on the detail level to allow aggregated freedom on a larger scale, was very small, however.
 |
| Expression Animation: EVENT |
The first of the social hemisphere, Event is defined by the autonomous / collective trait set, with technological deployment and identity type making up the secondary axes.
In the analysis of this arena, two major whorls appear: one is a loop in the center top of the diagram; the other is a precipitous drop of projects down to the lowest reaches. The loop represents the cyborg collective phenotypic cluster, those projects in which the mediation of technology allows the authorship to become truly collective and the social nature of the project collapses into a singularity lacking significant individually traceable elements — OMA/LMN’s trans-national, multi-agency Seattle Public Library is a very good example of this project type, with Grimshaw’s Waterloo Station exhibiting a similar organizational partÃ.
The sheer drop indicates the one-way movement of projects once they have been taken over by an firm with a desire for autonomy in architectural practice. The imposition of this self-referential format creates ultimately individualistic objects, “all varied, all isolated,” and all moving quickly away from the iterative loops of cooperative practice.
Though many of the projects are tactical with their deployment of technology or transinstant in identity, there are no projects within my sample which fall into both categories at once. This alignment speaks of an expressive alignment lacking from contemporary practice: tactical use of technology, that is digital tooling deployed to design the local connection and its many variations as dictated by the requirements of the project, but then dissipates and allows the final space to be defined not by its meticulous technology at the smallest scale but by the mindset of the end user. Imagine if the technological specificity of Grimshaw’s Waterloo station were to be obscured or shrunk, made less impressive and all-defining as far as the architectural identity of the space is concerned.
 |
| Expression Animation: PERFORMANCE |
The final vortex is focused on Performance, in which the discreet / ambiguous trait pair is primary while stylistic adherence and patterning make up the secondary axes.
Near the rear right hand side of the diagram a whorl appears, representing the movement of referential projects from discrete to ambiguous and back again in the process of parsing the design concept through existing cultural identifiers present in the social arena of the designing organization. If these are engineering-oriented designers, ambiguity might be the structural diagram while discrete is the construction drawing; for architects, abstract might be a grasshopper model while discrete is the joinery detail.
Lower center within the vortex is a cluster of projects discreet and expressive — the Seattle Public Library, Hong Kong Bank, the Zurich Olympic Stadium, Waterloo Station, Shiba Memorial Museum, Oakland Arena-Coliseum and Crown Hall all express this phenotypic pair — a combination of features which speaks of a engendering organization which embraces the restraint of modularity while still trying to legibly articulate its constructions as best as possible.
Also visible in the mid center is the impressive mutant cluster; this set of projects is in some ways the performative opposite of the last, designed by those endeavoring always to set themselves apart by creating new and ever more unique structures which create a lasting impression by simulating or appropriating a social identity which is not necessarily the reality of the building at all.
In this area of research, ambiguity emerges as the one trait least explored. It is alluring territory, inhabiting “a rigorous description of uncertainty” --- one which is more and more useful as the structure of social interaction becomes less continuous and more variable with each passing year.
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