Hybridization, Hacking and Mutation

Regardless of over- or under-representation in the built world, every trait I've identified has expressive possibility. The theoretical background for each gene is my claim that all possible expressions of the gene have merit, and that observation of those expressions would be useful to humanity at large in fostering an understanding of the built world, their surround.

In the era of privatized and invisible infrastructures, understanding of our environment has never been more difficult. This disconnect between public knowledge and the process of spacial production is something architecture is particularly well positioned to address; not only do we have the power to gather the atomized components of our process back into the bounds of our profession, but we can do so with intention to reveal those bounds in a way that is experientially legible to those individuals who inhabit our creations.

Above, Utzon's Opera House hacked. Below left to right, organizational
charts for global design studio, architect-as-artist, and integrated project.

Moving forward with my thesis, I am proposing a collection of details which embody the resultants of various methods of working present in today's Architectural profession. The jumping points for these details will be projects from the sample population analyzed in the fall; I will choose projects from my study which are close to or particularly ready for mutation to express one of the underrepresented traits I’ve identified. Each of these projects has an organizational format documented and known to me; I'll start by identifying where in this assemblage of players the shortcoming of the project's detailing is rooted, then hybridize it with a more expressive detail resulting from a markedly different format of working. Some details will come from a single-handed (Architect-as-Artist) mutation implemented by me; others will require the input of other individuals, with ties to epistemic communities other than  my own.

What happens when there is no designer? When a detail is assembled without the specificity of oversight, derived wholly from standards implemented by an unknowing body? This exquisite corpse detail is a necessary bounding condition within the context of my thesis; I will assemble a few such designerless designs to contrast with more the more willful creations of designers and engineers. 

Formative Complexity: Population Study

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.

Expression Animation: FORCE

Formative Complexity: Expressed Traits in Architectural Details

“The most important issue facing architects…is how to construct a viable, progressive project capable of incorporating the innovative design research of the past decades into a productive new model of practice. This would be a form of practice committed to public legibility, to the active engagement of new technologies, and to creative means of implementation. It would be an experimental practice that takes as its object not self-referential theories but real problems — the difficult moments when architecture takes its place in the world.” (Stan Allen, with Frampton + Foster, The New Architectural Pragmatism — Stocktaking, 117)

It is the claim of my thesis that the architectural detail contains embedded information about the cohort which produced it, clothed in the material realities inherent to architectural production; that organizational typologies have ramifications in the arenas of physical construction and material joinery; and that the progressive project Allen et. al. discuss might be fostered by uncovering and responding to the points of expressive failure observed in existing modes of practice.

I firmly believe that organizational trends, at their most virulent, threaten architecture’s ability to envision its resultant object, and so undermine the very utility of our profession. Certain formats estrange the architect entirely from the empirical realities of the material world; it is this remove which can render the design process destructively autonomous and ultimately unnecessary as other professions take on large parts of the architect’s work.

At the other extreme, I believe that the design firm could act as a highly reflexive reifying organism which reliably dampens and re-distributes what De Landa would refer to as friction --- that is, anything which “interferes with the implementation of a tactical or strategic plan” --- in such a way that the final object re-presents its genesis. A designed representation of the modern world’s structural complexity would render the networked reality of our lives in material tectonics.

Volatility // Culpability: Disruptive Friction and Organizational Formatting

[If a] system is dynamic there has to be the ability to exchange information all the time. At all scales data is fed through and transformed…what begins as a small set of instructions is multiplied into a complex web. (Balmond, 7)

Systemic responses to dynamic situations vary wildly. A working knowledge of which echelon within a regime is tasked with engaging mercurial realities fosters an understanding of how that organization might manifest these responses to volatility on the ground — take for example a column line undocumented in the as-built drawings provided a design team at the outset of a project. Manuel De Landa would term this discrepancy “friction,” anything which “interferes with the implementation of a tactical or strategic plan…’noisy data.’” (De Landa, 60) This friction could be impetus to shift the overlaid grid of new construction to a more harmonious abstract rhythm incorporating the surprise columns if discovered early and responded to by an architect. The same discovery by a trade partner after design documents are finalized and the project is under construction would create a localized, intensive and materially-dependent response; the difference between a strategic response and a logistical one, then, can be seen as a reification of hierarchically-driven separation of scope.

Each bullseye is an organizational typology; each colored ring a player or set of players within the same social arena. (A=Architect, S=Structural Engineer, M=Mechanical Engineer, GC=General Contractor, F=Facade Specialist, etc.)

Thesis Abstract

As you run your fingers over the surface of a rusted-out column, multivalent realities manifest themselves: first, the blobby amoeboid bloom of oxidization on the metal, speaking of an uneven sealing coat applied to the column, with rust forming first where paint was thin or the iron content of the steel below most assertive of its chemical realities. Next, the friable grittiness of the rough-finished surface, result of the flight of electrons from iron to oxygen, degrading iron to oxides and/or hydroxides which powder, flake and fail. You look up and notice rust around the bolts which, via inturned angles, connect the column web to the beam flange above; you reverse construct the joint, wonder at the organizational dynamics which created this detail — perhaps a welded joint would have necessitated an additional union contract, or the designer knew best the mode of light gauge steel framing and merely didn’t consider welding.

The world of materials is one rife with complex interactions and repeating rituals which give rise to the phenomena humans interact with on a daily basis. Volatility at all levels of engagement must be diffused or absorbed in flexible solution on the level of the mechanical connection. The formative complexities of the architectural field can often be typified by the material interactions an architecture engages; to explore the expression of these material machinations in the formal, representational, and organizational morphologies of the designed object is my thesis intent.