Open Form Architecture Blog

In 2006, I par­ti­ci­pa­ted at the NKS Sum­mer School, which was a de­fi­ning ex­pe­rience. The to­pic of my re­search was THE SPACE BETWEEN THE CELLULAR AUTOMATA: Re­wor­king the Spa­tial Di­vi­sion in Archi­tec­ture. Du­ring the last year, I con­ti­nued to ex­plore this idea and used it in va­rious in­ter­na­tio­nal archi­tec­tu­ral com­pe­ti­tions en­tries, such as the Plan-Less House (Ja­pan) and The Stockholm Li­brary (Sweden).This sum­mer, I will par­ti­ci­pate for a se­cond time to the NKS Sum­mer School at the Uni­ver­sity of Ver­mont, Bur­ling­ton, Vt. Du­ring this year’s pro­gram I will ad­vance my re­search by ex­plo­ring Net­work Struc­tu­res in architecture.

As Ste­ven Wol­fram ar­gues, “Space is a giant net­work of no­des” we see that, as op­po­sed to the me­tro­po­li­ses of the twen­tieth cen­tury, con­tem­po­rary so­ciety pro­du­ces Net­works of Ci­ties. These ci­ties work si­mul­ta­neously on their in­ter­nal re­no­va­tion, inc­rea­sing their ef­fi­ciency from within, while they or­ga­nize them­sel­ves te­rri­to­rially in the form of a NETWORK OF CITIES.

From this pro­cess, an archi­tect can ques­tion the struc­tu­res, mo­du­les, ru­les and plans of mo­dern spa­ces. To­day, archi­tec­ture could be un­ders­tood more as a cir­cuit of dy­na­mic mo­ve­ments and events – as a Net­work — ins­tead of a re­gu­lar and con­ti­nuous space. In this con­text, re­search on the net­work sys­tems can serve as abs­tract dia­grams to pro­duce new mo­dels of or­ga­ni­za­tion — since or­ga­ni­za­tion im­plies both pro­gram and its dis­tri­bu­tion in space — and to ex­plain or cla­rify forms, struc­tu­res and pro­grams for architects.

Thus, net­works can be used to ge­ne­rate open ma­tri­ces rather than clo­sed mo­dels. In an archi­tec­tu­ral con­text, the node, ins­tead of ans­we­ring to a grid can trace an elas­tic path and win­ding cir­cuit or tra­jec­tory ca­pa­ble of ar­ti­cu­la­ting mo­bi­lity and pro­gram. As Wol­fram af­fir­med, “The pro­per­ties of the Net­work Sys­tems de­pend only on the way in which the node are con­nec­ted to­gether, and not on a spe­ci­fic la­yout.” Es­sen­tially, the po­si­tions of the no­des have no fun­da­men­tal sig­ni­fi­cance. These dy­na­mic sys­tems re­pre­sent — th­rough com­bi­na­tions of pos­si­bi­li­ties – po­ten­tial re­la­tionships among the ele­ments; an open dis­po­si­tion, but also a lo­gics of de­ci­sion. For a de­sig­ner or archi­tect the Net­work sys­tems sym­bo­lize a mo­del for a new pos­si­ble archi­tec­ture which inc­lu­des both for­mal and pro­gram­ma­tic configurations.

Ma­nuel Gausa wrote that: “If, in its day, mo­dern space meant the shift from the idea of com­po­si­tion – as re­gu­la­tion – to that of po­si­tion – as co­rre­la­tion – to­day, con­tem­po­rary space means the shift from the idea of po­si­tion to that of dis­po­si­tion – as an ope­ra­tive de­ci­sion, but also as the pos­si­ble in­de­ter­mi­nate com­bi­na­tion (and dis­tri­bu­tion) of po­si­tion and/or la­yers of information.”

Du­ring the first half of the Sum­mer School, I pro­pose to in­ves­ti­gate the pat­tern of con­nec­tion and the evo­lu­tion of two di­men­sio­nal net­work sys­tems cou­pled with the evo­lu­tion of two di­men­sio­nal ce­llu­lar au­to­mata. The idea would be to place one or se­ve­ral — si­mi­lar or con­tras­ting — net­works in each cell of a ce­llu­lar au­to­mata struc­ture. Thus, the evo­lu­tion of a net­work will not only de­pend on the num­ber of dis­tinct no­des, but also on its po­si­tion within each cell of a CA struc­ture. This con­cept would be pushed, in the se­cond half of the pro­gram, in the third di­men­sion in or­der to de­ve­lop mo­dels that are clo­ser to the spa­tial pro­per­ties of architecture.

I be­lieve that this idea of position-disposition can pro­duce a new or­der and a more elas­tic lo­gic bet­ter adap­ted to the con­tem­po­rary en­vi­ron­ment. Mo­reo­ver, I sus­pect that the net­works com­bi­ned with the CA can be used to desc­ribe new struc­tu­ring prin­ci­pals for a new kind of archi­tec­tu­ral space. Net­works can form a new te­rri­tory and pro­voke a pro­found change in the way archi­tects ima­gine buil­dings and ci­ties. Tra­di­tio­nally, struc­ture was un­ders­tood as a sta­tic arran­ge­ment, but to­day the mea­ning of struc­ture is mo­bile and non hie­rarchi­cal. Like the archi­tect Sal­va­dor Pe­rez Arroyo desc­ri­bes: “We have grown up in a world of ri­gid con­tai­ners while the na­tu­ral uni­verse is ba­sed upon fle­xi­bi­lity and mu­ta­tion. We are su­rroun­ded by mo­bi­lity and trans­for­ma­tion, struc­ture and archi­tec­ture should fo­llow this reality.”