Emergent Architecture

Experimentally creating a architecture from emergent phenomenon. Coursework for [In]Arch Advanced advised by Keith Plymale and Mei-Lan Tan .

Emergent systems

The goal of the course was to research novel ways of arriving to architectural forms. I was interested in the phenomenon of emergence. A process entirely different from conscious design, it is responsible for the majority of forms in nature and arguably in the built environment. I considered emergence to be the creation of new forms emerging from the interactions between elements that affect one another. This occurs at a scale smaller than the one in which the new form emerges. Consequently, I set out to create a system that might produce emergent forms, following three constraints: - The system must be made up of many individual elements - Each element must affect the other elements in the system - It must start as a collage in paper

To make a simple emergent system to study, I cut many individual elements of cardstock. String between elements makes each element affect the other in the system when moved.

I made many of these systems until I started seeing new forms emerge. Each iteration varied the size of the elements, the length of the string, the number of elements in the system and the background on which they moved.

Capturing New Forms

The creation of each new system was informed by my attempts to try and capture new arising forms. I used physical and digital processes as a means to record them. I also wanted to explore projection of these new forms from two to three and four dimensions (x, y, z and time) to arrive at architectural space. To do this practically, I used spray-painting, printmaking and digital sampling.

I started noticing that I could use animation and change through time to create new forms.

The animation could be sampled digitally to create a new 3 dimensional form by stacking each frame of the animation. I wanted to capture the new spaces that where formed as the elements blocked the grid behind them.

Scanning, Site and Space

From the resulting geometry would emerge architectural forms.