Category Archives: cybernetics
Morphogenetic Metaphors in Architecture – The Quixotic Contributions of Conrad Waddington
For historians and theorists interested in the intersection of biology and architecture, the work of the British developmental embryologist Conrad Waddington is the physical equivalent of a black hole; important, yet allusive – better known through its affects, than from … Continue reading
Architectural Cyborgs – Nanotechnology and the Potential for Living Architecture
The real destiny of the machine [is] to merge itself with natural organisms. - Jack Burnham, Beyond Modern Sculpture, 1968 Prelude: In 1928, R. Buckminster Fuller presented the design for his Dymaxion House to the American Institute of Architects (AIA) … Continue reading
Function Follows Form: Rethinking the ‘Function’ of ‘Form’ in Architecture
“[Life] is a property of form, not matter, a result of the organization of matter rather than something that inheres in the matter itself. - Christopher Langton, Artificial Life, p. 41 “There is… a well-defined difference between the magical and … Continue reading
Provocation 3: The Human Servomechanism
For the last several months, I have been researching the field of cybernetics in preparation for a thesis that I will be preparing throughout the course of the next academic year. At the current time, this research is admittedly broad, … Continue reading
Provocation 2: Resurrecting the Form Follows Function Bugbear
Disillusionment with the modernist techno-utopian, deterministic paradigm of architectural design, embodied most famously in the dictum, “Form Follows Function,” came quickly on the heals of modernity’s most aberrant manifestations – the atomic bomb and the systematic genocide of Nazi Germany. … Continue reading
Provocation 1: Data and Design
… it appears from Trobriand magic that these people continually exhibit a habit of thinking that to act as if a thing were so will make it so. In this sense, we may describe them as semi-Pavolovians who have decided … Continue reading
