Algorithmic Architecture (2)

In addition to my previous post in this video made by Guiniture you actually see the software presenting different options based on fixed parameters.

And this video, placed on YouTube by the same user, you can clearly see an iteration from which eventually an optimum is formed.

Fascinating.

Future Design Office

Nokia provides us a possible view into the future.

Design on the spot. Will this become reality?

Design is invisible

These are the first two pages of Bruce Mau’s outstanding book Massive Change. The show a power line of which the towers collapsed under the weight of ice and snow. The book is a collection of innovative products, thoughts and systems that influence, or will influence, design.

Very inspirational. Higly recommended.

Redefining Architecture

Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas mentioned once he is driven by his sense of responsibility, which is a surprisingly traditional, because Calvinist, statement for this avant gardist. His sense of responsibility explains his continuous commitment to redefine the role of the architect. This came from an interview by Charlie Rose:

Any architectural enterprise takes at least 5 years. Today, in this economy, in this political system, globally, almost no ambition, and no coalition and no agreement lasts for more then 3 years. So there’s a painful discrepancy between the slowness of architecture and the constant turmoil with which everything moves and changes and mutates. (…) Maybe we could apply architectural thinking in its pure form without necessarily building.

This approach moved Koolhaas in founding AMO as a think tank counterpart of his architect’s office OMA. This comes from Wired:

What’s interesting about AMO is not that it will develop things that aren’t buildings, but that it will continue to work architecturally – to sell clients its analysis of the relationship between human behaviour, built structures and the invisible networks of commerce and culture.

Considering architecture is primarily an literally about housing processes (regarding our daily life as a process), architecture as Koolhaas describes it would be about shaping processes in whatever possible form. It would bring the work of the ‘hardware architects’ like Koolhaas closer to the work of the ‘software architects’ that we know from ICT. Moreover it would mean that everybody that is involved in management or policy, principally could be regarded as a designer (as Gilberto Gil does, see here and here).

This is not new. When architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) got involved with the cathedral of Florence, the Basilica of Santa Maria del Fiore, he did not just design the building. He designed the whole construction process. To this purpose he even designed construction devices that were so sophisticated that Leonardo da Vinci studied them thoroughly. In Brunelleschi’s view a cathedral in itself is not architecture. Building a cathedral is architecture.

It would be exciting to see what happens if we replace the polarized thinking that is so common in management and policy with design based thinking. Design considers contradicting factors as possibilities rather than obstacles. It aims to combine contradicting factors into a new design, the whole being more than the sum of its parts.

That would be progress.

Rem Koolhaas on AMO

“…What’s interesting about AMO is not that it will develop things that aren’t buildings, but that it will continue to work architecturally – to sell clients its analysis of the relationship between human behaviour, built structures and the invisible networks of commerce and culture…” – Rem Koolhaas, Architect

John Thackara on the architect

“We are in the middle of a transition to an economy in which services are more significant than stand-alone products. Can thing-based designers, or for that matter architects, make this transition too – or are they doomed to be left behind?” – John Thackara, Symposiarch

Doors of Perception

Manuel Castells on Information

Sociologist Manuel Castells stresses the importance of information management as the core of the contemporary creative process:

“The main process in this transition [from the industrial to the informational mode of development] is not the shift from goods to services but (…) the emerge of information processing as the core, fundamental activity conditioning the effectiveness and productivity of all processes of production, distribution, consumption and management.” – Manuel Castells, sociologist

An inside look at Google

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

Frank Gehry: Major Breakthrough

Sketches of Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry: Be Yourself