GEORGE KATODRYTIS / STUDIONOVA ARCHITECTS :: article :: NEWS :: Texts on PROCESS and FORM :: Emerging Morpho(eco)logies presentation at the Museum of Modern Art in Tehran

George presented at the International Conference on Patterning from Traditional to Contemporary Architecture, 16 October 2007, Tehran, Iran. The Conference took place at the Museum of Modern Art in Tehran.

Emerging Morpho(eco)logies
(Performative systems / Adaptive and mimetic space / Digital and evolutionary process)

The architecture of morpho(eco)logies and its design process is based on the idea that energy and environment is a dynamic and performative system of operations, forms, materials and programs which through self organizational and modulating processes can provide optimized solutions to complex and diverse problems. The design of such evolutionary and dynamic space can be generated by digital algorithmic methods. These methodologies can tackle the problem of sustainability.

Energy and most natural phenomena is an adaptive and self-sufficient process that achieves and maintains survival and optimization without external control. The research and design of such morpho(eco)logical systems engage the examination of physical systems in relation to their capacity to modulate climates, as well as space and program.

Architecture, in order to be sustainable can now imitate processes in nature. It becomes dynamic and adaptive and therefore it gains organic features. The boundaries between organic and inorganic are blurred. The body itself is invaded and reshaped by technology.

Environmental mimesis is a means for survival and performance. Animals are seen as perfecting mimicry (adaptation to their surroundings with the intent to deceive their pursuer) as a means of survival. By means of the mimetic impulse, the living being equates itself with objects in its surroundings. This holds the key to exploring the question of how human situate themselves within their environment.

Evolutionary systems require new conceptual and as well as technological inventiveness. Used as design tools, the new techniques of digital technology allow the modeling of forms as dynamic fields with forces and vectors. These interactive fields create the formation and subsequent deformation of the modeled space. These can be flows of people and vehicles, as well as the direction of sun and wind, new programmatic “attractors” and “repulsors”, etc. Such systems may exist as an extraordinary mixture of geography, climate, economics, demography, mechanics and culture that are understood as a whole.

One technique by which mimesis is constructed is by algorithms that are programmed to execute a series of mimetic tasks. Genetic algorithms constitute a class of search algorithms especially suited to solving complex optimization problems. Through its use the algorithm architectural notation has become operational: to design the choreographing of the transformation process. The architectural object is transformed into event and performance.

The architect now becomes a constructor of formal systems than static spaces. This new condition gives architecture an “autopoiesis”, similar to biological dynamics. As such, architecture may become – paradoxically – rigorous yet more uncanny and introverted.

By using scripting languages it is possible to create forms through methods analogous to the evolution of intelligent life: emergent behavior and self-organizing systems. It pursues various methods through which the role of the designer can shift from “space programming” to “programming space”.

As an example the Architecture of Morpho(eco)ecologies is an ‘autonomous’ settlement project that is flexible, adaptive and inventive in its response to environmental conditions. It forms the beginnings of a “necklace” of settlements arranged in a linear coastal pattern – along the Persian Gulf – that could suggest merging growth dynamics that in the future could form a continuous mega city.

above: Dynamic Field by George Katodrytis / StudioNova Architects

above: Mel Scripting by George Katodrytis / StudioNova Architects

above by Barrak (George’s Studio)

images above: Parametric Scripting by George Katodrytis / StudioNova Architects

above: Project by George Katodrytis / StudioNova Architects with Khalid Al Najjar

above: Project by George Katodrytis / StudioNova Architects

above: Project by George Katodrytis / StudioNova Architects

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