From the start, Walter Thomas Brooks has regarded each building as an experiment.
“Each building has a principle behind it, usually related to organic or natural form,” Brooks says.
- Imagine how wonderful life was in the 1980s: clients couldn't go online and "help" by researching cheaper "green" materials. 21 hrs ago
January 27th, 2009 at 12:39
If you would like to see more of Brooks’ architecture, check out http://www.walterthomasbrooks.com
January 28th, 2009 at 11:22
Searching for the Genetic Code of an Architecture….
The idea that an Architecture, could, like the
natural organism, design itself, may appear to be a highly presumptuous assumption. For although organisms like the shell do appear to construct themselves in a sort of a “deliberate”,“pre-determined” manner, what one doesn’t observe is the long term process which was needed to set this growth in motion, of the generations of code building necessary to establish this “so determined” shell construction process. Because for that shell, it is “Time” which has already set the genetic, the “theme” of its eventual form, and although that theme can be disturbed, even mutated, by the environment which surrounds it, for the majority of species the process will continue through its inner coding system, on its seemingly predetermined course. Nevertheless, it is the genetic that does the work.
The same can be said of an architecture. The greatest influences on an eventual architectural form happen in the earliest moments of that structure’s conception process, not only the establishment of its “theme’, but the parameters which limit the arrangements of its parts. These early moments of the design process are, in every sense of the word, “genetic”. For once that Genetic has been set, the design can be a highly deliberate process, one accreted, like the shell, by slow tedious incremental adjustment of the structure to its environment. But it is the architectural DNA which guides the boundaries of those incremental adjustments, suggesting that the most significant aspect of any architecture will be established by the postulates of its genetic code. It architecture, this is rightly called the “Conceptual” process.
Perhaps the best way to arrive at a “Genetic” base for an architecture would be through the observation and understanding of some of the mechanisms which Nature has used through time to guide the forms of organisms. Just for a moment let us think about how the natural process works based on observations, many of them taken from Darwin’s “Origins”.
1. An organism’s growth is determined by a
“guiding principle”.
2. Mere quantity does not insure existence.
3. The greatest amount of life can be supported by
the greatest divergence of structure, not by the
greatest number of structures.
4. Sometimes the most significant organism can be
shaped with the accumulation of small
discontinuous mutations.
5. The best structure is determined by
improvements through time.
6. Organisms in Nature grow from the inside out!
7. The best Selection Procedure is the one that
considers only the variation that is beneficial to
the total organism.
8. Death and Decay are part of the Creative
Process. It is called “Regeneration”
9. There is beauty in decay, just as there is beauty
in birth. They are connected. Until one can
find beauty in the compost heap or the dung
pile, one cannot truly understand Nature.
10. Ninety-degree angles and straight line occur
in Nature in relatively small numbers.
11. It is the natural selection process which allows
variations to accumulate.
12. Isolation can sometimes be important if an
organism seeks change.
13. Variety is the true measure of excellence
whereas complexity is not.
14. The better solution survives and procreates.
15. Simple Mechanisms can produce results more
complex than their starting conditions.
Complexity can be formed within simple
Rules (Wolfram)
16. Asymmetry is a higher form of order than
Symmetry but harder to achieve.
Before a natural architecture can be generated, a genetic code must be in place, one constructed through the observation of those postulates and principles which will best generate its form
17. When symmetry is eliminated, complexity
appears but Nature always attempt
July 28th, 2010 at 13:35
Undergroundhouses.com
October 28th, 2010 at 12:10
“Be able to read blueprints, diagrams, floorplans, and other diagrams used in the construction process.” – Marilyn vos Savant