ARCH 400.00 Advanced Design Studio: Student : Rebecca Caillouet

the architecture of proto-cellular housing

The project is an experiment in genetic architecture. Specifically, it is the construction of an abstract model of cellular housing based on the aggregation of cells or proto-architectural units into a cohesive architectural morphology. As such, these projects have no functional program to work with apart from their formal development that addresses fundamental issues of formation, development and the resulting morphology or form that encapsulates a specific mode of spatial organization.

It is premised on the idea that Architecture is the discipline that is directly involved in the construction of possible worlds. Notwithstanding the fact that socio-political and economic forces within a given situation establish conditions of possibility for the construction of architecture in the first place, the manner in which architecture determines the organization of spatial configuration of buildings and cities are of paramount concern. Architecture therefore is endowed with certain responsibility that is at once internal as well as external to the discipline in relation to the cultural context of the time.

The very idea of construction entails technology required in the making and production of something. To a great extent, the architecture of any given period in history is enabled by technology that is grounded in material and theoretical substance available at the time. With the convergence of computation and bio-genetics in the last twenty years, which consequently has ushered in the new discipline of bioinformatics, the very concept of construction has been expanded. We are now witnessing the emergence of a new paradigm for the construction of architecture: genetic architecture that is based on the logic of self-replication. inspired by but not predicated upon the notion of biomimesis. In other words, genetic architecture is not an approach or direction that is predicated on the imitation of biological systems.

Even though the concept of genetic architecture is derived from biology initially, it has now taken on a purely logical or formal method of construction. The term gene entails a minimal unit of hereditary information, and, genetics is concerned with the propagation of hereditary information. As such, there is a formal dimension to these concepts especially in the light of computation. The crucial idea that enables the formal aspect is the concept of self-replication or self-reproduction.

The project for the studio therefore is the construction of a Proto-cellular Housing that is based on the logic of self-replication and mutation as well as on the potential for self-organization into an emergent or end morphology of architecture. As such, it aspires to be a conceptual model for the construction of cellular architecture. The closest analogy is that of a housing project, albeit one that is situated in between a theoretical / abstract model of the aggregation of cells or cluster of cells and an architectural model of a housing project, which typically contains a high degree of redundancy built into it. One of these challenges for genetic architecture, which obsessively deploys self-similar elements that are driven by genetic codes, is how the engagement of difference and repetition at the formal level can generate novelty at the level of architectural morphology.

ARCH 400.00 Advanced Design Studio

Saturday, May 2, 2009

5/1/09 karl chu studio final review

the architecture of proto-cellular housing

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