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VISITNG PROFESSORS KARL CHU and ALEX LOYER HUGHES PRATT INSTITUTE, BROOKLYN, NY
Regardless of ideology and the imperatives of socio-political economy that governs the
production of architecture - of which cities are its momentous expressions, architecture, at the end of the day, is fundamentally concerned with the construction of possible worlds.With the convergence of computation and biogenetics in the latter part of the twentieth century, the world is gradually coming to witness a phase transition in the history of humanity. Unlike other paradigm shifts that have transformed the world in the past, this emerging phenomenon will usher in a new orientation, one that is destined to be simultaneously fantastic and perilous, of which we now have but a tiny glimpse of its possible manifestations in terms of evolutionary worlds to come. In other words, these brave new worlds will be ushered in by, among other things, a new modality in the construction of possible worlds: the implementation of the intrinsic logic of genetics, which lie at the kernel of the idea of instantiation or evolution. Along with the proliferation of transgenic food and related industries, the world is moving toward what many are now describing as the inevitable emergence of a Post-Human Era.
For architects the consequences are profound and far-reaching: the transformation of the conceptual foundation upon which architecture as a discipline is instigated without, until now, ever being subjected to the slightest need for interrogation with regard to its nature and, most significantly, the potential for the genesis of possible worlds contained in the very idea of architecture itself. Consequently, it entails a weakening if not, in hyperbolic terms, the eventual demise of the implicitly held notion that architecture is Man Written Large. The ultimate significance of this transition will be the opening up of a multitude of brave new worlds – each of which is not unlike that of a jungle - where multiple species co-exist within a symbiosis collectively constituted by a multi-faceted and multi-layered global culture that, at the level of the substrate, is now being produced, no doubt still at the stage of infancy, by the phenomenon of universal computation. In other words, the world will increasingly come to be understood as a form of planetary automata engendered by evolutionary computation.
Even though the sketch outlined above suggests a far wider approach needed to adequately address the idea of construction of possible worlds, or brave new worlds as they are framed in this context, the range and scope of the subject matter is undoubtedly huge, and far more extensive, dense and diverse than any single person or architect can deal with it effectively. Correspondingly, the agenda for the workshop will be far more restrictive and narrow but not less ambitious. We will therefore focus on the essential components of genetic systems that lie at the core of the logic of construction: the principles of self-replication, mutation and self-organization based on and derived from computation. As such, this will give insight to the nature of self-replicating systems that are fundamental to biological systems even though the premise of the studio is NOT predicated on the notion of biomimesis. The fundamental principles of genetic architecture are, relatively speaking, autonomous and they have more to do with the intrinsic nature and behavior of generative systems. The scripting procedures instituted in this workshop will propel students to experiment with rudimentary concepts of self-replication as medium and instrument for the generative construction of possible worlds.
Karl S Chu
fantastic blog
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http://row51.blogspot.com/