The research is rooted in the work Gustav Theodor Fechner, who laid the foundations for an inductive aesthetic perspective by empiric experimental research, Vorschule der Ästhetik (1876). In 1933 George D. Birkhoff first proposed a quantifiable aesthetic value for simple shapes. Today we start to see the concept of Aesthetic Complexity finding its way into the discourse on aesthetics. It focuses on larger compositions of elements using a computational approach.

The ongoing research seeks to extend the findings by Guy Birkin on Aesthetic Complexity to a spatial architectural setting. Birkin proposes a framework for measuring visual complexity by correlating it with image compression. The transfer to a spatial domain in done by linking the perceived level of detail to the distance to between viewer and object.

There are possible links to be made to the findings of empirical aesthetics in music and literature by Menninghaus / Wald-Fuhrmann at the MPI for Empirical Aesthetic

The ongoing research was presented in a lecture at the Städelschule, January 14. 2016.

The full version of this article was published in SAC Journal 1. It discusses how postgraduate programmes like SAC have contributed over the last decade to an inclusive environment of architectural production that spans different offices, schools and even disciplines. In its dimension and use we can regard this environment as an operating system on which architectural design is run. It is on the verge of being the third pillar in architecture besides built work and theory. It does not promote any style or agenda. It is here to stay and evolve.

Undeniably we do not have to promote digital techniques any longer. They have arrived in everyday life and are here to stay. The current discourse on the post-digital emphasises this point. The notion of the post-digital could be summed up as the state of living in a world where the digital is accepted and commonplace. Nicholas Negroponte was right when he claimed the digital revolution already happened before the turn of the millennium.

Of all inventions in the digital realm it is the internet and its ability to network minds and hardware which have had the biggest impact so far. Today we experience a shift where singular hardware devices lose their importance to an ecosystem of synced and networked objects, exhibiting the tendency of the digital to link processes. The very same tendencies are also basis for new forms of collective co-creation.

What technology wants

One could marvel at or be suspicious of digital technologies, but there is simply no going back. Their effects keep unfolding, driven by the accumulation of data, the processing of information and the consolidation of knowledge. It is a laborious and creative effort made by individuals and collectives. The discoveries and inventions made are often already embedded in the very nature of technology. This is Kevin Kelly’s thesis, discussed in What Technology Wants, where he argues that technology develops along an inherent trajectory. Kelly points out that innovations like the internet are not chance discoveries or a stroke of genius but inevitable after the discovery and application of electricity by Bell, Edison and others in the late 19th century.

This goes for every technology. Our close relation to technology is bi-directional: As much as we have an urge to invent things, technology offers itself to be innovated on. The point is that someone who wants to partake in technological innovation has to find means to access one of the inherent trajectories of innovation. Now, since the act of designing can be defined as the state of being open to possibilities inherent to the subject at hand, design and innovation are two sides of the same coin. Only by uncovering and understanding these processes can one unleash their generative potential.

Operating systems

Along with the digital revolution an entirely new layer of technology was introduced: The operating system, a software layer that binds and manages all underlaying hardware as well as providing the interfaces for applications to run atop. These systems are mega technologies in themselves and probably the largest systems created by humans. The UNIX system alone, with all the sub-systems evolving out of it such as Linux, Mac OS X, and Google Chromium, is a vivid proof of this unprecedented scale in technology.

This was only made possible by the digital allowing collaborations in large quantities and providing the means to consolidate knowledge. This phenomenon is not exclusive to the traditional notion of operating systems managing low level hard- and software processes, it includes new forms of collective digital creation. Wikipedia and Python illustrate this communal effort of knowledge consolidation, compression and abstraction. This development also impacted on creative disciplines and art. Firstly on digital audio and secondly on digital imagery, causing fundamental changes to how we create, distribute and consume these media.

The OS of Architecture

Since the early 1990s, a parallel development to that described above, has taken place in architecture, resulting in the discipline’s very own operating system. This operating system consists of methods, concepts, processes and technologies – a framework in which contemporary architectural design happens. It includes CAD systems, script libraries, mathematical and geometrical concepts, bidirectional interfaces to engineering analysis, links to prototyping and fabrication technology. In contrast to the OS of computing devices, the OS of Architecture has not been masterminded or consciously led by a single individual or corporation but rather created through collective effort. In this ongoing development new “features” get prototyped, tested, integrated or rejected. For the first time in the history of architecture there is an entity that accumulates design knowledge outside the array of buildings, wisdom and theory. It does not even propagate a style. I would argue that, beside discourse and built work, the OS of Architecture has become a third pillar of the discipline where meaningful contributions to the larger architectural undertaking can be made.

The OS of Architecture is everything but a set of tools; we cannot simply confuse it with a traditional palette of pen, ruler, compass, French curves and spline weights. The main difference to a collection of tools is that all its features and elements are being hosted in the same medium, the digital. Thereby they can evolve, hybridise and interlink – much like in an ecosystem.

Since the pandoras box of digital design was opened in 1992 with the Paperless Studio at Columbia GSAPP, there have been some very successful academic programmes – be it the AADRL in London5, the ICD at TU Stuttgart 6 or the DFABARCH at the ETH Zurich, that have built upon the work and accomplishments at GSAPP. What these programmes have in common is a lack of method and curriculum regarding design education. Instead they have been built around the notion of design research where the analysis of any found phenomena is not primarily used to argue for a single designed object but to construct a system which has the generative capacity to provide a range of possible solutions. More importantly and concomitant to the multiplicity of solutions, it became widely accepted to work with design iterations by which the designed-candidates’ performance could be tested in specific environments. These feedback loops are the perfect example of a first order cybernetic model. At a larger scale it is exactly the same model which laid the foundations for an architectural OS.

The OS was created in a collective effort, initiated at academic programmes and soon after pursued in architectural practice, software development and new forms of publishing. This is still an ongoing process. Where previous periods in architecture were often defined by a vocabulary and repertoire of style, the current model works on the accumulation and consolidation of processes.

In the mid-1990s animation software was used experimentally in some graduate programmes, like the Paperless Studio at Columbia GSAPP, and by pioneers in practice. The reason this seemed more interesting than general purpose 3d CAD packages was that it allowed to set things in motion by inter-dependencies, thus controlling a relative complex outcome via a chain of cascading dependencies. Several mechanisms catered for this functionality, but at the core was a directed, acyclic graph – a computational concept where each object computes its state from object-specific input parameters received from other objects. It was clear that any further development could not do without bettering that computational concept. And so they came, parametric design applications like Generative Components, Grasshopper™ and Design Script, which utilise and expose the underlaying graph structure as the main interface of design. As these applications evolved, they also accumulated design knowledge. Navigating on a freeform surface and placing architectural elements in a meaningful manner onto it was once a technical challenge only to be mastered by scripting or programming the solution. This expertise got consolidated and now sits on the graphic user interface (GUI) of many design applications. Along with the sophistication of the applications’ core functionality came the ability to link internal processes to external applications, analytical methods and manufacturing devices.

The OS of Architecture is the sum of these developments: the techniques, methods, processes and most importantly the interconnection between all of them.

Style

A broad range of architectural agendas and paradigms run on the OS of Architecture. Its unifying nature includes positions from ‘Parametricism’ (Patrik Schumacher) or ‘digital Morphogenesis’ (Michael Hensel, Achim Menges) to biological paradigms (Alisa Andrasek, Francois Roche) and exuberant formalism (Hernan Diaz Alonso).

The fact that two such different practices as Foster & Partners (F&P) and Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) can run on the OS of Architecture proves that something bigger than style is at play. Both of these offices have altered their method of design dramatically over the last 10 years, embracing parametric techniques, programmatic problem solving and form generation as well as performance-driven design.

So, despite their historic differences, they have a lot more in common today than one expects at first glance. This commonality goes beyond simply employing the same technology of production, and it is well demonstrated by the fact that the shared technology comes closely associated with an inclusive discourse on architectural geometry, design scripting culture, digital craft and robotic fabrication. Practices apparently as different to one another as F&P and ZHA might even use the same sediment of architectural ideas such as the articulated single surface, obviously dressed up differently in the resulting buildings. Thus, the commonality notwithstanding, the actual artefacts of both practices remain distinct and in line with their respective agendas.

Patrik Schumacher has argued that we have entered a new era of architectural style, one that is not transitional but here to last. However and despite Schumacher advocating an emergent parametric style, the comparison of F&P and ZHA across the shared technology and expertise shows that style is not at the core of the new era. It rather comprises a new layer of technology and furthermore, following Kevin Kelly’s argument, it does not require a manifesto since it is driven along its own, inherent trajectory of development.

The third pillar

Much like the digital has become ubiquitous, the OS of Architecture is also all-pervasive. Even those who oppose its most extreme and stylistic design results, cannot withdraw from it. Unless one steps completely out in pursuit of a manual arts and crafts approach to design, it is very difficult to offer an alternative and relevant methodological model for contemporary architecture. As much as one sees the OS of Architecture responsible for a collapse of distinctions in practice as illustrated above with F&P and ZHA, this is not true for the discourse on architecture. The traditional architectural discourse and the one on the OS of Architecture are different and, till now, largely separate.

Insofar as the OS of Architecture is a pillar to the discipline, adding to the code base of architecture is an equally valid contribution to the architectural endeavour and the development of the discipline as realising buildings or publishing theory. This allows for new players to participate in very different ways than before. It is true for single handed efforts such as David Rutten’s development of Grasshopper™, corporate ventures like Gehry Technologies’ Digital Project™ or Gramazio & Kohler’s systematic introduction of robots to architecture. Furthermore, a few graduate programmes have emerged as great contributors too by pulling technology (animation software, subdivision surfaces, script libraries) into the design process, by developing new methods and consolidating proven ones (form-finding, agent systems, space syntax) and by creating project evidence of experimental methods.

• Mathematical Surfaces and Seriality
• Chaos, Complexity, Emergence
• Packing and Tiling
• Optimization
• Topology
• Datascapes and Multi-Dimensionality

Each article is carefully edited striving towards a consistent overall thesis rather than a simple collection of projects under the umbrella of mathematics.

Among these projects there are two in the Mathematical Surfaces and Seriality chapter Mirco Becker was involved in as a computational designer. Beijing International Airport by Foster and Partner and Abu Dhabi Airport by Kohn Pedersen Fox.

Two nested isosurfaces – Copyright by Mirco Becker

An isosurface is a three-dimensional representation of a constant value of a field function within a given volume. They are normally used in computer graphics to visualize data in fluid dynamics, medical imaging, geophysics, and meteorology. The advantage of isosurfaces is that they can represent all sorts of topologies. That makes them a perfect tool for modeling, branching, forking, and bifurcating objects with smooth transitions. As they work of a field function, the surface is implicit, the polygonization an approximation. This is a good base for coupling performance with precision. The task was to define a set of handles to change and model an isosurface. It had to happen through the modeling of the field function in a way that is rather intuitive but without giving up the precision one is used to have from standard NURBS/BREP modeling.

Joint detail generated with isosurfaces based on linear field emitters. Copyright by Mirco Becker

The paper shows how a modeling framework for isosurfaces is implemented as a plug-in for Bentley Systems Generative Components allowing an intuitive way of exploring design variations. The implementation is illustrated with a proof of concept showing a sketch design

Journal Article: Communicating Space(s) [24th eCAADe Conference Proceedings / ISBN 0-9541183-5-9] Volos (Greece) 6-9 September 2006, pp. 868-873 DOI: 2006_868

A German version of this article was originally published in Modulor 02/2010

The history of algorithmic thinking can be described as a parallel development to the history of ciphering, started in ancient times along with the invention of writing systems. This cultural skill goes beyond the encryption of text but was the initiator for the ongoing digitalisation of almost all aspects of today’s life – the use of microprocessors for complex actions, enormous databases and the changes in media and communication we are experiencing.

There are two streams in which the digital finds new forms. Firstly the transposition of existing analogue media in a digital format such as text, sound and image, and secondly the creation of new communication devices, which are only made possible by the very nature of the digital such as the database.

Two examples will demonstrate how these two methods change architecture, its creation and perception. The spatial installation Radiolara Project by Christian Troche is in every aspect true to the inherent logic of the digital. It involves all aspect form design to fabrication to construction and finally operation. The second, the design for the new Terminal of the Abu Dhabi Airport by KPF, demonstrates how digital means allows the synthesis of complex relations in a comprehensive and practical design environment.

Closely connected to digital thinking is the notion of algorithmic complexity (Kolmogorov complexity). It is a measure for the degree of structure in a dataset, i.e. to specify the distribution of points in 3d space. A set of 100 points with random distribution have to be determined by XYZ coordinates thus leading to 300 entries in a table in order to be fully described. 100 points with equal distance along an axis of a Cartesian coordinate system can be expressed in a compact formula stating the XYZ coordinates of the first point, the modulus – equal distance, and the total number, thus only requiring 5 entries in a table.

This degree of structure is not only of practical use but has aesthetic aspects too. We seemed to have developed a human condition to relate to order and patterns. In the biological as well as in physical phenomenology we discover patterns, which could be described by algorithmically. They manifest themselves in various degree of order as in snowflakes, inflorescences, fur patterns, or dunes formations.

Digital design always deals with the description of order. Either these orders are given algorithmically or one has to find the next best algorithm to match the desired result. The Radiolaria Project is based on the patterned skeleton of radiolaria organisms, the design for the Abu Dhabi Airport looks out for algorithmic methods to capture design intentions and project constraints.

Radiolaria Project – Emergent Order

The Radiolaria Project by Christian Troche was developed, as part of his dissertation thesis. It is a piece of design research that covers the continuous nature of the digital. It employs methods form physics, biology and mathematics for form generation.

Design Surface

The design surfaces are created as minimal surfaces, only by defining their edge conditions. Minimal surfaces behave like soap film, spanning in an optimal fashion between edges or geometrically speaking the two principal curvatures cancel each other out in every single point resulting zero mean curvature. Frei Otto (Munich Olympic Stadium) discovered their properties for architectural applications by physical models in the 1960s. Only recently these methods are available computationally. This is not necessarily down to the algorithms which are know quite a while but mainly to the available computing power to simulate in real-time on personal computers, thus allowing a design dialogue and constant optimization of the result.

The main objective of the research was to find a system for structuring free form surfaces by linear members and 3-sided nodes. An algorithm was developed which tiled the surface in hexagonal and pentagonal shapes. Such network was generated on the design surface guided by the local principal curvatures. The overall pattern emerged form these local properties.

A parametric connection detail was developed which could be manufactured on a 3-axis CNC router. The three incoming members can each vary in two axes resulting in 6 degrees of freedom for each node, consequently each joint and member in the system could be unique. This extreme variation does not lead to an overall complication as the programmatic enumeration provides for precise identification of each member. Instead of standardising the elements the production process is standardized. The paradigm shifts form a modular system to morphological system. This is similar to the leaves of a tree, all having the same predisposition but forming differently by responding to location, season, and orientation.

Node detail, LED Installation

The joints were manufactured from their inherent parametric definition directly off the design dataset. The length of each member was plotter along with its ID to a spreadsheet and cut to size. The erection was done without plan or instructions, as it was only a matter of connecting pieces according to the labelling. The overall form shaped up effortlessly simply by connecting all pieces.

In a last step an LED was placed in each joint and all wired to a microprocessor. This created a visual play of light. Again, only the enumeration of the LEDs allowed the choreography of animated light patterns.

Abu Dhabi Airport – Finding Order

KPF won the international competition for the extension of the Abu Dhabi Airport in 2006. The design is not only convincing in how it resolves the functional and formal brief but mainly by proposing a process which integrates the different criteria algorithmically and putting them into computable dependencies. This new combination of design flexibility and control is the core of the process and makes the project unique. It allowed not only responding to all aspects during the design phase but also simulating scenarios which where outside the initial brief.

Airport Abu Dhabi, KPF

The ambition to become the main airport hub at the gulf lead to the extension of the existing airport in Abu Dhabi by building a second runway and planning a new terminal with 46 gates, all under one roof. The X topology is a direct result of the number and types of gates of the projected fleet mix. The distortion of the ideal X figure negotiates the maximum key-length for planes to park, minimal walking distance, optimal area efficiency, and connection to the existing infrastructure. The parametric model was build by implementing a constraint solver that solved for geometric dependencies of points, lines, arcs and all their parameters. At each instance all constraints were satisfied and a list of reporting metrics generated. The art of setting up these models lies in balancing constraints and freedom to solve for a solution and future optimization.

The building envelope is defined by 10 sections, which are blended by a periodic smoothing function. Only the position and the path along the plan outline of the building are defined. From this setup an infinitesimal number of steps between defined sections can be calculated. These dependencies allow controlling a rather large and articulate overall form with ease and precision.

Periodic Transitions

Both methods of working provide for a dialogue where a system is created that allows for control and change. The interplay of dependencies creates at every moment in time a coherent result. The designer’s interaction with the result is not a direct one, it is mediated by the system and only experimentation will enlighten him on how to steer towards a desired outcome.

The Radiolaria Project is more radical in being solely based on algorithmic principles from the bottom up. The Abu Dhabi Airport is about the search for matching algorithms that suit the performative and formal desires and negotiate the balance between different criteria.

As different as these to methods are they both employ the same principles. This does not lead to a new artificiality. Both projects demonstrate that the digital is developed enough today and used a Lingua Franca so synthetic and generative aspects equally contribute to shape our environment. We are just starting to see the potential and especially the search for specific algorithms demonstrates that the digital is an independent medium as defined by McLuhan.

At the moment we are witnessing a series of buildings that are governed by a new sense of the natural, which is not necessarily based on form or aesthetics but generated form relations to the environment, which have been already established in the design generation process, like shown in the two examples – mainly by algorithm means.

This method of design-thinking is based on processes and systems and will help to find answerers which are addressing complex systems much better than all mechanistic and hierarchical approaches which have dominated design, engineering and construction in the past.

The issue of Modular was geuestedited by Rafael Schmidt

Radiolaria Project by Christian Troche

Abu Dhabi Airport by KPF

by Mirco Becker

The last decade has seen major shifts in architectural design processes. These were mainly of computational nature and have lead to some spectacular buildings which often mastered complexity convincingly. The appealing aspects of these projects are mostly formal and have triggered an array of innovations in fabrication, construction, and use of material. Beyond the design and production of buildings the digital aspects of daily use and performance of buildings seem still underutilized – offering opportunities for innovation.

There might be some clues in the evolution of a once very special, now almost unthinkable to go without, product – the mobile phone.

What do you remember about your first mobile phone? Its design, how much you paid for it, the way your communication behaviour started to change? It was probably everything but handy, but you were somewhat excited about it.

Since then the technical development moved forward quickly. It now includes touch-screens, cameras, GPS, motion sensors, mobile internet. The true leap is not so much the addition of these new features but most importantly that these can be linked and mashed-up in any imaginable combination, programmed, and distributed as apps.

With the iPhone the hardware has found a neutrally slick form and the emphasis shifted from looks to interaction through touch and motion. Rather than a dedicated device with specific dials, buttons, and sliders it comes as a plain canvas open to hold all desirable applications.

So what does this episode of technology history tell us about the design and use of buildings? Most people agree that architecture is not just an appliance. They would consider it as a part of our environment along with landscape and climate. But maybe these categories don’t hold any longer? Wireless networks and micro processors are such an integral part of our daily life so they could be accounted as part of our environment as well such as any other infrastructure – and the boundaries between appliances and environment start to blur after all.

If we look back half a century Mies’ Seagram Building marks the pinnacle of modernism which claimed to enable all sorts of uses through plain spatial arrangement and slick facade design. Today’s digital avant-garde argue for specificity, differentiation and hyper-articulation. Their design results in stunning envelopes and new topologies but still is operating on Miesean territory of space and appearance. These expressive forms remind of the design-laden mobiles from Nokia’s “Matrix” to Motorola’s “Razor” which suggested novelty by appearance.

Digital technology could go far beyond providing the tooling for designing and fabricating superficial surface articulation or novel spatial arrangement. Buildings are already networked entities with sensors and actuators but mostly running on closed circuits parallel next to each other. It takes very little to make the leap and link them up, synthesizing multiple devices into a larger whole and start to choreograph them.

The innovative aspect would be less about form or functionality but more about the possibility to load and develop new links and services. A couple of cameras could set up a spatial self-awareness of a building, tracing the use, reading crowd and body gestures. New occupation patterns would be possibly if building elements could give the users real-time clues as how to navigate.

This passes the act of inventing over to the user community and certainly goes beyond mere background customization. It promotes designing and using buildings as processing units where the user can script the performance and ambient behaviour. Thus enabling a new engagement and playful interaction with the environment.