Engineering Ecologies

Engineering disciplines have, historically, been strongly dominated by physics. Structural and civil engineering are still based on the notion of controlling the forces of physics within our material world. However, a shift from physics to biology as the underlying paradigm of engineering is on the horizon, and with it a fundamental change in the way we conceive and practise architecture. Peter Trummer speculates on the possibilities and potential repercussions of ‘engineering ecologies’, which will be inherent to such a paradigm shift, by investigating a broad palette of contemporary design disciplines aimed at the careful modulation of environments and ecologies. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dancing with Entropy

Finding inspiration and drive in the chaos and fragmentation of today's world, Adriaan Geuze and Matthew Skjonsberg of West 8 have developed an approach that they refer to as ‘radical contextualism’. This requires not only a respect for reality and existing conditions, but also an openness to multiple layers of meaning and a wide variety of inputs, whether historic, cultural, anecdotal or even random. Giving themselves over to evolutionary entropy, they work with ingenuity with whatever they encounter.     

Designing for Disassembly (DfD)

The redundancy of existing buildings that leads to demolition and the unnecessary disposal of structures and their parts is one of the most challenging aspects of the current construction industry. This large-scale problem of obsolescence leads to the squandering of existing materials and resources on a massive scale. Here Elma Durmisevic and Ken Yeang advocate a means by which disassembly can be designed into buildings from the outset. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Austeria: City of Minimum Consumption

If a new stringency with economic and material resources is to become a new way of life, how should austerity be recast as a positive force rather than a negative imposition? Daliana Suryawinata and Winy Maas look at definitions of austerity and describes the Austeria project at The Why Factory at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) that looked at new models for combating excessive consumption, such as the ‘Zen road to affluence’.     

The Young Sensualists

Pino Scaglione perceives a new sensuality at play in Italy. He takes us on a tour that takes in the elegant and sober forms of +Arch's new headquarters for Dolce & Gabbana in Milan and the highly original new soccer stadium in Siena by Iotti + Pavarani. Heading south he highlights some remarkable new architecture in Naples, Sardinia and Sicily injected with a rare poetic sensibility. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Prosthetic Mythologies

The forest wilderness of Kielder in Northumbria is one ofEngland's remotest areas. Sharing an ecology similar to much of northern Scandinavia, Alaska and Canada, it shares none of its native culture or folklore. Only planted in the 1920s, the conifer forests are relatively recent - a graft on the natural landscape. Kate Davies and Emmanuel Vercruysse of LIQUID FACTORY describe how their site-specific performance piece sought out the psychological power of the forest, embuing it with ‘Prosthetic Mythologies’. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Everything We Need: Scarcity,Scale, Hyperobjects

Scarcity as a concept places an emphasis on limits and the restrictions that there might be on the supply of resources, energy and materials. Timothy Morton, who is Professor of English at the University of California, Davis, and has written extensively on philosophy and ecology, among other subjects, questions philosophically this emphasis on limits and the contemporary tendency to need to quantify everything around us. He urges us to ‘look beyond those artificial boundaries’ and ‘find abundance’.     

Navigating the Computational Turn

UNStudio has developed its own practice model for connecting colleagues and collaborators and sharing accumulated knowledge and techniques: the ‘Knowledge Platform’. Ben van Berkel with members from the UNStudio Smart Parameter Platform describe three projects at very different scales - the Burnham Pavilion in Chicago (2009), Raffles City in Hangzhou, China (2011) and Arnhem Central (2012) - that encapsulate UNStudio's working methods and approach to computational processes.     

What Are You Looking At?

There is a rebirth of interest in anamorphic perspective - that erudite artistic trick that allows one to represent different points of view in a single plane or view. Neil Spiller sees a new future for this arcane spatial practice that enables objects to dissolve their muteness. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Recyclicity: A Toolbox for Resource-Based Design

Architect Jan Jongert, urban ecologist Nels Nelson and chemical engineer Fabienne Goosens of 2012Architecten are all part of a shifting cast of specialists, undertaking research and design in this Rotterdam-based practice. Here they describe how a focus on recycling has led them to develop research tools, such as harvest maps, urban metabolism studies, material flow analyses and Sankey diagrams. These provide essential information for designers. Harvest maps, for instance, enable them to locate locally available recyclable materials and resources. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Radical Sources of Design Engineering

The German architect and structural engineer, Werner Sobek is internationally renowned for his expertise in lightweight structures - an approach that is epitomised by the dramatic elegance of his glazed House R128. Here, Sobek explains how his practice has extended a highly specialised focus on ultra-lightweight facades to that of building structures, facade planning, and sustainable and low-energy solutions, interweaving research and innovation with design and consultancy work. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Computatonal Intelligence: The Grid as a Post-Human Network

Research and design collaborative EZCT Architecture & Design Research has adopted grid computing to produce a series of furniture systems and other small-scale prototypes using genetic algorithms in combination with automated fabrication technologies. Here, cofounder Philippe Morel relates this design practice to the broader technical and social implications of various grid-computing projects, such as the online organisation Folding@Home, which utilises grid computing and distributed communities for the production and exchange of postindustrial knowledge. He argues that these ‘knowledge farms’ which create an ‘ambient factory’, are perhaps the ultimate form of social-economic production, transforming not only the evolution of design but of the communities that produce and eventually consume its products. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Planning by Parameters

With increasing pressure on available land for development, planning parameters continue to intensify. Since the early 1990s, such constraints on urban sites have provided a significant focus for MRVDV's design and research. The practice has worked on the creation of interactive software that enables designers to interact with the limits and opportunities highlighted by the visualisation and evaluation of these parameters. Jeroen Zuidgeest and Sanne van der Burgh of MVRDV and Bas Kalmeyer of think tank The Why Factory describe how parametric models are now being applied, leading the way to a whole new generation of open-source planning tools.     

Camouflage as Aesthetic Sustainability

A textile approach to architecture offers unique opportunities to explore a structure's surface and texture. Through a discussion of the history of the technique of camouflage and her own projects with Design Research and Development (DR_D), Dagmar Richter demonstrates the potential for surface enrichment to exceed mere ornament or patterning. A ‘performative texture’, camouflage interacts with its context mimicking the natural and effectively disguising whatever it covers. With a now long military association, camouflage also provides anything but a neutral background for its cover. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp (FJMT)

The output of FJMT varies greatly in scale and location. The practice has completed community schemes in Sydney's suburbs as well as accommodation for prestigious institutions in the city centre. It has adapted existing structures on heritage sites as well as producing high-tech newbuilds. As Fleur Watson and Martyn Hook explain, what FJMT's projects have in common is an unwavering commitment to the enhancement of the public realm. The firm embraces the full responsibility of building in the sensitive urban and topographic context of this harbour city with its ridges and coastal inlets. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Instinctive Sense of Space and Boundary

Petra Blaisse of Inside Outside describes how the studio focuses on the boundary of interior and exterior space, adding and subtracting highly tactile and sensuous layers. She highlights the significance of the invisible to her work - whether light, scent or texture - and how the future of design will be opening the way to ‘the sheer biology of things’. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Radical Experimentation As Research: AVATAR

For four years, AVATAR at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London has been advancing the ‘digital and visceral terrain’. As its main exponent, Neil Spiller explains how its preoccupations fan out far beyond the merely technological, encompassing the aesthetic, philosophical and the natural, enabling it to question current stylistic tyrannies in architecture. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Local Climates of the City

A specialist in urban effects on climate, particularly the heat island effect, Iain D Stewart is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Here he describes how the emergence of ‘borderless’, ‘patchwork’ and ‘polynucleated’ cities has led climatologists to develop a new classification system of urban landscapes. The system divides cities into local climate zones (LCZs) according to their surface structure, cover, fabric and metabolism.