Update

Eight weeks along in the projects, we've had two interim crits (including the so-called thesis prep exam) and the projects have reshaped themselves to focus on one key societal issue within the context of an architectural design task specifying site and program. The semester has come to an end but with another crit scheduled for early January, there is not much time for putting one's feet up. Fortunately, the break does offer time for site visits, further data collection and the necessary reflection.

Vinod has zoomed in on a particular site along the Delhi railway corridor that offers the necessary ingredients to explore his ideas for improving social and economical conditions for the increasing slum population in a more concrete form, without necessarily loosing track of the broader idea targeting the entire railway corridor.

In targeting architectural adaptation to climate change, Lee Sian Chyun has identified Singapore's east coast as particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and is suggesting a combination of defense interventions (including dykes, storm breakers and mangrove forests) with floating modules that serve both a defense function and also as a refuge in case of a flooding disaster. At the same time, these modules may allow for self-sustaining settlements.

Tan Yong Shen will apply his exploration of customized joints in the context of design for disassembly to the site of the pit building of the Formula 1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix. Considering the limited time span this event may be held at the Marina Bay (the current agreement is for five years), the pit building is a perfect example of a limited life-span building that could benefit from a design for disassembly methodology. Rather than considering the current pit building as it has been designed and constructed, Yong Shen will redesign the pit building considering customized joints, then consider a second design, of a different program, on the same site to fully test his ideas.

Chin Qian Lyn is exploring the use coexistence of nature and resource degradation, in particular, the Pulau Semakau landfill of ashes from the waste incineration plants. The landfill, adjoining a nature reserve, will be completely full by 2045 and will be ready for a new function. Qian Lyn is addressing the question of what kind of a program can be achieved on a landfill of ashes, that relates to the adjoining nature reserve but takes into account the toxicity of the ashes and at the same time acts as a reminder of the origins of the landfill.

Cheong Grace in her project is addressing the relatively limited life-span of HDB housing (most or all of which are being demolished and replaced far before their technical end of life) and the trends identified by HDB relating to the composition of households. She has identified a number of different block types that she will explore and analyze with respect to a number of issues concerning flexibility and performance in order to identify block types that may yield longer life-spans.

Finally, Tony Wijaya is developing a large parametric model for a terminal (the intended fourth terminal) for the Soekarno-Hatta international airport near Jakarta to explore the potentials of minimizing the building footprint, selected issues of energy consumption and issues of performance with respect to passenger and airplane movements.

Start

We've gotten off to a good start with very interesting project proposals. In any order:

Tony Wijaya is aiming to plan and design an ecological airport, considering the Soekarno-Hatta international airport near Jakarta as case study. He's considering to focus on various resource flows, such as energy, water and waste, attempting both to reduce the ecological footprint and to improve the impact of an airport on its surroundings. Follow his project here.

Cheong Grace is looking at the impact of non-renewable material resources on the building industry. Do we need to consider restrictions on the use/quantities of specific building materials in the future. What kind of buildings would this lead to? Will we be building huts again? For sure, an interesting question. Follow her project here.

Chin Qian Lyn wants to remind us of the waste we are responsible of and the resulting landfill at Pulau Semakau in Singapore. She's considering the design of a structure that reflects on the growing landfill. 180 thousand tons of new landfill every year, mainly ashes from the incineration of waste! Follow her project here.

Tan Yong Shen will focus on generative building design. His dissertation on customized joints may just be the perfect starting point for this. Follow his project here.

Lee Sian Chyun is battling architecture of "agnotology." He's looking to learn from nature for architectural adaptation to climate change. What can we learn from wetland or mangrove to help us deal with increased flooding and preserve fresh water resources?

Finally, Vinod is hoping to find good use for the Delhi railway corridor running parallel to the ring road, in order to improve social and economical conditions for the increasing slum population. Spaces along the railway corridor that now act as voids or urban dead spaces disrupting the urban tissue, might be considered as potential grounds for strengthening the urban tissue, especially for the slum population. This, of course, is not an easy task to grapple with. Follow his project here.

About Generative Design

Generative systems offer a methodology and philosophy that view the world in terms of dynamic processes and their outcomes. In the terminology of Thomas Kuhn (1996), it offers a paradigm shift for the process of design and the expression of that process. For designers, it involves a reconsideration of the static artifact and the actions that manipulate it. Conceptualization shifts from the primacy of objects to envisaging interacting components, systems and processes, which in turn generate new artifacts, with special properties (outlined below). The generative methodology offers an unconventional way of conceptualizing and working in design. Research in generative systems is closely tied to the general concept of synthesis, most viscerally apparent in nature and natural systems. Nature has devised a specific mechanism for generalized synthesis, using the physical apparatus of DNA, protein synthesis and biochemistry. The diversity and adaptability of life on Earth demonstrates the potential of these mechanisms to overcome problems in design and to generate novelty and diversity from relatively simple units. The key properties of generative systems can be summarized as:
• The ability to generate complexity, many orders of magnitude greater than their specification. This is commonly referred to as database amplification, whereby interacting components of a given complexity generate aggregates of far greater behavioral and/or structural complexity. Such aggregates may in turn generate their own interactions forming new aggregates of even higher sophistication and complexity. This is referred to as a dynamic hierarchy. A poignant example being complex multi-cellular organisms, whose hierarchy can be summarized: atom; molecule; organelle; cell; organ; organism; ecosystem.
• The complex and interconnected relationship between organism and environment. Organisms not only evolve and adapt to their environment, their presence and number may effect and change the environment itself. Inter- and intra-species dependencies form a complex web of relations (an ecosystem), within which there are often many feedback loops. These systems are typically homeostatic. That is, they actively maintain their state in order to offset environmental changes. 
• The ability to self-maintain and self-repair. Human-designed structures are typically brittle either in a physical or functional sense. As stated above, generative systems may adapt themselves to maintain stable configurations within a changing environment. Swarm systems for example can overcome significant disruption and individual loss, reforming and adapting their behavioral function to survive. They exhibit fault-tolerance and have a high degree of internal redundancy, giving them the ability to overcome changes that would limit a more fragile design.
• The ability to generate novel structures, behaviors, outcomes or relationships. Novelty used in this sense means the quality of being new, original and different from anything else before it. There are of course, different degrees of novelty. RNA and DNA were novel in that they introduced a completely new mechanism for replication and encoding of protein synthesis. Artists and designers are always seeking novelty (the opposite of which is mimicry or copying, something depreciated in the art and design world). Artistic novelty may not have such a significant impact as, for example, DNA, but the key concept is that of the new — generative systems have the potential to give rise to genuinely new properties. This is why they are often referred to as emergent systems. These new properties typically fall outside the designer’s expectations or conceptualizations for the design, resulting in functionality or outcomes that were not anticipated. This of course raises the issue of control, a problematic issue for generative design, particularly if the designer is accustomed to organizing outcomes in a predictable way.

Jon McCormack, Alan Dorin and Troy Innocent, 2004

References

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Third Edition), University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill., 1996.

Jon McCormack, Alan Dorin and Troy Innocent, Generative Design: a paradigm for design research, in: J. Redmond, et. al. (eds), Proceedings of Futureground, Design Research Society, Melbourne, 2004.

About Performative Design

Development of new instruments and methods contribute to a new understanding of the way buildings are imagined, constructed and experienced. Due to recent developments in technology, cultural theory and the emergence of sustainability as a defining socio economic issue, there is an increasing interest in performance as an architectural design paradigm. The paradigmatic appeal of the performative in architecture lies precisely in the multiplicity of meanings associated with it; however, performance is still one of the least defined concepts in architecture.
Being performative is usually associated with sustainability and complex digital models analyzing the structural and environmental behavior of buildings. This limits performance to a merely technical interpretation. Performative architecture must also consider other aspects, because architecture has always performed socially, semantically, ideologically, and in a basic manner as a shelter (Hagan, 2008). Therefore, the question “what is architectural performance in the digital age” gains importance. Is this performance comparable to the performance of a machine or a theatrical performance (Leatherbarrow, 2005)? There is no single answer for this question because of the multiplicity of the meanings and connotations of the word performance. Determining different performative aspects in a particular project and reconciling conflicting performance goals in a creative and effective way are key challenges in performative architecture.
Performative architecture is considered here as the shift in the orientation of architectural theory and practice from what the building is to what it does. Therefore, it defines the architectural object, not by how it appears, but rather by its capability of affecting, transforming and doing; in other words, by how it performs. The aim of performative architecture is to prevent clashing ideas between the performance aspects by optimization methods. Optimization should not be limited to a technical interpretation. If performative architecture is limited to simulation and evaluation, then there will not be much difference between performative architecture and engineering. Performative architecture should have the capability to generate. It uses digital generation and modification to search for design alternatives. The generated emergent effects of the architecture (on nature, site, people, climate and time) are analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively in performative architecture.

 Canan Albayrak and Bige Tunçer, 2011

References
Canan Albayrak and Bige Tunçer, Performative architecture as a guideline for transformation, Respecting Fragile Places, Proceedings of the eCAADe 2011 Conference, 21-24 September 2011, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Susannah Hagan, Digitalia - Architecture and the Digital, the Environmental and the Avant- Garde, Routledge, 2008.
David Leatherbarrow, Architecture's Unscripted Performance, in: B. Kolarevic and A. M. Malkawi (eds.), Architecture Beyond Instrumentality, Spon Press, 2005, pp. 5-19.