Resonating Spaces
1.Introduction
Since early ages man has used intermediary tools to interact with his context: the stone, diligently sculpted became a blade and allowed man to open fruits with a hard surface, to protect himself, to hunt animals. We got used to deploy mechanical or electronic means to shape our environment according to our needs. Due to this attitude our ecosystem has continued to suffer from human intervention and manipulation, mostly beneficial only to our own species. We persistently have constructed devices which gave us the illusion of evolutionary progress, whilst the technological lifespan of the objects we have created is very short, continously increasing an already huge amount of civilization waste. Traditionally we have been educated to generate static functional spaces, which preserve and protect us against external conditions. The ignorant exploitation of natural resources has induced a progressive weakening of our collective consiousness. Since a few decades progressive scientific research projects are achieving extraordinary results regarding the integration of man and its environment. We, as human species, are slowly understanding the necessity and advantages of a more harmonious coexistance with our environment. Interdisciplinary reserach is contributing to a more intelligent and organic evolution, creating organic-sintetic mechanisms that are able to adapt to, integrate and balance the needs and constraints of both men and the sourrounding context. Our collective consiousness is growing in line with ever increasing interconnectivity, through the web, social networks and related technological devices. Accordingly the quest for organic interaction with space can be put forward.
2.The Project
In the infinite spiral line which links the entire universe to single atoms, between man and nature, a part seems to be missing. The aim of this project is to give birth to an intelligent organic space, which reconciles the constraints of the inhabitant and its sourroundings, linking humans and nature in a consequent way. A space able to perceive and react on the vibratory frequencies of its visitors/inhabitants without the necessity of any intermediary tools will be constructed. Based on the principle of self similarity inherent in natural matter, space can be conceived as a replication of the units it is hosting, as a crystal is composed by molecules similar in structure to the crystal itself. Through synthetic biology an adaptive cohesive membrane can be created, as an intelligent physical extension of the human body and as interactive support to human activities. The structure and membrane are genetically endowed with functions reactive to the external and internal environment of the space. This organic tissue can be created through a molecular and genetic combination, induced with architectural properties. The matter of which the space is constructed, is made up of a supporting structure, enveloped in a membrane, contact point for the in-outside world. At the same time the reactive functionality between the structure and the membrane is interlinked in order to provide cohesive reaction and adaptation to the detected circumstances. Both the supportive structure, as well as the enveloping membrane can be printed using 3D technology, based on the abstraction of biological mechanisms. The following properties can be integrated into this architectural DNA: structural adaptation, ventilation, acoustics, moisture regulation, light sensitivity - regulation of luminsecence, temperature senstivity - hygrothermic adaptation, self assembly growth.
3.Syllabus and resources
In order to create an organic, adaptive, selfsustaining, hence alive and intelligent space able to receive direct inputs from its inhabitants or visitors, researches on various scales have to be put to work together. On an empirical level, sound as source of energy; matter on the smallest scale as vehicle of this energy and as harmonic structure propagating from atomic geometries to living organisms; digital generative simulations of harmonic architectural sequences and prototyping.
1.Physics: Exploration of sound transmission and possible materialisation.
New theories about sound reveal that sound is NOT a wave, but is periodic movements of air molecules bumping into each other in the ‘space-form’ of bubble-like spheroidals. This ‘bubble-in-a-hurry’ leaves a fleeting vibrational imprint on the surface of your body: every cell in the surface tissues of your body actually receives sound patterns from the bubbles that surround you. Although only low frequency sounds can penetrate the interior of our body, when speaking, we continously create infrared light in form of acoustic energy that rapidly expands out of our mouth and rushes away at around 1100 km an hour. Studying the different spectra of frequencies emitted by humans, new predefined geometric forms can be derived from the frequency flow.
2.Neuro-science: Exploration of the possibilities of direct human communication with organic matter with a focus on the psycho-energy hypothesis by William A. Tiller.
Our brain measures and identifies objects through geometric proportions and pattern matching. Each one of the principles of Gestalt psychology – continuity, regularity, simplicity, stability and unity – can be explained by the natural patterning of harmonic standing waves as they manifest in human physiology. The Reflective Interference Model, introduced by Richard Merrick, describe how our brain interprets, measures and predicts the outside world. Through the study of behavioural and reactive patterns in animals and humans, neuro-genetic informations can be extracted and applied. Based on this organic stimuli patterns organic membranes reactive to human behaviour can be created.
3.Bio-chemical engineering: Exploration of the possibilities of organic matter to responde to both environamental and human impulses.
Recent research on molecular and genetic manipulation, as discussed in the preceeding paragraphs, represent the true frontier of current innovation. Organic natural phenomena like bio-luminescence, colour changing, and so on can be replicated in biosynthetic membranes, containing those very properties. According to the Reaction–diffusion system by Alan Turing, the father of Artificial Intelligence, controlled growth of those membranes could be possible among complex rational patterns. Artificially structured materials can be designed to interact with and control electromagnetic waves.
4.Architecture: The smallest common denominator of this research leads to explore the sound as creative generative impulse. Codification, factorisation and crystalisation of sound as vibratory frequency in the Hilbert space may reveal a new source of harmonic space composition.
Combination and interaction between the research in 1,2 and 3 will allow to create an interactive, cohesive harmonic space. Through the study of models in nature, prototypes of integrative, self-assembling, self-organizing architectonical structures can be created. Self healing properties of skin and bone cells, self similarity of molecular and macro structures of crystals and plants are examples of the phenomena to be be examined. Geometric, self-supportive models can be derived, developed through digital analysis and prototyping (Harmonic Lattice, Buckminster Fuller’s Tensegrity, Fractal Geometry Systems, Minimal Surfaces, etc.). Opportunities of new organic materials like graphene and its extraordinary molecular regular pattern, have to be tested on applicability.
4.Perspectives
A kind of new intelligence, similarily predicted in “The Walking City” by British architect Ron Herron, is about to be born. In 1964, in an article of avant-garde architecture journal Archigram, he proposed building massive mobile robotic structures, endowed with autonomous intelligence, that could freely roam the world, moving to wherever their resources or manufacturing abilities were needed. Self sufficient intelligent spaces could satisfy the need of the new World-as-Organism paradigm. According to Aristotele any given material could be created from just four elements: water, earth, air and fire. But at the origin of all material substances he saw a fifth element, the “quinta essentia”, the ether, which possesses the unique power to breathe life into lifeless material. This fifth element can be read as the vibratory frequencies inherent in all matter which can be used to create harmonic organic exchange between men and matter, as introduced in the first chapter, the sound of the Universe which generates life.