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Simply Compta 56 C i i 3 4 S p r i n CilcKeading Simply Compta The Architecture of the Jumping Universe) A Polemic: How Complexity Science Is Changing Architecture and Culture by Charles Jencks. London: Academy Editions, f'W. /7ft pp., dim.. $20. How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built by Stewart Brand. New York: Viking Penguin, 1994. 14 i pp.. fflus., $30; $20 paper. Reviewed by Danny Siiinuels In recent decades, a significant new cross-disciplinary synthesis has developed in science that addresses the basic ques- Combination reilauranl, bar, and real eilala office, neor Yucca, Ariiona. Bill Wood (Dyna Domes), designer-builder, 1988. tion, I low do order and complexity emerge from chaos? After centuries of intelligence, culture, and even technology. and interpret our view of the universe; does Jencks. Brand looks at the real pro- predictable, confirmable, linear science involution is a means of generating vast since the universe is now seen to be com- cesses involved in creating buildings — based on reductionism — breaking things numbers of alternative designs that are plex, dynamic, and evolutionary, archi- design, financing, construction, occupa- down into their smallest constituent parts then selected according to their useful- tecture should at least look (if not be) tion by the users, energy exchange with in order to examine them — some scien- ness. The philosopher Daniel Dennett that way, too. I le envisions an architec- the environment, adaptation to changing tists have again started looking at the makes the point that every conceivable ture "of undulating movement, of catas- circumstances, maintenance, expansion, wholes that are greater than the sum of design, whether natural or artificial, can trophic folds and delightful waves, of renovation, and reuse — and sees build their parts, at the overarching "patterns be seen as existing somewhere within a billowing crystals and fractured planes, mgs as dynamic, evolving entities that which connect." vast (not quite infinite), continuous space ol layered glass and spiraling growth." progressively, through the actions of their Drawing together the diverse disu of all possible designs, and that cvoliii His approach is to discuss, topic by occupants, "learn" how to adapt to their plines of physics, mathematics, biology, H lu HUM hiologii al or inu lln m.il. is .1 topic, various areas of complexity science environments and uses. information theory, and computing into process for generating possible designs, (fractal geometry, noiilinearitv, folding, Brand traces a number of buildings a synthetic approach commonly known "for finding good ways to solve the emergence, chaos, C.aia), then to find through their life histories, using histori- as "the sciences ol Complexity," the new problems that arise." within that space. examples of buildings by contemporary cal photographs taken at different times paradigm offers insights into how com- Furthermore, designs bootstrap them- architects {mostly the usual gang. from the same angle to illustrate how plex systems — such as an oak tree, an selves to ever-higher levels of com- I isenman, Cchry, Koolhaas et al. — ami astonishingly a structure can change. One Jencks, who discusses his own work at ant colony, a wetland, a brain, ,\n econo- plexity.' Kevin Kelly, editor of Wired comparison that exemplifies his argument length I that seem to embody that idea. my , or a cit) — arise and evolve. In magazine, in a book currently making focuses on two research buildings at the Yet his discussion Focuses almost entirely essence, complexity theory shows that all the rounds of the design studios describes Massachusetts institute ol Technology: such systems are generated by, and evolve un what these buildings look like. What how the adaptability, resilience, and Building 20. a sprawling "temporary" according to, similar kinds of rides, Jencks advocates here is, as usual, an autonomy of living organisms are becom- wooden structure built in haste during architecture ol surface and appearance t omplexm doesn't simply happen. ing the models for understanding complex World War II, and the 1985 Media l a b rather than substance or process. Simple elements in simple relationships man-made systems that are beyond by I. ML Pei. Building 20, funky, well build up in hierarchical layers, simplicity human control, such as the global econo- On the other hand, Stewart Brand's loved, impossible to destroy, has proved my or the Internet. Kelly predicts rhar in upon simplicity, until eventually, unpre- How Buildings Learn: What Happens flexible and adaptable to changing the future, more products, systems, and dictably, a system organizes itself and After they're Built really could change research demands over the decades. In technologies will be "grown" through new, complex orders emerge. Once estab- architecture, if only students of architec- contrast. Brand finds I'ei's building distributed evolutionary processes rather lished, a complex system continually ture would read it. Brand, protege of inflexible, sterile, and pretentious. It has than centrally ni.iinil.ictured.- draws energy and information Irom its Criegory llareson, polymath, media guru, inhibited social exchange among the sci- environment in order to maintain its char- What, if anything, do these trends in inventor-designer, was a founder in the entists who use it, thereby locking into a acteristic form and structure, seeking scientific thought have to do with archi- sixties of The Whole Earth Catalog, later fixed pattern the activities of one of the stable configurations in a context ot con- tecturc - Is 1 building .1 complex system? ot the CoEvolution Quarterly |now the most innovative research centers in the tinual change. Sometimes it will evolve Does it, in any sense, evolve? Of all the Whale Earth Review), and recently of United States, Nicholas Negroponte's toward ever greater complexity, bur the foreign banners under which architecture The WELL (the Whole March computer Media l a b [the subject of Brand's 1988 more precisely adapted it becomes to its has marched, from existentialism to his conference network), and is the author of book). This "magazine architecture." environment, the more vulnerable it is to toricism to semiotics to dco instruction, The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at says Brand, is meant to look good in a sudden change in the context. In effect, this, it would seem, is the first that direct- MIT. He lives on a rebuilt tugboat and photographs — precisely what Jencks a system coevolves with its environment, ly addresses issues of form and structure writes in an office installed in a freight admires — but lacks a life of its own. one changing and the other responding container. Brand has now turned his that are intrinsically architectural. Needless to say, I'ei, representing most elaborately to those changes, which then attention to buildings. (. harles Jencks, ever the evangelist of design architects, comes off as a \ ill.iin. cause more changes, and so on. tlu n i \ t \ \ . i \ i in architecture, ccrtaniK Although he only glancingly refers to Brand's arguments echo and elaborate Darwinian evolution is a central mech- thinks so. The Architecture of the any scientific underpinnings for his ideas. some of the ideas of Lloyd Kahn, an early anism in the development ol complexity lumping Universe is intended "to change Brand exhibits a much deeper under- cohort who, through his Domebooks I and has now been seen to operate, not architecture, not |ust interpret it." Jencks standing ol the implications for architec- anil I I , ; almost siuglchandcdly promul- just in biolog\, but in the development of argues thai architecture should represent ture of current scientific thinking than gated the hippie dome-building Lid of the 57 t a 3 4 S p t i n it 19 9 ClieR e n d i n g Ricc University Press Proudly A n n o u n c e s The Alleys and Back Buildings of Galveston An Architectural and Social History by Ellen Beasley sixties and seventies. The domes em- .iiul its changing milieu, it acquires unan- ployed a radical structural technology; ticipated and diverse qualities, thereby every possible new material was investi- becoming enriched, with a life and char- gated to enclose them and seal all the acter ol its own. cracks. Unfortunately, nothing really Consider, then, that this simple unit worked well. The inflexible domes were is multiplied many times and woven difficult to expand, furnish, heat, and use, together, over long periods of tune, layer leaked like sieves, and too quickly fell by layer, into a fabric held together by - apart. In a I y .? essay, "Sin,in hut Not webs of movement, servicing, communi- Wise," Kahn made a public mea culpa cation, and Hows of capital, and energy. and disavowed such "whiteman techno- This pulsating fabric is the city. It is emer- plastic prowess," advocating a return to gent, distributed, evolutionary, always in traditional materials and vernacular flux, out of control, adapting, shedding "This is an important addition to our knowledge building technologies. If you want to exhausted parts of itself, renewing others, and understanditig ot how cities developed Its build shelter, he said, study how the growing new parts. In short, the city is value to historians, preservationists and citizens farmers in the region build, and build alive, and it does indeed evolve toward 1 alike reaches far beyond Galveston." iust like they do.' increasing complexity. In Brand's updating of this pragmatic fins view of architecture requires ,i -Elizabeth A. Lyon, retired Georgia State approach, the lirst responsibility in build- new and synthetic understanding of the 1 listoric Preservation Officer and co-chaii S.H.P.O. Task Force on Minority Participation. ing is to provide shelter for human relationship of the building and the cit): activities. Design the structure and the the city as an evolving space ol extensive ISBN CMW26 M28-X !f*9.95 enclosure to last a long time, with interi- webs and continual flows, the building as 11x10.200 pages.
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