642 Re.Building Posthumanist Responsive Architecture: Environments That Care PHILIP BEESLEY University of Waterloo “….the nature of both mind and spirit must be architectural components at Waterloo’s Integrated corporeal”– Lucretius, De Rerum Natura Centre for Visualization, Design and Manufacturing, Kinetic mechanisms based on digitally fabricated In the following discussion I explore posthumanist textile assemblies, actuation systems and micro- ethics as a strategy for working with responsive ar- processor-based control systems using open-source chitecture and attempt to relate this theoretical con- coding and design are enabling technologies. text to a series of projects developed within my own practice. The projects are designed with the intent of Past generations of ‘responsive’ architecture have finding renewed, mutual relationships between oc- been contested, subjected to substantial ethical cupants and environments.1 Fulfilling impressions of debate. In debates of this past century the con- kinetic architecture that were the subject of vision- cept of an instrument was often negatively associ- ary designs throughout the past century, an emerg- ated with ‘functionalist’ rationales that seemed re- ing new generation of building systems proclaim ex- sponsible for erosion of the dignity and freedom of panded qualities of a new ‘instrumental’ architecture individuals. Those voices3, which span some three defined by its performance. [Hensel, Menges 2008]2 generations of this past century, tend to align with Responsive functions engage a broad contemporary preceding critics of the Industrial Revolution in debate that has tended to replace anxiety about in- suggesting that treating architecture as an ‘instru- strumentalism with optimism about expanded quali- ment’ comes at a cost, just as the expanded powers ties. However it might be claimed that new gen- achieved by Alfred Arkwright’s spinning machines erative and parametric design practice have yet to and Henry Ford’s assembly lines arguably came at engage significant critical consequences of affective the cost of individual freedom. Perhaps inevitably, design. How does this architecture affect us? Kinetic today’s renewed examination of interactivity treads mechanisms offer significant scope for manipulat- on similar contested ground. Distinguishing a new ing the environment, but current strategies for re- generation of interactive architecture, sophisticat- sistance and for introducing sensitivity and ‘conse- ed functions are emerging that respond to building quence’ accompanying this expanded power appear occupants and surrounding environments, increas- slight. Contributing to this emerging practice and, ingly based on technical innovations that employ I hope, offering critical strategies, I am attempting distributed communication and control systems, to develop rudimentary emotional response func- lightweight actuators and sensors integrated within tions within built environments within my own de- component-based envelope systems. In turn, these sign work. Within the affects of emotion and empa- new building components are supported by emerg- thy, I am pursuing distributed physical environment ing design methods involving cycles of dynamic that might react to the state of occupants within the visualization and prototyping of complex systems, space, offering responses based on revulsion and and by emerging design tools employing new gen- attraction. My work involves practical technical de- erative and parametric design practices. Howev- velopment of innovative interactive sculptures and er, while impressions of kinetic architecture have POSTHUMANIST RESPONSIVE ARCHITECTURE 643 been the subject of visionary designers throughout 1830 debate, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and the past century, it might be said that the ethical Georges Cuvier, leading biologists and founders of implications of new ‘responsive’ architecture are the Museum of Natural History in Paris, examined only beginning to engage critical debate. Recent the basis of nature. Against Cuvier’s rear-guard de- prominent discussions exemplified by Kolarevic and fence of a Great Design determining individual spe- Malkawi’s Performative Architecture4 offer building cies anatomy, Geoffrey argued that anatomy deter- performance as a guiding design principle, adopt- mined how a species behaved, opening the door to ing new performance-based priorities for the de- speculations about nature divorced from theology. sign of cities, buildings, landscape and infrastruc- Geoffrey implied that there was no particular ‘tran- tures. This emerging architecture places broadly scendent’ destiny involved in individual functions, defined performance above form making, and use only concrete and ‘immanent’ functions that would digital simulations and fabrication strategies in pur- create particular opportunities for behaviour. The suit of comprehensive approaches to the design of argument of these two biologists threatened foun- the built environment. Immanent, dynamic, open: dations of their culture. In turn, similar debates be- the qualities focused by voices such as Kolarevic, tween ‘transcendent’ and ‘immanent’ qualities has Leach, and Spiller are marked by a striking opti- continued beyond Darwin’s conceptions of natural mism about the expanded powers of performance- selection and genetic mutation. A recent hinge for based architecture. The visionary schemes offered this debate is arguably the entry of Michael Fou- by avant-gardes exploring kinetic modes have cault’s Discipline and Punish within architectural tended to remain transcendently positive in such discourse a generation ago. Foucault dwelt on the discussions, yielding total visions that appeared to oppressive machinery of prisons and madhouses hold only the limits of technical innovation as their and, perhaps fatally, linked those institutional restraint. A collective manfesto is implied aspiring building types to the spatial mode of radiant sym- to the creation of high-performance architectures metries and axial constructions. By implying that that emulate complex natural systems, shaped as symmetrical, crystalline systems of unified geom- flexible ‘manifolds’ supporting diverse action. With etry in urban architecture were tantamount to Fas- reasonable-cost, durable mechatronics now inte- cism, Foucault’s power analyis lent fundamental grated within many Western industries, restraint hesitation to the continuous project of the Enlight- now appears indeed slight. Current strategies for enment. Insidious qualities embedded within such critical judgement introducing sensitivity and ‘con- total visions have widely remarked in post-modern sequence’ accompanying this expanded power of generations of discussion. mechanisms for manipulating the environment appear in the very early stages of development, In striking contrast to such a critique, a reverently seemingly remaining within the long shadow of transcendent vision of creation was evoked in Amer- twentieth-century technological optimism and ican designers such as Louis Sullivan and his pupil rooted within the centuries-old humanist tradition. Frank Lloyd Wright, building a vision of architecture embedded with the symphonic forces of nature. This Yet in contrast to this apparent consensus, design strategies and ethics of related design traditions within the past two centuries have been fraught with argument. Has distance from earlier parox- ysmic debates over eugenics and behaviour-pro- gramming relaxed the taboo of approaching hu- manity as mechanism? Have the formidable pow- ers of new digital parametric tools and complex- behaviour modeling methods renewed confidence in the engineering of nature? When preceding generations of engineers and de- signers developed analogies that held architecture 1. D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson Proportional systems to be operable like a complex instrument, their of human physiology, ‘After Albrecht Durer’, D’Arcy arguments tended to be divided. In their famous Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form, 1917 644 Re.Building late nineteenth-century organicism followdirectly Buckminster Fuller proposed his ‘ operating panel from Haeckel’s illustrated opus ‘Art forms in Nature’, for Space Ship Earth’ beside the United Nations�, he which illustrated Darwin’s vision of the practical evo- envisioned networked global markets and enlight- lution of species. Building a new kind of steward- ened individual human agency as a social and po- ship from this immersion in complex systems of na- litical fundament, while B. F. Skinner’s mid-century ture, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s 1917 opus On brand of behaviourist psychology attempted to engi- Growth and Form5 offered methods for manipulation neer happy, productive subjects. This transcendent, of dynamic forces. While that author’s benign influ- crystalline territory seems exemplified by Fuller’s ence on design has been repeatedly cited, the politi- radiant ‘geoscope’, a floating spherical instrument cal application of his methods to ‘improving’ human panel connecting to vast networked global systems, species through eugenics is also poignantly evident. focusing the entire world into a coherent, unified ve- In a similar vein, the mid-century systems-biologist hicle for organized operation. Conrad Waddington’s mid-century conception of an epigenetic field6 extended Thompson’s biomathe- matics into an environment organized by intermesh- ing form-creating forces. 3. Original concept sketch of Geoscope, R. Buckminster Fuller, 1962, illustrated in Fuller, Critical