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BIODeLab

There is growing interest in finding guidelines in living systems to help us understand new forms of designing. On occasion, this interest makes the mistake of wishing to imbue designs with a veneer of new organic ways, imitating natural forms, perhaps unconsciously aided by the incredible digital modelling resources we are increasingly able to master.
This could not be further from our intentions at the BioDesign laboratory (ADDA). We focus our interest on observing how biological organisms achieve complex emergent structures from simple components. The structures and forms generated by natural systems are analysed and understood as hierarchical organisations of very simple components (from the smallest to the largest), in which the properties arising in an emergent manner are rather more than the sum of the parts.
In our constantly developing society, with its demanding market, the use of new production technologies in fields such as engineering is becoming more frequent, and research is conducted to create state-of-the-art materials, such as composites, which open up new possibilities of use and performance, and contain the logic of living materials.

In the field of architecture, even more rightly, we are forced to regain this sensitivity in observation and research, and learn the lesson of nature on the act of formalising and metabolising. Our objective is to learn and explore this knowledge to then transfer it and apply it to the design process of architecture and spaces.

In this research process, we work by experimenting and learning from the material, applying the various techniques of form finding, such as folding, weaving, catenaries, minimal nets, minimal surfaces, tree structures, and others. This new approach to the creation of form through knowledge of material, and of its “intelligent” behaviour, complemented by the use of parametric software and advanced modelling, will enable us to produce designs that are not only totally innovative in material, form and behaviour, but also able to adapt to their environment. In short, we will learn that the limit between natural and artificial (or man-made) has been reconsidered from the perspective of biomimetic engineering.

Cyborg Architecture By Mireia Ferrate_From Book PARASite

Despite the fact that the term cyborg, short for cybernetic organism, was coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline to study the possibilities of systems consisting of human and mechanical elements to explore outer space, cyborg was at its most splendid and influential in the 1980s and early 1990s. Whether via the cyberpunk movement, exemplified in the novels by William Gibson or the films by Shinya Tsukamoto, the posthumanist and cyberfeminist texts and manifestos by theorists such as Donna Haraway, Hans Moravec and Katherine Hayles, or even its more Hollywood versions, such as Terminator or Robocop, cyborg exists between two quite different poles. On the one hand, this hybrid blend of man and machine embodies the fear and fascination for a dark technological future in which human aspects are overshadowed by mechanical ones, and, on the other, it opens up a broad horizon of liberating possibilities, in which category alternatives, such as body/mind, man/woman, or natural/artificial, become less defined, thus overcoming the traditional limitations which body and gender identity, race or social class exert over man.

If we return to the origins of the cybernetic organism as conceived by Norbert Wiener at the end of the 1940s, we discover that he refers to any open system, which, by means of communication and control, can behave in line with some objectives set and adjusted by ongoing processes of informative feedback. Buildings, cities, and landscapes can be understood as hybrid open systems made of natural and artificial elements which constantly relate to each other via retroactive flows of information to create more complex behaviours than those resulting from the simple sum of the parts. From this perspective, architecture can be a cybernetic organism or cyborg which should not be approached independently of its natural and artificial environment, its inhabitants, and, above all, its short- and long-term objectives.

In his 1969 article The Architectural Relevance of Cybernetics, Gordon Pask remarks how the cybernetic paradigm not only makes possible the design and construction of dynamic buildings which react actively to their environment and to their inhabitants’ behaviour, but it also provides the bases of a general architectural theory, which, rather than being descriptive or prescriptive, should be explanatory and mainly predictive. Pask characterises architectural design as the control of control: the architect’s overriding mission is to specify the purpose of the system and plan how it will adapt and develop over time and in space using some evolutionary principles which will continue to operate long after the end of the design and construction phases.

Some contemporary critics, such as Gilles Deleuze in Postscript on the Societies of Control, or Reinhold Martin on The Organizational Complex, directly connect the concepts of cybernetic theory and the technology they have created to information control systems, which, after World War II, have been exercised on the individual by large government, military and commercial corporations. Revisiting Martin’s theories we discover how this organisational complex that has dominated the second half of the 20th century is reflected in an architecture which, given its modular horizontal and façade design, is organic and flexible, although it ends up being self-referential and closed so that it can serve the capitalist system funding it. Without intending to discredit this type of criticism, it can also be argued that it mainly targets the most reductive and technocratic applications and concepts of the cybernetic paradigm, and that the heuristic and revolutionary possibilities of some of its later developments very often tend to be ignored.

Following the three phases of cybernetic development proposed by Hayles, an evolution can be discerned, which, based on the concepts of homeostasis and feedback, shifts towards reflexivity and self-organisation to end up in virtuality and emerging behaviour. The background to all these ideas, although they are not always referred to with the same terms, can be found, even if implicitly, in any of these cybernetic thought phases, which gradually mixes with concepts derived from the theory of information and systems, in the first instance, and other theories, such as chaos and complexity, in its most recent stages. It is with this overall perspective, which does not obsess about the narrow-mindedness of control and organisation ideas as forms of power and subjugation, that we can find the reason for continuing to defend the heterogeneity and validity of the cybernetic organism model for architecture.

Contemporary concepts, such as urban landscape, natural park, garden city or green wall remind us of the validity of the cyborg condition of systems which, although labelled architectural, urban or landscape, are actually, and always have been, hybrid, complex and dynamic. To keep the information pattern which determines its identity, the cybernetic organism must combine its own homeostatic and negative feedback balancing processes with the unbalancing and emerging processes connected with positive feedback. Consequently, as with any open system, the architectural organism must safeguard the dynamic balance that allows it to survive in a universe marked by the duality of information and entropy. Reinterpretation and vindication of the outmoded cyborg reminds us that architecture is an ongoing process operating in the fragile and shifting limits between nature and artifice, in which it perceives its environment and transforms it, at the same time learning and transforming itself.

Natural Materials By Javier Peña_from Book PARASite

WOOD:
Wood is the oldest and yet the most used structural material, and its production worldwide rivals that of steel. Structurally, it can be described as a porous composite material with a low density. The cellular wall is formed by concentric layers of cellulose fibres, joined together by a hemicellulose and lignin matrix, which plays a similar role to that of an epoxy resin matrix in a composite material reinforced with carbon fibres. This gives the wood a certain ability to withstand compressive stresses.

BONE:
A bone is a tissue which joins and acts as a support for the body’s various structures. From a structural point of view, it can be defined as a porous composite material with a low density formed by trabecular bone (internal part) and cortical bone (external part). It is organised on different levels, starting with a combination of apatite nanocrystals (mineral part of the bone) with collagen fibres, until it forms osteons, complex structures of the mature vascularised bone, as shown in the Figure 2:

TENDON:
A tendon is a fibrous tissue at the end of the muscles, which joins them to the bones and allows for contractions. From a structural perspective, collagen protofibrils associate with each other to form collagen microfibrils (diameter 10-200 nm), subfibrils, and fibrils (diameter 0.1-0.5 microns), collagen fibres (diameter 1-12 microns) and collagen strands or fascicles (diameter now in mm). This hierarchical and self-similar organisation gives the material some impossible properties if it is a solid section.

2. HIERARCHICAL ORDER AND ASSEMBLY
To obtain light and resistant material, for example, with some excellent specific traction properties, perhaps the first step is the orientation of the nano or microstructure, and then the fibre constitution. The second step might also be the hierarchisation of its structure on all levels.

According to the fractal patterns of self-similarity, a resistant fibre can be considered as formed by an infinite number of fibres on different scales with their own independence, but which, however, condition the properties of the whole. One of the properties that makes the fractals useful is containing an infinite surface area in a finite volume. In this case, the phenomenon of intricacy is key, as occurs in dry climate plants, since the flat surface of a normal leaf is a source of evaporation that would cause them to dry out. In feathers, there is a continuous surface on a functional level, which, however, has as much material as air (we could say that it is foam). In the respiratory system, the bronchial tubes and alveoli branch out in an apparently complex manner to cover the entire lung capacity with the maximum surface area so that the absorption of oxygen is maximised. The brain is another example of fractal geometry, in which the mass has to be folded onto itself to fit into the cranial capacity. Spider silk, consisting of a succession of casings and cores, which are no other than a recurrent concentric organisation, is yet another example.

In the synthetic world human beings create, this hierarchical organisation could already be seen in a rudimentary fashion in the most traditional esparto ropes, and the craftsmen empirically understood that a fault in a continuous section would spread making it all fail. However, in plaiting, a fault in the fibre does not have such a dramatic effect on the whole. Safety ropes for climbing are currently made according to a rigorous and optimised hierarchical system, which makes the ropes obtained unbreakable. Another example is the bridge with the largest span in the world, Akashi Kaikyo, which manages to cover a distance of almost 2 km by means of two steel cables, which are 1 m in diameter and consist of 290 strands, consisting, in turn, of 120 wires that are 5 mm each.

Understanding that a complex machine, such as a natural or robotic hand, is formed of different parts (self-similar or different) does not help to explain how the complete system works, without it mattering whether it is a servomotor or a cell. In other words, identifying and describing the pieces of a puzzle with high precision, even at a molecular level, serves no purpose if we do not understand the rules joining them together.

As nature relies on a very small number of patterns for the infinite number of forms in existence, it is easy to think that there are basic laws for assembly, i.e., that each form is not the result of a specific and independent solution. Whilst humans synthesise a specific material solution for each requirement (amassing a huge bank of possibilities which, however, are totally imperfect for the whole), nature obtains perfect solutions for each problem with highly specialised compositions of a few generic materials. Almost all the materials forming the various living beings are included in what human engineering has called composite. Nature, whenever genetic pressure has fostered lightness and mechanical resistance, has given rise to complex technical solutions. It has provided us with composite materials.

For example, in the composite, light and resistant material structures of the systems involved in human walking, muscles, tendons, ligaments, cartilages and even bones, we can see how the fundamental differences are the ordered arrangement of collagen fibres, which in each case have the same chemical composition. Obviously, in the case of bone, the mineral material (hydroxyapatite) which makes it hard is the main differentiator from muscles and tendons..., but as in a tendon or wood (cellulose and hemicellulose fibres), it is the correct arrangement of collagen fibres that provides the excellent specific properties. As hydroxyapatite is naturally fragile (ceramic), in theory useless for a solution such as a bone, its arrangement and synergetic cooperation with the collagen make it a resistant yet at the same time tough and light material.

This phenomenon, in which the components join to form larger and more stable structures, with new properties which might not have been predicted from the characteristics of their individual parts, is perceived intuitively by fractal geometry, whilst the mathematics of chaos attempt to decipher it. The phenomenon is known as self-assembly, analogous to the term used previously, hierarchical organisation or self-similarity.

3. ENERGY AND MULTIFUNCTION
Finally, it needs to be emphasised that in both the case of plant tissues, wood, and animal tissue, bone and tendon, among others, structural organisation aims to:

1. Optimise the properties of the material for specific service conditions.

2. Optimise energy and the consumption of material.

3. Be multifunctional.

We must not forget that in the majority of the cases pointed out, the materials designed by nature do not have a single function as they are multifunctional. Consequently, for example, besides a mechanical function, wood also has the function of forming a fluid distribution network (saliva), and the bone has an important metabolic function in the storage and release of calcium, or the production of blood cells (haematopoiesis).

5.27.2011

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