A thousand years of non-linear history

Manuel De Landa

When atoms are traveling straight down through empty space by their own weight, at quite indeterminate times and places, they swerve ever so little from their course, just so much that you would call it a change if direction.
If it were not for this swerve, everything would fall downwards through the abyss of space.
No collision would take place and no impact of atom on atom would be created.
Thus nature would never have created anything.
- Lucretius

Final poser

With the analogy of evolution we created a scenario for the future, this method helped to categorise the range of different changes we had imagined. The categories of ‘people and lifestyles’, ‘future scenarios’, ‘architectural opportunities’ and ‘sustainable futures’ were considered to be far to a segmented method of looking at predicting future scenarios.There is an interlinked flow on effect of each and our methodology helped to take a more holistic approach to the project.

Initiating these changes were our different ‘ages’ (Jurassic Age etc). From here we separated our ideas into ‘species’ – Politics, Culture, Education, Transport, Agriculture, Built Environment and Technology all playing out in the natural environment. We looked at how these would evolve differently throughout the different ‘ages’ – where we decided they would evolve more rapidly was represented with greater splitting of branches. The semi-circular form of the diagram allowed us to cross reference easily between ‘species’ for example when there was a change in cultural attitudes we could easily place the flow on effects of that within the evolution of other species for example new policy implementation, implications of policy implementation etc.

The changes we predicted were graphically represented with pictograms to allow a more visually appealing and diagrammatic exploration. Some of the pictograms represent quite complex ideas however, were able to be explained within the timeline above.

The future scenario of cultural change, the shift towards individualism and the potential of new social order will play a huge role in guiding my individual project. The resource crisis, and its affect on all the ‘species’, in particular its evolutionary affects to the exploration of retrofitting and parasitic architecture will also be a main focus for my architectural proposal.

Part content contributed from Heidi Nelsen (group member), but content discussed at length during tutorials

Individual Project One Statement

In this project we consider four key components, future visions/ scenarios, sustainable futures, people/ life styles and architectural opportunities.

Looking at the problem through an evolutionary methodology, as in the world or humanities evolution over time the out comes to these key components became perceivable.

Future Visions and Scenario’s:

The future scenario that prevailed from the evolution of the world and humanity is one that was shaped by the input factors of a world that has suffered from a sever resource crisis, compounding factors sparking economic bust and a population plateau leading to worldwide war. It allowed for the emergence of an innovative individualistic society thrust into a rapid invention mode fuelled most recently by the world conflict.

Sustainable futures:

Seven ‘species’, technology, the built environment, agriculture, education, transport, politics/policies and society, have evolved over time and led to various divergent outcomes all playing out in the natural environment. What emerged from the advances of these ‘species’ was the possibilities of an innovative society, one that is forever resourceful in finding solutions to the issues it may face.

People and Lifestyles:

Immediacy is what the people of the future demand, they want products that suit them perfectly and as such rapid prototyping and customisation have become the prevalent form of production. However this is not the end of the story, due to the resource crisis attitudes have changed over time and now society demands closed loop solutions and due to the additional expenses of the fly in fly out mining operations occurring in the terraformed regions of the Moon and mars society chooses to limit the use of these resources.

Shaping the world around them, people created spaces that previously were non-existent, with new personal transport devices leading to the disuse and repurposing of the ‘dinosaur’ transport systems of the early 20^th century. 

Architectural possibilities:

Society changed, the city changed, and the world shifted under their feet. Building in the future are repurposed and retrofitted creating a prevailing trend in parasitical architecture focusing on creative and purposeful use of space to facilitate the increased population.

To cater for societal attitude changes, local production and the death of traditional shopping trends meant shopping centres became customisation hubs, designing, manufacturing and sale-ing the goods people require then and there.  

The architectural opportunities of the future see a rise in productive vertical farming and localised manufacturing making the city the epicentre of local production facilitating the individualistic lifestyles of modern society.

Rapid prototyping

The idea of rapid prototyping is really quite fascinating, especially if you consider the possibilities for it in the future. Today with companies investigating the ability to 'print' diamond microchips, what will this mean for the future?
The ability to produce custom products instantaneously could see  rise in local production, perhaps even 'instant' printing of technologies such as phones or laptops. or even how this technology might embed itself in in the sectors of the built environment, or any of the other elements of society i have spoken about.

Architectural outcomes

This Ted talk provides an interesting insight into bio mimicry and how this can be related to architectural outcomes.
It also ties into how nature is incredibly efficient and perhaps how through evolution one day we too, our buildings and our society might become as efficient as the wonders of nature we see all around.
It opens the possibilities of development of new material technologies, ones that may have the same incredible strength qualities of the natural world, translated perhaps into architectural outcomes such as buildings that respond to immediate environmental changes in real time, moving to capture the best sunlight, breezes or views.
The infinite possibilities of bio-mimicry in the future development of architectural opportunities is truly astounding. Hopefully something that can be explored further in the semester.

reference: http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pawlyn_using_nature_s_genius_in_architecture.html

W5 Architectural Outcomes

Using the analogy of evolution helped to categorise the range of different changes we had been imaging when we discussed our future scenarios. We began to recognise that its quite difficult to septate the categories of ‘people and lifestyles’, ‘future scenarios’, ‘architectural opportunities’ and ‘sustainable futures’ because these all have a flow on effect to each other. If we imagined future changes in policies for example, this would affect all four categories, and those affects would have a reciprocal flow on affect and so on.
Despite this, when we analysed the various input factors we considered for this project some possible architectural outcomes were parasitical architecture. This may be informed by the lack of road use (due to no cars in the city policy) hence why as visualised this parasitical architecture spans between the buildings encroaching on the road space creating new sorts of connections throughout the city.

reference: http://whitelabel.openbuildings.com/buildings/3083#

Evolutionary Diagram W4

What will become of our society? Well this is what we have come up with! Based on our seven components of society we have mapped how we will grow and change and how social norms can 'die out' or diverge creating new 'species' that go on to become part of who we are in the future.

At the end of the diagram is a wealth of architectural opportunities that can be utilised for the next assignment.