ERROR HUMANO:

In the final and most speculative chapter I extrapolate the soft machine’s softening potential to discussions of architectural topology and spatiality. I speculate about an embodied approach to architecture that enables designers to conceive of architecture as if it had a body so that it can learn, unlearn and accommodate human behaviour and environmental changes.⁵³ Although the emergence of ideas of embodiment can be traced back to pre-Socratic thinking – and can be found throughout the history of philosophy – concepts of embodiment have been explored with surging interest in recent years in cognitive sciences, psychology and neurosciences. In soft robotics, the concept of embodiment has been adapted during a major paradigm shift in the 1980s towards acknowledgment of the inseparable connections between the mind and its body.⁵⁴ However, beyond its trivial meaning that alludes to intelligent behaviour requiring a body, embodiment implies that the artefact can understand and control its own actions. An embodied architecture that can teach itself can safely and meaningfully adapt, respond or interact with human beings, eventually shifting towards more anthropo-/ bio-/

ecologically compliant modalities. Based on these aspirations, the concept of embodied architecture introduces into the design space of architecture notions of reciprocal conditioning of constituent systems, materials, morphologies and behaviours.

As part of my research into soft machines as experimental media for architectural design I built several devices, prototypes and machines. In the following section I will explain the key methods used for their design. The main purpose for building soft machines as part of my design-led research was to entangle the theoretical project with practical projects, one influencing the other and vice versa in a reciprocal fashion. The research is therefore simultaneously informed by design driven processes⁵⁵ and a complementary process of

52 Germ.: stülpen/ ‘ʃtyɭpn / tr. V. to pull / put sth. on to or over sth.; turn the / one’s pockets inside out.

The ‘ü’ of the German verb ‘stülpen’ has been changed ‘ue’ to better accommodate usage in the English language.

53 Some concepts, methods and enabling technologies are discussed in c7. s3 Designing the embodied.

54 Pfeifer and Fumiya 2004.

55 Here I want to point to Ranulph Glanville’s important statement hat designers create knowledge by wishing to change the world, while scientists want knowledge of the world as it is (Glanville 2005, 115-26).

reflection, analysis and theorisation.⁵⁶ Thus, my design practice is a key contributor to the research project. As such, my research project is situated within the architectural design research tradition that is described as ‘research by design.’⁵⁷ Taking this approach allowed me to build up a theoretical statement that is scrutinised not only by theoretical methods but also by practical and experimental ones. Design based practices such as material specification, the selection of enabling technologies and construction methods influence the decision making processes that ultimately support or refute certain theoretical assumptions.

Although the studio-based projects are mainly concerned with improving and better understanding the potential of enabling technologies for embedded actuation in soft machines and their ramifications for tectonic studies, they are also part of my wider research into the methodological development of the soft machine in architectural design research.⁵⁸ The relation amongst the activity of designing, the methods involved and the study of the actual products needs to be understood as interdependent and co-constitutional. In order to examine the many hued aspects of design, it is worth looking at a proposition by the design researcher and educator Nigel Cross who suggests research into design falls into three categories. These categories are based on people (‘design epistemology,’ the ‘study of designerly ways of knowing’), processes (‘design praxiology,’ the

‘study of the practices and processes of design’) and products (‘design phenomenology,’ the

‘study of the form and configuration of artefacts’).⁵⁹ In keeping with Cross’ terminology, this section concentrates on the ‘design praxiology’ of my soft machines. The application of Cross’ taxonomy to this research project leads to the statement that soft machines embody design knowledge primarily in their existence as physical machines (products/

phenomenology) and thus their inherent teleology for physicality has to be considered as part

56 Verbeke 2013, 150.

57 The term has been developed since the mid-1990s by its best known proponents Jonathan Hill from the Bartlett School of Architecture and Leon van Schaik at RMIT University of Melbourne. See Hill 2003, van Schaik and Johnson 2011. Also see Murray Fraser’s introduction to ‘Design Research in Architecture’ for a more detailed discussion of the term’s uses and meaning, esp. p 3-5 and Verbeke’s essay ‘This is Research by Design’ in the same book (Fraser 2013).

58 I believe that this research project contributes to positioning the soft machine as a method of architectural design research and in doing so it supports, in a wider sense, a higher appreciation of the epistemological contributions architectural machines can make to better understanding the practice and theory of architectural design. For a more general discussion see Jonas 2007, pp 187-206.

of how ‘designerly ways of knowing’ (people/ epistemology) arise from them during the process of their making. It is therefore important to examine the design methods employed, as the decisions taken during the process of designing and making the soft machines inevitably form part of the intellectual and theoretical project this thesis proposes. Consequently, it is crucial to understand that the activity of designing in my design practice is not a conversation between designers and their immaterial ideas,⁶⁰ but a designerly discourse where the built artefact (i.e. the soft machine) contributes to the discourse through its material, structural and corporeal requirements and expressions.⁶¹ Within the thesis I present more than ten projects, varying in scope and dimension. The discussion of their respective design methods is part of the introduction to the thesis, more detailed information on selected materials and construction processes is provided in the appendices.⁶² The projects are discussed in a roughly chronological fashion in the relevant sections of the thesis, aligning their evolution with the theoretical argument towards softer conditions with the gradual softening of my own soft machine design sensibility. Within this method section I provide descriptions of three distinctive phases during which I developed my soft machine design methodologies. These phases are characterised by the way the soft machine design (‘design phenomenology’) is influenced by the way it is practiced (‘design praxiology’). The three groups are shown in illustration fig 0.03 below.

60 Glanville 1999, 88 and Pask 1976.

61 For a discussion of some of the problems and solutions of the role of the object/ artefact in design research, see Saego and Dunne 1999.

62 The research project involved the design and construction of a number of soft machines using different construction methods and a considerable amount of preparatory research into materials and production processes. The appendices provide selected information for a better understanding of the decision making processes involved during the making of the machines but also as a sort of glossary of materials and construction methods.

fig 0.03 Overview of my design studies.

This overview shows how the development of design is represented in the physical manifestation of the soft machine projects.

The first group, consisting of soft mechanical hybrids, was developed using a design through sculpting approach, while the second group consists of studies into elastic pneumatics, which were developed using a design through elastic inflation approach. The third group features tectonic studies into soft transformable envelopes. They were driven by the design through stuelping approach. In the following three sections, I discuss key projects as seen through the lens of the design methodologies that constituted them.