Evaluación

In answer to the question: What is that emerges, what does it emerge from, and how is emergence produced? We can say the following.

Form and behavior emerge from the processes of complex systems.

Processes produce, elaborate and maintain the form of natural systems, and those processes include dynamic exchanges with the environment. There are generic patterns in the process of self-generation of forms, and in forms themselves. Geometry has both a local and global role in the interrelated dynamics of pattern and form in self organized morphogenesis.

Forms maintain their continuity and integrity by changing aspects of their behavior and by their iteration over many generations. Forms exist in varied populations, and where communication between the forms is effective, collective structured behavior and intelligence emerges.

The systems from which the form emerges, and the systems within individual complex forms themselves, are maintained by the flow of energy and information through the system. The pattern of flow has constant variations, adjusted to maintain equilibrium by ‘feedback’ from the environment. Natural evolution is not a single system but distributed, with multiple systems co-evolving in partial autonomy and with some interaction. An emergent whole form can be a component of a system emerging at a higher level – and what is ‘system’ for one process can be

‘environment’ for another.

Emergence is of Momentous importance to architecture, demanding substantial revisions to the way in which we produce designs. We can use the mathematical models outlined above for generating designs, evolving forms and structures in morphogenetic processes within computational environments.²⁴ Criteria for selection of the ‘fittest’ can be developed that correspond to architectural requirements of performance, including structural integrity and ‘buildability’. Strategies of design are not truly evolutionary unless they include iterations of physical (phenotypic) modeling, incorporating the self organizing material effects of form finding and the industrial logic of production available in CNC and laser cutting modeling machines or some other useful technology. (This is the point where Nanotechnology can play a vital role)

The logic of emergence demands that we recognize that buildings have a lifespan, sometimes of many decades, and that throughout that life they have to maintain complex energy and the material systems. At the end of their life span they must be disassembled and the physical materials recycled. The environmental performance of the buildings must also be rethought. The current hybrid mechanical systems with remote central processors limit the potential achievement of ‘smart’ buildings. Intelligent environmental behavior of individual buildings and other artifacts can be much more effectively produced and maintained by the collective behavior of distributed systems.

Michael Weinstock’s view – “we must extend this (intelligent

individual building to its environment. Each building is a part of the environment of its neighbors, and it follows that ‘urban environmental intelligence can be achieved by the extension of data communication between the environmental systems of neighboring buildings. Urban transport infrastructure must be organized to have similar responsive systems, not only to control internal environment of stations and subways but also to manage the response to the fluctuating discharge of people onto streets and into buildings. Linking the response of infrastructure systems to groups of environmentally intelligent buildings will allow higher level behavior to emerge”.²⁵

We are within the horizon of a systematic change, from the design and production of individual ‘signature’ buildings to an ecology in which evolutionary designs have sufficient intelligence to adapt and to communicate, and from which intelligent cities will emerge.

References

1. Michael Weinstock; Morphogenesis and the Mathematics of Emergence, AD, Vol.74, No.3, May/June2004; Wiley Academy; pp 11.

2. Ibid; pp 12

3. Geoffery West; Charles Darwin: A Portrait; Yale University Press, 1938, pp 334.

4. D’Arcy Thompson; On Growth and Form; Cambridge University Press, 1961.

5. Alfred North Whitehead; The Concept of Nature; Cambridge University Press 1920.

6. Norbert Weiner; Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine; MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1961.

7. CE Shannon and W Weaver, The mathematical theory of communication; 5^th Ed., University of Illinois Press, 1963.

8. Ilya Prigogine; Introduction to Thermodynamics of Irreversible Processes; John Wiley, 1967.

9. Note: Any physical system that can be described by mathematical tools or heuristic tools is regarded as a dynamic system.

10. PT Saunders; The Collected Works of AM Turing Vol. 3, Morphogenesis Includes ‘The chemical basis of

morphogenesis; Philosophical Transactions, 1952.

11. Ibid.

12. Christopher J Marzek, Mathematical Morphogenesis;

Journal of Biological Systems, Vol. 7, 2, 1999

13. LG Harrison, Coupling Between Reaction-Diffusion and Expressed Morphogenesis, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 145, 1990.

14. FW Cummings, ‘A Pattern Surface Interactive Model of Morphogenesis, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 161, 1993.

15. CH Leung and M Berzins, A computational Model for Organism Growth Based on Surface Mesh Generation, University of Leeds, 2002.

16. Alexander V Sprirov, ‘The Change in Initial Symmetry in the pattern form interaction model of sea urchin

gastrulation, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 161, 1993.

17. Warren Weaver, ‘Science and Complexity’, American Scientist, 36, 536, 1948.

18. Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science, Wolfram Media, 2002.

19. John H Holland, Adaptation in Natural and Artificial systems:

An Introductory Analysis with Applications to Biology, Control and Artificial Intelligence, MIT Press, 1992.

20. SA Kauffman, Antichaos and Adaptation, Scientific American, August 1991.

21. Francis Heylighen, Self Organization, Emergence and the Architecture of Complexity, Proceedings of 1^st European

Conference on System Science, 1981.

22. HA Simon, The Architecture of Complexity, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 106, reprinted in the ‘The

Science of the Artificial’, MIT Press, 1996.

23. I Stewart, Self Organization in Evolution: A

mathematical Perspective. Philosophical Transactions, The Royal Society of London, 361, 2003.

24. Michael Weinstock; Morphogenesis and the Mathematics of Emergence, AD, Vol.74, No.3, May/June2004; Wiley Academy;

pp 17.

25. Ibid.

CHAPTER 3

DATA, GENES AND SPECIATION

3.1 Fit Fabric