Discrete Architecture and Iterations Report By Carel Abboud

DISCRETE ARCHITECTURE AND ITERATIONS Arch 580 - Fall 2020 - Presented to Ms. Leyla el Sayed Hussein CAREL ABBOUD - 201601878

REPORT OUTLINE

1- REPORT ABSTRACT 2- WOLFE AND RHYTHM 3- COHERENCE AND CONCURRENCY 4- HEIDEGGER ‘S ONTOLOGY 5- DISCRETE ARCHITECTURE REPRESENTED USING DIFFERENT AGGREGATIONS IN WASP 6- VISUAL PROGRAMING LANGUAGE AND HOW GRASSHOPPER WORKS 7- AI AND COMPUTER REPRESENTATION 8- BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABSTRACT

When analyzing the process of designing architecture, the process is almost as important as the final intervention.

Design, development, and other projects inevitably involve iteration and this inevitably in turn involve repetition.

Repetition when combined with Iteration has positive effects, such as enabling progressive generation of knowledge, enabling concurrency, and integrating necessary changes, but it also increases duration and cost of a project. That being said, the line gets blurred by what is just repetition and which is iteration, so they get lost in the process.

Everything at some point becomes ontologically flat.

In my own perspective and understanding based on my readings, Iteration is the process of repeating a set of tasks to refine some objectives, where each repetition adds extra information to the process, which is used to improve subsequent repetitions. While repetition is only the process of repeating something a set number of times. So basically, iteration involves repetition while changing the conditions each time to have a different output.

This report aims to explore means of visualizations of repetition, iteration and discrete architecture using rhino, grasshopper and wasp. It explores what is repetition and iteration, and how is discrete architecture is derived from the fluctuation of the dynamic relationship between repetition and iterations.

WOLFE AND RHYTHM

Ross Wolfe is an Author and editor of numerous published articles, essays, and reviews, in addition to organizing public forums and interviews. The main focus of his work is Russian and Soviet studies. Wolfe is also interested in the history of Europe, philosophy, and Marxism. He writes primarily about classical avant-garde architecture, contemporary political issues (elections, activism, current events), and topics such as the environment, technology, liberalism, utopianism, and the history of the Left.

Ross Wolfe associates repetition to the idea of rhythm, where he describes it as one of the easiest ways to experience architecture. Repetition as “rhythm” suggests a musical analogy, whereas in architecture, rhythm is realized in space.

He continues into describing that we naturally group things unconsciously Even when the elements associated together are have different properties, “we find that the structural resemblance dominates these differences. Repetition in any form of rhythm – as much in music as in architecture – is an extremely simple principle of composition which tends to give a sense of coherence.” (Wolfe, 2014).

COHERENCE AND CONCURRENCY Coherence and concurrency are all concepts that go in-line with main pillars of discrete architecture. Discrete architecture has some resemblance to the mono- or megalithic. Prehistoric megaliths, assemblies of large parts extracted directly from nature, are in some way strange mereologies, where the parts also exist outside of the whole and remain discrete within the composition, thus everything become ontologically flat, lines are blurred, between what is an iteration from the original and what is not while still blending in the context (Retsin, 2015).

Concurrency means multiple computations are happening at the same time. With respect to Grasshopper, which is a VPL (Visual programing language), it could take into consideration concurrency, if designed to do so. Many real-time software systems must be “reactive.� They must respond to externally generated events which may occur at somewhat random times, in some-what random order, or both. This could be achieved by attractors in Grasshopper.

COHERENCE AND CONCURRENCY An attractor is a geometric entity: a point, a curve or another element, used to modify the geometry around it within defined limits. The impact an attractor has on other geometry depends on the distance between the defined attractor and the object it is manipulating (Tedeschi, 2014).

HEIDEGGER ‘S ONTOLOGY In his investigation into the essence of being, Heidegger begins with the question of “why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” He finds that since nothing is the alternative to being, rather than simply different beings, then the possibility of not-being opens up. Thus, there stand alternatives to the existence of any given being, that they are different beings or that they could not exist at all. With these alternatives in mind, Heidegger found that being was binary. He was led to find an aspect or way of being that everything in existence shared. That thing was a way of being or mode of comportment in the world. This way of being was the continual act of a being putting itself forward as present in the world, or of phusis.

Heidegger describes phusis as “the emergent self-upraising, the self-unfolding that abides in itself.” That is to say, phusis is the continual act of a being revealing itself to its world. It is emergent and is the act of a being raising itself up and unfolding itself.

To be a being, one must be in a state of continual self-unfolding, continually showing oneself to one’s environment and continually exerting oneself on that environment (Heidegger, 2000).

This continuous unfolding, allows the parts to get lost, where did the whole start where does it end, thus becoming ontologically flat. In discrete architecture the parts also exist outside of the whole and remain discrete within the composition

DISCRETE ARCHITECTURE REPRESENTED Discrete architecture is a type of intervention in which a base part is repeated, and iterated in order to produce a certain design. It is not about the shape or form of the canvas, but about the syntax, the organization of the parts.

Design intent is never just and only embedded in the discrete part itself, but comes from decision making about the possible relations and aggregations of the parts. With strange dynamics, neither parts nor whole are predefined from the beginning.

Parts and whole coexist at the same time, with equal importance, and influence each other during the design process. (Retsin, 2015).

In order to represent Discrete design, it is always unfolding and should be designed to do so. To represent it, I used grasshopper and a plug-in wasp in 3 different aggregations: random Stochastic aggregation, field aggregation and Stochastic aggregation

DISCRETE ARCHITECTURE REPRESENTED When using the random stochastic aggregation, no g rammar rules are implemented and it is up to wasp to decide the connections, although the user set multiple connections. When using the random aggregation, generating multiple discrete interventions very quickly.

DISCRETE ARCHITECTURE REPRESENTED The second type of aggregation I experimented with, is the Field aggregation. a bounding box, with a varying number of resolution where it would allow to vary the distance between the centroid of the prism and the field aggregations. Those example show that in discrete design the original is lost in the process, It is forever unfolding and becomes ontologically flat.

DISCRETE ARCHITECTURE REPRESENTED The third aggregation that i have explored and experimented in, is the stochastic aggregation, where I define the rules of the aggregation. for example the bottom of the column should connect to the top of the slab. etc...

When defining the rules of the basic three elements, concurrency can be easily achieved, Concurrency means multiple computations are happening at the same time, as mentioned before.

3d models that are concurrent, must respond to externally generated events which may occur at somewhat random times, in some-what random order, or both. So, the wasp stochastic aggregation, can represent discrete architecture. So when designed to have a reactive model with three basic elements: slab, column and stairs, this methodology can be applied into a series of complex, reactive interventions.

VISUAL PROGRAMING LANGUAGE Visual Programing Languages and processes of representation have been under development mainly in computer science and linguistics research areas since the arrival of the computer. The theoretical foundation behind generative design methods stems from 2 main pillars: natural analogy and logical frame works. Natural analogies manifest itself by neural networks, genetic programing and artificial life (shea, 2004).

AI AND COMPUTER REPRESENTATION At its core, an algorithm is an interconnected chain of nodes, in which an input feeds into a node which in turn generates an output, which is then fed into the subsequent node, and so on and so forth until it reaches the ultimate output node. While AI generally functions in the same manner, it is an abstract mathematical model that works in a neural network. Given recent advancements in computational power, this “neural network� is now able to analyze quantifiable data using advanced formulas based on objective criterion. If a function can be broken down to fit into this framework then this function can be computerized.

Computer representation and the generative design process are closely knitted together, this representation must be encoded into a string of bits then decoded in order to understand the structure of the objects. In architecture, the more natural thing to do is to model and compute directly using shapes rather than binary symbols (shea, 2004).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1- Heidegger, M., & Fried, G. (2000). Introduction to metaphysics. New Haven: Yale University Press.

2- Tedeschi, A., & Lombardi, D. (2017). The algorithms-aided design (AAD). Cham: Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-31 9-53135-9_4 3- Retsin, G. (2019). In part whole: The aesthetics of the discrete. Architectural De sign, 89(5), 120-127. doi:10.1002/ad.2488 4- Wolfe, R. (2014, April). Repetition-Compulsion: World-Historical Rhythms in Architecture. E-flux Journal.

5- Shea, K. (2004). Digital Tectonics. Chichester, England: Wiley-Academy.

THANK YOU, CAREL ABBOUD