My research is centred upon how architecture is invigorated by cyberspace, the blurred boundary between the virtual and the actual, and how the different parameters of these spaces can be used to inform one another. My early experience in practice was that buildings are limited by the inert materials used to construct them and by the unimaginative ideas of what a building should look like and be. My research draws upon a variety of different disciplines to inform one architecture. The areas of research are multidisciplinary and include the changing status of the architectural drawing, smart materials, computer-aided architectural drawing, computer-aided manufacture, emergent systems, responsive environments, the architectural design of cyberspace, interactivity, cybernetics and evolving systems and algorithmic design. To create responsive, non-prescriptive designs for architectural intervention was the starting point that led to an interest in the logic of algorithms and open-ended systems. These problem-solving diagrams used by computer programmers are very useful as a way of describing fluctuating conditions in responsive environments. This led to an interest in other computing paradigms such as cellular automata, complexity and emergence. These and other ideas I attempted to bring into the arena of architectural design to help architects cope with the rapid growth of computational technology, which is starting to revolutionize the way buildings are designed, drawn and built. We are at another of the important perturbations in technology and epistemology that seems to affect us so often these days. Cell biology is the new cyber-space and nanotechnology. Once we fully understand the exact nature of how our world makes us and, indeed how it sometimes kills us, we will be able to make true architectures of ecological connectability. This is our profession's future. Small steps have been made, but much more remains to be done.
Synthetic biology could offer truly sustainable approaches to the built environment, predict Rachel Armstrong and Neil Spiller. BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT
Protocell architecture inverts the current economic and procurement processes of construction with their emphasis on cost, speed and quantifiable outcomes. Wet, semi‐living and symbiotic with ecological systems and materials, protocell systems promise a pargadigm that is the very antithesis of existing practice and will require the employment of very different skills sets and approaches. To ease the intellectual transition from hard engineering to chemical solutions, Neil Spiller investigates the enduring notion of alchemy. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Neil Spiller counters the main theme of this issue by questioning the dominant focus on production and new technologies in architectural culture, which places a premium on the generation of ‘ever more gratuitous complex surfaces and structures’. Could this inward‐looking emphasis on process and obsessive love of new technologies be at the expense of the final product? Are we in danger of producing artefacts that lose sight of human expression and poetics in the competitive drive for greater complexity? Are we, in fact, heading towards a great ‘forgetting’ in which humanity is subtracted from the architectural product?
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