Information Management over time

Few architects have incorporated time as a tool for design.  Time is an architectural strategy yet to be developed. Time itself involves taking on irreversibility and therefore its intrinsic indetermination.

Cedric Price used to question architect’s figure as this, compared to other disciplines such as science and philosophy. Most of architects do not care to incorporate time as a research object. He used throughout his life many concepts associated with time as anticipation architecture, planned obsolescence, uncertainty, flexibility, momentary theory, cybernetics, attractors … Of these perhaps the first illustrates more clearly its position with respect to time. Price was interested more about closed umbrella than open one, as the latter tells you it’s raining while the previous is anticipating rain. Umbrella metaphor advances architecture design ready for future action.

Time is linked to everything. Time means evolution and information, and the relation of both. Time means building an eco-system. For that reason one of the main  properties of eco-systems is its capacity of evolution and adaptation.

Irreversibility and the emergence of novelty

Eco-systemic architecture can be defined as relationship between form and information through time within an environment

 

Eco-system Design

Eco-system architecture is prospective design. It represents the beginning of a long and slow process. The eco-systems are potential places to bring out the urban life. The future architecture “grows” protecting and enhancing the ecosystem. Evolutinary Urbanism gives value to each one of the intermediate stages rather than focus on a future default. The initial ecosystem can slowly be transformed or remain indefinitely in its state.

Eco-system design for Brno competition entry, by nodo17 group

 

Biomimicry

Biomimicry is a revolutionary new science that analyzes nature’s best ideas. Through strategies based on biomimicry it is possible to study evolutionary processes occurring in nature for subsequent application to architecture. Biomimicry studies nature to find inspiration in it. Biomimicry comes to solving those human problems that nature has already solved.

From this point of view evolution could be understood as an adaptive process. So the future phases or developments are not preset. The phases will adapt to future demands through a growth system from small to large scale, from a small building to a great density system. The city is not built anymore only with large operations but instead with all possible scales that can adapt to its future requirements.

It is possible to learn from nature how organism has adapted to unexpected situations throughout its resilience capacity.

Evolutionary system for Brno competition entry inspired in the hydrological structure of the natural eco-system, by nodo17 group 

 

Synchronization

Best cities have always been those that can reinterpret the natural environment they inhabit and have evolved in conjunction with it. Cities evolves over time, but they need to synchronize with the different rhythms of the environment:
a. With the landscape rhythm of the seasonal changes
b. With the tree growth rhythm that can be slowly perceived.
c. Tree growth rhythm can be synchronized with the city construction.
d.  City life needs to be synchronized with city construction.

Synchronization of the city construction with environment. Klekovaca Tourist Centre in Bosnia-Herzegovina by nodo17 group

 

CAS (Complex Adaptive System)

A CAS is a structure that adapts to the changing environment to increase its survival ability. The research begins with the premise that city can be considered a CAS. A city is complex because there are dynamic networks of interactions. A city is adaptive because it is a collective behavior that mutate and self-organize in response to environment. For this reason the application and study of CAS may be critical to research.

Eco-Morphogenetic Prototypes

In  Complex Adaptive System architecture is designed as eco-morphogenetic prototypes. Traditionally architecture and urban design where linked by the concept of typology. There was an academic acceptance of relation between architectural typology and urban morphology. Evolutionary urbanism reinterprets the previous relation by defining architectural prototypes in relation to its environment. Prototypes adapts to eco-system.

Eco-morphogenetic design for Brno. Each prototype is designed as an adaptive system enclosed in environment. The position inside eco-system defines its eco-morphogenetic qualities

Evolutionary Regulations

In opposition to traditional regulations based on rigid morphological approaches, it is proposed evolutionary regulations. The traditional quantitative factors are replaced by open qualitative factors. Evolutionary urbanism is an open system that requires open regulations to enhance and adapt to its future development. It is based on topological parameters.

Diagram of evolutionary regulations for the hotels design. Klekovaca Tourist Centre in Bosnia-Herzegovina by nodo17 group

 

Different Hotels designs developed from topological parameters, by nodo17 group

Identity grows slow over time

Versus the rapid growth and speculative urban development, city identity can only be created with citizen participation and slowly over time. The citizens cannot be ignored anymore and they should become a really important part of the city evolution and transformation.

In this sense,   it is proposed a participatory model and an evolutionary urban management that can involve all the city actors: citizens, politicians, multidisciplinary team of experts (architects , landscape architects , urban planners, hydrologists, ecologists, mobility engineer…), political scientists, developers …

Participatory and self-eco-organized systems.

 

Management models of information over time.

Any process oriented in time requires a management system for its development. It is not enough to raise the performance of a system. There must be self-organizing mechanisms for its management over time.
Perhaps one of the biggest difficulties of any process oriented in time is how to transmit and control information. It is necessary to design an informational system based on feedback and retroactivity.
It is needed a technological approach to social behavior. The technology offers us the possibility to develop an efficient interaction between us and surrounding environment. Information has become an increasingly significant element in urban social life.

Evolutionary tree management from Brno competition entry, by nodo17 group

Germs: building the minimum

Rather than finished objects, evolutionary urbanism designs germs with different completed levels. Building the minimun is not just a low-cost decision. Designing the minimum means to give opportunity and chance to adapt to future requirements and needs of every user.
Through an additive principle, the initial stage, “the germ”, can grow and can be transformed in almost an infinite number of different prototypes.

 

Plan for Affordable Housing in Sudan. nodo17+MTM+Cso