Tag Archives: biomimicry

BETWEEN BUILDING AND NATURE. The Nature of Order by Christopher Alexander.

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Chritopher Alexander argues that the concept of order, as well as the generation of ordered structures, are fields that can be explained from the point of view of physics and biology, although there is yet too much to be done in the field of architecture. The four volumes of The Nature of Order (The Phenomenon of Life, The Process of Creating Lige, A vision of a Living World and The Luminous Ground) could be considered as a self-biography in which new contributions are linked to those made during the period between the 1960s and 1970s. The numerous examples that illustrate Alexander’s thesis (collected in the book of The Nature of Order) belong both to the world of modern and vernacular architecture and to that of nature, and even to his own work.

On the other hand, we are facing an aescalar and fractal investigation, that addresses both the detail of a mosaic and the structure of a city. Alexander’s gaze rests on nature as a source of evolutionary inspiration and production of order, collected in the second book: The Process of Creating Life. In this second volume, both the morphogenetic processes present in nature and the generation processes of the vernacular architecture are analyzed in parallel.

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Acetabularia seaweed morphogenesis.

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San Marcos Square morphogenesis.

This ambitious work by Christopher Alexander aims to identify and study hidden ordered structures in nature, for its later application, as basic principles without scale, to the built environment.

ECO-EVOLUTIONARY DESIGN

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Klekovaca Tourist Centre by nodo17 group.

Forest Ring have been designed according to evolutionary principles. Our aim is to adapt to current Kozila Ecosystem and at the same time allow flexibility to developers. Forest Ring is a resililent structure able to evolve over time and to adapt to future requirements and changes. Unlike traditional urban planning, evolutionary design works with time as one of its most important tools. Time, change and evolution are three names for the same concept. There is a deep relation between time and creation. As Henri Bergson used to say duration lies on creativity.

Most of times, big scale projects, as in the current case, will change over time and probably they will not be constructed as it was originally designed. This changes over time could be traumatic unless you integrate the ability for change and transformation under the design process. This is what evolutionary design is for.

Evolutionary design requires a holistic approach to urban design. Probably it is the only way to face the complexity of a long process over time. So many are the layers of complexity as the duration of urban development over the years. In this regard, our first objective is to set up the tools required to work with time and evolution.

Our first reference is the current Kozila Ecosystem. It is a highly complex structure able to evolve and adapt over time. We need to learn from it and try to synchronize our design with it. From the seasonal changes to the tree growth, there are many different rythms of time inside Kozila Ecosystem. We know there are many more rythms, but it is neccesarry to reduce them in order to synchronize our design with them. The Forest Ring is a great opportunity to work with time and to integrate with Kozila natural ecosystem. Thus, Forest Ring has been designed according to previous rythms. In other words, Forest Ring is the metronome of the future construction and development of Klekovaca Urban Zone. It set the pace and we need just to follow it.