Visionary Aesthetics and Architecture Variations

Celestino Soddu

Professor of Architectural Design, Registered Architect

Director of Generative Design Lab

Department of Architecture and Planning

Politecnico di Milano University, Italy

celestino.soddu@polimi.it - www.celestinosoddu.com

1.0 Abstract

This paper describes the use of Generative Approach to construct the transformation processes of artificial environment. In particular urban and architectural environments with long history are considered.

The aim was to design generative codes able to generate detailed architectural projects of new buildings and new imprintings inside existing historical environments. These new architectures had to fit, or better to increase the specific town evolution.

These design experiments follow my first generative projects, dated from 1988, concerning Italian Medieval Towns and subsequent evolutions. These were conducted in 2002 and 2003 in Hong Kong, Macau, Shanghai, Nagoya, TelAviv, Rome, Los Angeles, Chicago, NewYork and Washington DC.

The challenge is to generate Visionary Variations of complex environments by using Morphogenesis codes. As in nature to reach, by using generative codes, the complex contemporary quality of detailed architectural projects.

2.0 History and Nature

Our goal is to associate the natural environments to the artificial environments that had been marked by the time and cultural processes. Historical cities that have had a cultural stratification through the centuries seems to be more natural. They seems to fit our more deep needs in living environmental systems as a mirror of our life. This wonderful quality belongs to ancient cities like Rome and in modern cities like NY City and Chicago that stratified, in the last centuries, different cultures. This is a process that works as an identifiable and recognizable concept of ideal City.

This analogy with nature is due to a lot of factors. Each of these factors is a fundamental part of the natural image of these complex artificial systems. In my work each one is described and designed with a generative morphogenesis code, with algorithms that, as an artificial DNA, work to define the evolution of town environments.

2.1 Uniqueness. Generation versus Cloning

First factor. Aesthetics of Transformation versus Aesthetics of Repetition.

The association of the adjective "artificial" with the concept of repetition of objects all equal can help us to consider a historical city as a natural world. No architecture, in cities born and evolved before the last century, is equal to another. May be that we can discover similarity, but not repetition.

Our good harmony feeling inside natural environments is also due to the appreciation of uniqueness and un-repeatebility of natural realities. No tree is equal to another, also if it is similar. Each tree is unpredictable, also if it is not a surprise. It is recognizable.

In the artificial worlds we can work to build this quality by using a morphogenesis approach. We can design "natural" species instead of objects. As happens in nature, these species generate endless sequences of individual realities.

Generative Design can fit these human needs. As Leonardo codes, we can do that by designing the Dna of possible architectural and urban scenarios.

After two centuries of cloned objects and versus the concept of architecture and design of artificial objects as equal repetition of the same result, considered "optimal", with Generative Approach we can find again the ability to design and to produce artificial worlds emulating the nature oneness and un-repeatability.

So, avoiding the random-form approach, we can design extended artificial DNA, and we can control these artificial species from the whole to the details of each possible generated individuals. Generative design is the construction of an idea/code as similarity of individuals that belong to a same species. It is not only the generation of random results waiting for the emergence of unexpected form which could satisfy the expectations of people with not-well defined aim.

The species is a design product. New individual don't emerge from random. Each scenario is one of the possible endless representations of the same generative processes, of the same concept/idea. Each result is different because of unpredictable factors of the context in which each individual lives, but each result belongs the applied morphogenesis codes.

2.2 Complexity, Artificial Life and Cellular Automata

Second factor. Natural organic structure of historical cities comes from progressive contaminations of different concepts in a running time line. The complexity of a long-lived-town's system cannot be emulated without running again the same type of progressive path. In this sense the generative methodology has to foresee a series of transformation logics, which we could assume as concepts representation. Each generative project has to activate and to run artificial lives that manage, dynamically, the progressive mutual contaminations of these concepts.

"In order to realize complexity and clarity, one needs to define operational logics that are strongly structured and that explicitly mirror a simple subjective approach. First of all, complexity cannot be reached in a single step. If we try to draw a city we will always make a simplified representation of it, or, at most, one that is strongly allusive with respect to a particular and limited reading key. The urban images of Piranesi, the series of engravings on the "Carceri" are, perhaps, the highest visionary representations of the urban and architectural complexity in a single sketch. But even Piranesi, in order to reach complexity, stratified one sketch onto the other, using an already carved plate and stratifying new visions, often contaminating one perspective logic with another, creating ambiguity and new possible overlapping reading keys that follow different temporal and emotional moments contaminating one another but that are not contradictory.

Complexity is always the result of progressive paths of contamination and stratification. It is generated from the dynamics of a process and often from its non-linearity. That's not all. Complexity also emerges from the ability of an idea/hypothesis to confront unforeseen events within a process of temporal transformation. If the idea, considered as visionary of the future, comes across obstacles, overcoming these obstacles and constraints creates knots of complexity in the system. At the same time, this increases the recognizability of the idea, that is, the complex identity of every single event." (Generative Design Visionary Variations. Morphogenetic processes for complex future identities, Celestino Soddu, Communication and Cognition Journal, 2003)

Complexity, as stratification of different and subsequent approaches, needs to have a process time. Also a subjective approach defined today is different from tomorrow's new one, the same if it belongs to the same human viewpoint.

Complexity is created by the simultaneous existence of different concepts and, in the same moment, of contradictory ones inside the same visionary approach.

If our aim is to design morphogenesis codes able to construct a contempoirary complexity, we need to stratify, inside generative project, a lot of different subjective concepts mirroring our personal history of designers, our different moods and the sequence of hypothesis belonging to our cultural viewpoint.

Doing that, we need to interpret each design occasion as a particular contamination way of our stratified morphogenetic codes. So we need to redefine a paradigm that will control the evolutionary path.

Following the concept that complexity rises only from a temporal path, we can manage a second possibility using evolutionary systems. This second possibility can be used only together with the first one because it can only consolidate the increasing complexity of a topological relationship.

In order to design this system of rules, we could also use Cellular Automata logical approaches. But such evolutionary structures don't succeed in satisfying the complexity as figuration proper of architectural events. In my generative architectural projects I used three-dimensional cellular automata for increasing the complexity of a topological system but not directly for shaping possible architectural events. Each of these architectural events follows genetic structures built considering the specificity of feasible buildings. This peculiarity is defined through rules of transformation. Cellular Automata is really a generative phenomenon but only as a schematic support of possible configuration.

Cellular Automata define a progressive structure of different codes that are applicable to each event, at the different scales, considering the structure of relationships with the surrounding events. It is very important for the possible starting up of generative processes.

Each architectural event is identified and it is generated by considering what happens in the 26 surrounding positions. These relationships operate enhancing the rules of transformation already working in each single event and in its 26 interfaces shared with other events. This process occurs from the whole architecture until its details. My process uses logics similar to fractal systems. The difference with fractal systems is that the homothetic approach is applied not to forms but to transformations.

Sequence of increasing complexity in a 3d cellular automata experimental program by C.Soddu

2.3 Figuration and Idea

3dr factor. Like in nature, the constrains belonging to the increasing functional and technological factors that occur during the design life will increase the quality and natural character of artificial environment.

The strong relationship between figuration, feasibility and architectural concept can be managed in way that the feasibility don't reduce the idea but can be the key to gain complexity by opening a lot of parallel possibilities to develop the architectural concept until the implementation of final design results.

I defined, inside my generative projects, a structure of different, parallel and possible devices of transformation that represent a lot of different constructive approaches to the architectural shape feasibility. The choice among these possible evolutionary paths is done not only at a low level but with the purpose to enhance the idea/code during each increasing complexity process. The evolutionary process is managed by fitting the progressive results with different construction approaches and their progressive contamination in an open system. In this way, all the practical needs, that could seem to be bonds, are really used to enhance the architectural idea. As normally happens in nature, difficulties don't reduce the input but are the occasion for increasing the complexity implementation.

Like olive tree. More it is beaten from the wind and from the bad weather, more it has been marked by time history, more the quality of the result is amazing and fascinating. Time and constrains has enhanced its identity of individual, its being an exceptional and unique expression of the species code.

Olive tree aged of two thousand years in the Getzemani Garden, Jerusalem

In our town environment (and in architectural design processes too) the same process happens. More the town was passed through strong and different cultures, and, in sequence, different needs was applied to transform this reality, more its artificial environment has a high quality.

In generative processes happens the same. More the requests of the client are strong, contradictory and impossible, more the quality of the results can be high. The difficulties push the evolution and each step is an occasion to use an architectural code, using its ability to transform the request in increasing complexity and the first draft in a progressive good project.

Loa Angeles downtown, Visionary Variation. C.Soddu generative project 2003

3.0 Generative Codes and Visionary Variations.

Our aim is to construct Morphogenesis codes able to generate endless Visionary Variations. We can use, simultaneously, a set of different devices of transformation, made with the aim to represent the manifold faces of our architectural hypothesis.

As in nature, no one of this device of transformation is necessary or is exhaustive of our idea. We can use all them together. But we can also insert later other devices in order to upgrade our architectural idea during the time of our designing experience. The generated results will represent our subjective experience, our cultural references. Subjective codes in collective modality.

Chicago, one century ago. Visionary Generative scenario fitting City Identity. C.Soddu generative project 2003.

My challenge was to design a generative code able to represent fascinating environments as historical cities. By representing the process and not the results, by constructing an artificial DNA.

I considered these subsequent issues and I used them to design an open system of generative codes:

1. In the historic cities everything seems always been so, that everything could not be anything else than so, but, at the same moment, everything is surprisingly unpredictable and complex, full of contradictions and of unexpected contaminations.

2. Everything is organically structured but every detail, every event is unique and unrepeatable. The codes of transformation, that I designed, manage opposite characters: uniqueness and recognizability, complexity and identity, unpredictability and organic system, order and chaos.

3. It is possible to find codes of identity and associations among characters and specificities of the events that compose these complex systems. But every code is interpretative code, is an hypothesis that represents the subjectivity of whom builds it.

4. The codes of reading are endless and each of these is like the codes that we use to recognize the objects surrounding us, the same codes that we learned to build when we was children and we needed to distinguish a chair from a table, an automobile from a truck, a picture of Van Gogh from one of Picasso, the teachers of mathematics from those of gymnastics. Generative codes have to manage recognizability and clarity of possible scenarios.

5. The amazing thing is that, even if these codes are built so strongly by following our subjectivity, they perfectly work and are able to give us the ability to recognize unpredictable events. These rules of identification, also if they are different from the rules used by other people, can fit the same results. This happens even if these subjective rules are founded on different lived events and on different logical associations. So, Identity codes can be written referring to our subjectivity. They will work well if these codes will be a lot inside an open system.

6. The codes of transformation that build the artificial DNA have to simultaneously fit our subjective way to read the surrounding environment and its transforming processes and, in the same moment, the inter-subjective feeling of how (in our interpretation) the inhabitants look at the past/future of the city environment.

7. The idea of city that springs from these subjective and inter-subjective approaches operates toward the realization of the city itself increasing its own fascinating aspects, its own characters, its own identity. This Idea represents an evolution and progressive stratification of complexity and it traces, unequivocally, the existence of a temporal run in action. The existence of the past, that is represented by the visible and by interpretable transformations gives the possibility of looking to a future. The need to interpret the existing town environment puts us into the game. We feel us inside the time, we feel alive, we feel well. A city without history is unliveable, because it is without time and therefore without future. At least until first transformations will be implemented, by opening the games to the creativeness and to the future.

The generative codes must be rules of transformation. Nothing has to be defined as form: this is a static approach. Everything has to be identified and to be designed as process of transformation, by following our need to feel alive. The more interesting and "natural" architectures were born by a transformation, not by a single act. The Pantheon too, one of the more perfect architectures, was born transforming a previous existing temple.

Shanghai. Visionary variation of city evolution. C.Soddu generative project 2003

Table 1. ." (from: “Generative Design Visionary Variations. Morphogenetic processes for complex future identities”, Celestino Soddu, Communication and Cognition Journal, 2003)

The generative process (cycle 1-2-3-4-5) uses algorithms managing the transformation and evolution inside a non-linear system, but not the evolution of the system itself. The IDEA is the evolutionary system. It uses generative algorithms for representing a particular subjective concept defined as process. Each generative project can generate, using a lot of parallel artificial lives, an endless sequence of possible parallel results for fitting the architect’s imprinting with the client’s needs. The system has not automatic upgrading (like genetic algorithms) because the aim is not optimising/homologising the idea-system but representing a subjective human creative identity with the fullness of all possible results. For this reason (cycle 6A, 6B) the upgrade is manually made by the architect. As in Renaissance, this upgrading activity is one of the most important human creative act during the design process. The only one that, following subjective interpretation, is impossible to emulate with AI and AL.

Nagoya. Visionary variation of the district of the harbor. C.Soddu generative project 2003

4.0 Visionary Variations

My last generative works have been characterized by the attempt to design the complexity of the urban-architectural environments of the modern tradition. While my first generative projects in the 80' have been characterized by the reconstruction of generative codes of the Italian urban tradition, from the Roman Empire to the medieval cities, from Renaissance to the Baroque, my last works focused the comparison with the urban environments of the modern tradition, as Chicago of the beginning of last century. This approach was enthusiastically performed and I found a good field to verify the possibility of using the generative approach directly in one of the most important design activity: the design of the quality of the urban environment, of the urban-architectural character and of its identity. Above all because in city as Chicago, Hong Kong and New York we can easily read the passage to the modern not only as innovation but also as construction of a cultural ideal shared among its inhabitants: the ideal city.

The challenge was to identify and build, with generative codes, visionary variations of ideal cities that are readable and interpretable in these real contexts and in their active and evolutionary processes.

Nagoya downtown, Japan. Visionary Scenarios of increasing complexity 2003

4.1 The Visionary approach

To implement a visionary approach we have:

1. To operate by generating variations and not permutations of pre-designed components (also if these components are parametric). My approach uses a set of parallel codes of transformation that represent a subjective vision, an interpretation of the reality as first step to implement possible worlds. Following that, my generative work don’t use databases. It is an open system able to generate endless results.

2. To reread the historical architectures but not to re-design their forms. The concept was to re-construct the complexity as harmony able to put, in only a scenario, the plurality of events that represents the natural multiplicity of the possible.

Washington DC, Inter American Development Bank Visionary variations. C.Soddu generative project 2003

3. To build an artificial DNA that can be, at the same moment, innovative, contemporary, and the mirror of the architectural tradition of Renaissance. Where the generated scenarios, also if they mirror the tradition, they consolidate themselves in complex forms constrained by rules, they overcame the limit of these rules by using them. These scenarios have to deny the constrictive aspect of these rules to find again, in the constrain, the occasion to explain the concept and run the process of discovery. We are working, as in the Renaissance, in the field of art and science.

4. To maintain, rather to amplify the recognizability of each of these cities, also operating through architectures whose image is strongly linked to contemporary concepts of architecture.

5.0 Conclusion. Generative Art: technology or philosophy ?

The results of this challenge are the visionary variations of cities like Chicago, Nagoya, Shanghai, Washington, Los Angeles, Tel Aviv, and Rome.

These visionary approaches trace not the solution but the process toward a possible, a look toward possible variations of the environment that we are living. The aim is to design an idea of artificial objects that mirror nature, of architecture as plot of endless variations, of simultaneous uniqueness, of complexity that suddenly appears as existing from a long time, as natural character that we was looking for a long time, as mirror of our life.

Washington DC, Dupont street. Visionary variation of town evolution. C.Soddu generative project (IDB exhibition 2003)

TelAviv. Visionary variation of seafront. C.Soddu generative project of a new hotel, 2003

The generative approach overcomes the technology, it goes beyond the limits of the tools and it is the occasion of deep evaluations on the structure of the environmental systems surrounding us, occasion of discovery of creative spaces that we, for a long time, were looking for.

The idea can be concretised in a project of ideal city without having the necessity to represent it as solution, but only as code of the possible, as process of transformation that we can run: this is the Generative Art. Opening unexplored roads to the creativeness redefining the concept of design GA is, more than a technology, a philosophy.

Generative Art is not (only) a technology also if it uses information technologies. It is not only a tool that we can use to generate forms. It is a philosophy with a strong and humanistic imprinting: each generative project can be implemented only starting from a hypothesis, like all scientific discovery paths, from a subjective vision of possible worlds, of possible rules, of possible increasing complexity.

Rome. Visionary variation of Ghetto-Trastevere new link. C.Soddu, E.Colabella, A.Sonnino Generative project 2003

References

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C.Soddu, "La patina del tempo" (the time patina) in "Recuperare" magazine n.9 1984.
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C.Soddu, "L'immagine non euclidea" (the not euclidean image), Gangemi publisher, 1987.
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C.Soddu, "Rappresentazione e rilievo per immagini tridimensionali computerizzate della morfogenesi storica urbana" (computer 3D representation of the morphogenesis of urban evolution), in the proceedings of the conference "il Rilievo Tra Scienza e Storia", Perugia 1989, then published in the magazine XYZ 1991.
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C.Soddu, Generative Design Visionary Variations. Morphogenetic processes for complex future identities, in Communication and Cognition Journal, 2003 (incoming printing)