Abstract
“Technology is the active human interface with the material world.” — Ursula K. Le Guin, 2005
As designers grapple with the changing landscape of research and practice in the context of global climate change and uncertainty, important questions arise regarding architecture’s entanglements with broader ecological systems. Can design and architecture engage with and negotiate between ecosystems—whether biological, political, or otherwise? What role might computation play in such engagements—both technically as an interface with complex systems, and conceptually for expanding sensibilities of interdependency and relational coexistence? How might computational methods and emerging modalities of automation, perhaps paradoxically, subvert inherited legacies of irreconcilable binaries between the natural and the technological, to offer new and synthetic models of design, fabrication, and cohabitation?
This special issue explores the capacity for design computation and building automation to uncover, catalyze, support, and nurture new interdependencies among humans, machines, and ecosystems. “Ecological levers” are offered here as a metaphor to provoke a range of approaches and responses to the prompt, with levers being active agents that interface between actors or systems. In the context of simple mechanics, an exerted force at one end of a lever will meet with equal resistance from the other end. If that initial force is amplified by some type of catalyzing lever (such as a pulley system), the resulting effect can invoke a much greater force or net positive outcome, beyond that which was initially applied. This volume asks, what intermediary levers are at our disposal to initiate systemic change as we face dire ecological crises? How do we tend to the complexity of interdependent multi-parameter (or multi-lever) systems while resisting the urge to simplify them for the sake of computability? How do we establish new research cultures to effect impactful outcomes that are beneficial and lasting? How can computational processes and technologies of production contribute to our stewardship of our material world, from the nanoscale of materials to the macro scale of ecosystems? What emergent models can we reimagine for co-creation and co-existence?
The papers curated in this volume elucidate on degrees of autonomy to better understand the interplay of interdependencies across both computational processes and their materialization in architectural construction. Such interdependencies are explored in a range of approaches, from challenges in material systems in construction to computational processes. Across all the contributions are efforts to integrate a variety of knowledge areas and disciplines, demanding that the existing methods and tools at our disposal do more to address pressing concerns.
In Bamboo Spatial Systems, Developing an Integrated Computational Workflow and a Tailored Semi-Automated Fabrication Apparatus, the authors outline the workflow and customized tooling necessary to tackle the use of nonstandard natural materials such as bamboo. This work underscores the need to address missing links in the processing of bamboo and joinery details, thereby enabling the use of more sustainable materials for construction.
For Clay 3D Printed Hydroponics, A Paradigm to Address Global Food Insecurity, Additive Manufacturing is discussed not simply as contributing to the field in terms of digital automation or 3D printing; the optimization of such fabrication processes is aimed at agricultural cultivation to address larger challenges of food insecurity. The paper proposes how 3D printed ceramics offer unique advantages for modular, customizable hydroponic systems optimized for the cultivation of vegetables, as a distributable and scalable system for food production.
Optimizing for daylighting performance for architectural designs can often be a black box, where agency for the designers’ inputs and ways to weight multi-value parameters are limited. In Application of Multimodal Learning in Daylight Provision and View Quality Assessment of Residential Building Layouts, the evaluation and optimization processes foreground the insertion of human-in-the-loop workflow for the training, integrating visual and numerical assessment as a valuable tool for early-stage design work. The approach not only arrives at desirable performance metrics in a more direct manner; as a tool for designers, it enhances decision-making by ranking the metrics that one can work with based on the iterative process. Here, the “lever” is influenced neither by machine nor human; rather, it reflects a synergistic co-development of both.
The concept of synergistic co-development is further elaborated in the last three papers, addressing levels of push and pull between computational processes and creative production. Spectral Ruins: Empathy with Inanimate Material Movements explores digital simulation tools as vectors for developing a new empathy-centered design process. The paper analyzes four case studies of art and design practices that center simulation as a key aesthetic and design tool. It argues for design processes that revel in the imperfect, glitchy, and unpredictable nature of working with digital and physical materials while rejecting the status quo narrative of a computational design process as a solutionist endeavor. The paper critiques the prominent culture of design-as-science found in design labs and urges us to reconsider the design process as a gesture of relinquishing power and control to non-human actors.
In Cooperative Timber Joint Assembly: Augmented Reality Empowering Human-Robot Complementarity, the authors make a similar call to reassess decision-making processes, in this case through human-machine interaction and hybrid agencies in building processes. The work proposes a new approach that highlights the importance of collaborative decision-making in a productive human-machine workflow. The paper argues that the prominent approach to the human-machine process as a labor delegation problem is not sufficient for the development of equitable labor practices and systems in the future. It focuses on developing a new set of criteria for defining research objectives and outcomes that prioritize creativity and decision-making for both human and non-human actors within an augmented digital fabrication process informed by hybrid capacities of human-machine intelligence.
Autonomous Ecologies of Construction: Collaborative Modular Robotic Material Ecosystems with Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning introduces new levels of interdependencies in design and construction through a cyber-physical network that enhances the human-machine ecosystem. The research employs distributed intelligent machines, where multi-agent systems trained with deep reinforcement learning operate within modular robotic material ecosystems. By integrating cyber-physical simulations and adaptive intelligence, the research shifts from linear construction to dynamic, interrelational frameworks that enable scalable and autonomous building practices. The prototyping of these autonomous modes of construction, which expand and advance the interdependencies of digital and physical systems, broadens the ecology of construction technologies.
As climate change and its attendant impacts increasingly restructure relationships between humans and the environment, it becomes ever more important for designers to develop new modes of ecological engagement in the design and production of architecture. The six papers presented in this volume suggest how computational workflows can be leveraged to facilitate and support such engagements and interdependencies across technological and ecological systems to create novel hybrid processes that begin to resist binary classification into either category. Whether through material investigations, machine learning workflows, simulation workflows, or robotic approaches to assembly and construction, the work presented in this volume demonstrates how in a time of ecological transformation, there are a diverse range of levers at our disposal to catalyze new and beneficial ecosystemic change.