TY - JOUR T1 - Architecture: Biological Form and Artificial Intelligence JF - The Structurist Y1 - 2006 A1 - Nikos Angelos Salingaros A1 - Kenneth G. Masden II AB -

New extra introduction*

How can biological concepts help professionals engaged in architecture, building, and urban planning to design a healthier and more sustainable city? Let us bypass for a moment all the conventional rules of design, and learn from nature and the way living organisms work. For this, we need to know exactly what essential properties and qualities biological entities possess. This information comes not only from standard biology, but is supplemented by recent research on artificial intelligence, complexity theory, and mobile robotics.

Christopher Alexander developed a novel theory of architectural and urban form based on the structure of matter and human emotions. His goal was to prioritize human feelings arising from psychological and physiological responses to built form. Emotions are part of our biology, connecting us to natural structures around us. Alexander and his colleagues first traced evolved design solutions that appear in traditional architecture (called “Patterns”) (Alexander et al., 1977). They came up with a useful catalogue of Patterns that codify the qualities of living systems. Designers working on any scale can interpret these vital relationships for direct application to their immediate work and needs.

In trying to explain the properties of design Patterns, Alexander dug deeper into what makes particular geometries work as healing environments. It has to do with how matter itself is put together. He presents his results in The Nature of Order (Alexander, 2001-2005). Trained as both an architect and a scientist, Alexander was never satisfied with simply applying a design method that could not be explained scientifically, and this questioning led him to his major discoveries. Nevertheless, the architecture community does not think in those terms, and is only now beginning to appreciate the importance of validating any design framework scientifically.

Some hints were given in The Nature of Order for how to achieve the sought-for healing environment in practice. Having worked with Alexander to edit that book, I was in a key position to help explain the scientific side of the arguments, and to offer further research to support them. This task involves bringing scientific results and the scientific way of thinking into architecture, something that most architects are not quite ready for. They think and work in terms of images, yet that approach simply perpetuates unintelligent design templates when we could readily be building adaptive environments with healing properties.

Certainly, the majority of architects today seek innovation above all. But in which direction is it best to seek innovative forms, and which directions can do harm such as causing anxiety in the user? Conventional image-based design is powerless to contemplate such implications. The general design framework developed by Alexander and further elaborated by myself and other colleagues allows us not only to pose this fundamental question, but also to answer it. Applying the methods that Alexander has developed can give birth to an entirely new, nourishing architecture.

SP - 54-61 CP - 45/46 ID - AZ-CF-172793 ER -