Table Of ContentSpringerBriefs in
Architectural Design and Technology
Pia Fricker · Toni Kotnik
Patterns of Interaction
Computational Design
Across Scales
SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design
and Technology
Series Editor
Thomas Schröpfer, Architecture and Sustainable Design, Singapore
University of Technology and Design, Singapore, Singapore
Indexed by SCOPUS
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·
Pia Fricker Toni Kotnik
Patterns of Interaction
Computational Design Across Scales
Pia Fricker Toni Kotnik
Aalto University Aalto University
Espoo, Finland Espoo, Finland
ISSN 2199-580X ISSN 2199-5818 (electronic)
SpringerBriefs in Architectural Design and Technology
ISBN 978-981-19-9082-3 ISBN 978-981-19-9083-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9083-0
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Foreword: Perpetual Boundary Judgments
Patterns of Interaction addresses timely topics and concepts that permeate contem-
porary discourses. These link together urban design, architecture, and landscape
architecture from an environmental perspective, and include urbanization, ground,
topology, performance and implicitly also environment, in the greater sense, as a set
of complex dynamic relations. The authors outline a particular approach to design
involving a methodological framework that combines aspects of design thinking,
systems thinking, and design computing. Tackling such multifaceted topics inevitably
necessitates the making of frequent boundary judgments, i.e., timely and spontaneous
decisions as to what is to be included or excluded from the approach and from the
design agenda as the approach is developed.
Werner Ulrich developed Critical Systems Heuristics [1], a key concept of critical
systems thinking, as a conceptual framework for boundary critique [2]. In general,
professional propositions require choices regarding which facts (observations) and
norms (valuation standards) are considered relevant and are included, as well as
those, which are less relevant and can be left out.
However, every aspect that requires boundary judgments can also be subject to
change. This already begins at a primary conceptual level when insights and discourse
change, as, for instance, in the case with what constitutes an environment [3], and
furthermore what role politics [4], practices [5] or experiences [6] can play in offset-
ting previous understandings or opening new inroads. When defining or selecting a
conceptual approach, for instance, in the notion of performance, it is necessary to
select related items, relations, and dynamics. Performance requires agency, which
indicates the capacity with which something is able to act in the world. Actor-Network
Theory positioned agency as a non-human trait, thereby making it possible to think
of all human and non-human entities as actors or actants possessing agency [7]. This
entails an understanding of the performative capacity of the items and therefore also
of their dynamic relations to other items in their setting [8]. Given that these dynamic
relations form networks, it becomes clear that boundary judgments are ephemeral
and might change in any process of environmental transformation, e.g., by way of
urbanization and construction.
v
vi Foreword:PerpetualBoundaryJudgments
Given today’s prolific pursuit and development of discourse, primary and
secondary concepts are frequently reframed. This makes it very challenging to
address, as this book does, questions of urbanization, ground, topology, performance,
and related issues of figure–ground, grounding, operativity (presumably from a prag-
matist perspective), patterns, organized matter, etc. And in this context clearly no
boundary judgment is without immediate and substantial consequence.
The same is true for boundary judgments related to the methodological approach.
Design thinking and systems thinking deliver useful inroads in terms of framing
design problems and solution spaces. Yet again, there exist a wide array of different
approaches. The same applies to design computing.
Today, Ian McHargs’ work is a frequent key reference, not only in terms of
approach, but also in terms of establishing a specific methodological use of data and
thereby initiating Geographic Information Systems [9]. Still, the question remains,
as to which aspects, dynamics, and scale ranges should be selected and focused on.
Pim Martens stated, “a new research paradigm is needed that is better able to reflect
the complexity and the multi-dimensional character of sustainable development.
The new paradigm … must be able to encompass different magnitudes of scale (of
time, space, and function), multiple balances (dynamics), multiple actors (interests)
and multiple failures (systemic faults)” [10]. To incorporate this in a computational
approach presents numerous challenges but entails, in the first instance, the ques-
tion whether to aim for an all-inclusive type of world model or an approach that is
based on models that are custom assembled and tailored to a context-specific design
task. Furthermore, data-integrated approaches to trans-scalar urban and architectural
design are attracting growing interest and attention and require careful and thorough
examination [11–13] .
That this is not just theoretical deliberation becomes clear when examining
approaches related to the one revealed in this book, overlapping with and differing
from Landscape Urbanism [14] or various concepts of ground [15–17].
Given all these challenges, books like Patterns of Interaction constitute impor-
tant contributions to the development of design approaches that link urban design,
architecture, and landscape architecture in order to provide more sound and
environmentally and ecologically positive results. Great insight may be gained into
their understanding when such works disclose the boundary judgments that were
continually made to progress in their development.
Vienna, Austria Michael Hensel
References
1. Ulrich W (1983) Critical heuristics of social planning: A new approach to practical philosophy.
Wiley, London
2. Ulrich W (1996) A primer to critical systems heuristics for action researchers. Centre for
Systems Studies, University of Hull
Foreword:PerpetualBoundaryJudgments vii
3. Benson ES (2020) Surroundings—A history of environments and environmentalisms. The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago
4. Latour B (2018) Down to earth: politics in the new climatic regime. Polity Press, Cambridge
5. Hensel M (2019) The rights to ground: integrating human and non-human perspectives in an
inclusive approach to sustainability. Sustainable Development, 27, 245–251
6. Ingold T (2000) The perception of the environment—essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill.
Routledge: London
7. Latour B (2005) Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network Theory. Oxford
University Press, London
8. Hensel M (2013) Performance-oriented architecture—rethinking architectural design and the
built environment. Wiley: London
9. McHarg IL (1969) Design with nature. Doubleday, Garden City
10. Martins P (2006) ‘Sustainability: science or fiction?’. Sustainability: Sci Pract Policy 1(2):
36–41
11. Hensel M, Sørensen SS (2019) Performance-oriented architecture and urban design—relating
information-based design and systems-thinking in architecture. FORMAkademisk 12(2):1–17
12. Sungurog˘lu Hensel D, Tyc J, Hensel M (2022) Data-driven design for architecture and environ-
ment integration: Convergence of data-integrated workflows for understanding and designing
environments. Spool 9(1):19–34
13. Chokhachian A, Hensel M, Perini K (eds) (2022) Informed urban environments: Data-
integrated design for human and ecology-centred perspectives. Springer, The Urban Book
Series
14. Waldheim Ch (2006) The landscape urbanism reader. Princeton Architectural Press, New York
15. Rajchman J (1998) Constructions. The MIT Press, Cambridge
16. Hensel M, Sungurog˘lu Hensel D (2010) Extended thresholds I: Nomadism, settlements, and
the defiance of figure-ground. Architect Design 80(1):14–19
17. Hensel M, Turko JP (2015) Grounds and envelopes—reshaping architecture and the built
environment. Routledge, London
Contents
1 Introduction .................................................... 1
References ...................................................... 4
2 Convergence .................................................... 5
2.1 Figure Without Ground ....................................... 5
2.2 Grounding .................................................. 9
2.3 Operative Surfaces ........................................... 12
2.4 Layered Land-Scape ......................................... 16
2.5 Operative Layers ............................................ 20
2.6 Contextual Figuration of Ground .............................. 25
References ...................................................... 28
3 Patterns of Interaction ........................................... 31
3.1 Topological Turn ............................................ 31
3.2 Topological Design Thinking .................................. 34
3.3 Patterns That Connect ........................................ 39
3.4 Organized Matter ............................................ 42
References ...................................................... 47
4 Computing Land-Scapes ......................................... 49
4.1 Performative Patterns ........................................ 49
4.2 Digital Ecology Extended .................................... 51
4.3 Operative Extension of Nature ................................. 53
4.4 On the Notion of Flows ...................................... 57
4.5 Umweltecture—Sustainable Visions Between Architecture
and Landscape .............................................. 64
References ...................................................... 66
Epilogue ........................................................... 69
ix
About the Authors
Pia Fricker is Professor of Computational Methodologies in Landscape Architec-
ture and Urbanism at Aalto University, Finland. She holds a doctorate degree in
Architecture and a postgraduate degree in Computer Aided Architectural Design
from ETH Zurich. Her research and teaching link urban design and landscape archi-
tecture to the field of computational design culture through the lens of emerging
technologies. Prior to her current position, she was Director of Postgraduate Studies
in Landscape Architecture at the ETH Zurich. She is a member of the editorial board
of the Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture, the Scientific Program Committee
of the DLA conference, several Peer Review Committees, and expert peer reviewer
for the International Journal of Architectural Computing, the Urban Planning Journal
and the Journal of Architecture and Urbanism. Pia Fricker has published extensively,
and her work has been exhibited, amongst others, at the Venice Biennale, the National
Design Centre Singapore, the Museum of Modern Art – EMMA, as well as at the
Helsinki Design Week.
Toni Kotnik is Professor of Design of Structures at Aalto University in Helsinki,
Finland. He studied architecture, mathematics and computational design in Germany,
Switzerland and the US and received his doctoral degree from the University of
Zurich. Before joining Aalto he taught among others at the ETH in Zurich, the
Architectural Association in London, the Institute for Experimental Architecture at
the University of Innsbruck and the Singapore University of Technology and Design.
He has been lecturing at universities worldwide as well as at museums like the
Guggenheim in Bilbao or the MOMA in New York. His practice and research work
has been published and exhibited internationally, including the Venice Biennale,
and is centered on the integration of knowledge from science and engineering into
architectural design thinking and the exploration of organizational principles and
formal methods as design driver at the intersection of art and science
xi
