ABSTRACT
The product of architecture is not merely a building in its physical site, but also the process of organizing large datasets and the construction of conceptual formal recipes from acquired patterns found in the analysis of that information. This chapter proposes a form for a future prototypical Chinese house and a new approach to the question of complexity and speciation of forms: a universal housing machine. Iteration and recursion from micro to macro scales produce arrays of possible but finite states, while pushing the concept of universality. This research draws from John Von Neumann and Alan M. Turing's work on neurons and cellular automata systems, which both use sets of simple rules as starting points to achieve unpredictable and emergent outcomes. Through a step-by-step process, simple initial conditions become increasingly complicated. Similarly, this exploration of form describes intelligent neighborhood organizations where aggregated modules form an assembly of complex architectural bodies.
