This situation has been aggravated by architectural theorists themselves, proclaiming the death of architectural theory, and seeking to liberate architecture from any mental depth or spiritual purpose, any mental expression or spatial imagination, in deference to the necessity of technological advancement. In Detlef Mertins’ essay “Bioconstructivisms,” in NOX: Machining Architecture (2004), materialism is proclaimed as the new basis for architectural theory. Self-generation and immanence replace predetermination and transcendence in a celebration of the material, and material technology, in exclusion of human intellectual development. An important element of bioconstructivism is autopoiesis or self-generation, taking advantage of digital modeling and computer programs to imitate the capacity for organisms in nature to organize themselves, or for unorganized or fluid material to consolidate itself, based on the inner active principle of the organism, an “essential force” or “formative drive” which contradicts the mechanistic theories of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. The monad of Leibniz, for example, can self-generate in “integrals” from pre-existing sets of variables, resulting in “continuous multiplicity.” While “a history of generative architecture has yet to be written” (Mertins 2004: 361), structural linguistics and deconstruction, in their emphasis on the pure signifier and the priority of syntactical relations, are seen as having led to the “shift from metaphysics to epistemology,” and the pure materialism of self-generation and immanence, which are paradoxically seen as guaranteeing “transcendental apriority” and “cognitive necessity and universality.” This kind of stylistic reductionism and materialism needs to be avoided in architecture. Self-generation needs to be combined with predetermination, and the metaphysical needs to be combined with the immanent. As Mertins himself said, quoting Helmut Müller-Sievers, “Only if they are self-produced can the categories guarantee transcendental apriority and, by implication, cognitive necessity and universality” (p. 361). The denial of the possibility of the metaphysic cannot lead to transcendental apriority. The materialist epistemology of bioconstructivism on its own has no theoretical basis, and no potential to develop architecture as a form of human expression. In bioconstructivism, architectural history has been for the most part abandoned, which is the case in general in current architectural education. Historical styles have come to be understood as “residual transcendent authorities no longer commensurate with the present” (p. 362), the present entailing the abandonment of architectural design to mechanical production and technological advancement, and the abandonment of the desire on the part of the human being to express an idea in the current hypertechnological dystopia. Predetermination (the a priori concept or the expression of an idea) and transcendence (the metaphysical in language) are avoided, in deference to self-generation and immanence in the bioconstructivist model, because of the “new urgency under the conditions of industrialization and mass production” (p. 363). Hypertechnological production neglects intellectual and spiritual development, and the potential for human expression and creativity. Similarly, Jane and Mark Burry, in The New Mathematics of Architecture (2010), celebrate the submission of architecture to the materialism of technological

production. Complex geometries are incorporated into architectural design, expanding the vocabulary of architecture, but the new vocabulary thus far does not contribute to the expansion of architecture as a form of the communication of ideas or poetic expression. The new computer-generated forms based on complex geometries are mute forms, technological marvels servicing technological advancement, but revealing nothing about the human condition or human identity, other than its servitude to technology. The new mute forms have “transcended the metaphysical” (Burry and Burry 2010: 8), as self-generated and immanent, and they have evolved beyond the “dead geometries” of the “rectilinear dogma of Modernism” (pp. 10-12). The excitement over technological development supersedes the value of history, philosophy, and intellectual development, the humanistic elements of architecture and expression in the arts which resonate with the core of human identity, which have lasting value as expressions of the human condition, of human experience and existence in the world. A redeeming quality of bioconstructivism is that it involves the engagement in architecture of generative models from nature, which is in the tradition of the natura naturans in architecture, the imitation of the forming principles of nature, as opposed to the natura naturata, the direct imitation or mimesis of the forms. As was seen in the first chapter, according to Plotinus in the Enneads, it is the purpose of all the arts to not just present a “bare reproduction of the thing seen,” the natura naturata, but to “go back to the Ideas from which Nature itself derives” (Plotinus 1952: V.8.1), in the natura naturans. As was seen, the contrast between natura naturans and natura naturata was explored in the writings of Johann Winckelmann, Francesco Algarotti, and Quatremère de Quincy in the eighteenth century. In Winckelmann’s History of the Art of Antiquity (2006 [1764]), architecture is more ideal than the other arts because it does not imitate objects in nature. Its forms are instead derived from the rules and laws of proportion, which are abstract concepts. In Algarotti’s Saggio sopra l’architettura (1784), architecture “must raise itself up with intellect and must derive a system of imitation from ideas about things that are the most universal and farthest from what can be seen” (Lavin 1992: 107). In the Encyclopédie méthodique (1788) of Quatremère de Quincy, architecture is described as more ideal, intellectual, and metaphysical than the other arts, because architecture must convert the qualities of the forms of nature into its own forms, and it must imitate the spirit of the forms of nature, in the universal idea, rather than a particular form (1:495), as in biomimesis. Architecture should imitate natural forms analogically and metaphorically, rather than literally. Quatremère describes architecture as imitating the ideas from which nature derives, like Plotinus, rather than natural forms as given by sense perception. The model for this type of imitation in abstraction was the primitive hut of Marc Antoine Laugier, described in the Essai sur l’architecture (1775). While the cave is a model for architecture in the imitation of the forms of nature, and the tent is a model for architecture in the construction of forms not connected to nature, the primitive hut is the perfect model for architecture in the construction of forms in the imitation

of the principles of nature. In De l’architecture égyptienne, Quatremère described the primitive hut as the product of the perfection in the human intellect of the forming principles of nature, and it was that perfection which made Classical architecture possible. In this way the origins of architecture are linked to the present, in bioconstructivism. Laugier saw the primitive hut as a purely natural model, but Quatremère argued, in Encyclopédie méthodique (1:454), that the primitive hut was already an abstraction in human intellect, derived from the principles of nature. While Laugier saw the primitive hut as a model that could be directly reproduced in architecture, for Quatremère it could only be indirectly reproduced, since the wood of the hut would have to be transformed into the stone and marble of Greek buildings. According to Quatremère, Classical architecture was based on an underlying conceptual organization of abstracted forms and principles from nature, in the natura naturans, as in bioconstructivism. A project which shows the potential for the tenets of bioconstructivism to be integrated with a genuine theoretical basis for computer-generated design, which does not abandon architectural history or the historical function of architecture as a form of poetic expression, is a design for a theater by Amy Lewis in a Graduate Architecture Design Studio (a 515, 6 c.h.) directed by Associate Professor Andrew Thurlow at Roger Williams University, School of Architecture, Art and Planning, in Spring 2011 (Figures 7.1 and 7.2). In the design by Amy Lewis there is a dialectic between the form and the function, a contradiction between the forms and the structural and functional requirements of the building. There are, on the one hand, the methodologies of

Figure 7.1 Amy Lewis, Endless Dreamscape, Andrew Thurlow Studio, 2011

bioconstructivism and biomimesis, the focus on immanence and self-generation, and there is, on the other hand, the methodology of poetic expression, of transcendence and predeterminism, in the contradiction between the form and the function, and the presence of the metaphysic in the allegorical or metaphorical. There is the focus on the signifier and the syntactical, and the play of differences in signs, and there is also the narrative and the representational. There is an enactment of the syntactical relation between dream thoughts and dream images from the dreamwork of Freud, through the mechanisms of condensation and displacement. The title of the project is “Endless Dreamscape.” The building appears as an epigenetic landscape, contradicting the topological forces which predetermine it, in the same way that a Renaissance façade would be both a summation and a contradiction of the structural and functional relationships of the building. The forms in Amy Lewis’ project display the catastrophic jumps in epigenetic processes, resulting in the contradiction between form and form as well as the contradiction between form and function. The forms display the “modifications, perturbations, changes of tension or of energy” (Kwinter 1992: 52) of matter, as described by Henri Bergson. The forms display the vocabulary of “waves, fields, and fronts” of epigenesis. The forms display topological flows which are “scattered, accelerated, accreted, collided” (p. 53) into diverse surfaces or developmental fields. The forms display a dialectic between the stable and continuous and the unstable and discontinuous. The discontinuity of the forms is a sign of morphogenesis. Catastrophic mutations take place between different levels of activity and organization. The presence of forms as “structurally stable moments within a system’s evolution” (p. 59) is subsumed into a process of evolution or mutation. Moments of structural stability are juxtaposed with moments of structural instability, to represent the contradiction inherent in self-generation or emergence. The composition can be seen as a “dissipative system,” a dynamic evolving system of matter. The composition can be seen as a catastrophe because each singular form can be seen to be the product of a multiplicity of forces, singular and multiple causes simultaneously. The combinations of multiple and contradictory forms result in irregular and discontinuous formal relationships which create a dynamic, emerging composition. Trajectories of forms suggest development and change, and transformation through time. The trajectories incorporate realized forms as well as forms which are not yet actualized, but are present as traces, as enfolded “in between” the realized forms. The unrealized forms are related to the actualized forms in a continuum of contradictions. The architectural composition should be seen as an “event,” as an occurrence in nature, both biomimetically and allegorically, involving continuity and interruption, singularity and multiplicity, predetermination and immanence. The self-generation of the forms situates the unpredictable within the predictable, as can be found in DNA cell reproduction. Within a continuity, the morphogenesis of the forms results in structural changes (as represented by the forms), which occur during the developmental process of an organism in nature. The forms in the composition display the

transformational events or deformations that result in discontinuities and contradictions, according to topological theory. The forms display the dynamic of morphogenesis, as a system of discontinuities, involving the simultaneous transformation of every individual parts of a system. The emergence of a singular form within the system, in catastrophe theory, is a moment of structural instability rather than a moment of structural stability. In Amy Lewis’ composition (Figure 7.2), moments of structural instability are juxtaposed with moments of structural stability. In the morphogenesis of the catastrophe, certain configurations will remain stabilized, while other configurations will point toward destabilization, or structural instability. Equilibrium is juxtaposed with disequilibrium. The singularity of the surfaces of the forms in the epigenetic landscape contradicts the complex network of interactions of topological forces from which they result, in a contradiction between form and function. Actions in the environment on unstable, unstructured forms, and undifferentiated structures, result in stable, structured forms and differentiated structures. Traditionally, architectural forms such as the post and lintel or column and entablature are seen as representing structural stability and continuity, but in catastrophe theory and epigenesis they are seen as interruptions of structural stability and continuity. The stasis and the flux are juxtaposed in this project. Amy Lewis’ project illustrates that theory is not “dead” in bioconstructivism and computer-generated design, that predetermination and the metaphysic, representation and signification, can be reconciled with immanence and selfgeneration, syntax and the play of signifiers, and that architectural history can still have relevance in bioconstructivism and other models of computer-generated design, in the incorporation of formal typologies into generative systems. As in all stages in architectural history, form can contradict function in a bioconstructivist architectural composition, so that the architecture continues to be a form of poetic

Figure 7.2 Amy Lewis, Endless Dreamscape, Andrew Thurlow Studio, 2011

expression, and the expression of an idea external to the structural and functional requirements, through allegory or signification. The project calls to mind the dictates of Louis Sullivan, that form should follow function in the creative process of the architect, but not that the form of the building should follow the function of the building, its functional or structural requirements, and that “the essence of things is taking shape in the matter of things” in nature (Sullivan 1947: 208). As was seen in Chapter 5, form follows function in the expression of life, in the processes of birth and growth, and in the dialectics of birth and death, organic and inorganic, physical and metaphysical. Form follows function in the emotional expression of life, wherein “the same emotional impulse shall flow throughout harmoniously into its varied form of expression” (p. 188). Form follows function in architecture insofar as the function of architecture is to express a metaphysical idea. All forms in architecture “stand for relationships between the immaterial and the material, between the subjective and the objective-between the Infinite Spirit and the finite mind” (p. 45), according to Sullivan. Function in architecture is a “phase of that energy which we have called the Infinite Creative Spirit” (p. 99), the essence of the creative process of architecture, its emotional needs. Function is assimilated in order to express a creative impulse. As Amy Lewis said to the author, “the architect still exists in the realm of the poet, who seeks to describe the nature of a beast he can never hope to know or understand, but merely define in his own rudimentary conceptualization or philosophical truth.” The design of a building is the expression of a transcendental idea which manifests itself in form through nature. Architecture imitates nature insofar as nature forms itself by universal principles, in bioconstructivism as well as in prior theoretical approaches. A building, as an organism, while it is developed according to the methods of nature, cannot be an imitation of any particular work of nature, but must rather be the expression of an idea of nature. Architecture is poetry, as poetry is the expression of an idea in matter. According to Sullivan, the functional and structural requirements of a building play no role in the art of architecture, because they have no relationship with nature, but only with the technological progress and material development of society. Architecture is based on the visual appearance of a natural organism, which best expresses the essence of nature. The essence of the building, the expression of the transcendental idea, the relationship between the human mind and nature, is likewise expressed in the composition by Amy Lewis. The design involves an interweaving of the mimesis of organic forms and constructed geometries, to represent the dialectic between a priori reason (predetermination) and sense experience (immanence). The dialectic between the objective, in the rational organization of the building, and the subjective, in the incongruities and inconsistencies, is also represented. As in Sullivan’s architecture, the dialectical method is used in multiple ways, in juxtaposition and contradiction: subjective/objective, appearance/essence, rational/ emotional, geometrical/organic, horizontal/vertical, form/function. The juxtapositions evoke the “Rhythm of Life” and the “Rhythm of Death,” the rhythms of growth and

aspiration interwoven with the rhythms of decadence and destruction, and the rhythms of Eros and Thanatos. The vertical movements and the striving in the forms for the detachment from the constraints of the material are juxtaposed with the horizontal movements and the confinement to the material, the grounding of the concept in the matter. As it is biomimetic, Amy Lewis’ project is anthropomorphic, metaphorically, as if it is a body striving to lift itself off the ground, and to release itself from material constraints, of outline and gravity. The dialectical relations evoked in the composition of the building have no connection with the structural or functional requirements of the building. The dialectic of the building in architecture, like the dialectic of the human being, involves the understanding of the processes of nature and the ability to transfer those processes into visual form, establishing the rhythm of the relationship between the human being and nature. The dialectic is a form of Einfühlung, or empathy, the act of inner imitation, natura naturans, carried out in bioconstructivism. The dynamism injected into the architectural vocabulary elements, the organic and geometrical forms, and the horizontal and vertical movements, projects the struggle between body and mind, material and spiritual, onto the building. The Einfühlung involves the dialectic of the rhythm of life and death. The human mind defines itself in its translation of that which is external to it, as in the transposition of the essence of nature to visual form. Language, and the visual language of architecture, are a function in mind of the translation from the external to the subjective, and from the particular to the universal. The essence of nature is transposed to visual form metaphorically. The nature of the sign in language is that the particular becomes subject to the universal in the transition of the perceived object into the word or form, and the simultaneous transition of the word or form into the idea. The formulation of language is a process of the externalization of perception into the particulars which mask the unified universality of existence and render existence fragmented, in the same way that the instinct for self-preservation in the organic being renders the universal impossible in a nature composed of fragmented particulars. Amy Lewis’ composition stages these relationships-between the human mind and nature, particulars in perception and universals in thought, words, or visual forms and ideas. The transition from nature to mind is a “coming-to-itself of mind out of its self-externality in Nature,” in the words of Hegel (Hegel 1971 [1830]: § 381). The transition from nature to idea occurs in mind; it is not a natural transition, not governed by the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Perception is constructed by reason, and ideas in mind are constructed by mind in self-consciousness. While reason and logic are governed by necessity, in cause and effect, language (the scaffolding of reason), which is an abstraction of perception in mind (a transition from “the singleness of sensation to the universality of thought”), is a construct of mind in its development toward self-consciousness. Language and the language of visual forms in architecture are elements in the mediating process of nature in mind, which begins to disappear in the development of self-consciousness. Architecture,

in any form, from a Classical temple to a bioconstructivist composition, is capable of expressing and representing that process, in the relation between the human being and nature, between perception and language, and between form and function in both visual form and the human mind. The processes and relationships are most completely revealed in the contradiction between form and function. The contradiction between form and function is inherent in architecture, language, philosophy, and human identity. Architecture, like poetry, requires the contradiction between form and function in order to be artistic expression, in order to express the human condition, in the contradiction between mind and matter, thought and perception. This simple lesson, included in architectural education, can result in great architecture. Architecture is not about making empty formalist compositions with new technologies, or, as Alberto Pérez-Gómez writes, the “mindless search for consumable novelties disconnected from history” (PérezGómez 2012: 164). As Sullivan put it in the “Kindergarten Chats,” the architect has to be more than a “peddler of fashions” (Sullivan 1947: 39). Architecture is about the expression of ideas. Architects need to resist the mindless conformity imposed by consumerism and technology. As Amy Lewis said to the author, “because the technology exists to prescribe a certain tectonic ideal does not mean it should become the motive power behind design and the teaching of our craft.” The use of the computer has increased the conformity imposed by technology on the architectural profession. The discipline of architecture is currently servicing media markets and flooding them with novel “blobs” and other forms which communicate or express nothing, and books and magazines are being filled by corresponding apologies by “architectural theorists” who celebrate the “death of theory” in architecture, under the threat of conformity imposed by technological production and the corresponding necessity of technological development and novelty, and offer nothing as an alternative. Perhaps the “death of theory” in architecture will lead to the death of architecture as an autonomous profession. Architecture will complete its dissolution into a service industry, and be absorbed by various types of media production. Buildings will continue to be built, but architects will play no creative role in their design, as suggested by Mario Carpo in The Alphabet and the Algorithm (2011). Contemporary “architects” and “architectural theorists” have already begun to abandon architecture, and are profiting from the dissolution of the very practice in which they purport to engage. Architectural schools teach construction, structure, construction management, computer operations, and sustainable practices, but they rarely teach architecture as an art, the design of a building for the purpose of expressing an idea external to its structural and functional requirements. Symptomatic of this is that architectural history is currently disappearing from architecture schools, as it is supposedly irrelevant to computer-generated design. Doctoral programs in architectural history as an autonomous discipline are becoming fewer, and there are fewer positions for architectural historians. The death of architectural history as a discipline is complicit with the death of architecture as art. The lack of architecture as a form of expression of ideas, along

with the lack of art, literature, and philosophy in a society, means a lack of human intellectual development in favor of the priority of empty consumerism and the disposable novelties of technological development and entertainment, shadows on the wall. The potential for architecture to be a form of artistic or poetic expression should not be forgotten. Through its forms, architecture can express and communicate aspects of human identity that even language cannot express. While the role of architecture in culture has changed dramatically in the last five hundred years, with the advent of the printing press, the Industrial Revolution, and now the computer, architecture can still play the same roles that it played historically, in the expression and representation of cultural identities and values, philosophies, cosmologies, and psychologies. If nothing else, history can provide models for architects to express ideas through architecture. The uniqueness of architecture as a form of expression lies in the dual presence of its functional requirements combined with the visual affects of its sculpted forms. In other words, architecture is unique because of the relationship between form and function which it necessarily entails. This relationship can be exploited by architects, not only as a conformance, in the traditional “form follows function,” but also as a contradiction, as suggested by this book. The contradiction between form and function can in fact lead to greater potentials for architecture to express and communicate fundamental elements of human existence, and allow architecture to have more value in people’s lives and identities. That is the hope of this book.