Kisho Kurokawa
metabolist and symbiotic philosophy
From the Age of the Machine to the Age of Life - 1959
Critique of Popular Formalism
December 18, 2006
The paradigm shift that I declared with “From the Age of the Machine to the Age of Life” in 1958 was actually interlinked with a parallel paradigm shift that was occurring at the same time in a variety of fields.In particular, there is a particularly strong interconnection with the paradigm shift in the knowledge systems (philosophy and other academic fields) in the West at that time.
It goes without saying that the dualism, rationalism and purism proposed by Aristotle, Descartes and Kant made a significant contribution to economic development and the development of scientific technology in the 20th century, but on the other hand, these philosophies had clear limitations. Criticism of dualism, rationalism and metaphysical philosophy, which began in the first half of the 20th century, had become the mainstream philosophy around the time modernism was established.
The structuralism of Lévi-Strauss assigned a relative and structural value to the interpretation of the world by the West in “The Savage Mind” (Wild Thought). The semantics (symbology) that was born from the linguistics of Saussure also became an ideological paradigm for the 20th century. In his “On the Geneology of Morals”, Nietzsche stated “Facts and the like do not exist. The only things that exist are interpretations. The only things that can be defined are things that do not have a history.” The role of Foucauld was also considerable, and he effectively stated that the weave woven by history is in actuallity fiction, although precise details that cannot be refuted are provided. This was probably due to the influence of Nietzsche.
Merleau-Ponty, whom proposed the philosophy of ambiguity or physical philosophy, sharply points out the double meaning or ambiguity of the relationship of the spirit and the body.
The following things are common with these philosophies and the philosophies during the first half of the 20th century:
1. Anti-Western-centrism
2. Anti-rational-centrism
3. Anti—anthropocentrism
4. Anti-Enthnocentrism
5. Anti-purism or anti-metaphysics
These philosophies concur with the philosophy of symbiosis (from the age of the machine to the age of life) that I have been promoting since 1958.
This movement has seen rapid progress since 1960, and has had repercussions in a variety of academic fields.
This represents a shift away from a Bourbakian system to a non- Bourbakian system.
The Bourbakian system appeared with the dynamics of Newton, the geometry of Euclid, the science of the Lavoisier, quantum mechanics that replaces the theories of Darwin, fractal geometry of Mandelbrot and the symbiotic theory of evolution of Margulis.
The field of quantum mechanics brought about the Copenhagen interpretation which states that facts found through scientific observation are nothing more than one chance occurrence out of an infinite number of facts. Furthermore, in “Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind and the Resurrection of Spirit in the World” by David Peat, it explains that the connection between the mental and material is not clarified with dualistic thought.
Philosophy has advanced into the realm of post-structuralism as the information society has continued to evolve. Rather than propose a unified alternative, philosophy is now headed towards complete diffusion where there is no center and no universality.
The philosophy of post-structuralism proposed by Deleuze/Guattari, Roland Barthes, Derrida and others reflects this.
Architecture is a spiritual statement and an expression of thought of the age in which it is created. Therefore, architecture has also entered the age of symbiosis, the age of diversity and the age of diffusion.
Formalism, style and symbolism similar to fashion design are currently rampant in the architecture industry. There is no future for architecture without thought.
I think that the movement to re-evaluate the ambiguity and intermediate areas proposed by Consciousness-Only philosophy, and the philosophy of symbiosis and philosophy of the metabolism, which evolved from this, is a reflection of this movement.
19 Temmuz 2009 Pazar
2 Şubat 2009 Pazartesi
game
"A game is the interaction of one or more agents, players, with a set of known and fixed formal rules that involve gains and losses."
francisco tolchinsky
27 Ocak 2009 Salı
.:confusions:..
For the last couple of days I am dealing with my paranoic obsessions about deseases.. Moreover if you ask me, these paranoic symptoms of fatal deseases are mostly worth to worry about. Anyways the theme of my this serious essay is not the psychologically observed symptoms nor their objective existence. Instead how instantly we can give up from our aims, change our thoughts about how to behave, or even our plans about the next day. One grows a great consumption desire whereas he was a very passionate idealist about sustainability issues. One becomes a money waster on every single object he desires, whereas he might not have been a materialistic person up to that point in his life.
Excuse me that I am still confused while writing this sentences, I have more questions than answers... What is it that changes us so quickly? Humankind is selfish, we knew that. Even when they are talking about the rainforests, air pollution, or glabal worming, the mankind thinks about their grandchildren, not the fucking pandas that are fading away. Humenkind is so selfish that in every approach towards a better balance in nature, the fake utopias for a better world is covering their mission for a better life for only themselves. The only difference of today's utopias is that people are realizing that they won't have a better life without the world itself, and this realization is not in the minds of half of the population I bet. The conclusion I can get from here is that maybe in the future some will achive to create a more balanced life in nature, including all the species... but since humankind is selfish and stupid and owns a memory shorter than fishes, this balance won't last so long.
Excuse me that I am still confused while writing this sentences, I have more questions than answers... What is it that changes us so quickly? Humankind is selfish, we knew that. Even when they are talking about the rainforests, air pollution, or glabal worming, the mankind thinks about their grandchildren, not the fucking pandas that are fading away. Humenkind is so selfish that in every approach towards a better balance in nature, the fake utopias for a better world is covering their mission for a better life for only themselves. The only difference of today's utopias is that people are realizing that they won't have a better life without the world itself, and this realization is not in the minds of half of the population I bet. The conclusion I can get from here is that maybe in the future some will achive to create a more balanced life in nature, including all the species... but since humankind is selfish and stupid and owns a memory shorter than fishes, this balance won't last so long.
26 Ocak 2009 Pazartesi
- towards a living architecture -
Fusion of computation and genetics in design
Contemporary approach towards architecture is the conclusion of a new well-established cross-fertilization of ideas between computer science including concepts as computaion, informatics, modeling, animation and biological science concerned with evolutionary concepts and genetics.
Thus, the paradigm now that architectural discourse is into is the erutive juxtaposition of three disciplines which are computer science, genetics and architecture. The computational paradigm introduces architecture concious process of design with a bottom-up approach, whereas the biological paradigm apparently allows the designer a return to reality from the pure electronic realm of digital computation. Appreciating biological systems within the process of computation permits us to see how techniques of computation reflect the way organism and environment involve and evolve simultaneously. This interpretation brings out resolutions of re-understanding architecture as living entities and of evaluating potential benefits of applying life criteria to architecture.
Re-evaluating natural evolutionary processes in terms of computation and harnessing some of the qualities of natural systems can bring a real improvement in the built improvement. Such an approach proposes broad innovations and creative solutions by passing the boundaries of intuition, perception, and experiences of an architect. The traditional engines of architectural design have been the unique capabilities of human brain, whereas within the approach of biodigital architecture architectural creativity departs in many ways from the traditional model, but still relies on human skills for the essential first step of forming the concept. The concept is not only draft drawings of a predicted solution anyways; the concept here refers to drawing process of the system by determining initial operations and parameters.
Nature here becomes a guide from reality to understand the information processing in computational ways, and a helper to identify basic rules that would lead to healthy environments which will satisfy simple missions. Following a similar path of that exists in natural evolution changes architectural products to organizations which behave with life-like capacities, fulfilling solutions for sustainability, one of the biggest problems of our contemporary world that has been left with insufficient solutions.
The biological structures of natural ecosystems behave very distinctly from our man-made structures we have today. They recycle their materials, allow change and adaptation in their form, and make efficient use of the environmental energy; where as built environments do not recycle, are not adaptable and waste energy. However, the way out is not directly replicating natural organisms but applying some general principles of interaction with the environment. The solutions to our environmental problems lie in relating architecture to the new holistic understanding of the structure of nature in order to create buildings that act as ecosystems in themselves instead of only containing some added mechanisms to reduce consumption.
In short, incoming information from the sciences of nature and understanding them in means of computation brings us towards a new way of doing architecture. Applying essentials of biological systems in the framework of computation to artificial systems proposes many advantages and possibilities for our built environment. This new approach of form-generating changes static architecture into living systems that they themselves are ecological structures that live in harmony with its surroundings and environmental conditions showing adaptive and responsive behavior and including inventive space framing and material usage. Consequently the search for a new form of life brings up researches on life itself. And in this search for constituting artificial life, architecture questions how emphasizing on the process of generation, leaving behind the questions of what.
Contemporary approach towards architecture is the conclusion of a new well-established cross-fertilization of ideas between computer science including concepts as computaion, informatics, modeling, animation and biological science concerned with evolutionary concepts and genetics.
Thus, the paradigm now that architectural discourse is into is the erutive juxtaposition of three disciplines which are computer science, genetics and architecture. The computational paradigm introduces architecture concious process of design with a bottom-up approach, whereas the biological paradigm apparently allows the designer a return to reality from the pure electronic realm of digital computation. Appreciating biological systems within the process of computation permits us to see how techniques of computation reflect the way organism and environment involve and evolve simultaneously. This interpretation brings out resolutions of re-understanding architecture as living entities and of evaluating potential benefits of applying life criteria to architecture.
Re-evaluating natural evolutionary processes in terms of computation and harnessing some of the qualities of natural systems can bring a real improvement in the built improvement. Such an approach proposes broad innovations and creative solutions by passing the boundaries of intuition, perception, and experiences of an architect. The traditional engines of architectural design have been the unique capabilities of human brain, whereas within the approach of biodigital architecture architectural creativity departs in many ways from the traditional model, but still relies on human skills for the essential first step of forming the concept. The concept is not only draft drawings of a predicted solution anyways; the concept here refers to drawing process of the system by determining initial operations and parameters.
Nature here becomes a guide from reality to understand the information processing in computational ways, and a helper to identify basic rules that would lead to healthy environments which will satisfy simple missions. Following a similar path of that exists in natural evolution changes architectural products to organizations which behave with life-like capacities, fulfilling solutions for sustainability, one of the biggest problems of our contemporary world that has been left with insufficient solutions.
The biological structures of natural ecosystems behave very distinctly from our man-made structures we have today. They recycle their materials, allow change and adaptation in their form, and make efficient use of the environmental energy; where as built environments do not recycle, are not adaptable and waste energy. However, the way out is not directly replicating natural organisms but applying some general principles of interaction with the environment. The solutions to our environmental problems lie in relating architecture to the new holistic understanding of the structure of nature in order to create buildings that act as ecosystems in themselves instead of only containing some added mechanisms to reduce consumption.
In short, incoming information from the sciences of nature and understanding them in means of computation brings us towards a new way of doing architecture. Applying essentials of biological systems in the framework of computation to artificial systems proposes many advantages and possibilities for our built environment. This new approach of form-generating changes static architecture into living systems that they themselves are ecological structures that live in harmony with its surroundings and environmental conditions showing adaptive and responsive behavior and including inventive space framing and material usage. Consequently the search for a new form of life brings up researches on life itself. And in this search for constituting artificial life, architecture questions how emphasizing on the process of generation, leaving behind the questions of what.
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