i don't think there is any fiction/fantasy in those architectural examples, it is just one of the many real trajectories of contemporary architecture, no matter what governaments, citizens think, or technicalities sit behind it, the question doesn't lie on that, as i don't know of any ism that could trap contemporaneity, as emergence just doesn't really give time to classify, and is there a need to label it?

At some point you have to stop dreaming and stop fantasing about what architecture ,production and arts would profit -- and you can not do it halve way's , you can't just form the clay into a splendid dramatic form , there has to be a meaning a reson and the thing has to be genuine, as genuine as my name.
Just forming the clay in a new fasion, forgetting what this is all about ,new fabrication as the old rigid beams and sheets must be handled in a compleatly different way , and if there are not a system to gurantee then costs will reach the sky before the roof of the building, as if you try mimic these without inventing a brand new core , if you want architecture to stay as lookalike of this but with no real apeal than just a new look, then there are no idea no real idea to even fabulate about self growinng structures and recursive designing .

Now I to would be happy to see these wonders all over the worls, as then the great problem would seek a solution --- how to make this, without it being a lookalike, how to build this with a genuine core , how to do that, without a revolution in manufactoring and projecting.

Give me my name back !

vindpust, arent almost all buildings built today imitations without any real meaning anyway. i believe a contemporary world finds beauty in the arbitrary, and i highly doubt all the praised historical architectural components (ie. ionic columns) had any real meaning other than pure decoration, meaning it is what looked good to the eye at the time.

True but then think about what is waiting, how expensive Decor are intergrated into building structure already , emagine tomorrow will render wonderfull new facination ,brand new meaning and a reson with it all.

I am loving that Hadid building! Looks like a curvy example of her earlier stuff, but I love it.


ARCHIT3CT - I don't think you should classify everythign with curves as 'emergent'. Hadid's work is carefully sculpted in the same way as Gehry or Libeskind (or Saarinen for that matter). For what I know (which is admittedly little these days), none of these employ any 'algorthms' in there designs.

Formal architecture is experimenting with sculpture, more or less. It doesn't really matter if someone writes some code in Maya or carves the form out of clay.

I'd like to see more interesting forms, but it all comes down to the talent of the form maker - I'd hate to see a world full of blobs without sculptural form.

In the end most of it'll come down to cost, as with most designs.

I think you said it ; these new tools and their visions havn't even realy been called out for a test yet. What we see is the good will and the lookalike wonders ,before things accumulated the driving force before a caurse was even typed in, before architecture even found the direction, before anyone could emagine that detail is beauty and computers are here to acturly ease the vision. Zaha's designs are expensive not cheap, that do not bring the masses of volumes the cheap nice new architecture ,no my dear Romans we have not even started.

a world full of blobs without sculptural form is just as bad as a world full of boxes without vision or "emagination", i personally like zaha's vision and forms, but you guys are right about the praticality.

and i think the meaning behind them lies in the exploitation of the tools we have today (as did all the great architecture of the past), in a capitalistic society, there is no room for great architecture, since it is inherently inefficient.

But there are other angles ; lattrice structures, chaos made work by expensive special fittings, the structure as semi 3D by recursive engineered space rods. I find it wrong staying with today's agreaed standards and aproved trends , with this sort of computed structures there are no limits so how can we put up expertations chained by what we today can emagine . Some of it been tried, but only manufactored as how today's standard dictate and without the splendid mastery , the ability to scrap the old and reconise it , know why particular simply must be avoided, even engineers would emagine the world to tumble.
See the only wrongs about engineers is just that, the lack of fantasy.

I still find Zaha's blob beton way to expensive, and the reson ; it is still the old forms and tricks more than 100 years old , even it is translated into a 3D drawing that drawing , is nothing but the top of what they would like to do, before the computers. Ask the engineers they was terrified about what 3D formwork in fact ment from the old fasion model, that allowed for nothing more, than what we already know -- that put into computer code, how can that be more than more efficient calculations .

How could the Pyramides be build, unless each block was cast up against the previous for perfect fit ? How could the Romans make all those fancy facilities if not for concrete ,concret that still last, and by casting a structure into the concrete deck even lattrice lookalike concrete roof structures but, nomatter Le.Corb reinvented it nomatter they tried to kill it with standard building compoments it still is the old perception, Zaha when doing rounded forms just ask the engineers to look further into bunkers and 3D formwork --- something that truely would be the first real delivery aided by computer but still, the old , the computer doing the difficult calculations in a technike that can not compeed with direct link production of an assembly of the structure.

Working the materials cover a particular number of technikes , some of these will proberly for a time more challance newer methods unseen methods ,secret methods , but architecture will not change for real before, before new technikes make the computer into what it is ; not something that shal mimic the old way's , but something to make the new architecture something to develob a whole new act.

vindy, you can't teach an old dog new tricks ;)

Yes it is strange ,since even before anyone put it into code, some architects fantasised about recursive self reliant buildings. About making a line of code structure the spaces and, some of this acturly sounded promising. But still it is not about how things look, about how it relate to other theoretics --- to often it evolve into what is impossible to build as the efford is not how to build it or how to manufactore what the program computed , only the sight or the spetacular aproach seem to be the interesting thing , ---- so we form the clay in a new fasion and forget that the force that shuld have transformed it, shuld have come from the inside not from the outside.

But ofcaurse this seem so simple for me -- I se it this way that the computing shuld only decide the designs so, that this can be directly translated into what structure lattrice that will deliver the foundations for floors and walls, for me it is enough that the fancy recursive design tools allow for floors and walls in various hight at no further cost than a tradisional rigid floor plan --- but if the engineer has to go thru a depression to translate the architects sketches, and the whole thing become one huge compromise then, then we are surely on a dead-end road. --- Esp when expenses reach the sky.

buildings don't come any more emergent then treehouses, especially if you grow one from a sapling.

ARCHIT3CT, I'm just curious what it is about these buildings - meaning what is it about their forms - that fascinates you? As opposed to other contemporary work like Calatrava, or Gehry, or Morphosis, or whoever?

Liberty Bell we should visually define "these buildings" I am in the process of finding images refering to, but if anybody has good suggestions or images please submit. Allthough I highly appreciate the work of the architects (and especially these architects in particular--you forgot to mention Zaha) non of these touches the natural form as good as a morphogenetic building designs. I think the closest to architectural reality ( needs definition ) is the work of the "design research laboratory" at the AA (I think it touches more aspects and architectural parameters than any other architectural work I have ever seen and experience in Europe). Natural form-as well as non mirrored (calatrava's work is mirrored-he designs half of it and then mirrors it) and non harmonical is what fits better with our natural surrounding. Talking about geometrical of course is one aspect and looking at the architectural experience another. But I guess the same way I got use to "boxes" I will learn to live into buildings with more organic forms too. Later, architects , academics, students will wright extensivelly and analyze about eg "living in organig form skyscrapers ".

Other reason is that I like to see new shapes and forms previously unthinkable.

i can tell u what doesn't fascinates me alot:
calatrava- computer generate form imitates skeleton. (feels like back in the 60's organic architecture)
gehry- computer generate form imitates his handmade sculptural model.
morphosis- computer generate whatever is in fashion.

i like aranda alot- http://www.arandalasch.com/ , discovery the underlining principles of things and imply to architectural function.

Its simply the shape of things to come !

Has anyone considered that Zaha is severly of the last generation, and yet people are labeling her the shape of things to come?

I think that perhaps what Zaha is, is old; old in the sense of her thinking. (and this includes many of the "acolytes", you too) This method of thinking is one in which value is given to the purely new, to that which divests itself from (or rather, ignores) an understanding of man's relationship with the earth, (another name for which is building) while maintaining a tenous relationship to historical lineage by merely being built.

This is the architecture of the constant revolution (emergence) and it's just getting non-sensical. Kind of like when architects were let loose upon the forms able to be replicated by the mechanical techniques of the industrial revolution and produced art nouveau.

"Other reason is that I like to see new shapes and forms previously unthinkable."

Without new methods meaningless. Without a new conception silli. Without a new production impossible unless it is just a lookalike.

new shapes at this conversation are products of new methods new conceptions and new production previously unthikable .... I thought that was obvious ? maybe not


the following link posted before but there are good links within

http://www.emergentarchitecture.com/hub.php?id=1

also at the upenn portfolio towards the end there is a building I quite like and looking to apply the same geometrical method to an airport.
All though the company i work for (hok) is conservative towards new designs and more interested to the amounts of money they are going to make, they are still open on new suggestions.