I chose to call this page Buildings rather than structures or something similar. This on my part clearly shows some intent. Clearly in working with specific locations and the design of structures there, the design has to be adapted or made to/for the design. It is easy to see that case - based design can be difficult to adapt as a generic design - system. My intent then, when taking the leap from nature's growth to Architectural design has to do with more generic cases of building design. In MY case the standard city block, the uniform, coded area of land that facilitates the vertical, but severely limits the horizontal. The building that most exemplifies the growth or generation that we see in plants is the skyscraper, or high rise if you will. Starting from a limited plot of land, the analogy of the growing plant is one pretty easy to understand. Architecture of course, is still static. (Buildings failing to abide by this rule would fall in under robotics or mechanics). Yet in both the case of plant and building, it is the end result we tend to covet. An example process of generating different floor plans and vertical structure from a base could be compared to the environmental conditions governing the generation process from the seed and up to the final exhibitory botanical specimen. An extraordinarily simplistic example of morphology and growth in architecture is Dr. Haresh Lalvani's algorithm columns. Literary millions of equally valid designs can be created from one seed/axiom, using one algorithm.

It is of great importance to be more than well acquainted with high rise structures and the way they work as well as biology and botany, to be able to appreciate the parallel drawn here. Nature holds complexity that we as humans are yet to figure out, yet it lacks the synthetic aesthetics that we seem to appreciate in man made construction. Less is more seems to prevail, as architects seek to "lead" and "clarify" in our visual surroundings, rather than embrace the generating forces of nature. This seems to have its foundation in industry standards, because they decide what can be mass - produced. So we produce boxes, based on boxes, based on boxes... So does this mean we have peaked here ? That today's productions and production systems are optimal ? Of course not. Even if 3 dimensional forms can be simplified through simple geometric shapes, the product is more than the sum of its parts, or its current production systems. It is not longer a case of if we can build high, neither is it a case of simply how high, but rather how(and why). We see high rises now beginning to experiment with shape. This can be done because of proven structural methods and better materials. Say you have a typology that is proven through experience. What if you were to map certain "successful" productions of this type, and recreate it through an L-system ? It is being partly done through Parametric Design, though this is portrayed mostly as a tool for modular construction. Depending on your requirements for the system, tying creative design to parametric design could be a big undertaking, but what would you be left with afterwards ? This is where it gets hard; If you managed to recreate a skyscraper design by forming the system(algorithms) for the essential parts of it(Construction elements for example), what you would then potentially be left with would be a machine for producing an infinite number of variants of the original building. The benefits of this is of course an almost infinite number of designs to choose from. I am therefore inclined to believe that past projects can serve as a database of designs for producing high rise algorithms valuable and viable in the design of a high rise project. This is already being done, the growth- algorithms would just facilitate and automate the manual tasks of learning from the past.

More to follow....