Diagram As the Mediator

Architecture and nature have always been centered in humanitys changing relationship with nature, especially in how that relationship has been captured through form. Throughout history, nature has always been the main inspiration for shaping architecture: from Greek architecture, which reflected the ideal proportions of the body as an architectural style, to the functionalism of Louis Sullivan. While modernism created a corruption from the past by creating a new set of vocabulary that only reference itself, architecture still finds new ways to derive the contemporary from nature. Nature has been rediscovered as an organizational system, one that offers a complete new approach in developing the architectural form.

Today, digital technologies allow us to develop more complex forms through untraditional ways of thinking, like algorithms, among others. These new disciplines also alter architectural imagery. However, the relationship between media and architecture raises questions. In this matter, diagrams have been the main tool to understand complex systems. In nature, field gradients like temperature, pressure, volume, speed, and density create a fundamental relationship between the material and the form generated by the material. New materialism, in which raw matter and energy flow through self-organizing processes and morphogenesis, generates these structures. Is it really possible to adopt the same approach of a generation in architectural form via new digital technologies? Can the diagram be the middle ground in the battle of form vs. function? Can form and function generate an architectural form equally, without one of following another?

[Fig.1]

Diagram has been studied as a new tool in architecture by many theorists. In The Diagram, Deluze and Guttari describe Francis Bacons painting process. Bacon explores non-figurative aspects of abstraction through action-painting. According to Deluze and Guttari, he seemingly starts randomly painting lines and shapes and colors. These shapes suggest new possibilities within the painting. They are not a representation of an object, but the opportunity of it. According to Delanda in Immanence and Transcendence in the Genesis of Form, physical forms are created through morphogenetic process called abstract machines. Abstract machines can be defined as systems that generate dynamic structures through certain parameters. These parameters in nature occur as field gradients.

Material systems have a capacity for differentiation and variation. Deluze and Guttari have extended these material system relationships in nature in A Thousand Plateaus, categorizing the genesis of natural structures as two main systems: Meshwork and strata. Meshwork is the interconnection of heterogeneous elements, which creates certain patterns, whereas strata is through homogenous elements, creating a certain hierarchies like rhizomes of trees.

An abstract machine in itself is not physical or corporeal, any more than it is semiotic, it is diagrammatic It operates by matter, not by substance, by function, not by form The diagrammatic or abstract machine does not function to represent, even something real but rather constructs a real that is yet to come, a new type of reality. Deluze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

In Diagrams Matter, Stan Allen also discusses the diagram in terms of architecture. Allen describes diagram as an abstract thinking about organization. Organizational diagram has both formal and programmatic variables like space, event, direction, and force. In an architectural context, organization includes both program and space. So instead of a superiority of function over form or form over function, multiple functions and actions can inter-play through diagram. Diagram creates these potential relationships while not imitating nature but instead understanding its organization system.

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The works of Reiser and Umemoto focus on the approach of diagram and material system. In their work it is possible to see complex systems that generates novel formations through rethinking on nature. The diagram in their design creates flexibility and become a medium to produce the

unplanned. Through loose fit of the program it is possible create a more dynamic relations between the spaces which neither form nor program is superior to other. So media is a material substance and with its virtual and informing potential, it operates through diagram. Digital technologies also altered the space. Calculus spaces allow changing timeless and neutral character of the Euclidian space into dynamic spaces. Calculus based forms can incorporate multiple vectors in multiple times with a single surface. Form derives directly from the context and it can store this information of forces. Our interaction with the form creates a dynamic relationship.

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The concept of diagram and materialization can be seen in Reiser and Umemotos Sagaponac House design in Long Island, NY. Surrounded by the forest, the house brings together idea of house as a modern pavilion and blurring boundaries between interior and exterior. By analyzing the natural forces and topography, the building integrates with the landscape. These topological forms have ability to respond all the forces and create smooth transition from the garden into the building with many different entrances in different levels. The house also derives from Miess American housing projects like Farnsworth House in Chicago. Where the house is designed as an suspended plane, overlooking to landscape as a free standing pavilion. Mies idea of universal space that is generated through Cartesian euclian space has been reinpreted by Reiser and Umemoto in a topological non-euclidian space. The structure of the Sagaponac House reveals as rob truss on the

edges and one main column. The structure actievely engages with the landscape instead of just framing it. These kind of integration into the landscape creates a very complex but also more interactive dynamic relationship between the people and the building. Here a formal agenda of free standing pavilion revealed through the living space extending and cantilevering over the pool. So instead of a form derives the building just like in Miess Farnsworth house, in this case the form and function do not suppress each other. They can both be the part of this materialization of the building.

[Fig.5]

Another example from their work that can deal with a functional and formal agenda simultaneously can be the competition project for Alishan Tourist Bridge Routes in Taiwan, 2003. In this project they have a more regional sense in accordance with the functional agenda. They purposed to transform Alishan railroad to a toruism center where the Alishan Mountain and culture is expressed through the program and the landscape. The continuous flow of green from parking to bamboo forest and to the town is designed. Building program integrates into the each other and landscape while in the mean time the agriculture in the landscape helps them to create more dynamic environment as a cultural display. Of the main design elements of the project is the footbridge that is crossing over the railroad. Through several explorations and analysis of the structural forces with different material optimizations. The formal agenda of making the bridge as

transparent and light as bamboo trees comes into play and created a double shell waved structure system for the bridge.

Nature has been one of the main inspirations for the architecture throughout the history. This relationship has been changed and interpreted very differently in different ages. Modernism created a new set of vocabulary that erases its root from the past and created a battle between form versus function. Materialism rediscovers architectures roots in nature and create a new medium through diagram that function and form can act simultaneously. It doesnt matter what will be the new name for this: Biomimicry, Organicism, Morpho-ecologies, so on This materialist approach is the next big thing in architecture.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1 Reiser, Jesse, and Nanako Umemoto. Atlas of Novel Tectonics. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. 2 Reiser, Jesse, Nanako Umemoto, Andrew Benjamin, and Daniel Libeskind. Reiser + Umemoto: Recent Projects. London: Academy Editions, 1998. 3 4 Thompson, DArcy Wentworth. On Growth and Form. United States: s.n. Lynn, Greg. Animate Form. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999. 5 Deleuze, Gilles, and Flix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. 6 7 Francis Bacon The Logic of Sensation. Univ of Minnesota Pr, 2005. Manuel DeLanda, Immanence & Transcendence in the Genesis of Form in Ian Buchanan (ed), A Deleuzian Century?: South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol 96, No 3, Summer 1997, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 499-514, ISBN 0-8223-6451-4; reprinted 1999. 8 Allen, Stan. Diagrams Matter in ANY: Architecture New York no.23 1998 / p.16-19 9 Reiser, Jesse and Umemoto, Nanako, Sagaponac House, http://www.reiserumemoto.com 10 Reiser, Jesse and Umemoto, Nanako, Alishan Tourist Bridge Routes, http://www.reiser-umemoto.com

FIGURES 1. Author 2. Author 3. Author 4. www.reiser-umemoto.com 5. www.reiser-umemoto.com