ARCH 503

Spring 2008
CONTEMPORARY TOPICS IN COMPLEXITY &
NON-LINEAR SYSTEMS
Eric Ellingsen, MARCH, MLA, MA
Senior Lecturer
ellingsen@iit.edu
OFFICE HOURS:
Thursdays, 1-5pm: Metals Building, second floor
The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation. Hume, 1739
The world lies under the spell of the phantom style-architecture. It is hardly possible for people today to
grasp that the true values in the building-art are totally independent of the question of style, indeed that a
proper approach to a work of architecture has absolutely nothing to do with style. Muthesias, Style-
architecture and the Building Art, 1902
The historian of architecture must be in close contact with contemporary conceptions. Only when he is
permeated by the spirit of his time is he prepared to detect those tracts of the past which previous
generations have overlooked. Siegfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture, 1941
What is crucial in these developments, though also powerfully obscured by them, is that in our culture the
process of making and the process of knowing are no longer separate. Sanford Kwinter, Architectures of
Time, 2001
The new architecture will not be about style, but rather about substanceabout the very methods and
processes that underlie making. Kiern, Timberlake, Refabricating Architecture, 2004
Linearity is a trap. The behavior of linear systems is far from typical. If you decide that only linear
equations are worth talking about, self-censorship sets in. Your textbooks fill with triumphs of linear
analysis, its failures buried so deep that the graves go unmarked and the existence of the graves goes
unremarked. As the eighteenth century believed in a clockwork universe, so did the twentieth believe in a
linear one. Ian Stewart, The Mathematics of Chaos, 1990
With the recent triumph of the far from equilibrium paradigm, we may be about to witness a change in
engineering practices, a change that may place at their disposal the full self-organizing powers of matter.
Manuel Delanda, Domus, 2006
The problem of modern architecture is not a problem of rearranging its linesit has nothing to do with
defining formalistic differences between the new buildings and the old ones. But to raise the new-build
structure on a sound plan, gleaning every benefit of science and technologyThe art of building has been
able to evolve through timeas have the discovery of natural laws, the perfection of technical methods, the
rational and scientific use of materials.
Antonio SantElia, The Manifesto of Future Architectures, 1917
No ideas but in things. William Carlos Williams, 1946
DESCRIPTION & OBJECTIVES
What do soap bubbles, snow crystals and architectural modules have in common? What is the
difference between intensive and extensive thinking? What do philosophers and scientists mean
when they use concepts like multiplicity, singularity, emergence, productive difference and
intensive gradients when describing matter and nature? What does the virtual mean other than as
a reference to the computer? Morphogenesis, epigenesis, phylogenesis? What does it mean to
assert that there has been a shift from a mechanistic understanding of the world to a pluralistic
understanding, from linearity to the non-linear? What is the plane of immanence vs. the
transcendental? What do tendencies have to do with technique? And why in the hell does any
of this matter to architecture?
At the break of the 20th century Muthesius claimed that architecture was going through
a teething process, where a truly new conception of art is about to unfold. Can the same
thing be said about architecture now, as many contemporary theorists and designers assert? Is
there in fact a new building art taking place today?
The 90s witnessed a critical shift in applied thought, particularly influenced by radically new
assumptions springing from the biological and physical sciences. The foundation of this shift
rests on a process-driven understanding of the world; a process of interrelated, intensive open
systems exchanging energy and information with their environment. Architecture is one of these
systems. And now the twenty-first century is in the midst of what many scientistsIlya
Prigogine, Roger Sperry, Brian Josephson, Stewart Kauffman, to name a feware deeming as a
new paradigm shift, a shift fundamentally changing our understanding of the world and our
relation to it including how it could be and should be designed.
Architecture, constantly on the prowl for new ideas to defend or define its new trials, trends and
assertions has been permanently and, I believe, positively influenced by these new paradigms of
thought. In fact, architecture has been appropriating them--as more than mere metaphors--
throughout the end of the last century up to the present. This seminar will thus attempt to identify
what these assumptions are, when they started, what might have influenced them, and then
investigate the useful and productive breadth and range by which they can and are being applied
to architecture. It will give actual architectural and structural examples around which the class
will base its discussions, discussions which will facilitate, as Manuel Delanda says, know how
rather than a know what approach to these topics. The methodological intention of this seminar
is therefore oriented to explore and critically formulate relevant questions between design and a
contemporary scientific understanding of matter, rather than presumptuously impose categorically
pre-existing fixed answers.
The semester will be divided into three Deleuzian components:
I: Population thinking from the biological sciences,
II: topological thinking (or differential thinking) from mathematicstopology in particular and
rates of change
III: thermodynamics from the material sciences.
Themes within each model of thinking are the following:

1) Intensive differences drive processes
2) process rather than products
3) multiplicities replace essences
4) immanence replaces transcendence (time replaces timelessness)
5) disequilibrium replaces equilibrium
6) measurement: intensive and rates of change is added to extensive
7) totalities are contraband
8) ordinal is added to cardinal
9) material and organization as an assemblage filled with capacities rather than inert receptacle of
form
10) difference which makes a difference
11) THE RE-ENCHANTMENT OF MATTER
REQUIREMENTS
Each class session will consist of a lecture by the instructor of the philosophic and
historic context of the topic (covered in the recommendedhighly recommended,
encouraged readings). The lecture will be followed by short student presentations, one
on the scientific context, and the other on an architectural context of the topic. Each
student will be required to give two 20 minute presentations, one in the scientific
category and the other in the architectural category. Students will be allowed to pick
which topic most intrigues them from the list provided in the syllabus. In addition to the
two presentations, each student is expected to complete the required readings for the
week and participate in the discussions. Though small in size, these readings are
challenging. Each class will end in a discussion prompted by the readings and
presentations. A short paper or project, not to exceed 6 pages, will be required near the
end of the semester. Each paper/project topic will be chosen and developed in
coordination and consultation with the professor.
GRADING
weekly: 20%
students are required to attend all classes, complete all required readings an participate
regularly in discussions
presentations: 30%
1) 15% : research and presentations of topic
2) 15% : respondent
model : 30%
paper: 20%
BOOKS REQUIRED to PURCHASE:
>A Thousand Plateaus (capitalism and schizophrenia), Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari,
trans. Brian Massumi, University of Minnisota Press, 1987.
>Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, Manuel Delanda, Continuum, 2002.
>Atlas of Novel Tectonics, Reiser and Umemoto, Princeton Architectural Press, 2006.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED:
>Informal, Cecil Balmond
>Phylogenesis: foas ark: foreign office architects, Actar 2003
>Self-Organization in Biological Systems, Camazine, Deneubourg, Franks, Sneyd,
Theraulaz, Bonabeau, Princeton University Press, 2003
>A thousand Years of Non-linear History, Manuel Delanda, Zone Press
READINGS outside required texts ARE AVAILABLE AT:
http://www.box.net
LOGIN: ellingsen@iit.edu
PASSWORD: crownhall
RED = Ellingsen lecture
YELLOW = student presentations & respondents
GREEN = no class
PINK = model project reviews with Balmond
________________________________________________________
WEEK 1 : (Jan28): INTRO: 3 models of intensive thinking:
Populations (biology) , Topology (mathematics), & Thermodynamics (physics)
essences vs. multiplicities, transcendence vs. immanence, being vs. becoming
>Manuel Delanda, Material Expressivity, Domus, Matter Matters, May2006, p.57.
Kwinter intro
>Richard Dawkins, Bar Codes in the Stars, from Your Lighthouse, Olafur Eliasson,
Works with Light 1991-2004.
>Sanford Kwinter, Introduction, Zone 1/2 .
Lecture : Post-Plato & Partnering with the Expressivity of Matter
Architecture examples: Frie Otto
scientific examples: soap films
________________________________________________________
WEEK 2 : (Feb 5): POPUATION THINKING: ecology, evolution & variation
The type is an abstraction, only the variation is real. Ernst Mayer (quoted in Delanda)
Required:
>Manuel Delanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, pages: 56-63, 72-76,
119-127, 9-10, 14-16, 21-22, 26-27, 30-33, 39-41.
>Michael Weinstock, Emergence in Architecture, Morphogenesis and the
Mathematics of Emergence, AD Emergence: Morphogenetic Design Strategies, Vol.74,
p. 6-17.
Lecture 1: Processes not Products: Ecology, Morphogenesis, and Evolutionary
Processes
Lecture II: Self-Organization and the AUTO Selective Importance of Variation
Architectural examples:
Metabolists, Louis Sullivan, Walter Netsch, Moshie Softie
Scientific examples : windmills, slime-molds, blue-gills and swarms
Recommended:
>Louis Sullivan, System of Architectural Ornament, The Inorganic and the Organic, p.
1-15.
>Raoul H. France, The Plant as Inventor (Stuttgart: Jung and Sons, 1923), p.5-23.
>Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species, Variation Under Domestication, Variation
Under Nature, p.71-114.
>Frie Otto, "Finding Form: Towards an Architecture of the Minimal"; Edition Axel
Menges; 1995.
>Eric Bonabeau, Self-Organization in Biological Systems, What is Self-Organization?,
How self-organization works, Princeton University Press, 2001, p.7-15.
_________________________________________
Week 3 (Feb12): Mapping the Field
Presenters: Ewa Guzek, David Rochlen, Bridget Oconnell
Defendants: Marilyn Musgjerd, Adriana Rios, Patrick Fagan
Required:
>James Corner, The Agency of Mapping, Mappings, ed. Denis Cosgrove
>Stan Allen, Field Conditions, Points + Lines, p.92-103.
> A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 1: Introduction: Rhizome, Gilles Deleuze
Presentation: Field Operations (Highline, Freshkills, Downview) + Stan Allen +
Bernard Tschumi (la Villette Park)
required readings for presenters & respondents :
>Stan Allen, Infrastructural Urbanism, Points + Lines, p48-57.
>James Corner, Not Unlike Life Itself, Harvard Design Magazine, 2004, p.1-3.

Recommended:
>H.P. Berlage, Foundations and Development of Architecture, The Western Architect
vol.18, no 9 (Sep 1912), p.96-99.
>Joseph Rykwert, Organic and Mechanical, RES 22 (Autumn 1992), p.11-18.
_________________________________________
Week 4 (Feb 19): Propagating Organization
Presenters: Edward Eichten, Trudy Smaistrla, Heiki Kumpf
Defendants: Marco Veneziano, Katie Hart, Matthew Lacey
Required:
>Detlef Mertins, Same Difference, Phylogenesis: foas ark, p.270-279.
>Manuel Delanda, Non-Organic Life, Zone 6, p.129-167.
>A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 15: Conclusion: Concrete Rules and Abstract
Machines, Gilles Deleuze
Presentation: FOA (Foreign Office Architects) : Yokohama + Southeast Coastal park
required readings for presenters & respondents :
>Farshid Moussavi/ Alejandro Zaera Polo, Types, Style and Phylogenesis, AD
Emergence, p.34-39.
>Alejandro Zaera Polo, Phylogenesis: foas ark, p.6-17, 57-82.
>Stewart Kauffman, Investigations, Propagating Organization, p. 81-109.
Recommended:
>Steven Johnson, Emergence: the Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software,
2001, p.11-23.
_________________________________________
Week 5 (Feb 26): NOMADS-BY-CHOICE
TOPOLOGICAL thinking , symmetry & rates of change
The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of
the settled disciplines. Benoit Mandelbrot
Required:
>Cecil Balmond, New Structure and the Informal, Lotus International 98, p.70-83.
>Manuel Delanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, pages: 10-18, 22-26, 80-85,
186-188.
>James Gleick, Chaos, p. 82-113
>Gyorgy Darvas, Symmetry and Asymmetry in our Surroundings, Olafur Eliasson:
Surroundings Surrounded, p.136-149.
> watch: Glenn Gould: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=qlCgz4wbreM&feature=related
Lecture I: Difference which makes a Difference, or The symmetry of the Pattern
which Connects
Lecture II: The Games of Life, Algorithms, and Architecture
architectural examples:
Buckminister Fuller , Jorn Utzen, le Ricolt,
scientific examples: Darcy Thompson, wasps, L-systems
recommended:
>Manuel Delanda, Deleuze and the Use of the Genetic Algorithm in Architecture,
Phylogenesis, foas ark, p.520-529.
>Gregory Bateson, Introduction, Mind and Nature, p.3-20.
>Aristid Lindenmayer, The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants, Graphic Modeling Using L-
Systems, p. preface, 1-50.
>Mark Wiggley, Planetary Homeboy, ANY 23.
>Martin Gardner, Mathematical Games: the Fantastic Combinations of John Conways
Game of Life, Scientific America, 223, Oct, 1970.
>Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science, Implications for Everyday Systems, p.
363-432.
>DArcy Thompson, On Growth and Form, On the Theory of Transformations, of the
Comparison of Related Forms, p.1026-1095.
>Ian Stewart and Martin Golubitsky, Fearful Symmetry, What is Symmetry?, p.26-53.
>Detlef Mertins, Transparencies Yet to Come, A + U, 325 (Oct 1997), p.4-16.
>Peter McCleary, Robert Le Ricolaiss Seach for the Indestructible Idea, LOTUS 99,
p.102-110.
>Reinhold Martin, Crystal Balls, ANY 17, p.34-39.
>Sanford Kwinter, Fuller Themselves, ANY 17, p.62.
>Reiser + Umemoto, Atlas, Some Notes of Geodetics, p.132-135.
_____________________________________________________________
Week 6 (MARCH 4): ******NO CLASS******
>Kevin Kelly, Hive Mind
_____________________________________________________________
Week 7 (Mar 11) : Survival Patterns
Presenters: Marilyn Musgjerd, Matthew Lacey, Patrick Fagan
Defendants: Megan Lawler, David Rochlen, Stephen Claeys
Required:
> A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 14: 1440: The Smooth and the Striated, Gilles
Deleuze
>Cecil Balmond, Survival Patterns, MODELS, 306090, p. 26-32.
>Chris Williams, Design by Algorithm, Digital Tectonics, p.79-81.
>Aranda, Lasch, Pamphlet Architecture 27: Tooling, p.8,9, 22-31, 52-91.
Recommended:
>Robin Evans, The Projective Cast, Intro, p. xxv-xxxvi.
>Douglas Hofstadter, Parquet Deformations: A Subtle, Intricate Art Form,
Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern, p. 191-212.
>Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science, The Crucial Experiment, p.23-50.
>Akira Asada, Beyond the Biomorphic, Tokyo Bay Experiment, p. 21-27
Presentations: Balmond (Serpentine with Ito+ V & A ) & Terraswarm (Tooling)
required readings for presenters & respondents :
>James Gleick, Chaos, A Geometry of Nature, p.81-118.
>Cecil Balmond, Informal, Fractal, p. 219-227, 243-263, 267-272.
>Cecil Balmond, Geometry, Algorithm, Pattern, Digital Tectonics, p.128-135.
_________________________________________
Week 8 : (Mar 18): ******SPRING BREAK *******
_________________________________________
Week 9 : (Mar 25): MODELS Exercise assigned;
> Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 12: 1227: On the Treatise of
Nomadology, Gilles Deleuze, p.380- 387.
> Gilles Deleuze , A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 10: 1730: becoming-Intense,
becoming-Animal, Becoming- Imperceptible, Memories of a Haecceity, p.260-265.
> Gilles Deleuze , A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 2: 1914 : One or Several Wolves, p.
30 (bottom) -34.
_________________________________________
Week 10 : (April 1): Geometry in material, Geometry in mind
Presenters: Hang-tang Tu, Smita Vijaykumar, Katie Hart
Defendants: John Castro, Bridget Oconnel, Trudy Smaistrla,
Required:
> Van Berkel & Bos, Interactive instruments in operations diagrams Olafur Eliasson:
Surroundings Surrounded, Essays on Space and Science, p. 79-88.
>Reiser and Umemoto, Atlas of Novel Tectonics, p. 38-69.
>Bernard Cache, A Plea for Euclid, ANY 24.
>Lindy Roy, Geometry as a Nervous System, ANY 17.
Presentations: UN Studio : Mercedes Museum & Mobius House
required readings for presenters & respondents :
>Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, Live it/Love it, Digital Tectonics, p. 137-141.
>Peter Saunders, Nonlinearity: What it is and Why it matters, Architecture and
Science, 2001, p.110-115.
Recommended:
>Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, Non-Euclidean
Geometry, p. 861-924.
>Stephen Barr, Experiments in Typology, What is Topology, p. 1-5.
>Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought From Ancient to Modern Times, The Beginning
of Typology, p.1158-1181.
>Stewart Dickson, True 3D Computer Modeling: Sculpture of Numerical Abstraction,
Leonardo Vol 25, p. 281-288.
>Manuel Delanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, p.14-18, 56-76.
>Mark Wiggley, The Hyper-Architecture of Desire, Constants New Babylon, 1999.
>Friedrich Kiesler, Friedrich Kiesler: Endless House 1947-1961.
_________________________________________
Week 11 : (Apr 8): INTENSIVE THINKING : thermodynamics and the Model
Disguising process under product Delanda
Required:
>Manuel Delanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, pages: 10-22, 24-26, 68-72,
104-110, 171-178.
>Manuel Delanda, Extensive and Intensive, Domus, Matter Matters, May2006, p.57.
>Lee Smolin, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, The Universe is Made of Processes, not
Things, p.49-65.
> James Gleick, Chaos, 121-153.
>Sanford Kwinter, Architecture in Time, p.22-31.
.
Recommended:
>Reiser + Umemoto, Atlas of Novel Techtonics, Intensive and Extensive, p.71-77
>Reiser + Umemoto, Atlas, p.150-153
>Martin Gardner, Kline Bottles and Other Surfaces, The Colossal Book of
Mathematics, p. 227-239.
>Manuel Delanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, p.14-18.
>Greg Lynn, Animate Form, p. 9-25, 29-35.
>Bernard Cache, Digital Semper, ANYMORE, p. 190-197.
>Mark Burry, Virtual Gaudi, Digital Tectonics, p.23-33.
Lecture I : Models: the PLANE Difference, examples in associative design
Lecture II: Critical Thresholds in the Body Without Organs
Architecture examples: Antontio Gaudi, REM Lagos, Smart Geometry Group
Scientific examples: ice crystals, chemical clocks, soap films, catenaries curves, weather
patterns, pendulums, law curves, associative geometry
_________________________________________
Week 12 : (APR 15): reschedule for Saturday, APRIL 19 : Animate Your Form
Presenters: Isaac Plumb, Goran Radulovic, Jacklyn Bookshester
Defendants: Ewa Guzek, Edward Eichten, Carmille Yu
Required:
> A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 6: November 28, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself a
Body Without Organs?, Gilles Deleuze
>Greg Lynn, Animate Form, p. 8-41.
Presentation : Greg Lynn
required readings for presenters & respondents :
>Greg Lynn, Architectural Curvilinearity: the folded, the Pliant and the Supple, AD:
Folding in Architecture, p.24-31.
Recommended:
>Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Monadology.
>Alan M. Turning, Can a Machine Think? The World of Mathematics, Vol 4, p.
2099-2123.
>Gregory Chatin, Irreducible Complexity, web, p.1-15.
>Gregory Chatin, The Limits of Mathematics, web, p. 1-8.
________________________________________
Week 13 : (APR 22) : Anexact and Intense
Presenters: Adriana Rios, Mahdieh Salimi, Marco Veneziano,
Defendants: Heiki Kumpf, Goran Radulovic, Isaac Plumb
Required:
>Detlef Mertins, Bioconstructivism, NOX, p. 360-369.
>Manuel Delanda, Materiality: Anexact and Intense, NOX, 370-377.
>Lars Spuybroes, Machining Architecture, The Structure of Vagueness, NOX, p.
6-13, p 352-359.
> A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 10: 1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming Animal,
becoming Imperceptible, Gilles Deleuze
Presentation : NOX
required readings for presenters & respondents :
Recommended:
>Ilya Prigogine, Exploring Complexity: an introduction, p.5-14, 217-219.
>Manuel Delanda, A thousand Years of Non-Linear History, Sandstone and Granite,
Geological History, p.57-87.
>James Gleick, Chaos, p.9-31, 121-153.
>John Gribbin, Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity, 2005.
>James Gleick, Chaos, p.307-314.

_________________________________________
Week 14 : (Apr 29) : The Total Model: Associative Design, Associative Geometry,
Presenters: John Castro, Stephen Claeys, Carmille Yu
Defendants: Smita Vijaykumar, Hang-tang Tu, Mahdieh Salimi, Jacklyn Bookshester
Required:
>Johann Sischka, Manufacturing Complexity, AD: Emergence: Morphogenetic Design
Strategies, p. 74-79.
>Michael Weinstock, Self-Organization and the Structural Dynamics of Plants, AD:
Techniques and Technologies in Morphogenetic Design, p. 26-33.
>Achim Menges, Instrumental Design, AD: Techniques and Technologies in
Morphogenetic Design, p. 42-53.
>Bernard Cache, Towards an Associative Architecture, Digital Tectonics, 102-109.
>Sanford Kwinter, Architectures and the Technology of Life, AA Files, 1994, p.3,4.
.
Recommended:
>Gilles Deleuze, What is Philosophy, The Plane of Immanence, p.35-60
Presentations: Foster and Parners : British Museum Great Court Roof/ Swiss Re
Headquarters; Reichstag
required readings for presenters & respondents :
>Robert Aish, Extensible Computational Design for Exploratory Architecture,
Architecture in the Digital Age, p. 243-252.
>Hugh Whitehead, Instrumental Geometry, AD Techniques and Technologies in
Morphogenetic Design, p. 42-49.
>Hugh Whitehead, Laws of Form, Architecture in the Digital Age , Design and
Manufacturing, p.83-93.
_________________________________________
Week 15 : (May 6) : Your Surroundings Surrounded
Required:
> A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 11: Of the Refrain, Gilles Deleuze
> Olafur Eliasson, Models are Real, MODELS, 306090
lecture : Experiment in Architecture
Architecture examples : Olafur Eliasson