Download or read book Protocell Architecture written by Neil Spiller and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-04-18 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the ages architects have attempted to capture the essence of living systems as design inspiration. However, practitioners of the built environment have had to deal with a fundamental split between the artificial urban landscape and nature owing to a technological 'gap' that means architects have been unable to make effective use of biological systems in urban environments. Protocell Architecture is an edition of AD that shows for the first time that contemporary architects can create and construct architectures that are bottom up, synthetically biological, green and have no recourse to shallow bio-mimicry. In the next few decades, synthetic biology is set to have as much, if not more, impact on architecture as cyberspace and the digital. The key to these amazing architectural innovations is the Protocell.
Download or read book Toward a Living Architecture written by Christina Cogdell and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold and unprecedented look at a cutting-edge movement in architecture Toward a Living Architecture? is the first book-length critique of the emerging field of generative architecture and its nexus with computation, biology, and complexity. Starting from the assertion that we should take generative architects’ rhetoric of biology and sustainability seriously, Christina Cogdell examines their claims from the standpoints of the sciences they draw on—complex systems theory, evolutionary theory, genetics and epigenetics, and synthetic biology. She reveals significant disconnects while also pointing to approaches and projects with significant potential for further development. Arguing that architectural design today often only masquerades as sustainable, Cogdell demonstrates how the language of some cutting-edge practitioners and educators can mislead students and clients into thinking they are getting something biological when they are not. In a narrative that moves from the computational toward the biological and from current practice to visionary futures, Cogdell uses life-cycle analysis as a baseline for parsing the material, energetic, and pollution differences between different digital and biological design and construction approaches. Contrary to green-tech sustainability advocates, she questions whether quartzite-based silicon technologies and their reliance on rare earth metals as currently designed are sustainable for much longer, challenging common projections of a computationally designed and manufactured future. Moreover, in critiquing contemporary architecture and science from a historical vantage point, she reveals the similarities between eugenic design of the 1930s and the aims of some generative architects and engineering synthetic biologists today. Each chapter addresses a current architectural school or program while also exploring a distinct aspect of the corresponding scientific language, theory, or practice. No other book critiques generative architecture by evaluating its scientific rhetoric and disjunction from actual scientific theory and practice. Based on the author’s years of field research in architecture studios and biological labs, this rare, field-building book does no less than definitively, unsparingly explain the role of the natural sciences within contemporary architecture.
Download or read book Future Details of Architecture written by Mark Garcia and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-07-16 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the exaggerated news of the untimely 'death of the detail'by Greg Lynn, the architectural detail is now more lifelike andactive than ever before. In this era of digital design andproduction technologies, new materials, parametrics, buildinginformation modeling (BIM), augmented realities and thenano-bio-information-computation consilience, the detail is now anincreasingly vital force in architecture. Though such digitallydesigned and produced details are diminishing in size to themolecular and nano levels, they are increasingly becoming morecomplex, multi-functional, high performance and self-replicating.Far from being a non-essential and final finish, this new type ofhighly evolved high-tech detail is rapidly becoming theindispensable and critical core, the (sometimes iconic) DNA of aninnovative new species of built environmental form that is spawningin scale and prominence, across product, interior, urban andlandscape design. This issue of AD re-examines the history,theories and design of the world’s most significant spatialdetails, and explores their innovative potentials and possibilitiesfor the future of architecture. Contributors include: Rachel Armstrong, Nic Clear, EdwardFord, Dennis Shelden, Skylar Tibbits. Featured architects: Ben van Berkel, Hernan Diaz Alonso,Peter Macapia, Carlo Ratti, Philippe Rahm, Patrik Schumacher, NeilSpiller.
Download or read book Protocells written by Steen Rasmussen and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 723 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive general resource on state-of-the-art protocell research, describing current approaches to making new forms of life from scratch in the laboratory. Protocells offers a comprehensive resource on current attempts to create simple forms of life from scratch in the laboratory. These minimal versions of cells, known as protocells, are entities with lifelike properties created from nonliving materials, and the book provides in-depth investigations of processes at the interface between nonliving and living matter. Chapters by experts in the field put this state-of-the-art research in the context of theory, laboratory work, and computer simulations on the components and properties of protocells. The book also provides perspectives on research in related areas and such broader societal issues as commercial applications and ethical considerations. The book covers all major scientific approaches to creating minimal life, both in the laboratory and in simulation. It emphasizes the bottom-up view of physicists, chemists, and material scientists but also includes the molecular biologists' top-down approach and the origin-of-life perspective. The capacity to engineer living technology could have an enormous socioeconomic impact and could bring both good and ill. Protocells promises to be the essential reference for research on bottom-up assembly of life and living technology for years to come. It is written to be both resource and inspiration for scientists working in this exciting and important field and a definitive text for the interested layman.
Download or read book Architecture and Feminisms written by Hélène Frichot and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-10 with total page 621 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set against the background of a ‘general crisis’ that is environmental, political and social, this book examines a series of specific intersections between architecture and feminisms, understood in the plural. The collected essays and projects that make up the book follow transversal trajectories that criss-cross between ecologies, economies and technologies, exploring specific cases and positions in relation to the themes of the archive, control, work and milieu. This collective intellectual labour can be located amidst a worldwide depletion of material resources, a hollowing out of political power and the degradation of constructed and natural environments. Feminist positions suggest ways of ethically coping with a world that is becoming increasingly unstable and contested. The many voices gathered here are united by the task of putting critical concepts and feminist design tools to use in order to offer experimental approaches to the creation of a more habitable world. Drawing inspiration from the active archives of feminist precursors, existing and re-imagined, and by way of a re-engagement in the histories, theories and projected futures of critical feminist projects, the book presents a collection of twenty-three essays and eight projects, with the aim of taking stock of our current condition and re-engaging in our precarious environment-worlds.
Download or read book Vibrant Architecture written by Rachel Armstrong and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-08-17 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sets out the conditions under which the need for a new approach to the production of architecture in the twenty-first century is established, where our homes and cities are facing increasing pressures from environmental challenges that are compromising our lives and well being. Vibrant architecture embodies a new kind of architectural design practice that explores how lively materials, or 'vibrant matter', may be incorporated into our buildings to confer on them some of the properties of living things, such as movement, growth, sensitivity and self-repair. The theoretical and practical implications of how this may occur are explored through the application of a new group of materials. Characteristically, these substances possess some of the properties of living systems but may not have the full status of being truly alive. They include forms of chemical artificial life such as 'dynamic droplets' or synthetically produced soils. As complex systems, they are able to communicate directly with the natural world using a shared language of chemistry and so, negotiate their continued survival in a restless world. Vibrant architecture may create new opportunities for architectural design practice that venture beyond top-down form-finding programs, by enabling architects to co-design in partnership with human and nonhuman collectives, which result from the production of post natural landscapes. Ultimately, vibrant architecture may operate as an ecological platform for human development that augments the liveliness of our planet, rather than diminishes it.
Download or read book Space Architecture written by Neil Leach and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-01-12 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forty years on from the first moon landing, architecture in Space is entering a new era. Over the last decade, there has been a fundamental shift in the Space industry from short-term pioneering expeditions to long-term planning for colonisation, and new ventures such as Space tourism. Architects are now involved in designing the interiors of long-term habitable structures in Space, such as the International Space Station, researching advanced robotic fabrication technologies for building structures on the Moon and Mars, envisioning new 'space yachts' for the super-rich, and building new facilities, such as the Virgin Galactic 'Spaceport America' in New Mexico designed by Foster + Partners. Meanwhile the mystique of Space remains as alluring as ever, as high-profile designers and educators – such as Greg Lynn – are running designs studios drawing upon ever more inventive computational design techniques. This issue of AD features the most significant current projects underway and highlights key areas of research in Space, such as energy, materials, manufacture and robotics. It also looks at how this research and investment in new technologies might transfer to terrestrial design and construction. Space architects: Constance Adams, Marc Cohen, Ondrej Doule, Sandra Häuplik-Meusburger, Scott Howe, Brent Sherwood, Madhu Thangavelu, Andreas Vogler, Robert Zubrin. Architects: Bevk Perovic Arhitekti, Dekleva Gregoric Arhitekti, Foster + Partners, Neil Leach, Greg Lynn, OFIS architects, SADAR + VUGA.
Download or read book Modelling Protocells written by Roberto Serra and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-07-24 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The monograph discusses models of synthetic protocells, which are cell-like structures obtained from non-living matter endowed with some rudimentary kind of metabolism and genetics, but much simpler than biological cells. They should grow and proliferate, generating offsprings that resemble in some way the parent protocells with some variation, so that selection may take place. Sustainable protocell populations have not yet been obtained experimentally and mathematical models are therefore extremely important to address key questions concerning their synthesis and behavior. Different protocell “architectures” have been proposed and high-level abstract models like those that are presented in this book are particularly relevant to gain a better understanding of the different properites. These models are able to treat all the major dynamical phenomena in a unified framework, so they can be seen as “virtual laboratories” for protocell research. Particular attention is paid to the problem of synchronization of the fission rate of the whole protocell and the duplication rate of its "protogenetic" material, which is shown to be an emergent property that spontaneously develops in successive generations. The book is of interest for a broad range of scientists working in soft matter physics, chemistry and biology, interested in the role protocells may play on the development of new technologies with medical, environmental and industrial applications as well as scientists interested in the origin of life.
Download or read book The Digital Turn in Architecture 1992 2012 written by Mario Carpo and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-06-27 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Architektur im digitalen Zeitalter, eine zwei Jahrzehnte alte und wechselvolle Geschichte. Dieses Buch aus der Reihe Architectural Design (AD) beschreibt sämtliche Stufen und Phasen: von Folding zu Cyberspace, Nichtlinearität und Hypersurface-Architektur, von Versionierung zu Skripting, Emergenz, Informationsmodellen und Parametricism. Es erfasst und interpretiert den Geist der jeweiligen Zeit mit dokumentarischer Präzision, fördert und antizipiert oftmals bedeutende Entwicklungen in Architektur und Architekturtheorie. Diese Anthologie der bedeutendsten Artikel aus Architectural Design ist chronologisch und thematisch geordnet, bietet einen vollständigen historischen Zeitstrahl zu computergestütztem Design und digitalen Produktionsformen, von den Anfängen bis zur heutigen Vorrangstellung dieser Technologien. Mario Capo gibt in seiner ausführlichen Einleitung und im Vorwort zu jedem Originaltext einen scharfsinnigen Überblick über die jüngste Geschichte des digitalen Designs. Diese Synopse fehlte bislang, sowohl als pädagogisches Instrument für Studenten als auch Forschungsinstrument für Wissenschaftler. Sie spannt den Bogen zwischen dem Status quo "digitaler" Architektur und der Geschichte und Theorie jüngster Entwicklungen und Trends, stellt wichtige Fragen zu den heutigen Methoden und Techniken im professionellen Design. Eine umfassende Anthologie digitaler Architektur von Mario Carpo, einem der herausragendsten Wissenschaftler in diesem Fachgebiet. - enthält bahnbrechende Essays von Bernard Cache, Peter Eisenman, John Frazer, Charles Jencks, Greg Lynn, Achim Menges und Patrik Schumacher - stellt die wichtigsten Werke von FOA, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Ali Rahim, Lars Spuybroek/NOX, Kas Oosterhuis und ShoP vor
Download or read book Niche Construction written by John Odling-Smee and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-09-03 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How niche construction theory extends evolutionary theory beyond natural selection to a more general theory about the coevolution of organisms with their environments. In Niche Construction, John Odling-Smee, the leading authority on niche construction theory, extends evolutionary theory from an explanation of how populations of organisms respond to natural selection pressures in their environments to a more general theory about the coevolution of organisms with their environments. Organisms, he shows, cause changes in their local external environments by interacting with them, thereby contributing in fundamental ways to their own and one another’s evolution. This book applies niche construction theory to current problems such as human-induced global warming and suggests how humans might contribute positively to the future evolution of life on Earth. Odling-Smee explains how orthodox evolutionary theory falls short in two ways. First, it does not describe how organisms contribute to their own and one another’s evolution through their environment-changing niche constructing activities. Second, it fails to explain how genetic evolution can give rise to supplementary knowledge-gaining processes in many species. These include certain developmental processes in individual organisms and socio-cultural processes in animals, including humans. Neo-Darwinism, the author writes, assesses the fitness of individual organisms in populations in terms of their capacity to survive and reproduce, but without attributing these capacities to the active, purposeful agency of organisms. He argues that the purposeful agency of individual organisms plays a central role in evolution. He also discusses the relationship of an organism’s energy-consuming activities and the second law of thermodynamics.
Download or read book From Life to Architecture to Life written by Tim Ireland and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2024-01-18 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book establishes a correlation between architectural theory and the biosemiotic project, and suggest how this coupling establishes a framework leading to an architectural-biosemiotic paradigm that puts biosemiotic theory at the heart of cognising the built environment, and offers an approach to understanding and shaping the built environment that supports (and benefits) human, and organismic, spatial intelligence.
Download or read book Self Assembly written by Ramanathan Nagarajan and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-01-07 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the state-of-the-art of the diverse self-assembly systems Self-Assembly: From Surfactants to Nanoparticles provides an effective entry for new researchers into this exciting field while also giving the state of the art assessment of the diverse self-assembling systems for those already engaged in this research. Over the last twenty years, self-assembly has emerged as a distinct science/technology field, going well beyond the classical surfactant and block copolymer molecules, and encompassing much larger and complex molecular, biomolecular and nanoparticle systems. Within its ten chapters, each contributed by pioneers of the respective research topics, the book: Discusses the fundamental physical chemical principles that govern the formation and properties of self-assembled systems Describes important experimental techniques to characterize the properties of self-assembled systems, particularly the nature of molecular organization and structure at the nano, meso or micro scales. Provides the first exhaustive accounting of self-assembly derived from various kinds of biomolecules including peptides, DNA and proteins. Outlines methods of synthesis and functionalization of self-assembled nanoparticles and the further self-assembly of the nanoparticles into one, two or three dimensional materials. Explores numerous potential applications of self-assembled structures including nanomedicine applications of drug delivery, imaging, molecular diagnostics and theranostics, and design of materials to specification such as smart responsive materials and self-healing materials. Highlights the unifying as well as contrasting features of self-assembly, as we move from surfactant molecules to nanoparticles. Written for students and academic and industrial scientists and engineers, by pioneers of the research field, Self-Assembly: From Surfactants to Nanoparticles is a comprehensive resource on diverse self-assembly systems, that is simultaneously introductory as well as the state of the art.
Download or read book Radical Architectural Drawing written by Neil Spiller and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-09-19 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a newfound interest in architectural drawing. Some of the most forward-looking architects worldwide are reinventing it to discover the radical possibilities of contemporary architecture as a rich mix of the virtual and the actual. Architectural drawing is adapting to compensate for these new changes to the discipline, and is being used to speculate on new paradigms of space and representation. This AD seeks to showcase the architects who are pushing the envelope of drawing in extraordinary ways, and their insights into architecture’s future spatial dexterity. The issue is built around an international group of architects involved in an ongoing KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture international drawing research project, who are creating new drawing methodologies in new and exciting realms. Their projects are written about from the perspective of architectural representation by critics and commentators from across the globe, illustrating a cornucopia of graphic verve and talent in this highly contemporary and thought-provoking issue. Contributors: Aaron Betsky, Penelope Haralambidou, Ulrika Karlsson, Michael McGarry, Nicholas de Monchaux, Ricardo de Ostos, Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Peter Salter, Chris L Smith, Wolfgang Tschapeller, Sarah de Villiers, Robin Wilson, and Jason Young. Drawings by: Bryan Cantley, Nat Chard, Peter Cook, Riet Eeckhout, CJ Lim, Perry Kulper, Metis (Mark Dorrian and Adrian Hawker), Shaun Murray, Smout Allen, Neil Spiller, Nada Subotincic, Michael Webb, Mark West, and Michael Young.
Download or read book Advances in Artificial Life Evolutionary Computation and Systems Chemistry written by Federico Rossi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-02 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the revised selected papers of the 10th Italian Workshop on Advances in Artificial Life, Evolutionary Computation and Systems Chemistry, WIVACE 2015, held at Bari, Italy, in September 2015. The 18 papers presented have been thoroughly reviewed and selected from 45 submissions. They cover the following topics: evolutionary computation, bioinspired algorithms, genetic algorithms, bioinformatics and computational biology, modeling and simulation of artificial and biological systems, complex systems, synthetic and systems biology, systems chemistry.
Download or read book Living Construction written by Martyn Dade-Robertson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-28 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern biotechnologies give us unprecedented control of the fundamental building blocks of life. For designers, across a range of disciplines, emerging fields such as synthetic biology offer the promise of new sustainable materials and structures which may be grown, are self-assembling, self-healing and adaptable to change. While there is a thriving speculative discourse on the future of design in the age of biotechnology, there are few realized design applications. This book, the first in the Bio Design series, acts as a bridge between design speculation and scientific reality and between contemporary design thinking, in areas such as architecture, product design and fashion design, and the traditional engineering approaches which currently dominate biotechnologies. Filled with real examples, Living Construction reveals how living cells construct and transform materials through methods of fabrication and assembly at multiple scales and how designers can utilize these processes.
Download or read book Experimental Green Strategies written by and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Evolutionary Biology Exobiology and Evolutionary Mechanisms written by Pierre Pontarotti and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-07-03 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents 19 selected contributions to the 16th Evolutionary Biology Meeting, which took place in September 2012 in Marseilles. The aims of these annual meetings, which gather together leading evolutionary biologists and other scientists, are to promote the exchange of ideas and to encourage interdisciplinary collaborations. The first chapter deals with the history of a great discovery: The first experiments on ascidian and sea urchin egg fertilization. The remaining contributions are grouped under the following categories: · Evolutionary biology concepts · Exobiology and the origin of life · Evolutionary mechanisms Offering an up-to-date overview of recent findings in the field of evolutionary biology, this book is an invaluable source of information for scientists, teachers and advanced students.
