Systemic Architecture

This is a manual investigating the subject of urban ecology and systemic development from the perspective of architectural design. It sets out to explore two main goals: to discuss the contemporary relevance of a systemic practice to architectural design, and to share a toolbox of informational design protocols developed to describe the city as a territory of self-organization.

Collecting together nearly a decade of design experiments by the authors and their practice, ecoLogicStudio, the book is organised into three design domains: environments, machines, and behavioural spaces.

The conversation touches disciplinary definitions, often perceived as oppositions, such as sustainable development versus ecologic urbanisation, algorithmic (process driven) versus critical (narrative driven) architecture, bottom-up tactical versus top-down strategic design, space as patterns of use versus behavioural space, low tech materiality versus high tech design, the boundary of the natural and the artificial realms within the city and architecture.

A new kind of emergent "real-time world-city" is presented in the book in the form of an operational design manual for the assemblage of proto-architectures, the incubation of proto-gardens, and the coding of proto-interfaces. These prototypes of machinic architecture materialise as synthetic hybrids embedded with biological life (proto-gardens), computational power, behavioural responsiveness (cyber-gardens), spatial articulation (ecoMachines and Fibrous structures), remote sensing (FunClouds), and communication capabilities (Footprint Grotto).

With this manual, ecoLogicStudio illustrates a form of know-how that constitutes the basis for its critical practice. Such a mode of practice is better understood through the actual application of the manual, by experiencing architecture as an experimental practice devoted to promoting a critical understanding of our society through the evolution of a personal architectural knowledge; a new individual modus operandi able to be shared and interconnected to trigger new appetites, new hungers in crafting a better environment.

Supporting the authors' own essays and projects are contributions from key innovators in contemporary architecture and urban design — Michael Batty, Andrew Hudson-Smith, Michael Weinstock, and Patrik Schumacher.