EVDA 621 INTRODUCTION TO DESIGN THEORIES CASE · PDF file01.11.2011 · EVDA 621 INTRODUCTION TO DESIGN THEORIES CASE STUDY: THE EMBRYOLOGICAL HOUSE, GREG LYNN PART-2: BODY

EVDA 621 INTRODUCTION TO DESIGN THEORIESCASE STUDY: THE EMBRYOLOGICAL HOUSE, GREG LYNNPART-2: BODY

Instructor: Graham Livesey, Vera Parlac, Joshua M. TaronLangjing XuNov. 01, 2011

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Greg Lynn's Embryological House which used bodily forms and human morphologies, as well as the allegorical genetic processes, is widely considered as a genetic architecture. The prototype of the embryological house is a topological symmetrical pure sphere, which is a curve duplicated 12 times. In the first few months studying the project, Lynn and his team was focus on the massing, on how the curve could best performed. They tried to automate the whole thing. Lynn first established the parameters for the Embryological House geometry (the primitive curves) using Microstation software. By experimenting with a series of twelve control points attached to this basic geometry he established prescribed limits, beyond which impractical designs would result. The Embryological House directly projects the body (embryo), which both stands for it and represents its ideal perfection. In Vitruvian and Renaissance theory, the building derives its authority, proportional and compositional, from the body; in a complementary way, the building acts to confirm and establish the body. Human

Building

BUILDING AS BODY

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The system is built up with a sphere and 6 targets. Then each of the targets is blend with the sphere. There are 6 variants if the whole morph equals . As long as any one of them changes, the result would change.

Recombinant architecture looks to the figure of the artificially designed body (genomically, surgically or otherwise realized) as a cyborgian measure of both structure and inhabitant, while genetic architecture infers or applies genetic grammars into the moment of creating formal architecture. The body is the first architecture: the habitat that precedes habitation. Architecture looks toward the body for its telos, its image of unified singularity, its continuous historicity.

“The condition of embodiment and its material poetics of scale, temperature, solidity and pliability, reproducibility and singularity have located the horizon of design from Vitrivius to Virilio.” (Benjamin Bratton)

sphere

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target 1

target 2target 3

target 4

target 5target 6

target 1

target 2target 3

target 4

target 5target 6

6 targets & 1 sphere

blending

+ = resulting geometry

CONSTITUTION

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VARIATION

target 1morph ratio

location (could go with time)

target 2 target 3 target 4 target 5 target 6

12 points on the basic geometry controls the curve. Each one of these 12 controls another 8 points. And each one of those 8 controls another 32. It is how it gets the variable curve.

Bodies could be considered as machines, and machines as bodies, therefore they can be used for new design practices and modifications. A spatial example could be the ear-mouse in 1995, which was then removed, without harming the mouse. Additionally, the extreme body modification and plastic surgeries could be considered as “a deliberate renovation of the first habitat (of the Self), and of the public production of performative space (of the singular Other)” (Benjamin Bratton). Although in the fields of primary mechanics the ultramodern Body is a highly recombinant form, the ultimate realization of genomic digital auto-fabrication, it is unlikely to happen for legal and ethical reasons. Bodies are now imaged as genomic territories, due to the fact that they are sliced into component subvariables and statistical predispositions. Bodies could be considered not only as the first architecture, but also as the first digital architecture. The bodily forms produced are themselves architectonic in the highest order. Like all the other naturally occurring architectures these genomic manifestations are incredibly perfect as they are and available modifications.

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REFERENCE

Reference: 1, Lynn, Greg. Animate Form. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.2, Lynn, Greg. “Greg Lynn: Embryological Houses,” AD "Contemporary Processes in Architecture" 70, 3, London: John Wiley & Son, 2000: 26-35.3, AD. “Deconstruction at the Tate Gallery.” AD “Deconstruction” (1988): 7.4, Karen Burns, Greg lynn's Embryological House Project: The "Technology" and Metaphors of Metorsm of Architecture5, The Premise of Recombinant Architecture, Benjamin H. Bratton, http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0304/msg00011.html6, www.glform.com7, Anthony Vilder, "The Building in Pain, The body and Architecture in Post-Modern Culture"