On Scale, Meta-Architecture and The Anthropic Principle

On Scale, Meta-Architecture and The Anthropic Principle

Michael Fowler

Institute for History and Theory of Design, University of the Arts, Fasanenstraße 1b, 10623 Berlin Germany

[email protected]

Michael Fowler works in the interstitial spaces between architecture, landscape architecture, electro-acoustic music and sound art. After studying music in Australia and the USA he completed postdoctoral research at the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory, RMIT University (Melbourne Australia) and at the Audio Communication Research Group at Technical University Berlin. He is also an alumnus of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung

research fellowship program.

On Scale, Meta-Architecture and The Anthropic Principle

This paper is an exploration of a number of key themes that have been pertinent in the history of architectural thought, particularly in the late 20th Century. By drawing on the discourses of Aldo van Eyck, Le Corbusier, the contemporary philosophers Brian Massumi, Paul Virilio, Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari as well as science-fiction writers Flann O’Brien and Stanislaw Lem, I examine the notion of architectural scale, the concept of the body and the meaning of space. This series of reflections is further opened through an introduction to the ideas of ‘the anthropic principle’ of cosmologist Brandon Carter and our relationship to the physical and dimensionless constants (c, Ω, h, l etc.) in our observeable universe. I concluded the paper with an examination of the design project Fine-tuned universe, a future post-human design scenario in which the notion of a parametrisation of the constants of the universe serves to produce a continual series of meta-architectures (other universes) that I argue automatically embody creative potentials.

Keywords: architecture theory; digital art; 3D modelling

Modulating the Modulor

When Dutch architect and theorist Aldo van Eyck, at the end of the 1950s declared that “whatever space

and time mean, place and occasion mean more,” (van Eyck 1968, p. 101) he was seeking to rupture what

Reinhold Martin argues as the still as yet unchallenged notion in contemporary architecture that space is a

plenum where “questions of form tend to quickly turn into questions of content.” (Martin 2008, p. 15) Van

Eyck’s endeavour was to purpose the spaces of architecture as inherently meaningful through presenting

a modus operandi in which “space in [our] image is place and time in our image is occasion.” (van Eyck

1968, p. 101) Built architecture has in many ways an immutable connection to the human body, its range of

motion, physiological characteristics and the ways in which we psychologically perceive and engage with a

spatial program. Indeed, it is these particular types of connections that would lead architect Bernard Tschumi

to later lay claim that in fact “there is no space without event, no architecture without program.” (Tschumi

1996, p. 139)

Though these modernist and post-modernist ideas in architecture have sought to place an emphasis

on the architectural program and designed space as a type of ‘place maker,’ as Georges Teyssot notes,

“since the Greek canon and Vitruvius, an intrinsic aspect of the Western tradition has been to embed

human proportions into a building.” (Teyssot 2008, p. 37) A strongly traced line can then be observed to

such precedents in Le Corbusier’s (2004) vision of the necessity of a proportional metrics in architecture,

as found in his Modulor 1 & 2 (1948/1955). Here, the architect’s system for aesthetic and practical

management of proportions regarding the design of built space uses two reference scales (a red and a

blue) that are derived from a ladder of golden means found in the Fibonacci series (Gans 2006). Following

on from past models such as those from Roman architect Vitruvius (Smith 2003), the Modulor greatly

emphasizes the human body as a utility for the extradition of scalar proportions that may be used to guide

architectural design. As Le Corbusier argued “the human being is at the same time the source and purpose

of architecture. Therefore, the human body with its proportions should be the centre of all order” (Kanach

2008, p. 12). But the Modulor was certainly also seen by Le Corbusier as a means in which to give what

Vitruvius named as the three requisite principles of architectural design—structural soundness, functionality

and beauty (Wotton 1624)—a fundamental and grounding metric.

But the relevance of the Modulor today, and into the near future, may find an increasing slippage

regarding its principles of the conceptualisation of the body, not least in the face of how Kuniichi Uno reads

architecture as proposed through the lens of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concept of the body without

organs: “what is at stake here is the idea of an invisible body of architecture and the invisible connections

between the two. Architecture may be part of a giant, open infinite body without organs.” (Uno 2001, p.

1019) Uno takes from playwright Antonin Artaud’s original concept that the body is but an assemblage in

which the organs represent not singularities themselves, but simply “functions, articulations, divisions and

determinations [that are] forced on the body” (Uno 2001, p. 1017). By stressing the nature of scale regarding

architecture and of the human body and its structural relations, Uno argues that architecture’s grounding in

the earth, its immobility and its inseparability from sedentary life marks a crisis for the conceptualisation

of its (professed) dynamics. A critique that Tschumi had also found fundamental to his call for the re-

structuring of architectural thought, especially in light of his reading of Paul Virilio:

The objective of our research was to challenge outright the anthropometric precepts in the classical era—the idea of the body as essentially a static entity with an essentially static proprioception—in order to bring the human habitat into a dynamic age of the body in movement. In our work, the traditional stability (habitable stasis) of both the rural horizontal order and the urban vertical order give way to the METASTABILITY (habitable circulation) of the human body in motion, in tune with the rhythms of life. The space of the body became MOBILE. The limbs of the individual became MOTIVE. And the inhabitant effectively became LOCOMOTIVE, propelled by the (relative) disequilibrium created by the gravity of planet earth, the habitat of our species. (Virilio et al. 1996, p. 13)

But the crisis that is evolving regarding the notion of the applicability of the Modulor is also finding

a platform in the rapid increase in technologies for building construction in the 21st century. With new

materials and technologies brisling in the shadow of the fallout from the idealistic notion of a post-60s

space exploration expansion (Benjamin 2003), a consistent challenging of the status quo in all areas of

design and production has become commonplace. Therefore, as we encounter a momentum towards the

design of ever-taller buildings (Al-Kodmany 2011), scale and the relationship between the human body

and the built environment becomes a question framed by the notion of the nonlinear rather than the linear.

Here, as Manuel Delanda (2012) observes, linear casual relations are based on assumptions derived from

uncompromising laws (that is, the presence of fixed resultants), while nonlinear patterns represent a variety

of possibilities “of which the linear case is but a limiting case” (Delanda 2011, p. 6). The concept of

emergence then regarding the notion of scale is pertinent here given that as the built environment begins

to grow (upwards and outwards), the relationship between humans and architecture becomes increasingly

intangible and detached. What then arises is a refocus that shifts us beyond Le Corbusier’s primacy placed

on the human body and human scale. We are instead rapidly approaching an outlook in pursuance of Uno’s

open infinite body, towards Virilio’s METASTABILITY—that is, a look beyond the distinctions between

rural and urban, vertical and horizontal, and instead out to the greater relational structures of the landmass of

the planet itself.

In fact as Delanda suggests, there are evident structures in natural phenomena too that produce

continual scalar iterations: “there is a recurrent part-to-whole relation, in which wholes at one scale become

parts at the next larger scale.” (Delanda 2011, p. 16) A situation masterfully exploited by filmmaker Charlie

Kaufman in Synecdoche New York (2008). Here, the main protagonist Caden spends the latter part of his

life writing and staging a theatre piece by constructing a 1:1 replica of New York City inside a warehouse.

But as the piece becomes more complex, and the demand for a greater realism emerges, Caden eventually

constructs a warehouse within that warehouse and so on through a continually unfolding scalar iteration. As

Richard Deming notes, the magnitude of Caden’s project pushes the viewer’s conception of time and space

into the nonlinear, into the indeterminate given that “the relative scales are constantly shifting.” (Dening

2011, p. 195) The film then is a particularly erudite examination of architectural tropes and those scalar

relationships born out of considering the interrelations between recursions of parts to a whole and a whole to

its parts.

Indeed for Ray Kurzweil (2006) there is an inevitability concerning the future perpetuation of

scalar recursion in the built environment. In Kurzweil’s projections for the 6th and final epoch of (human)

existence, technological infrastructures and the built environment become seamed into an indivisible

whole. Here, as “the universe wakes up” Kurzweil foresees that because of an imperious need for greater

evolutionary momentum, all technological infrastructures on the planet will be swiftly appropriated. The

transformation’s goal of absolute computational power will require an uptake of all organic substrate on

earth for the purposes of creating a planet-sized thinking machine that itself will eventually consume the

entire universe—a body without organs perhaps?

But relationships of scale, and in particular those mathematical spaces defined by the very large and the

very small, have also continued to present provocative challenges to modern science and mathematics

(Weinberg 2011). It appears to be a particularly human need then that the peculiarities of nonlinear equations

of quantum mechanics (the infinitesimally small) and the linear nature of gravity, stars and the workings

of galaxies (the infinitely large) need reconciling into a ‘theory of everything.’ This natural tension then

between understanding and engaging with (or within) the continuum of spatial proportions is not only a

challenge for modern science. Architect Andrea Mina used similar disruptions to question the meaning of

architectural scale and our reading of it. Mina’s intricate and highly detailed architectural models are made

from dust, scraps and found objects and are often no larger than what can be placed in the palm of a hand,

though labelling them as ‘scaled’ models is counter to his intentions:

‘Miniature’ is both a misleading and useful word to describe or attempt to contextualise these objects as the word offers an intriguing ambiguity in interpretation ranging from re-presentation on a small scale, with the implication that an ‘original’ exists prior to the production of a representation of ‘it’ to ‘the art of action, originally that of a medieval illuminator, of painting portraits on a small scale . . . The latter interpretation is the more useful application as the inference is that the ‘miniature’ is the original, it is neither a reproduction nor a stand-in for something else but it has a presence and integrity of its own. (Mina 2006, p. 159)

Architecture too it seems is seeking to reconcile and redefine notions about the connection between scale and

proportion to the human body given the new paradigms facing a post-modern world without Le Corbusier.

Mina’s models, conceived then as 1:1 complete structures sitting at the other end of the continuum from the

warehouses of Synecdoche New York, serve to highlight the complex nature of representation in architecture.

Mina offers up the experience of the architectural miniature as a potential to act out daydreams (like Gaston

Bachelard) that “as invitations to verticality, [create] pauses in the narrative during which the reader is

invited to dream.” (Bachelard 1969, p. 162)

Certainly the potential of dream states, of otherness, and of literary evocation is equally viewed by

architect Mark Burry as an opportunistic envelope in which to explore and challenge notions about time

and space. Burry’s fascination with the novel The Third Policeman (1940) by the Irish writer Flann O’Brien

occurs on a number of levels, not least the latent architectural fluidity of O’Brien’s expansion “of time

and space in ways that an animator can only dream of being able to do.” (Burry 2011, p. 134) It is perhaps

O’Brien’s ease for which van Eyck’s assertion that “space in our image is place” is so readily dismissed

in favour of creating a space without ground, without place, without predictability that has the greatest

implications for architecture.

In one of the most captivating passages of The Third Policeman we encounter the narrator, who

after finding himself in a seemingly altered world of unpredictabilities and other strangeness comes upon a

Police station, itself possibly existing in multiple dimensions given its apparent lack of discernible edges,

and a remarkably odd Policeman who has crafted a series of small chests over the course of his natural

life. The narrator gradually discovers that each chest has another inside and as each is exposed using ever-

smaller tools for the handling of the objects, the final chests are revealed to be unperceivable and indeed

have yet not been seen by anyone. Though these smaller chests are imperceptible to the eyes, the Policeman

uses invisible tools for their construction and handling. What follows for the narrator is perhaps the effect

of a metaphysical violence on the senses in which a sudden realisation, a satori by way of Suzuki (1974),

that space-time has gained some quality other than it should have, or some deeper terrifying truth has been

explicated:

At this point I became afraid. What he was doing was no longer wonderful but terrible. I shut my eyes and prayed that he would stop while doing things that were at least possible for a man to do. (O’Brien 1969, p. 64)

Here, the notion of scale and those relative proportions to the human body that has driven so much of the

underpinnings of modernist discourse in architecture is used by O’Brien as a means to push us beyond

thinking within the linear and towards the notion of the assemblage of Deleuze and Guattari (1987).

As a collection of “things” the assemblage brings together a large number of effects (aesthetic,

productive, destructive, machinic etc.) to bear within its body. It is not a formally organised entity but is able

to draw any number of “things” into its body as does The Third Policeman and the effects of its numerous

spatialities, of its protagonists, its reportedly non-Euclidean qualities and its scalar proportions. The function

of these spatialities of otherness are a reminder too of what Henri Lefebvre referred to as “the representation

of space,” one of his three definitions of space:

Representations of space have a substantial role and a specific influence in the production of space. Their intervention occurs by way of construction – in other words, by way of architecture, conceived of not as the building of a particular structure, palace or monument, but rather as a project embedded in a spatial context and a texture which call for ‘representations’ that will not vanish into symbolic or imaginary realms (Lefebvre 1991, p. 42)

The architectural qualities of O’Brien’s world are constructed cognitively; they are, in their encounters and

spatial potentials, “a conceptualised space,” a space that Lefebvre describes as frequented by “scientists,

planners, urbanists, technocratic subdividers and social engineers as [well as] a certain type of artist with a

scientific bent.” (Lefebvre 1991, p. 38) “Representations of space” then are constructed in the mind’s eye,

in which the relations between people and objects are predicated on a logic that will inevitably break them

apart because of a lack of consistency, of their idealism or their otherness, but nevertheless remain important

in society (and in architecture).

The notion then of the virtual arises and how architecture is to deal with conceptions of space

beyond the immediacy of the occular. Indeed for Brian Massumi there remains an inaccessibility of the

virtual to the senses beyond those fleeting appearances manifested in the multiplication (by way of images,

representation) of its effects. Nonetheless, his reading of architecture as a revealing of virtual qualities and of

the building as a “technology of movement—a technology of transposition—in direct membranic connection

with virtual event spaces” (Massumi 2002, p. 204) is particularly telling. For Massumi then, the virtual space

of the event is ultimately modulated by architecture, architecture acts as “an experiential supermodulator

device: a modulator of modulations.” (Massumi 2002, p. 204) His further argument that understanding the

virtual requires an adaptation of a topological approach (Massumi 2002, p. 134) openly emphasizes how

Le Corbusier’s Modulor is as much about its conformity, as it’s espousal of the predictability of Euclidean

space. In this sense, the Modulor acts as a reinforcer of the sedentary in architecture, as it is consistently

concerned with embracing the groundings and linearities of Euclidean thinking.

Strong vs. Weak

Indeed when Massumi speaks about the modulations occuring between virtual event spaces and architecture

and of the manner in which a building places “relation against relation, towards inflected variation,”

he is also arguing that Euclidean space is actually an imperfect metric for describing our universe. As

astrophysicst Jean-Pierre Luminet suggests, numerous aspects of the complexity of the universe we observe

(for example, black holes) cannot be described in Euclidean terms but rather in non-Euclidean hyperbolic

topologies. (Luminet 1999) That the universe then has these types of observable virtual properties lies at one

of the more absorbing questions regarding both notions of space-time and indeed the possibility of mapping

the architecture of the universe. These two closely related concepts are pivotal in understanding the two

original readings of the “anthropic principle”—which are framed by the single question of ‘why does the

universe appear to have the properties that it does.’ Aptly named WAP (weak anthropic principle) and SAP

(strong anthropic principle) they provide the seemingly tautological answer, ‘it is as it is because we are able

to observe it,’ or as in deference to Descartes (1637), cogito ergo mundus talis est. But such a simplification

skews those more complex and appealing implications that arise.

First established by cosmologist Brandon Carter in 1973, and as a response to the Copernican principle

(Danielson 2009) that states humans do not occupy a privileged position in the universe, Carter’s WAP

postulates that human observation of the universe is possible because the conditions to allow observation

are just right. Carter argues that in fact, counter to Copernicus, our existence is privileged and is indeed

compatible with our existence as observers. Mathematical physicist Roger Penrose remarks of Carter’s

premise that:

The argument can be used to explain why the conditions happen to be just right for the existence of (intelligent) life on the Earth at the present time. For if they were not just right, then we should not have found ourselves to be here now, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time . . . At any other epoch, so the argument ran, there would be no intelligent life around in order to measure the physical constants in question — so the coincidence had to hold, simply because there would be intelligent life around only at the particular time that the coincidence did hold! (Penrose 1989, p. 521)

Carter conceived in his WAP that within the universe we occupy, and in the particular pocket that exists at

this point in time and relative to our observational capabilities, life exists. This then implies that in other

parts and other times of the universe, conditions were not rife for the formation of the building blocks that

have allowed intelligent life forms to evolve and subsequently observe the universe. Here, Carter is specific

in his allowance for non-carbon-based forms of life as potential creative observers of the universe, unlike

John Barrow and Frank Tippler’s (1988) consequent re-definition of the WAP in which only carbon-based

forms of intelligent life are considered relevant. Indeed the nature of observation in science and the concept

of how other non-carbon-based life might even communicate with humans is a pertinent theme explored in

Stanislaw Lem’s gripping science-fiction novel Solaris (1961).

The living planet-entity of Solaris described by Lem appositely highlights those difficulties that

may arise in understanding the anthropocentric qualities of the ‘observer effect’ and its oft-paired relation

the Heinsenberg uncertainty principle (Masanao 2003). In Lem’s novel, scientist Kris Kelvin joins a space

station orbiting the planet for which a strange series of events unfolds including an apparent attempt of

the planet at communication through the reconstruction of deceased peoples previously known to the

crew members from their memories. But perhaps more relevant to Carter’s WAP and SAP, measurements

of Solaris (undertaken for the past hundred years) have eluded all but the most basic forms of scientific

evaluation and understanding to the point that the very question of the limits of knowledge have caused

confusion and frustration among those observing. This has subsequently challenged the very basis of their

unconditional trust in the adequacy and objectivity of science to reveal truths about the universe:

Some things have been determined with precision: the planet controls its orbital periodicity directly, and discrepancies of time-measurement are discovered even along the same meridian. But very little mathematical certainty is possible, since the planet often changes the measuring devices applied to it, and the human scientists no longer know what it was their readings were registering. Solaris acts as a macrocosmic uncertainty generator (Hayles 1991, p. 249)

What is really known then in our own observation of the universe, and finding ourselves attempting to

grasp the nature of the WAP is the question of what has actually remained unchanged, or that which Uno

nominated as the sedentary in architecture and indeed in the universe. Penrose positions the WAP as

contingent on the observation and knowledge of a number of unchanging constants in the cosmos (such as

the number of dimensions in space-time, speed of light, Planck constant etc.) which could only be observed

and indeed known in our present time, in our present situation. Through the context of these constants then is

how one can extrapolate further the differentiating factors between the WAP and the SAP.

In the WAP Carter proposes that the fact of our existence can help in asserting predictions about

the constants, whereas in the SAP the nature and values of the constants can be used as explanations for

other universes in which the constants differ. Carter originally used the term ‘ensemble’ universes, which

has today developed into (via String theory) the idea of the multiverse (Carr 2007). Here then, and for the

SAP, the question of exactly why the fundamental parameters of our universe exist in their current forms is

answered by the fact that there might be up to 10500 other universes in which the constants vary in myriad

ways (thus enabling or barring the possibilities for intelligent life to emerge). Through the SAP then is

Carter’s ultimate truth revealed, that evolved intelligence and indeed creativity is a product of a Fine-tuned

universe. But as Nick Bostrom observes, some writers have taken the SAP as a vehicle “to attempt to make a

case for some version of the design hypothesis,” (Bostrom 2002, p. 7) that is, a case for an intelligent design.

In Carter’s original notion of SAP though, the Fine-tuned universe is simply a statistical consequence of the

fact that there are a vast array of other universes in which similar or completely contrasting values of the

constants exist.

Meta-Architectures and Possible Worlds

What then might the qualities of an SAP mean for a theory of architecture, or the development of a meta-

architecture to describe the multiverse? To return to Le Corbusier, we are reminded that in the architect’s

mind, or perhaps within the “representation of space,” that the Modulor frames, was Le Corbusier’s certainty

that a definitive answer to the problem of proportion would always be relevant to the idea of architecture.

Yet after its initial explosion within the discourse and intense wider public interest in the work, it soon

became relegated to a dark corner of architectural history. Richard Padovan sees the gradual dismantling

of the concept of the Modulor as a function of it favouring its own arguments as well as its philosophical

unsteadiness in light of contemporary scientific advancements:

Nature writes Le Corbusier in The Modulor, is ruled by mathematics, and so too is art, which must conform to nature’s laws. But a few pages further on he describes mathematics itself as ‘the majestic structure conceived by man to grant him comprehension of the universe. Which is it to be? Is mathematics the law of nature, or an artificial framework constructed by man in order to make nature comprehensible? (Padovan p. 341)

Indeed, applied mathematics has become in the digital realm of the 21st century, and of contemporary

architecture, a particularly influential tool for re-shaping conceptions of the rigidity of the architectural plan.

The rise of the computer as a device to allow for time-ordered sequences of states via the representation

of a simulation (Parker 2009) has greatly impacted a number of fields such as climate science, biology

and economics for example. But as a paradigm for architecture its functionality lies in its ability to

generate viewing windows as statistical possibilities at any given point within the simulation or the design

process. The consequences for architecture have in fact led Patrik Schumacher to argue that a new style of

architecture has emerged from the ashes of the modernist, post-modernist and deconstructivist trilogy of

form fixation: parametricism.

The use of parametric principles in architectural modelling and design has been widespread now

for at least 10 years, though as Schumacher observes, it is in the manner of the making and producing of a

design that radically changes the concept of how architecture is conceived:

Modernism was founded on the concept of space. Parametricism differentiates fields. Fields are full as if filled with a fluid medium. Instead of the classical and Modern understanding of design as the composition of a handful of parts, according to Parametericism, design involves the scripting of dynamic fields that encompass myriads of malleable components organised into differentiated and mutually correlated subsystems. (Schumacher 2012, p. 19)

What is perhaps so radical about parametrics in architecture is that it represents a way of designing that

works only with relationships between constituents (that is geometric primitives such as surfaces, points,

planes, lines etc.) that are re-definable and thus completely fluid in what they might output. Moving a point

along the z-axis might not only affect the shape of a surface under its influence, but equally for instance, the

x, y values of neighbouring points in a completely nonlinear fashion. Thus if Artaud’s original conception

of the body (without organs) is framed in parametric terms as an assemblage where organs are regarded

as functions, articulations, divisions and determinations, then Schumacher’s allusions to field conditions

in parametricism appear strikingly similar. If architecture is a body, then a house contains no rooms, nor

internal structures of articulation, it is simply a space whose internal configurations are a function of the

discrete relationship, the parametrisation between its program, the membrane that separates it from the

exterior conditions and its materiality. The parametric architectural model then is a potential in the sense

that a design might only be a statistical representation of the field from which it is born. A single parametric

model might produce numerous individuated objects in much the same manner in which Greg Lynn sought

in his Embryological House to “refuse the transcendence of static form [by beginning] . . . to describe

the particular characteristics of incompletion rejected by the exactitude of geometry and the symmetry of

proportion.” (Lynn 1992, p. 37)

The implications then of incompleteness, as Mark Woodford and Andrew Burrow (2001) have argued, give a

new sense and meaning for conceiving the space of designing, of Lefebvre’s “representation of space.” The

parametric paradigm is thus best framed as indicative of a discrete subset of the larger and vaster “design

space.” Here, the creation of a design is essentially the exploration (often assisted via computation) of the

design space for the purposes of generating a suitable object which itself will be imbued with expressiveness.

Based on the arguments of D. C Dennet (1995), Woodword and Burrow assert that though

Figure 1. Fine-tuned universe-collage00. Diagram of ∃x[SIE(x)∧Made(x, mankind)]⇔ (∃x [SIE(x)∧ Made(mankind, x)]∧∃x [Universe(x)∧ Made(SIE, x)]).

N = 10 36

" = 0.007

Ê = 1

Õ = 10 -122

Q = 10 -5

D = 3

•••

•

•

•

e

N = ratio of strength of gravity to electromagnetism" = strength of force that binds nucleiÊ = density parameterÕ = cosmological constantQ = gravitational energy required to pull large galaxies apartD = dimensions in spacetime

f (Õ ) = e n

f (Ê, " ) = e n

Figure 2. Fine-tuned universe-collage01. Projection Graph e, of the six dimensionlessconstants and example shape transformation matrix.

expressiveness cannot account for all possibilities it is perhaps “not whether a suitable artefact is expressible

as a design, but whether a suitable design is accessible to an explorer positioned somewhere in the design

space.” (Woodburry & Burrow 1995, p. 57)

Fine-tuned Universe: beyond architecture

Such accessibilities to a design space, or what Herbert A. Simon (1959) called satisficing, that is, the

extended search of all available alternatives in order to fulfil an acceptability threshold, is influential in the

project Fine-tuned universe, of which I will outline here. Initially conceived as a premise for developing

a framework around an imaginable future use-case scenario, Fine-tuned universe is an attempt to produce

an assemblage of ideas and of artistic works that emerge from those notions I have already discussed here

previously within architectural theory concerning scale, the body, notions of space, space-time and the

philosophical consequences of the SAP (Figure 1).

Imagine then a distant future, a post-human future, or at least what Kevin Warwick expects as the

unavoidable AI/Human transitory phase (Warwick 2004) where Kurzweil’s (2006) prediction of planet-

sized computers means that super-intelligent entities (SIEs) have complete control over all matter. In this

scenario then, the physics and mathematics of linear and predictable qualities of Euclidean geometry that so

discretely defined the Modulor as well as van Eyck’s rationalism can be bypassed, changed and manipulated

at (collective) will. At the (virtual) hands and minds of an SIE, the physical constraints of space-time we

currently experience are simply adjustable parameters, or more succinctly, the universe itself is a giant

parametric model to be manipulated. The more far-reaching consequence then is that the parametric model

itself represents a meta-architecture for the generation of myriad other universes, each complete and

individuating in their spatial characteristics.

The qualities of a universe described by Fine-tuned universe, one that is accountable to, or derived

from the parametric paradigm, is a function then of the nomination of 6 dimensionless constants—after

Martin Rees (1999)—and 4 physical constants. These 10 constants are provided as the basic parameters for

numerous malleable linear or nonlinear relationships to emerge (Figure 2 & 3). The constants observable in

our own universe are numerous and varied (but finite), with those considered most fundamental represented

here. Graphed through multiple axes, the morphology of the current shapes outlined by the values is the

point for an SIE’s intervention. Here, thinking through various transformations and other manipulations

gives agency to one of an infinite number of matrix possibilities that simultaneously pay homage to Burry’s

(2011) notion of form finding through computational routines and Lynn’s call for a movement away from

conceiving design in terms of blocks and volumes and instead towards that of surfaces and continuities

(Lynn 2000). But rather than presenting these diagrams as actuals, of precision and of determinability, they

f (h, ħ ) = e n

f (G ) = e n

c = speed of light in vacuumħ = reduced Planck constantG = Newtonian gravitational constanth = Planck constant

c = 299 792 4580 m·s-1

•

•

•

•

G = 6.67384(80)×10 m · kg · s -2-1-3-11

h = 6.626 069 57(29) ×10 J·s -34

ħ = h / (2/π) = 1.054 571 726(47) ×10 J·s -34

Figure 3. Fine-tuned universe-collage02. Projection Graph e, of four physical constants and example shape transformation matrix.

ha, x j a = x = (ax) = 1 i . 4 2 2 Dih4 =

a2a

b

ba a2b

a3b

e a3

Subgroups:Z8: {e, a, a2, a3, b, ab, a2b, a3b}Z4: {e, a, a2, a3}, {e, ab, a2, a3b}, {e, a2, b, a2b}Z2: {e, a2}, {e, b}, {e, a2b}Z1: {e,}

Elements:order 4: a, a3, ab, a3border 2: a2, b, a2border 1: e

c

ħ G

h

b˚ e a a2 a3 ab a2b a3be e a a2 a3 b ab a2b a3ba a3ba2

a2 a3

a3

e

baba2b

ab

a3b

a2b baa2 a3 e a a2b a3b b aba3 e a a2 a3b b ab a2bb ab a2b a3b e a a2 a3

ab a2b a3b b a a2 a3 ea2b a3b b ab a2 a3 e aa3b b ab a2b a3 e a a2

Figure 4. Fine-tuned universe-collage03. Cayley Graph of e (as Dih4) of four physical constants including Cayley Table and subgroups.

ha, x j a = x = (ax) = 1 i . 6 2 2 Dih = 6

a2

a

b

ba

a2b

a3b

a4b

a5b

e

a3

a4

a5

N

"

Ê

Õ

Q

D

a˚ e a a2 a3 4 a5 b ab a2b a3b a4b a5be e a a2 a3 a4 a5 b ab a2b a3b a4b a5ba a a2 a3 a4 a5 e ab a2b a3b a4b a5b ba2 a2 a3 a4 a5 e a a2b a3b a4b a5b b aba3 a3 a4 a5 e a a2 a3b a4b a5b b ab a2ba4 a4 a5 e a a2 a3 a4b a5b b ab a2b a3ba5 a5 e a a2 a3 a4 a5b b ab a2b a3b a4bb b a5b a4b a3b a2b ab e a5 a4 a3 a2 aab ab b a5b a4b a3b a2b a e a5 a4 a3 a2

a2b a2b ab b a5b a4b a3b a2 a e a5 a4 a3

a3b a3b a2b ab b a5b a4b a3 a2 a e a5 a4

a4b a4b a3b a2b ab b a5b a4 a3 a2 a e a5

a5b a5b a4b a3b a2b ab b a5 a4 a3 a2 a e

Subgroups:Z12: {e, a, a2, a3, a4, a5, b ab, a2b, a3b, a4b, a5b}Z6: {e, a, a2, a3, a4, a5}, {e, a2, a4, b, a2b, a4b}, {e, a2, a4, ab, a3b, a5b}Z4: {e, a3, b, a3b}, {e, a3, ab, a4b}, {e, a3, a2b, a5b}, {e, a3, a2b, a5b} Z3: {a, a2, a4} Z2: {e, a3}, {e, b}, {e, ab}, {e, a2b}, {e, a3b}, {e, a4b}, {e, a5b}Z1: {e,}

Normal Subgroups:Z12: {e, a, a2, a3, a4, a5, b ab, a2b, a3b, a4b, a5b}Z6: {e, a, a2, a3, a4, a5}, {e, a2, a4, b, a2b, a4b}, {e, a2, a4, ab, a3b, a5b}Z3: {a, a2, a4} Z2: {e, a3}Z1: {e,}

Figure 5. Fine-tuned universe-collage04. Cayley Graph of e (as Dih6) of six dimensionless constants including Cayley Table and subgroups.

are rather to be viewed as potentials within the larger “representation of space” that Fine-tuned universe

affords. The possibilities in such an assemblage for morphological manipulation of the shapes described by

the constants as parameters is seemingly endless, though the most simplistic resource of a Cayley diagram

(Figure 4 & 5) provides a first insight for forward momentum. That each initial shape, e, may be rotated

sequentially (a, a1, . . . an) and at least located through an inversion, b, means that the task of swapping axes

and therefore values can be enacted simply. The Cayley multiplication tables essentially describe all possible

combinations and equivalents of rotation and mirroring (through self-multiplication of the elements to

produce en in E) when one considers the physical constants (which contain 4 axes, Figure 3) as derived from

the cyclic group Dih4 (or dihedral group order 8) and the dimensionless constants (which contain 6 axes,

Figure 4) from the cyclic group Dih6 (or dihedral group order 12).

But the parameter shapes of en, will also allow an SIE the possibility to grasp (physically or

conceptually) a resultant series of manifolds (Figure 6), which though nominally sit outside of space-time,

are tools for the generation of new space-times, potentially new forms of life and certainly new spatialities

of being. The extruded manifolds are then both virtual representations (potentialities) and creative structural

entities or singularities. As virtual figures they are approached as Massumi suggests, through topological

deformation (Massumi 2002, p. 134) such that each manipulation is enacted on the same figure, yet the

multiplication of these actions produces a multitude of effects. They are perhaps creative in themselves

while also enabling forms of creativity to emerge in those new universes that they produce. Following this

logic then, matter, things, nonhuman organisms, technologies, tools and machines are to be considered as

creative entities. As products of an SAP multiverse, the entire content of each new universe becomes a direct

artefact of the parametric nature of Fine-tuned universe. M. D. Mumford’s (2003) definition of creativity as

an involvement of novel and useful products then underscores the function of Fine-tuned universe in which

SIEs have developed a tool in order to perpetuate, morph and reproduce new forms of creativity and thus

new products of creativity.

If as a tool, Fine-tuned universe is an enabling device for space-time or other multidimensional

manipulations by an SIE, then it can also be conceived as offering a bridge between worlds (Figure 7). By

lofting a surface that connects iterations of e together (Figure 8), a bridging device is created that connects

parameters that have defined child universes. But as a bridge between this and other possibilities it is

also, by its very nature, a device that folds time into an ever-repeating cycle, an embodiment of samsāra

(Takakusu 1947) as it were. As Massumi explains, “the outer edge of the universe might not be an edge at

all, but a recursion where the limits of space loop back to the irruption of time, from which space unfolded

in the first place.” (Massumi 2002, p. 202) Fine-tuned universe then can be seen as a type of architectural

Figure 6. Fine-tuned universe-collage04. Extruded manifolds of en

Figure 7 & 8. Fine-tuned universe-collage05/06 Lofted surface connecting en... en+1

representation of this fold, this twist, in which the form of the manifold enables the establishment of a

bridge—not a bridge to nowhere, but a bridge to before. This must be the case when one considers that the

production of an identical universe to our own, though potentially existing in what Michio Kaku (1994)

describes as ‘hyperspace,’ is nonetheless inevitably both the origin (the question) and the arrival point

(answer) to understanding the perspective of the observer within Carter’s SAP and WAP. The grand cycle

of samsāra, of life, death, rebirth and its continuity for infinity becomes the meta-architecture of Fine-tuned

universe. Perhaps as Kitarō Nishida eloquently explains, the notion of time is but the spatialisation of things:

the dialectic of life means that in the present the past and the future exist contemporaneously. The present, while being uniquely determined, possesses spatially infinite possibilities. The present is the place of act-intuition. Therein we have our bodies. Since the past and the future are contemporaneous with the present, the world has a circumference. The world is through and through expressive. Expression is nothing but the spatialization of temporal things. (Nishida 1937, p. 151)

The future is the past and the past is the future. When we ask how did this particular universe that we

observe come into being, we can perhaps answer it through saying that an SIE manipulated the parametric

model of Fine-tuned universe and produced an output. But at the same time, the SIE is understood to be

within our own Euclidean space, within our own ‘time line,’ within our own (future) predicted experience.

The logical consequence that arises then is that we end up living in a universe created by ourselves, indeed

as Gautama Buddha said, “with our thoughts, we make the world” (Byron 1976, p. 3):

€

∃x SIE (x) ∧ Made (x, mankind )[ ] ⇔

∃x SIE (x) ∧ Made (mankind , x)[ ] ∧ ∃x Universe (x) ∧ Made (SIE , x)[ ]( )

Here, translated into first order logic, the statement that an SIE creates mankind is true if and only if the

SIE is created by mankind and also duplicates the universe (See also Figure 1). Accordingly then, all matter

within our universe warrants the status of being a creative entity, a creative product in which parts of a whole

are embodied within a grand scalar recursion. Whether or not such a scenario is an actuality, is grounded in

the here and now, is inconsequential given that time, even in our own observable universe is not universally

synchronized, not metricised. As Nishida acknowledged, there is past, present and future simultaneously. To

return once more to our first encounter with van Eyck’s notion that “whatever space and time mean, place

and occasion mean more,” one might cadence the argument by remarking that though space and place may

be but one indivisible entity, it is time that decouples to produce occasion.

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