Applied Responsive Devices

A methodological proposal to enhance the interaction between analogical and digital approaches in architecture Caterina Tiazzoldi1

Abstract

"In a complex-structured city in which the interactions among parts intensify; in which the number of decision-makers and cultural scenarios overlap, interconnect and sometimes collide; in which the temporal dimensions of the citizens are dissimilar; in which local and global, physical and virtual dimensions co-exist, it is necessary to identify a set of design tools which could respond to design complexity. That is why in the last fifteen years architects have adopted advanced digital tools such as algorithms, dynamic relationships, parametric systems, mapping, morphogenesis, cellular automata and bifurcation with broken symmetry. In the first phase architects' interest focused on the direct transposition into the architecture of digital tools deriving from other scientific fields. The use of such tools led architects to discover forms that were inconceivable with traditional procedures. Nevertheless, in the mid-1990s the lack of control of tools that were not specific to architecture engendered a drastic reduction in the initial enthusiasm for such an approach”2. The research Applied Responsive Devices (ARD), developed by the Nonlinear Solutions Unit at Columbia University Architecture School, focuses not on the tools but on the methodologies developed in other scientific fields. ARD examines how it is possible to set up a model that operates a correct interaction between the analogical and digital environment. It analyses the possible applications of a model (to demonstrate, to analyse and to discover) and the properties that it should embed (resemblance, repeatability and robustness) to be efficient. The methods contained in this proposal investigate the existing relationships between the perception of a specific architectural condition and its translation into a set of elements that can be manipulated through computer models. It probes how a given problem can be translated into a codified symbolic language. In fact, some architectural problems can be managed with a code, consisting of a set of rules, each of which performs particular actions every time its conditions are satisfied by a specific informational attribute. ARD's interest is to embed sets of constraints within the modelling process that affect the decision-making of the designer. This project aims to develop an innovative tool that assists a decision-maker to take into account a number of different parameters. The goal is to enhance architecture's capacity to respond to specific environmental requirements with an adaptable physicality. From an epistemological perspective ARD's research operates as a heuristic device aiming to challenge the boundary existing between the Measurable and Nonmeasurable dimensions in architecture.