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1 Mathe+
3 4

architectural design
July/August 2011
Profile No 212
matics
of
Guest-edited by George L Legendre 7 8

9 10
Space
11 12

13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20
 2 Architectural Design
Forthcoming 2 Titles

September/October 2011 – Profile No 213

Radical Post-Modernism
Guest-edited by Charles Jencks and FAT

Radical Post-Modernism (RPM) marks the resurgence of a critical architecture that

engages in a far-reaching way with issues of taste, space, character and ornament. Bridging
high and low cultures, it immerses itself in the age of information, embracing meaning
and communication, embroiling itself in the dirty politics of taste by drawing ideas from
beyond the narrow confines of architecture. It is a multi-dimensional, amorphous category,
which is heavily influenced by contemporary art, cultural theory, modern literature and
everyday life. This title of 2 demonstrates how, in the age of late capitalism, Radical
Post-Modernism can provide an architecture of resistance and contemporary relevance,
forming a much needed antidote to the prevailing cult of anodyne Modernism and the
vacuous spatial gymnastics of the so-called digital ‘avant-garde’.
• Contributions from: Sean Griffiths, Charles Holland, Sam Jacob, Charles Jencks
and Kester Rattenbury.
• Featured architects: ARM, Atelier Bow Wow, Crimson, CUP, FAT, FOA, Édouard
François, Terunobu Fujimori, Hild und K, Rem Koolhaas, John Körmeling,
muf, Valerio Olgiati.

Volume 81 No 5
isbn 978 0470 669884

November/December 2011 — Profile No 214

Experimental Green Strategies: Redefining Ecological Design Research
Guest-edited by Terri Peters

Sustainable design and ecological building are the most significant global challenges for the design profession.
For architects to maintain a competitive edge in a global market, innovation is key; the design of new
processes, technologies and materials that combat carbon emissions and improve the sustainable performance
of buildings are paramount. Many contemporary practices have responded by setting up multidisciplinary
internal research and development teams and collaborative research groups. This title offers insights into how
a wide range of established and emerging practices are rising to these challenges. In pursuit of integrated
sustainability and low-energy building, material and formal innovation and new tools and technologies, it will
illustrate that the future of architecture is evolving in an exchange of ideas across disciplines. Incorporating
the creation of new knowledge about ecological building within the profession, it also identifies the
emergence of a collective will to seek out new routes that build in harmony with the environment.
• Contributors include: Robert Aish, Peter Busby, Mary Ann Lazarus, Andrew Marsh, Hugh Whitehead
and Simos Yannas.
• Features: the GXN research group at 3XN; Advanced Modelling Group at Aedas; Foster + Partners’
Specialist Modelling Group; the Adaptive Building Initiative, Hoberman Associates and Buro Happold;
Biomimicry Guild Alliance, HOK and the Biomimicry Guild; and the Nikken Sekkei Research Institute.

Volume 81 No 6 • Projects by: 10 Design, 2012 Architecten, Berkebile Nelson Immenschuh McDowell Architects (BNIM),
isbn 978 0470 689790
HOK and RAU.

January/February 2012 — profile no 215

London (Re)generation
Guest-edited by David Littlefield

Plans to regenerate East London and transform the capital are integral to the vision of the London
2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. This title brings into focus notions of regeneration within
the specific context of London: what does the term actually mean, how has it been applied and is
it being applied? Historical overviews of large-scale interventions from the past are combined with
case studies of new and planned schemes, and explorations of how change and rejuvenation can
retain or enhance the city’s unique sense of place and identity. Looking beyond the Games, the
title will look at the direction in which regeneration is going in a post-recession economy. How
can a long-established, highly protected and even cherished city, like London, continue to renew
and expand? Unlike Chinese or Middle Eastern cities, London is constrained by a wide range of
factors from heritage protection and geography to finance and democratic accountability; yet the
city continues to grow, change and develop, either incrementally or through big, dramatic leaps,
like the Olympic Park and King’s Cross. In this way, London provides a fascinating case study of
how a developed, Western city can negotiate and greet the pressures for change.
• Contributors: Michael Batty, Peter Bishop, Matthew Carmona, Murray Fraser, Matthew
Gandy, Robert Harbison, Peter Murray Austin Williams
• Architects: Sir Terry Farrell, Richard McCormac,
Volume 82 No 1
isbn 978 1119 993780
• Projects: King’s Cross, the London 2012 Games and the Shard.
 1
Architectural Design

Mathematics
Guest-edited by
George L Legendre

of Space
04|2011

Architectural Design
Vol 81, No 4
July/August 2011
ISSN 0003-8504

Profile No 212
ISBN 978-0470-689806
in this issue
1
ArchitecturAl Design

MatheMatics
Guest-edited by
GeorGe L LeGendre

of space
 eDitoriAl
Helen Castle
36
 ABout the guest-eDitor
George L Legendre

 introDuction
The Mathematics of Sensible Things
George L Legendre

1 Mathematics and the Sensible

World: Representing,
Constructing, Simulating
Amy Dahan-Dalmedico

2 Architecture and
eDitoriAl BoArD
Will Alsop
Mathematics: Between
Denise Bratton
Paul Brislin
Hubris and Restraint
Mark Burry Antoine Picon
André Chaszar
Nigel Coates
Peter Cook Architecture’s and mathematics’
Teddy Cruz enduring relationship is one of
Max Fordham
Massimiliano Fuksas
vicissitudes – embrace and estrangement
Edwin Heathcote – as charted by Antoine Picon.
Michael Hensel
Anthony Hunt  Continuity and Rupture
Charles Jencks Dennis R Shelden and Andrew J Witt
Bob Maxwell
Jayne Merkel
Peter Murray
Mark Robbins
Deborah Saunt
Leon van Schaik
Patrik Schumacher
Neil Spiller
Michael Weinstock
Ken Yeang
Alejandro Zaera-Polo

2
 44 IJP Explained: Parametric
Mathematics in Practice
70
George L Legendre

4 A Sense of Purpose:
Mathematics and Performance
in Environmental Design
Martha Tsigkari, Adam Davis and
Francis Aish, Specialist Modelling
Group, Foster + Partners

 Long Form and Algorithm 100 Pasta by Design

Daniel Bosia George L Legendre

 Intuitive Material Distributions 102 The Metabolism of the City:

Panagiotis Michalatos and The Mathematics of Networks
Sawako Kaijima, Adams Kara and Urban Surfaces
Taylor (AKT) Michael Weinstock

10 Rising Masses, Singapore

Max Kahlen
66 112 The Hinging Tower
Ana María Flor Ortiz and
Rodia Valladares Sánchez,
Rising Masses Studio, Harvard
Graduate School of Design

11 Implicit Fields – MOCAPE

Shenzhen PRC
George L Legendre and Max
Kahlen

122 Sense and Sensibilia

Philippe Morel

10 counterPoint
0 Lost in Parameter Space? Less Answers More Questions
Fabian Scheurer and Will McLean
Hanno Stehling

0 Geometry Working Beyond Effect

Mark Burry

Is descriptive geometry on the wane?

Or as suggested by Mark Burry, does
it enable us to make some significant
distinctions between disciplines?

0 Desargues and Leibniz:

In the Black Box –
A Mathematical Model of
the Leibnizian Monad
Bernard Cache

3
 Architectural Design
1 July/August 2011
PROFILE NO 212

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Front cover: IJP, Punctual Klein Bottle, 2003.

© George L Legendre
Inside front cover: Concept CHK Design

04|2011

4
 Editorial
Helen Castle

Many of us glaze over at the very mention of the word ‘mathematics’. It brings
to mind too many years of forced learning in stuffy classrooms. Moreover as
‘creatives’, many designers feel themselves to be entitled to be free from the
strictures of such a highly demanding and logical discipline. In his introduction
(see pp 8–17), guest-editor George L Legendre compares mathematics to
‘plumbing’ – the essential but unappealing system underlying architectural
thought. Certainly, it is the more humdrum application of mathematics in
operational processes that architects have had an ongoing problem with,
even today when algorithms enable scripting and the design agility that it
brings. When acknowledging this deep ambivalence to the discipline, it is also
necessary to recognise the enduring romance that architecture has had with one
particular branch of mathematics – geometry. This is a wholly natural affinity,
as geometry is the most visual manifestation of mathematics. It is a liaison that
has held sway across continents and time, most apparent in ancient temples,
Renaissance churches, Islamic structures and contemporary digital surfaces;
it reached perhaps its point of greatest infatuation with ‘sacred geometry’ in
15th-century Italy, when certain numbers and patterns were attributed as having
symbolic divine qualities.
So why this sudden interest in ‘plumbing’ in 2? There has been what
Antoine Picon so aptly phrases an ‘estrangement’ between architecture and
mathematics for several centuries (see pp 28–35). The onset of computation
has, however, offered us the chance not only to reconnect architecture with
geometry and pursue the possibilities of non-Euclidean geometries, but also to
realise the opportunities that other branches of mathematics, such as calculus
and algorithms, afford. This places an important emphasis on looking beneath
the surface, providing architects with a fuller understanding of the processes
and software that they use and solving problems from the baseline. George L
Legendre exemplifies this approach, not only disseminating an understanding
of the discipline through his teaching at Harvard Graduate School of Design,
but also rigorously working with parametric analytic equations across the design
process in his London-based practice IJP Corporation (see pp 44–53). This
requires an aptitude and stringency that is not possible for most practices to
embrace, but it also recognises a real need to question the given and problem
solve at a higher level. 1
Text © 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Image © Steve Gorton

5
 IJP with John Pickering, F01(b), 2009 IJP with RSP Architects Planners IJP with RSP Architects Planners
top: Projective sculpture (detail). F01(b) and Engineers, Henderson Waves, and Engineers, Henderson Waves,
features two overlapping cylinders inversed Singapore, 2008 Singapore, 2008
relative to the same centre. The resulting above: Study model of structure. opposite: The tallest pedestrian bridge in
figure is encased in a translucent box Southeast Asia is located in the Southern
which crops the infinite surfaces produced Ridges area of Singapore. The 304.8-metre
by a transformation known as inversion. (1,000-foot) long footbridge was designed
with a single periodic equation. The doubly
curved parts of the deck form a tapestry
of 5,000 modular boards, each varying by
a single degree every few metres and all
tapered to measure.

6
 About the Guest-Editor
George L Legendre

George L Legendre’s fusion of design, mathematics and computation took off

in print starting with IJP: The Book of Surfaces (AA Publications, 2003). Part
publisher’s spread and part mathematical surface, this playful manifesto was closely
followed by the Henderson Waves project (2004–8), in which his newly minted,
eponymous office IJP deployed similar principles to design and tender the tallest
pedestrian bridge in Southeast Asia. The contractor borrowed the book’s original
notation to identify the project’s parts – bridging the gap between theory and
practice. Since graduating from Harvard, Legendre’s work has been defined by the
full-time decade he spent in academia. An Assistant Professor of Architecture at
the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) from his mid-20s, he has been a
visiting professor at ETH Zurich and Princeton University, and master of Diploma
Unit 5 at the London-based Architectural Association School of Architecture,
where he undertook for eight years (alongside Lluís Viu Rebès) the intense
educational experiments for which the place was famed. He returned to Harvard in
2008 as a visiting design critic before being appointed Adjunct Associate Professor.
Freely inspired by analytic mathematics, computer programming, the literary
pranks of Oulipo and other less highbrow forms of automatic writing, the work
of IJP is closely identified with the emergent computational avant-garde. While
cherishing this brotherly affiliation, IJP’s attachment to traditional values of
instrumentation and artistic probity has been equally important. To date the
office has won a competition to cover a central London street with glass (with
Adams Kara Taylor), and completed Henderson Waves (with RSP) in Singapore.
In 2011, the practice was a finalist of the MoMA-PS1 design competition. The
influential weekly Building Design recently elected the firm as one of the top five
practices in the UK led by principals under the age of 40. The work of the firm has
been featured on the cover of AA Files, the RIBA Journal, Mondo Arc Perspective +
and Icon Magazine among others. A regularly published lecturer and essayist, in
addition to IJP: The Book of Surfaces, Legendre is also the author of Bodyline: the
End of our Meta-Mechanical Body (AA Publications, 2006) and a critical essay, ‘JP’s
Way’, in Mohsen Mostafavi’s Mathematical Form: John Pickering and the Architecture
of the Inversion Principle (AA Publications, 2006). His next research piece, Pasta
by Design (see pp 100–1 of this issue) will be published by Thames & Hudson in
September 2011. 1
Text © 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 6(t) © IJP and John Pickering; pp 6(b), 7 © IJP

7
 Figure 1. Fdecomite, Laughing Cow Inverted
Humorous deployment of projective
geometry in the graphic space of a
famous food brand, instantly recognisable
among French schoolchildren past
or present. This piece is based on a
projective transformation known as
inversion (developed in the 1820s); that
is, scaling relative to a fixed point, but
with a variable coefficient.

8
 Introduction
George L Legendre

The Mathematics of
Sensible Things

Architecture and Mathematics have constantly

balanced between two extremes: an experiential
dimension often imbued with contemplative
connotations, and the quest for operative
techniques that do not necessarily present a spatial
meaning. Hence the ambiguity we find ourselves
in today, faced simultaneously with architecture’s
estrangement from mathematics and the spectacular
diffusion of computational tools.
— Antoine Picon, ‘Between Intuition and the Quest for
Operative Techniques’, public lecture, Symposium on
‘Mathematics in Space’, Harvard Graduate School of
Design, 5 March 2010

Over the past 15 years, architecture has been profoundly

altered by the advent of computation and information
technology. Design software and numerical fabrication
machinery have recast the traditional role of geometry in
architecture and opened it up to the wondrous possibilities
afforded by topology, parametric surface design and other
areas of mathematics. From the technical aspects of scripting
code to biomorphic paradigms of form and its association
with genetics, biology, phylogeny and other branches of
natural science, the impact of computation on the discipline
has been widely documented.1 What is less clear, and has
largely escaped scrutiny so far, is the role mathematics itself
has played in this revolution.
While our design culture has firmly embraced the
innovations of computing, it has decidedly less time for the
formulated thought lying at the very root of the breakthrough.
There are several reasons behind this paradox. Mathematics
is a deeply abstract discipline, and as such it is easily
misunderstood. On a personal level, mathematics is likely
to summon memories of hard graft, frustration and perhaps
even of failure. Critically for designers (at first glance at
least), the instrumentality of computation seems easier to
grasp than that of mathematics, which good design software
will render ‘transparent’ anyway. This transparency comes
at a price. The underlying essence of formulated thought
is often wrongly perceived to be no better than plumbing,
and as such unworthy of being separated from the higher-
9
 Figure 2. Fdecomite, Third
Stellation of Cuboctahedron
A cuboctahedron, also
known as a dymaxion
according to Buckminster
Fuller, is a uniform
polyhedron with a specific
number of faces.

Figure 3. George L Legendre, Self Portrait As Photoshop Filter, 2006

The mapping rotates the complex coordinates of a pixel by an amount proportional to
the square of its distance from the origin to produce a swirl. Mathematics is typically
pervasive under the software hood – in this case, matrix algebra applied to a pixel grid.

10
 Far from being a bonus or a side-effect,
architectural geometry is a discipline in its own
right, forming a long and complex continuum
subdivided into distinct historical segments
with vastly different instrumental priorities.

level functionality of design computing that has ultimately itself abolished (see pp 36–43). In Bernard Cache’s account
smothered it. As a result, in our software-saturated design of the work of French mathematician Girard Desargues (pp
environments the formulated syntax of mathematics is all too 90–9), projective geometry represents a practical expedient
easily amalgamated with the functionality of digital tools, which to determine metric relationships, as well as an embodiment
mathematics enable – but also predate by thousands of years. of Gottfried Leibniz’s mystical monad. And so on. Throughout
At this critical juncture in time, it is therefore important for the 16 essays and projects collected here, we are presented
us architects, designers, computational designers, historians with a productive tension between mathematics understood
and engineers to tease the mathematics out of our respective as an autonomous set of questions and speculations (a ‘well-
disciplines, not to show how it is done – a hard and futile ordered ceremonial’), and mathematics as an open, problem-
challenge for the reader – but to reflect on the shared roots solving-oriented force of creation and praxis.
of our process, and the multiple ways these roots shape our
practices and intellectual agendas while helping us define new Which Mathematics?
directions. Strangely neglected since the onset of the digital Mathematics is a broad topic that we must necessarily
design era, the impact of mathematics on contemporary restrict, for the purpose of brevity and coherence, to the
creativity may now be explored in its own terms. subject of geometry. As Martha Tsigkari, Adam Davis, and
Francis Aish of Foster + Partners’ Specialist Modelling
Dualities Group demonstrate in their thoughtful essay on the ‘invisible’
Mathematics, as Amy Dahan-Dalmedico reminds us in the mathematics of environmental performance (pp 54–7), the
historical account that opens this issue (see pp 18–27), formal and perceptual aspects of architecture best abetted
is hardly a ‘stable and well-defined’ object. In effect, the by geometry are not the only game in town; but they are
term applies to a greatly diverse collection of practices and the primary one. Compare, for the sake of argument, two
‘cognitive constructions’ spanning various practical, historical structures as far apart in scope and scale as Foster +
and philosophical contexts. Wading through this collection Partners’ Swiss Re Building (the Gherkin) and Philippe
of theoretical and applied reflections on mathematics Morel’s Universal House (see p 122). Regardless of emphasis
in space, we are indeed struck by the many themes our (algorithmic or otherwise) and despite the occasional claims
subject can simultaneously embody, by the many dualities to the contrary, the overwhelming geometric implications of
it is apt to represent. Duality is a ‘native’ concept in its own any structured design process will not go away – so we may
right, designating a state of equivalence between objects as well discuss them seriously.
in projective geometry, such that a given transformation Far from being a bonus or a side-effect, architectural
involving two terms will remain valid if we swap them around geometry is a discipline in its own right, forming a long and
(replacing a point with a line and a line with a point in the complex continuum subdivided into distinct historical
plane, for instance, as established by Jean-Victor Poncelet’s segments with vastly different instrumental priorities. What
1822 Principle of Duality).2 distinguishes these segments, qualitatively speaking, is less
Hence, for the historian Antoine Picon (see pp 28–35), what they do, than how they do it; and in this sense, the key
the relationship of architecture to geometry since the 18th difference between contemporary architectural geometry and,
century reflects alternate polarities of ‘hubris’ and ‘restraint’ say, that of Andrea Palladio (1508–80), is not only that we no
in relation to a formal, conceptual, and even mystical longer believe in the ideal figure of the circle, but that when we
design project. For Amy Dahan-Dalmedico, geometry can do use it we choose to construct it with Cartesian or polar
be understood either as a realistic practice rooted in human (parametric) coordinates, rather than with a ruler and a compass.
perception and the world itself, or as a Platonist realist The difference is not only technical. As the consolidation
collection of concepts totally independent of the human mind. of symbolic algebra and its emancipation from the figures
For Dennis Shelden and Andrew Witt, recent developments in of geometry began around the middle of the 16th century,
digital computation posit the emergence of a higher geometry the Renaissance architect (born in 1508) whose villas
at once continuous and discrete – until the very distinction is embody the ultimate expression of classical geometry lies
11
 on the wrong side of modernity by a couple of decades. The
algebraists of the 16th and 17th centuries set out the future
innovations of analytic and differential geometry, this new
geometry of symbols and operators rather than lines and
figures, which subtends our contemporary understanding
of mathematics in space and, of course, enables the recent
innovations of computation. With the notable exceptions of
Desargues’s projective transformations profiled by Bernard
Cache, and to some extent (though not exclusively), Mark
Figure 4. Euclidean geometry at work
Burry’s analysis of ruled and developable surfaces in the The applied mathematics of space in the
work of Antoni Gaudí and Félix Candela (see pp 80–9), 17th century consists in bisecting the
triangle and other Euclidean concerns. From
analytic geometry is, in all its subsequent forms, the brand L’Ecole des arpenteurs où l’on enseigne
of mathematics discussed here. Hence the architectural, toutes les pratiques de géométrie qui sont
nécessaires à un arpenteur (The Survey
engineering and computational proposals illustrating our School where all Manners of Geometry
Needed by Surveyors Are Taught), Thomas
theme (as well as most geometry produced and consumed Moette (Paris), 1692.
today in the world at large) can be said to be calculated rather
than figured, and written rather than drawn.
Sadly no trained architect since Desargues in the 17th
century has managed to contribute disciplinary knowledge
to mathematics, but the movement across the (increasingly
wide) boundary between geometry and architecture has
nonetheless been continuous. In the 18th century, a further
seismic shift towards calculus, detailed by Antoine Picon in
his account of the turbulent relationship between geometry
and architecture, alienated our profession’s narrowly intuitive
dimensional sensibility, leading to a protracted estrangement
from mathematics, only weathered today, thanks in part to
the advent of computation, which has imbued the relationship
with a new lease of life.

Mathematics or Computation?
The relationship between computation and architectural
geometry looms large in the collective argument exhumed
in this issue. To explore the terms of a fair and mutual Figure 5. Analytic geometry at work
rapport, this collection of essays departs from the habitual The applied mathematics of space in
the 19th century is no longer concerned
emphasis on computational morphogenetic design that with drawn figures: all steps are now
has dominated theoretical discourse in the last one and written (and calculated). From Charles
Dupin, Applications de géométrie et
a half decades. The simplistic notions that computation de mécanique à la marine, aux ponts
et chaussées etc. pour faire suite
constitutes an ‘automation’ of mathematics (a probable aux développements de géométrie
side effect of the introduction and popularity of early CAD (Application of the Latest Developments
in Geometry and Mechanics to Marine
systems), or conversely that mathematics is only a slower, Engineering and all Manners of
static expression of computational activity, must be dispensed Infrastructure), Bachelier (Paris), 1822.

with. As Fabian Scheurer and Hanno Stehling demonstrate in

12
Figure 6. Omar Al Omari, Superficial Thickness I, Diploma Unit 5
(Learning Japanese), Architectural Association, London, 2004
Analytic geometry at work. Parametric periodic curves subjected to a ‘thickening’
function that reproduces the inflections of a calligrapher’s brushstroke.

13
 Figure 7. Omar Al Omari, Superficial Thickness II,
Diploma Unit 5 (Learning Japanese), Architectural Association, London, 2004
Periodic pleating. Discontinuous parametric surfaces are subjected to a ‘pleating’
function that produces a highly controlled instance of superficial depth.

14
 Figure 8. Omar Al Omari,
Superficial Thickness II,
Diploma Unit 5 (Learning
Japanese), Architectural
Association, London, 2004
Periodic Pleating. Detail of
material model.

their masterful analysis of the applied relationship between

mathematics and theoretical computer science (pp 70–9),
Figure 9. Ema Bonifacic, Suk-Kyu Hong and Jung Kim, Degenerate Weave, Diploma
the relative transparency of mathematics when subsumed Unit 5 (Engineering the Immaterial), Architectural Association, London, 2003
The iterative summation of a complex periodic function causes a weave of indicial
under the interface of standard software is merely an threads to veer into a hyperactive, disorderly pattern.
illusion. The essential issues of representation, abstraction
and reduction of data are still very much there, and must
be disentangled through a careful interplay of mathematical
and computational resources, driven to a large extent by the
unforgiving bottlenecks of machinic performance and physical
materiality. Scheurer and Stehling’s essay outlines in great
detail the interdependence of the two realms when faced with
problems of increasing complexity, while reaffirming their
respective specificities.
In a similar vein, Dennis Shelden’s and Andrew Witt’s
article demonstrates how recent developments in computation
have re-actualised established yet hitherto exceptional
non-Euclidean configurations, usually treated in general and
simplistic form, and turned them into something applicable
to architecture, ‘and indeed [to] everyday experience’.
Recalling Felix Klein’s and David Hilbert’s famous theoretical
consolidations of geometry in the 19th century (also
mentioned by Amy Dahan-Dalmedico), Shelden and Witt
suggest that the recent breakthroughs of computing may
demand a similar approach; that innovation may bring about
a further generalisation of historical precedent, that the
feedback loop between the development of technology and
the history of mathematics is still up and running, and hence
that the relationship between them is alive and well, despite
the more cautious prognoses spelled out by historian of
science Dahan-Dalmedico at the close of her article.

Praxis
This issue would not be relevant without an applied survey
of what mathematics can actually do for practice. More than
efficiency or technique, mathematics in design is ultimately
about individual authority. When it comes to solving problems
and creating new things, working with mathematical concepts
and equations, rather than with the standard modelling
software disseminated by the industry, implies a direct
recourse to generative symbols and marks. Writing forms
and processes in this manner requires an authorial mindset.
Modelling software being generally built by ‘chunking’, or
consolidating lower-level steps into higher-level ones – like
15
 In all these projects the material considerations
and an intimate knowledge of physical
behaviour go hand in hand with a rigorous
mathematical formalisation, abetted by the
latest computational facilities.

Figure 10. Ema Bonifacic, Suk-Kyu Hong and Jung Kim, Figure 11. Ema Bonifacic, Suk-Kyu Hong and Jung Kim, Degenerate Weave, Diploma
Degenerate Weave, Diploma Unit 5 (Engineering the Unit 5 (Engineering the Immaterial), Architectural Association, London, 2003
Immaterial), Architectural Association, London, 2003 The woven arrangement of indicial threads veers into a hyperactive, disorderly pattern.
Detail of thickened parametric threads. Threads that used to be parallel are now secant (the intersections are flagged in red).

16
 Figure 12. Ema Bonifacic, Suk-Kyu
Hong and Jung Kim, Degenerate
Weave, Diploma Unit 5 (Engineering
the Immaterial), Architectural
Association, London, 2003
Thanks to the multiple intersections,
half of the form is becoming potentially
self-structural. The other half is
removed, and the remainder laminated
into a self-supporting structure that
shares the morphological characteristics
of half and whole.

a pyramidal structure – to work with commercial software is Similar concerns abound in our own work at the London-
to work at the top of the pyramid, where the interaction is based IJP (see the articles pp 44–53, 100–1 and 118–21).
intuitive but the decisions have already been made. To write IJP explores the deployment of parametric analytic equations at
equations, on the other hand, is to work, if not at the bottom all stages of the design and construction process, from scheme
of the pyramid, at least pretty down low, where most of the design to tender; and at all scales, from urban infrastructure
room lies but little if anything is predefined. Hence to design to numerically fabricated installations. Over the past six
with mathematics in 2011 is not to design free of software, a years it has developed a unique body of knowledge about
futile if not wholly impossible claim in an age where software periodic equations, variously consistent with the constraints
is the only idiom available. To work with mathematics is to of numerical fabrication machinery (some better suited to
work without interface, and the difference matters: like any sheet cutting, others to lamination). This direct mathematical
channel of communication, the interface conveys as much approach to practice has already inspired a new generation of
as it fashions the message itself, ultimately undermining the outstanding young architects, including Max Kahlen (see his
authority of the designer. Rising Masses project on pp 108–11) and Ana María Flor Ortiz
The pattern-oriented design strategies devised by Daniel and Rodia Valladares Sánchez (The Hinging Tower, pp 112–
Bosia’s Advanced Geometry Unit (AGU) at Arup (pp 58–65) 17), who studied under myself at the Architectural Association
provide a strong survey of the incredible creativity and in London and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design
pragmatic application, in different contexts and at different (GSD), and whose recent final theses are in part reproduced in
scales, of non-linearity, branching, recursion, complex this issue. Among other things, these school projects for a new
proportional relationships and mathematical parametricism type of global high-rise building demonstrate the application of
in practice. In all these projects the material considerations periodic equations and Fourier summations to the production of
and an intimate knowledge of physical behaviour go hand building diagrams while pointing to many new future directions.
in hand with a rigorous mathematical formalisation, abetted In March 2010, Bernard Cache, Amy Dahan-Dalmedico,
by the latest computational facilities. Similar concerns about Antoine Picon, Dennis Shelden and myself participated in a
spatial and organisational patterns, networks and scaling conference on a related subject that I convened at Harvard,
animate Michael Weinstock’s masterful study of territorial during which many ideas presented in this issue were initially
growth and self-organisation (pp 102–7), reconciling the discussed. The variety, scope and strength of this collection of
latest heuristic paradigms of flow and network topologies with projects and essays testify to the continued vitality of mathematics
a time-honoured progressivist model of city growth, where the in space, an age-old discipline finding itself at a defining moment
mathematics of space operate at a large scale.3 of acute re-actualisation and renewed relevance. 1
Another line of argument unfolds in Scheurer and
Notes
Stehling’s practice, designtoproduction, where such issues are 1. Among others, see Antoine Picon, Digital Culture in Architecture,
taken at the other end of the spectrum to the micro-level of Birkhäuser Architecture (Basel), 2010; Michael Hensel, Achim Menges
component fabrication, resulting in ground-breaking structures and Michael Weinstock, AD Techniques and Technologies in Morphological
Design, Vol 76, No 2, 2006; Michael Hensel and Achim Menges, AD
in collaboration with architect Shigeru Ban. Tsigkari, Davis Versatility and Vicissitude, Vol 78, No 2, 2008; Michael Hensel, Achim
and Aish at Foster + Partners use projective geometry, Menges and Michael Weinstock, Emergent Technologies and Design: Towards
chaotic/probabilistic algorithms and statistical analysis to a Biological Paradigm for Architecture, John Wiley & Sons (London), 2010;
Michael Hensel, Achim Menges and Michael Weinstock, AD Emergence:
calibrate the environmental performance of some of the Morphogenetic Design Strategies, May/June 2004.
largest buildings erected by the practice in the last decade. 2. Jean Victor Poncelet, Traité des propriétés projectives des figures,
And Adams Kara Taylor (AKT) research associates Panagiotis Bachelier (Paris), 1822.
3. Françoise Choay, L’Urbanisme: Utopies et réalités (Urban Planning: Utopia
Michalatos and Sawako Kaijima have devised an application and Reality), Editions du Seuil (Paris), 1979.
of topology optimisation theory to facilitate an intuitive yet
Text © 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 8, 10(t) © fdecomite; p 10(b) © IJP; pp
rigorous approach to structural scheme design in the early 13-14, 15(t) Omar Al Omari and George L Legendre; pp 15(b)-17 © Ema Bonifacic, Suk-
Kyu Hong, Jung Kim, George L Legendre
parts of the design process (pp 66–9).
17
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