Demo as Thesis - blog post

Demo Set as Thesis - Sept 15 Presentation Boards

Demo as Thesis - re-define and redline

House as Thesis - Blog Post

House as Thesis - Sept 8 Presentation Boards.

selfDerivation* - Initial interests in self-sufficient systems and applications of resource extraction.

Constructed Ecologies - Paradigm Map Redux

The Paradigm Map is a collection of sources that have directly influenced the progression of thought associated with our independent thesis investigations. Key ideologies or other salient characteristics of each source have been extracted and summarized as key terms that describe our individual and commonly held interests. The connections that are made when individual lineages overlap and combine reveal new opportunities for each respective line. The three lineages are color-coded by author; the strength and importance of each path and source to their owner is reflected through their line quality. (Collab w/ J.Blair and C. Roussel)

Thesis within Paradigm

The thesis within the paradigm...almost (collab. w/ j.blair and c. roussel)

What I've Been Reading...

A lot of reading. A lot of trying to understand and absorb. I need to force myself make some important decisions and commit to a direction. The paradigm map assignment has really opened the floodgates in terms of sifting through the abundance of resources available and trying to figure out if they are even applicable to my interests, which seem to become more fluid with exposure to more resources. My interests lie within the composition of constructed or "artificial" landscapes (which are truly just layers of ecological systems/but what landscapes are not artificial?). I want my thesis to projectively position new-age stewardship through innovative tactics which understand a landscape as an infrastructure of ecologies: Landscape as a synthetic conduit between complex ecologies. I have always been interested in the theory and measurement of "registry" within the landscape. Registry becomes the interface which emerges as a result of impact or augmentation.

Thesis as Abstract

Definitely a work in progress...

Artificial Systems: Future/Present Landscapes
Thesis Abstract Statement

Artificial Systems: Future/Present landscapes, positions itself critically between historically modernistic beliefs that ecological systems are inherently closed-loop and self-sustainable entities, and the contemporary notion that the natural environment can no longer maintain itself from the impacts of urbanization, which is now dependent on stewardship of the human species to mitigate these impacts. Our self-reliance is not a sustainable method of operation, which relegates the human race to providers of reactionary measures and preventative tactics of further degradation, an infinite and unobtainable task. Historically, modernism brought to light that context was vestigial to the autonomous system, which could be hermetically sealed in a bubble to protect itself from entropy. Current research states that ecologies successfully exist due to their co-dependency on spatial networks, which foster interaction in order to maintain biological heterogeneity. Artificial Systems projects that present and future ecologies must be designed and maintained via responsive techno-artificial ecosystems which can filter, monitor, and adapt to successfully reclaim landscapes through interaction within a network of constituents - ecologies as sustained through designed patch dynamics.

Artificial Systems: Future/Present Landscapes will question the relationship between man and nature. It will measure the efficacy of stewardship principals such as restoration, reclamation, and conservation applications in the modern disaster-prone world, leveraging advanced artificial landscapes as modes of adaptation. It will answer such questions as: If ecological systems must become artificial, to what extent should their technologies reference their biological precedents? How can these artificial landscapes remain compatible with humanity and promote inhabitation? What are the architectural and societal implications of an adaptive landscape? How can marginalized ecologies benefit from the deployment of modifiable parameters within a designed system? This research and design development intends to investigate the potential of intelligent defensible systems and the construction of artificial environment.
Artificial Systems will ground itself in historical as well contemporary theories, science, research, principals, and projects, which will act as a supportive structure towards its agency within the discourse in terms of its projective nature. A.S. will test grounds and situate itself within multiple scales of specific arenas to which it will be deployed, becoming a form of projective scenario planning or adaptive ecological management. Through this methodology this thesis will seek to absorb theories/data and represent them through an array of tools which will test man's registry within nature. Ultimately, interests lie in hybridizing the digital and physical, utilizing interaction through Processing software - a code-based tool used to spatialize data, which can manipulate actuators in a micro-controller called an Arduino processor.
The artifacts that A.S. will produce will balance between levels of dimensionality and representation. Works will consist of complex data-logical mappings, interactive prototypes, physical assemblages, and computer and hand-based drawings.

Site as Thesis Boards

Notes from Site as Thesis review to follow...

Operationalizing Artificiality

Site as Thesis Pinup

BLOG RE-TITLE

artificial systems: SITE AS FUTUREPRESENT LANDSCAPES

This title is a nod towards an article in AD magazine, Landscape Architecture Site/Non-Site - Operationalizing Patch Dynamics (2007) written by Victoria Marshall and Bryan Mcgrath. The project reveals an urban design approach to the city as a dynamically populated system, incorporating ecology theorems which I want to extract and study.

For my thesis, I want to re-appropriate the knowledge that I am gaining from my SNRE class- Human Dominated Landscapes, which I decided to take because the course is primarily focused on ecologies affected by the urbanization and the human element. My term paper topic I have designed is meant to bridge this class with thesis research, which is entitled:"Ecosystem matrices and mosaics- The use of Patch Dynamics design on polluted riparian borders."

This fascination with controlled energies/artificiality began after research and reading done about the vast invisible infrastructural systems which are continually breaking down within urban rural gradient. A measure of the extent of influence urbanization has on a previously native landscape.

At the beginning of Bruce Mau's 'Massive Change', he states "For most of us, design is invisible, until it fails." I placed this quote on my first 24x24 board because, I feel this it begins to break down the current state of affairs which exists between failing ecosystems and the human species. We are now in state of infinitely "declining" ecologies which we are deemed responsible for continually maintaining.

Site As Thesis Text:

past conditions:

reminiscent of the modernistic bubble-dome environments proposed in the 60’s & 70’s, a time when crisis became the framework for a reaction-based architecture. this modern model sought to capture and sustain ecoligies, severing them from their fateful surroundings. ecologies were to be hermetically sealed in amorphous bubbles, an iconic symbol of a closed and self-sufficient system.

On the second 24x24 board, I begin to set up the thesis argument with another quote from Mau's "Massive Change" -

"Most of the time, we live our lives within these invisible systems,

blissfully unaware of the artificial life, the intensely designed

infrastructures that support them." - Bruce Mau

The words intensely designed infrastructures and artificial life resonate with the development of my thesis in respect to my critique of the modernistic approach to siphon ecosystems from their environments in order to allow them to "survive". Disaster architecture and bubble domes engulfing systems and cities embraces the traditional belief that ecological systems are self-sufficient closed loop processes. My argument is that contemporary science has proven biological ecologies are co-dependent on patterns of intersection in order to maintain equilibrium and heterogeneity.

Site As Thesis Text:

future conditions:

It will no longer be sustainable for the human race to act in ecological stewardship for the remainder of our being. the design of future landscapes must embody technology-based functionality, with ecologically driven science. complex artificial ecology systems developed as spatially cohesive open resourceloops will be able to respond dynamically to an imbalance in the ecosystem equilibrium through employment of the concept of patch dynamics.

Review Thesis Presentation Critique

This post is in-part to display my reactions to the presentation critiques and also to allow me to get back into the verve of consistent posting and research.

I feel that the review was helpful in a sense that it let me get this project out of the confines of my head and out in the open (as was the purpose of the project). Although, I feel that I perhaps got too focused on the manifestation of the idea into physical and purported form. Trying to fit it into a house/barn obscured the thesis. My goal was to investigate the ways that scenario planning and adaptive management (reviewer coined terms) could become the methodology of the creation of an architectural intervention. With the emergence of the desire to revolutionize building methodologies, I wanted to implement virtues of a closed loop system. A sort of cradle to cradle "liturgy". It ultimately appeared ideological and holistic (but I don't think that that is necessarily a bad thing). Comments from the gallery were relegated to the discussion of 'Closed Loop' systems vs 'Open Loop' systems which is where I want this thesis topic to be driven, a further understanding of Systems Logic thinking. "How big can the closed loop get until it breaks? When should it become an open loop?" Ultimately, such a large topic promotes deeper delving.