Hybrid

Hybrid

Greg Lynn’s book “Animate Form” proposes that animation can generate design through a composite of parameters. This composite is a hybrid of sorts in the sense that these parameters are in themselves heterogeneous elements that form a single composition.
The assertion is that architecture has predominately come from statics whose discrete set of elements can be rationalized and formed by the architect into a design. There are concrete beginnings with clearly calculable endings. Rather Lynn encourages a machine intelligence that is created by mindless connections establish by complex rules. The goal is to develop a set of performance diagrams and organizational techniques that will establish parameters which in turn will translate into architecture. The ultimate goal is not to measure the distance from A to B as with statics, but rather describe the circuitous route.
As pointed out in the first sentence, this animate form is not to be confused with motion, but rather contains embodied energy that has either formed a hillside landscape or is working intimately in tandem with energy as with the ship hull. This tandem is a relationship of time and motion animating matter through a stable rhythm in a sort of zen balance. This representation between time, motion and matter can this be frozen into keyframes which can then be used as the concrete assemblage.
Foreign Office Architecture also talks about a hybrid of parameters to animate there design for the Yokohama International Airport. The process of designing the terminal is full of references of energies and resonances affecting the design process. Rather than design a building from the top down by program, the design team chose to use spline like circulation paths to literally form the building and the program would fall on these spaces like furniture.
This method allows for the flexibility of a changing program similar to how Lynn talks about designing the system rather than the elements. Even more directly related to the language in “Animate Form” was FOA’s grouping of the program into area’s of space time according to the “slowness” of that program. Additionally the roof openings were designed to maximize views according to the time of year of large festivals.
Finally we conclude the study of design and hybrid with the evolution of humans by a hybridization of humans and chimpanzees. The tension between the time data of paleoanthropologists and geneticists has led to the belief that humans spun off as a hybridization for a period of time. Over a long period of existing in a hybrid state according to Dr. Reich, the male and female human genetics were finally compatible to create a self sustaining offspring.