Marina Warner opens her discussion of metamorphosis by proceeding in a historical fashion to explain the origins of metamorphosis as a concept in mythology and its etymological roots in the physical sciences. Warner goes on to say that our understanding of the word itself continued to change as it interacted with the physical sciences, especially with the case of evolutionary theory. What began in the realm of supernatural and spiritual trickled into theories of natural order, slowly increasing its ‘breadth and depth’ as more and more modes of physical metamorphosis become available. The variable applications of the word are exemplified as Warner articulates:
“Oddly enough, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career, from Pumping Iron to the Terminator to Governor of California, typifies one trajectory of metamorphosis in contemporary culture, in its most menacing form” (p.21)
“An ancient ambivalence still governs any blurring of boundaries between human and beast. Yet this fantastical merging of categories is increasingly becoming a reality as the arts of cloning and genetic modification advance.” (p.21)
What becomes evident is how embedded the concept of metamorphosis is in culture of the human race. There has been a keen awareness of it in literature, philosophy, science, spirituality, and more recently graphical/experiential representation & architecture. However, simultaneously there is also a consistent fear of metamorphosis in culture. Change, in the form of metamorphosis is oft perceived as unnatural and undesired. Hybrid entities are often frowned upon and outcasted, whether it’s the The Golden Ass or someone with a xyy chromosome mutation leading to hermaphroditism.
In many cases people prefer stability over metamorphosis – views of life that eliminate unpredictability. Religion is one such way to impose regularity and absolutism. As a species we have been obsessed over the course of history, and especially in the last century, with models of prediction and organizing randomness – the pre-entropic concept of a ‘mechanistic world view’. As Robert Smithson points out, architects, with “this attitude of set design solutions throughout the world” (p.2) fit nicely in that category: “Architects tend to be idealists, and not dialecticians. I propose a dialectics of entrophic change.” (p.2)
That brings us to John Frazer’s attempt to frame architecture from an evolutionary/ metamorphic stance. In this natural model, “Architectural concepts are expressed as generative rules so that their evolution may be accelerated and tested. The rules are described in a genetic language which produces a code-script of instructions for form-generation.” (p.9). This stands in direct opposition to the result & product oriented view of architecture currently so prevalent. In this proposed model, we as designers would be less concerned with a final form (output) of a building, but much more concerned with the instruction set (inputs) that begin to generate and influence the output. This puts architecture more along the lines of hardware and software design. A processor may have millions of transistors but only a few hundred instructions. But it can dynamically adapt to almost infinite variables so that you can render an image or encode a video without being aware of the inner workings. But the nature of the instruction – how the core communicates with the memory controller or how it allocates cache, will drastically affect how the resultant experience is for the end user.
Architects have the tools available to begin exploring new morphological typologies but the real problem lies in the mode of thought of society as a whole (incl. construction industry). As a society we are very much “goal-directed” in our approach. In any given profession the bottom line is the result, the end product, a static finale. Architecture is much more readily understood and appreciated as an image, an icon, than an endless series of permutations. But just as true we are beginning to realize that static modes of analysis (in all fields of study) are incapable of accounting for entropic change. Shifting programs, the morphing fabric of the city, could be better understood through the dynamic model. Such is the draw of the great unified theory.
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