hi all, the reading for Utopia has been posted in the resourse page.Is there anybody knows how to move the two pdf files into the Week 4 folder?Enjoy the weekends~~

sorry, fell asleep before posting.

All of the readings seem to approach the idea of system from different angles, with different strategies on the method of engagement with the system. The Kansai Airport inhabits a system of air flow, while the Swiss Re seems to be a creation and manipulation of a specific system of organization and structure. Fuller descends into the topic of the human system in a sort of Powers of 10 narrative, starting from the universe to the planet to the human to the plants to the animals to the actual DNA and RNA that form the basis of the system. In some ways his definition of a system is very spatial, with a system being a subdivision between the outside and the inside. This seems to lend itself to Bantham's idea of systems but Fuller introduces the idea of indeterminism as a way to perceive systems as they exist across dimensions and scales, which forces us to understand systems by trying to perceive the whole or the general in order to accurately perceive the specific. Bantham's description of architectural systems as separate and almost competing elements attempting to garner attention and study, then, is a very bitter description that fails to see the "all" thinking of the system of building.
It is important, I think, to see systems the way Fuller describes the universe. He recognizes the finite quality of the universe as a sum of finite parts, but also is able to accept it as a system continually under transformation or evolution. The perception of systems as both micro and macrocosmic, or perhaps even scale-less, is something that is directly applicable to the practice of architecture and design. The parti moment, then, can become more of a realization and opportunistic use of the system affecting the design, rather than a scale-specific gesture.

WK3:SYSTEM

As with Fuller’s Spaceship Earth, the development of system is said to coincide with the development of human intellect. Creation of systems allow for organization to occur, which enables civilization. Once man was able to ‘generalize fundamental principles’ from his experiences, as with the tree leverage example, he then gains the ability to synthesize more complex modes of phenomena. Critical systems that have altered our conception of the world (as well as the way we live) include Darwin’s hierarchical phylogeny system, or the Fordist system of production, or the sub-atomic structures or DNA systems, etc. Systems, is in essence, the basis of all human knowledge.

Most, if not all, systems are inductively derived, through observation and experimentation – standardized through the scientific method. Analysis of collected data seek to find patterns of behavior, which then is formulated into a theory – or more simply, a system for understanding that particular study. Fuller describes the notion of an Earth Spaceship without a manual. Man can only begin to understand the inner workings of the world through inductive reasoning. An interesting drawback of inductive systems is that they rely on the data through which the system is modeled after, which is to say, if the data set is incomplete or flawed, so then is the system. So at best a system is an approximation of reality at work. Banham’s article talks about the flaw in the definition of a particular system – namely the architectural system’s failure to incorporate mechanical aspects into its scope.

In our current era, there is an increasing need for the awareness of advanced systems both visible and unseen. The advent of internet has proliferated the idea of network systems in including social and cultural realms. There has also been efforts to systematize traditionally non-systemic things. Such as the chaos theory, or algorithms that generate ‘randomness’. In the context of cities and architecture, a reinterpretation of system is necessary in part due to the failures of absolutist (inflexible) systems of organization of the previous era that failed to adapt to evolving demands of urban fabric. Potential new fluid systems will work in a multi-scalar fashion with the ability to merge with other systems or subdivide within itself to provide flexible ways of understanding the city.

Ted Rubenstein
Week 3: System

If we are to consider the concept of system in relationship to cities it seems that first we must first be very clear to define the central (indeed intrinsic) role that humans play in any system of human organization. I am struck initially by Buckminster Fuller’s metaphor of “Spaceship Earth” and how he situates humans in relationship to the system of the planet. He claims, “We have not been seeing our Spaceship Earth as an integrally-designed machine which to be persistently successful must be comprehended and serviced in total” (52). In typical Fullerian fashion this is a densely charged statement filled to the brim with assumptions that at the same time makes clear an impassioned plea to the reader. Fuller’s hinging of the sentence on the phrase “have not been seeing” and the word “must” makes his claim a moral call to arms; what has been wrong in the past must be made right in the future. By making this moral plea the grammatical armature of his claim, Fuller is more subtly dislocating humanity – “We” – from the system of the planet, or “Spaceship Earth.” This is important because it posits the “We” / “Spaceship Earth” relationship as a subject / object relationship, a relationship which (even though Fuller’s intentions here are of the noble “big picture” proto-environmentalist strain) grants humanity a willful leverage over the system of the Earth. Fuller’s argument would benefit from the assertion that humanity is inescapably integrated with the Earth.
Stranger still is Fuller’s earlier acknowledgement that humanity’s willful existence outside the system of Spaceship Earth is a modern phenomenon. He says, “Spaceship Earh was so extraordinarily well invented and designed that to our knowledge humans have been on board it for two million years not even knowing that they were on board a ship” (50). It is not clear to me why our knowledge of the Earth would somehow dislodge us from a strictly objective relationship with the planet. Perhaps Fuller puts more faith in our ability to comprehend such a large and chaotic system than I do (especially considering that we cannot draw a picture of this system without being self-referential). Perhaps there is some sort of holy sublimation that humanity can achieve by “thinking big” or holistically (59) that I am not able to grasp.

The Best of All Possible Systems

In the first paragraph of Unwarranted Apology, I was struck by the statement of an inhumane world’s division of buildings into two ‘intellectually separate parts’ – introduced reductively as mechanical and structural. This seemed to me to be a description of how buildings do what they do, but not necessarily what they are or why they are. (The metaphysical implications of this potentially false dichotomy between how, what and why are not to be explored here, but it’s important to note that this distinction is not drawn by Buckminster Fuller.) Fuller is concerned with an expansive world view, leaving out no variables, to systematically describe what is, or, perhaps more importantly, what we define the universe as within the limits of our systematic understanding.

Both Banham and Fuller argue for expanding our intellectual understanding of what is. Fuller is of course more ambitions by imposing no initial limits to this system of understanding, and Banham is uncircuitously concerned with buildings. Banham argues that the division of structure and mechanical makes no sense, and that ‘the mechanical environmental controls are the most obviously and spectacularly important, both as manifestations of changed expectations and as an irrevocable modification to the ancient primacy of structure…’ Contemporary buildings reflect these sentiments. When one looks at new buildings like the Federal Building or the De Young, or even buildings contemporary to this article, like the Kimball Museum or the Richards Memorial Laboratory, one can see the structure has lost its primacy, and elements like services and enclosure have become primary informants of the order and form of the building. Both articles address a new way of thinking brought about by the 20th century technological advances, and reflect a post-enlightenment idealism.

Spaceship Earth is laden with Candidian language. Every element of the system is ‘by design’ the best in the best of all possible systems. The phrase ‘by design’ comes up multiple times. I appreciate that in order to surmise on the systemic workings of the universe and to believe one has arrived at a comprehensive world-view one needs to be a believer. Fuller clearly is. The language doesn’t seem to recognize the ‘inhumanity’ that Banham describes. ‘Objective employment of those generalized principles in rearranging the environment seems to be leading to humanity’s eventually total success and readiness to cope with far vaster problems of universe.’

Once again, we see that nature is given primacy, (‘nature, which always employs only the most economical realizations…’) as is reason. Fuller recognizes that, like a bird in an egg, our resources are being drained and our inhabitation of the system will necessarily need to change. Perhaps the output of our natural tendencies toward preservation and propagation, mixed with our rationally defined generalized principles will someday synergize, producing more than the sum of the two parts. History has shown our nature and our intellect to be at odds. Cosmological stories from many religiions have to explain the conflict between these two, but Buckminster Fuller argues they will and must synergize. Surely, they could do no other such thing in the best of all possible systems.

System

System:
The Random House Dictionary has seventeen different descriptions of the word system with many of them varying widely. While the first description relates to architecture in the traditional sense stating "an assemblage or combination of things or parts forming a complex or unitary whole: a mountain system; a railroad system," most others talked about a wide array of topics from numerology, biology, geology to the mundane checkers. Organization, organism, and cosmos are synonyms for system and while organization is a topic regularly used in architecture and organism's biological roots are sometimes introduced as descriptors, the cosmos, which is a large part of the word, is almost never used.
The Etymology Dictionary dates this word back to 1619 and describes it as an “an arrangement” in L.L. systema which was taken from the Greek root systema, an “organized whole, body.” It was then recorded in 1638 taking on a less physical description as a "set of correlated principles, facts, ides, etc." Approximately fifty years later, system begins to refer to our biological understanding of the word stating system in terms of an "animal body as an organized whole, sum of the vital processes in an organism." Finally the word refers to a "group of related programs" established from a recording "all systems go" by the U.S. space program.
A typical pragmatic architectural use for the word system is discussed by Nikken Sekkei when describing the Kansai International Airport terminal's jack-up stands. Stands made up of adjustable parts are use for mechanical services and huge stands are used for the buildings nine hundred columns. He does not talk about the parts being a system on the micro scale, rather these smaller assemblies together creating a working system to level the airport. Further a description of the Swiss Re Headquarters describes its' ventilating elements as a ventilation system, the typical use for describing many elements of the HVAC (Heating and Ventilating System). On the other hand the book Operating book for spaceship Earth uses systems to describe life, energy, and stars all within almost the same paragraph.

System

System
Liwen Zhang

What is interesting about the word system is the multiplicity of meanings and connotations it has both within and between differing and similar contexts. Take for instance in Banham’s Unwarranted apology, the word system tackles and brings to mind a range of meanings.

On the one hand, we think of the term system in reference to Banham’s assertion of the lack of systematic integration within buildings, for instance between a building’s structure and a building’s “mechanical services”. The term “mechanical services” is interesting because usually when in reference to the particular systems that operates in buildings, such as the structural system, the term mechanical system typically follows. However, in this case the term “services” replaces the word system. Thus we question what the term “mechanical services” actually means; especially bearing in mind that the underlying word assigned to the reading is the replaced word system itself. Upon further reading we realize that Berman intends the word service to imply a organized system of apparatus rather then the more specified definition attributed to the term mechanical system. For Berman, his “mechanical services” is a system that either provides “the basic life support that makes a viable or valuable environment” or facilitates “circulation and communication”.

On the other hand, the term system is used in reference to the institution of education and discourse. When Banham lays claim to how the “vast range of historical topics extremely relevant to the development of architecture is neither taught not mentioned in many schools of architecture”, he immediately brings about the critical questioning of what is lacking in the system of architectural education.

The presence of the word system and its multifaceted meanings can be strongly felt throughout Banham’s text. Thus it is no surprise that this multifaceted array of meanings can be brought to productive use when describing the conditions of cities in particular, as a city tends to induce and require descriptions that possess such multiplicity.

System
Bin Wang

After reading the four paragraph I’ve been impressed by an idea that architecture is a system; the society is a system; the universe is a system. Everything is a system while every system is belonged to a larger system. Therefore it gave me a new perspective about architecture and architects.
Some times we regard ourselves, architects, are principle of the world. We are the designer of people’s life. Actually , we are only tiny components of the world. What’s the difference between architecture and rocket? The answer may be “no difference”. They are both components of this world, which is a system. Even in the system of architecture, we architects are only part of it. Our job is just to make the system running normally and developing well. We really have little ability to influence the whole system.
In Spaceship Earth it mentions “If we don’t really know how big “big” is, we may not start big enough, and are thus likely to leave unknown”. So is it a big problem if we don’t know big enough? As a point of my view, we could always deal with what we know, thus we don’t need to worry about something out of the system. For example, right now we have no idea about the space outside the universe so architects are just designing buildings on the earth and are doing a pretty good job. However, if one day we know the outerspace enough , I believe we could deal with it as a bigger system, because human’s intelligence is unlimited.

Modern
Bin Wang

Response to Louis Kahn
I agree that “the same order created the dwarf and Adonis”, but I am not sure that “the same order created the elephant and created man”. In my understanding, elephant and man are designed by different order (maybe use the same materials), just like “modern” and “postmodern” or “deconstruction”. They are different languages. Turn to cities, I don’t think an ancient asian city has the same order with the contemporary San Francisco.
I do believe “from order he will derive creative force and power of self-criticism to give form to this unfamiliar”, just like Aldo Rossi’s building in an Italian city, it’s unfamiliar, but has a clue to the other buildings in the city.

Response to Postmodernism
Because of my limited English, I don’t totally understand this article.
As my understanding from the article, the high modernism destruct the fabric of the traditional city and its regional culture. On the opposite, the postmodernism is kind of attempt to mix the different culture. Thus to me, the modernism reflect the technologic revolution while postmodernism is more like a cultural revolution no matter it was successful or not. What obvious is that with the development of globalism, the loss of regional culture is unavoidable, at least it seems to me.

Response to “post modern culture”
I think we shouldn’t define “modernism” as a period of time. To me , the spirit of modernism is to catch the development of the world. It is always “modern”. Modernism is not in the past, it is what happening right now.

Response to “5 points and villa Savoie”
I just want to mention one point that I don’t agree the author that “there is no back or front” of Villa Savoie. The shape of the ground floor clearly define the front and back. And all the drawings of the plan show the entrance at the below, although the entrance is facing west.

Response to “the city and its region”
I enjoy reading this article . It talks from people to economic, political , topographic, mechanic. Everything is right but I don’t know how to response. Is mechanic wrong? Is globalism wrong? It is really a contradictory question. Maybe as Wittgenstein said, “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”.

System

Architecture 209X, Spring 2007

Words and Cities: The rhetoric and meaning of statistically improbable phrases

Nicholas De Monchaux

Qing Wang

System

System usually means a serial of things working together. It means something complicated enough that not single methodology can be applied to achieve the goal. In politics, it indicates some similar functional departments to work together. In computer software, it represents a whole pack of commands to work together to finish the operation. In architecture, it also means different kinds of agendas to participate into the building process. More specifically, it is more related to structure system, mechanical system. In article – spaceship, earth, Buckminster metaphorizes our earth into spaceship to imply that we should design the building as the same way we operate this mechanical spaceship. Furthermore, he stresses on the ecology of earth as a perfect system we can learn to apply on our architectural design. It talks in a general big idea of universe and explains it as two different categories: the physical universe and metaphysical universe which I consider as exteriority and interiority of architectural design manipulation. Obviously, the architectural cases we read this time are in the first camp.

The project of Kansai International Airport Terminal spends numerous photos, diagrams and sketches to show how objectively logical this design process except the original ideas of archy structure that can be considered as the sign of interiority. The first part of the reading focuses on how the air flow deforms the regular archy structure. The second part

is about how mechanical system integrates into the architecture idea to solve the problem of subsidence of the land. I see nothing but the terminal works as a functional machine in that particular site. The building is designed and operated based on external forces.

The similar situation of another case – Swiss Re. Headquarters we read. It explains the geometry of the building that it totally responds to its environment. The cylinder shape reduces the reflection. The smaller base concedes more space to the pedestrian to shows the friendly gesture to its neighborhood. Moreover, the word “lung” it uses to describe the sky garden tries to imply the whole building as an organic system which always has been considered as a sustainable system we learned from for thousands of years.

hi Ted ,this is bin.I will talk with Nicholas tomorrow morning about "utopia"at 9 o'clock.it will be great if you could come as well.

If somebody know Ted's phone number please give him a call cos I can not find his email address.Thanks a lot.

see you tomorrow

reading_system

When we use the word ‘system’, it usually brings many miscommunications without explanation. Because of its multi-meaning, it could be interpreted differently depending on situation and context.

In these three readings also have different uses of word ‘system’. In Swill Re headquarters, system means something about functional working. It contains mechanical meaning with environmental circulation. However, in unwarranted apology, system means closer to mechanics. It means how the building works and it focused on how the structure could work with design. And the other article, ‘spaceship earth’ said system is total formation. It said system is the starting point that makes the space and it should be well organized not to be ruined.

System means basically well organized structure. To design well composed space, we need system. It could mean circulation, structure or way of function. Even though we usually mix-use the word, it is usually understandable because it goes to total composition.

However, in this comprehension, we also usually overlook the system. To accomplish the design, architects force to make structure or space to sacrifice. They divide the useless or unmeaning space, even though they knew the fact, and designers said they had no choice for the concept of system. In this case, even though system is function, we use it as a word. And between this gap, architects could make mistakes to pick the system.

Reading reposne #3

The readings for Thursday

The readings for tThursday are now posted on bspace. (We will not do a close reading of the Kansai project example)

Anders