International Bartlett Lecture Final

Systems Architecture

Dr Rachel Armstrong

Teaching Fellow,

AVATAR Research Group,The Bartlett School of Architecture

Overview: Definitions

• Systems Architecture

• Complexity Science• Biogenesis

Squid Skin with Chromatophores,activated by neural and hormonal mechanisms to perform a signallingfunction

Overview: Examples

• Model Systems • Compatibility of

Complex Material Systems

• Fundamental Living Technology

• Material Computing• Autonomous

Architecture

Robo Roach 2007– can influence the behaviour of organic roaches. Reported in Science by Jose Halloy of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, in Brussels, Belgium

Overview: Outcomes

• Systems Architecture and the Built Environment

• Systems Architecture and the Extreme Environment

• Systems Architecture Perspectives

• Inter Disciplinary Methodology

• Spillerian PerspectiveEmbryonic Development: an intimate relationship between an architectural system and the environment

What is Systems Architecture?

• Systems Architecture is the architecture of complexity, inspired by the science of systems biology, which is the scientific study of complex biological systems

What is Complexity Science?

• Complexity Science is a model of the world that is based on exploring the connections between systems in order to characterise them

What is Different about Complexity Science?

• It replaces the Cartesian view of the biological world that assumes systems are made up of components, which are connected to each other as a secondary phenomenon

What are the Characteristics of Complex Systems?

• Characterized by Albert Laszlo Barabasi who demonstrated that complex systems shared common features

Characteristics of Complex Systems

• Independent of embodying medium

• Connect to and organize around ‘hubs’ of activity

• Scalable

• Robust

• Exhibit ‘redundancy’

• Can interconnect through shared ‘hubs’

How does Complexity Science inform Systems Architecture?

• Systems Architecture embraces interlinking material systems and networks that are organised around hubs of activity

• Systems architecture is robust, independent of scale and the embodying medium

What is the Methodology of Systems Architecture?

• As a methodology systems architecture is cross disciplinary and takes the form of an experiment based in complexity science whose outcomes inhabit the realm of the inspirational and surreal rather than following the goal orientated pursuits of science

Systems Architecture in Practice

• Systems Architecture directly connects the organism to nature and the environment, through its multiple, varied connections beyond the immediate realm, dispensing with traditional dichotomies and

hierarchies such as

landscape and city,

or body and architecture

Systems Architecture in Practice

• Systems Architectures are capable of decision making and can evolve

• Need to understand the principles of self organizing matter to engage in the design of materials capable of complex interactions

Self-Organizing Matter

• Characteristic of living systems

Primitive Streak, Karl Grimes

Universe as information

“Life is a fundamental property of the universe”Christian De Deuve

“Chemistry has this computational nature embeddedIn it, which it inherited from the underlying computationThat’s going on in quantum mechanics in general.”Seth Lloyd

"... the Anthropic Principle says that the seemingly arbitrary and unrelated constants in physics have one strange thing in common, these are precisely the values you need if you want to have a universe capable of producing life.” Patrick Glynn

Biogenesis and Systems Architecture

• Biogenesis is the term given to the transition between inert and vital matter

Artificial Life and Systems Architecture

• The discipline of Artificial Life investigates how this ‘transition’ occurs, if there is indeed a transition, between inanimate and vital matter

Artificial Life and Systems Architecture

• The insights from Artificial Life Sciences are crucial for Systems Architecture as we strive to make a transition from a built environment that is composed of inert materials, to one that is capable of life-like behaviour

What is Life?

• No satisfactory definition of life

Does Life Exist?

• Scientist Andrew Ellington argues that definitions of life do not tell us how to make life from an experimental perspective and that trying to define what life ‘is’ does not actually help research objectives

Life As Energy

• “Living matter evades the decay to equilibrium” Erwin Schrödinger, 1944

Life As Information

• “…the essence of life is information, but information is not synonymous with life. To be alive, a system must not only hold information but process and use it. It is the active use of information, and not the passive storage, that constitutes life.”

Freeman Dyson

Life is a Scalar Concept

• Mark Bedau argues that life is a scalar concept

Embodiment

• Process by which information is manifest

• Complex• Not fully understood

or characterized

In Vivo … In Vitro, Daniel Lee

Origin, Daniel Lee

Creating Living Systems

• "Creating a cell from scratch is probably at least 10 years away, but it is going to happen. We're in for some very interesting, very profound new ways of thinking about what life is, and about where you draw the boundary between life and non-life.“ Mark Bedau

Approaches to Designing Artificial Life

• Top down approach bases design principles on existing systems e.g. biomimetics

• Bottom up synthesises new structures from fundamental components

Working Definition of Life

• A working material definition is needed so that the energy and information implicit in living systems is embodied and also so that scientists know when they have something interesting

• Gives rise to entities recognised as fundamental living technologies

Fundamental Living Technology

• Nanotechnological systems capable of traducing information and coupling energy from the environment to convert resources into building blocks, grow and divide

• Characterized by robustness, autonomy, local intelligence, self-repair, adaptation, and self-replication

Gizmo

• “A small self-contained unit of high performance in relation to its size and cost, whose function is to transform some undifferentiated set of circumstances to a condition nearer to human desires.” Reyner Banham

Biology

• “Biology is the Nanotechnology that works” Tom Knight MIT

Definition of Biology

• The spontaneously occurring terrestrial system of nanotechnology capable of self organization and replication that arose out of fundamental living technologies generated

during the Hadean period• Probably happened

many times

How did Biogenesis Occur?

• Two main theories of Origins of Life exist which are both supported by experimental observation

Experimentation that indulges in the messinessAnd ambiguity of everyday life …Archigram

RNA World

• Information First• RNA World is the theory that chemical

information in a particular molecule like RNA which was able to speed up its own production created the driving force behind organised protein synthesis and metabolism

• Walter Gilbert 1986, Thomas Cech and Sidney Altman won Nobel Prize for RNA experiments

Protocells

• Metabolism First• Protocells offer a matrix and

compartment for more primitive technologies to assimilate and concentrate. RNA may have been taken up into the matrix later

• First described by Oparin 1924

Symbiogenesis

• Many different kinds of fundamental living technologies existed simultaneously and gave rise to biological forms through cooperative strategies and alliances

• Konstantin Mereschkowsky 1926

• Freeman Dyson 1980s

Minimal Life

• These are working definitions of what scientists are trying to achieve in the laboratory to prove their hypothesis about how biotic materials become organized in such a way they exhibit characteristics associated with living systems

Minimal Genome

• Top down approach

• ‘minimal genome’

• Pioneering work by J Craig Venter

• First synthetic genome

• Mycoplasma Laborotorium

• ‘Golem’ sequence created ‘in vivo’ and awaits animation in a host

Minimal Cell

• Bottom up approach

• Definition involves three compartments defined by Rasmussen et al.

• Container

• Metabolism

• Information

• Results anticipated in the next 10 years

Complex Systems Dogma

• Alludes to the presupposition that simple lower-level elements can give rise to higher-level dynamical structures

• Steen Rasmussen highlights the shortcomings of such a dogma, claiming that higher-level dynamical structures can only be obtained through forming more complex lower-level structures

Artificial Life Form, Karl Sims

Systems Architecture vs. Smart Technologies

• Smart materials fall into Steen Rasmussen’s definition of simple lower-level elements as they are reflexive

• Systems Architecture employs complex biological systems and fundamental living technologies that constitute Rasmussen’s notion of complex lower-level structures

Origins of Life and Systems Architecture

• Essentially the Origins of Life Sciences are revealing that seemingly primitive chemical systems are capable of great complexity and synthesis

• In other words. Terrestrial materials are rather special and interesting as many of them are not inert

Origins of Life and Systems Architecture

• The scientific field of Origins of Life and what constitutes it, is hugely significant for architecture.

• Traditionally architecture has been made of out inert matter

Systems Architecture: Spectrum of Fundamental

Living Technologies

• Architecture is considered as being separate to, or outside of the organism and an adornment of the environment, not as part of it

• Architecture has occupied the realm of artifice

Systems Architecture: Spectrum of Fundamental

Living Technologies• With the advent of biotechnologies the

inside and outside of an organism has collapsed

• Systems Architecture can be thought of as part of a continuum of evolving, self organizing systems providing it is made of the ‘right’ kind of materials

Model systems• Systems Biology

(complexity)• Synthetic Biology,

the modification of bio nanotechnology to generate novel biological functions and systems

• Fundamental Living Technologies

Drosophila Melanogaster, theWorld’s most interfered with Organism … probably

Bacteria

Bacteria can be thought of as a super-organismAccording to James Shapiro and Martin Dworkin

Powerful inter-cellular communications systems

Bacterial behaviour is coordinated

Billions of organisms can mobilize to a food source

Quorum sensing and easy genetic programming exploited for the purposes of Bacterial Computing

Diatoms

• Unicellular eukaryotic photosynthetic algae present in aquatic environments

Diatom Nanotechnology

• Diatom nanotechnology e.g. biomineralization, biophotonics, photoluminescence, microfluidics, compustat domestication, multiscale porosity, silica sequestering of proteins, detection of trace gases, controlled drug delivery and computer design

Importance of Diatoms

• The first organisms for which the gap in our knowledge of the relationship between genotype and phenotype is closed

Slime Mould

“In the Dallas suburb of Garland, an Unidentified GrowingObject [big as a platter, foamy and creamy and paleyellow] terrorized Mrs Marie Harris’ back yard for threeweeks until it died of sunstroke and nicotine poisoning.”Newsweek, June 11, 1973

Can move at speeds of up to 2cms per hour

Saprophytic, feed on decaying matter and bacteria

In poor conditions they form spores

Green Algae

Bryopsis, is made of a single giant cell of up to 30 cms

‘Dustbin’ metabolism, can assimilate nano-particles

Tissue Cell Culture

• Transformed animal cells capable of ‘immortality’

• Depend on nutrifying medium for continued growth

• In vitro cultures are very susceptible to bacterial infection

SymbioticA, Victimless Leather

Orlan

• Skin is deceiving and capable of taking on multiple identities

• Cells taken from donors of many ages and races in a collaboration with SymbioticA

Cosmetic surgery as a form of auto-portraiture, in defiance of Godand nature

Harlequin Tissue Culture

Residency at SymbioticA

Stelarc

• Obsolescence of the body

• Flesh is ill suited for survival as its physiological range is narrow

• Technologies augment and replace the body and psyche

Compatibility Between Complex Material Systems

• Man with severed thumb

• Dr Charles Vacanti from the University of Massachusetts

• Coral acts as bioscaffolding for patient bone cell culture

Coral shaped to look like a thumb

Fundamental Living Technology

• Alternative biologies or synthetic chemical systems

• Able to create functional nanotechnology capable of producing autonomous architectures

Photograph courtesy of Martin Hanczyc

Protocells


Spontaneous self organization


Morphological simplicity but hugely complexchemistry consisting of numerous phases


Capable of complex behaviour, movement and primitive sensation


Giant protocells can divide toproduce inert daughter cells


Material Computing

• The ability of molecular systems to make ‘decisions’

• Context sensitive• Problems need to

be well defined• Multiple solutions

The Protein Albumin Denaturing

Semantics of Material Computing

• Problem with semantics of chemical/material systems: what do the results mean?

• Not Turing based

Interference patterns during protocell generation


Outputs of Chemical Computing

• Growth and Development are forms of material computation, Andrew Ellington

• Architecture interprets the semantics of form independently of function

Alba, The GFP Bunny, Eduardo Kac

Limitations

• Scale • Time• Aqueous medium • Continuous Nutrition• Physical limits of

carbon chemistry

Limitations

• Complex Systems are not predictive

• Adjacent Possible, in Reinventing the Sacred, by Stuart Kauffman

Tightrope walk between Twin TowersPhilippe Petit, 1974

Decay & Digestion

• In Systems Architecture these are processes by which it is possible to reconfigure architectural complexity and achieve structural transformation

Detritus

Urban Complexity

• How can the principles of Systems Architecture be applied to the urban environment?

Systems Architecture and the Built Environment

• Donna Haraway’s notion of ‘cyborg’

• Integration of nano-bio-info-cogno systems with built environment

Bjork, All is full of love, Director Chris Cunningham

Systems Architecture and the Extreme Environment

• Beyond our physiological limits the environment has an extreme impact on biology

Sarah Jane Pell, Hydromedusa


• Systems Architecture becomes prosthetic in extreme environments


• Complexity has its limits

• Complexity collapses when there is only one hub that out competes all the others, when it becomes ‘simple’


• “Even though biological organisms span many orders of magnitude in size, their metabolic rates all lie within a single factor of ten. So there does seem to be some kind of broadly optimal rate of energy consumption in our biosphere. Curious. I wonder if it's related to the rate of arrival of solar energy, and planets around different suns, or in different orbits, would have different optimal metabolic rates.” Larry Yaeger

Systems Architecture Perspectives

• With each new philosophical shift in the way that we perceive our world, comes a fresh opportunity to use the science and associated technologies

in innovative ways


• In Systems Architecture biology connects with the psyche, communications networks, landscape, environment, population dynamics and information systems in an integrated gestalt of flow, like a giant

super-organism


• Systems Architecture anticipates the evolution of autonomous and autopoietic* architectures

Autopoiesis*

• The process by which an organization produces itself. An autopoietic organization is an autonomous and self-maintaining unity which contains component-producing processes.

• The components, through their interaction, recursively generate the same network of processes which produced them.

• An autopoietic system is operationally closed and structurally state determined with no apparent inputs and outputs.

• A cell, an organism, and perhaps a corporation are examples of autopoietic systems.

Interdisciplinary Methodology

• Systems Architecture requires inter disciplinary collaboration between biological complexity scientists, fundamental living technologists and architects to explore this new territory

Interdisciplinary Methodology

• Systems Architecture is based in complexity science and takes an experimental approach to architectural practice, resulting in design outcomes

“Cell biology is the new cyberspace and nanotechnology. Once we fully understand the exact nature of how our world makes us and, indeed, how it sometimes kills us, we will be able to make true architectures of ecological connectability.”

Spiller’s Bits: Complex Systems Architecture, 2008

Spillerian Perspective