2_ versioning response

Versioning: Evolutionary Techniques in Architecture; guest edited by SHoP

As these articles are supplementing experiment, it is no wonder they offer more questions than conclusions. Accordingly:

Do the examples of the tail fin and the highway components really deny an original prototype or archetype? Isn’t an archetype an original set of assumption/reactions/conclusions to forces/factors/parameters? What is the value of taking this idea down off an imagined pedestal? Very symbolic.


[When parameters are changed or new input added:
version-oriented model: different versions
change-oriented model: differential relations
time-based model: differentiation between subsequent versions
author-based versioning: modification of versions’ variants]

In the sense that all of these iterations are related as part of a set of parametrically generative resultants, the objects themselves seem to me as a kind of object-vector, in that links of each object’s predecessors and successors are embedded in each permutation.
see: “Each revision or variant, a snapshot of an instant in the evolution of the object, is contained within the versioned object.”

The virtual anonymity of the DynaForm design does not conjure liberated design process and the architect’s reclamation of his professional ownership. Instead it seems to advocate the architect as drone programmer, and only one in “team” of programmers, all politely removed from the original notion of building (out eisenman-ing eisenman).



Rocker: “reckless process” vs. criticism that more than one variable changes at a time

This tangent from the DynaForm reading is related to a piece of a rant a critic recently had in studio regarding the use of animation in the design process. Although nothing about Rocker’s description of the formulaic refinement of the (pre-determined) form suggested any creative abandon, the notion that multiple variations can adjust simultaneously still seems to boggle the too-logical approach of the control variable in diagram development. Establishing changes, or testing conditions, in one variable at a time seems a. infinitely time consuming, and b. obsessively linear. Yet, despite the static nature of buildings’ materialization, the conceptualization of architecture is universally heralded as about space (3dimensional) and sequence (temporal), which describes, as Lynn repeats, a dynamic design environment. Logically, one can only assume simultaneity, and embrace the inevitable accidental information that will arise over time (which either fits right in with Rocker's thesis and/or advocates for the complete opposite).