Contents

  1. Author's Note: The Concept of Living Structure
    1. Real life created by a process in the caribbean
  2. Preface: On Process
    1. 1. A Dynamic view of order
    2. 2. The necessary role of process
    3. 3. Order as Becoming
    4. 4. Process, The Key to Making Life in Things
    5. 5. Our Mechanized Process
    6. 6. Possibility of a New View of Architectural Process
  3. Part 1. Structure-Preserving Transformations
    1. 1. The Principle of Unfolding Wholeness in Nature
    2. 2. Structure-Preserving Transformations
    3. 3. Structure-Preserving Transformations in Traditional Society
    4. 4. Structure-Destroying Transformations in Modern Society
  4. Interlude
    1. 5. Living Process in the Modern Era: Twentieth-Century Cases Where Living Process Did Occur
  5. Part Two: Living Process
    1. 6. Generated Structure
    2. 7. A Fundamental Differentiating Process
    3. 8. Step-by-step Adaptation: Gradual Progress Toward Living Structure
    4. 9. Each Step is Always Helping to Enhance the Whole
    5. 10. Always Making Centers
    6. 11. The Sequence of Unfolding
    7. 12. Every Part Unique
    8. 13. Patterns: Generic Rules for Making Centers
    9. 14. Deep Feeling
    10. 15. Emergence of Formal Geometry
    11. 16. Form Language and Style
    12. 17. Simplicity
  6. Part Three: A New Paradigm for Process in Society
    1. 18. Encouraging Freedom
    2. 19. Massive Process Difficulties
    3. 20. The Spread of Living Processes Throughout Society: Making the Shift to the New Paradigm
    4. 21. The Role of the Architect in the Third Millennium
  7. Conclusion
    1. Appendix: A Small Example of a Living Process

Author's Note: The Concept of Living Structure

The basic idea of Book 1 is this: Throughout the world, in the organic as in the inorganic, it is possible to make a distinction between living structure and non-living structure.

Strictly speaking, every structure has some degree of life. The main accomplishment of Book 1 is in making this distinction precise, in providing empirical methods for observing and measuring degree of life as it occurs in different structures. Perhaps most important, I gave in Book 1 partly mathematical account of living structure, so that we may see the content of living structure, its functional and geometric order, as an established and objective feature of reality.

The question is, How is living structure to be made by human being? What kind of human-inspired processes can create living structure?

Real life created by a process in the caribbean

It should be repeated again and again, and understood, that the capacity of a society to create living structure in its architecture is a dynamic capacity which depends on the nature and character of the processes used to create form, and to create the precise sequence and character of the unfoldings that occur during the daily creation of building form and landscape form and street form.

For this purpose I shall, in the chapters of this book, move from the technical language of structure-preserving process to the broader and more intuitive language of living process. I shall define a living process as any process that is capable of generating living structure.

Above all, the living processes which I shall describe, are - as it turns out - enormously complex. The idea that all living processes are structure-preserving turns out to be merely the tip of a very large iceberg of hidden complexity. The subject of living process is a topic of great richness, which is likely to keep us occupied for centuries as we try to master its variety of meanings and its attributes and potentialities.

Preface: On Process

1. A Dynamic view of order

Book 1 invited us to see the world around us - buildings, plants, a painting, our own faces and hands - as field-like structures with centers arranged in a systematic fashion and interacting within the whole. When a structure is living we will feel the echo of our own aliveness in response to it.

Book 2 takes the necessary next step of investigating the process of how living structure creates itself over time;

Book 2 invites us to consider the role and importance of process and how it is living or not. It is about the fact that that order cannot be understood sufficiently well in purely static terms because there is something essentially dynamic about order. Living structure can be attained in practice, and will become fully comprehensible and reachable, only from a dynamic understanding. Indeed the nature of order is interwoven in its fundamental character with the nature of the process which create the order.

When we look at order dynamically, the concept of living structure itself undergoes some change. Book 1 focused on the idea of living structure, and the viewpoint was geometric, static. In Book 2, I start with a second concept, based on the idea of an unfolded structure. The point of view -- even for the structure itself -- is dynamic.

The two conceptions of structure turns out to be complementary. In the end we shall see that living structure and unfolded structure are equivalent. All living structure is unfolded and all unfolded structure is living. And I believe the concept of an unfolded structure is as important, and should play as essential a role in architecture, as the concept of *living* structure. Thus we shall end up with two equivalent views -- one static, one dynamic -- of the same idea.

2. The necessary role of process

What process can accomplish the subtle and beautiful adaptation of the parts that will create a living architecture? In a certain sense, the answer is simple. We have to make -- or generate -- the ten thousand living centers in the bulding, one by one. That is the core fact. And the ten thousand centers, to be living centers, must be beautifully adapted to one another within the whole: each must fit the others, each must contribute to the others, and the ten thousand centers then -- if they are truly living -- must form a coherent and harmonious whole.

It is generally assumed that doing all this well is the proper work of an architect. This is what an architect is supposed to do. It is what an architect is trained to do. And -- in theory -- it is what an architect knows how to do. There is a general belief that how it is done by the architect and others is part of the mystery of the art; one does not ask too many questions about it.

Thus we shall see that processes (both of design and of construction) are more important, and larger in their effect on the quality of buildings, than the ability or training of the architet. Process play a more fundamental role in determining the life or death of the building than does the "design."

3. Order as Becoming

The waves of the ocean are the flowing product of the process of interaction between wind and water. ... In each case, the whole system of order we observe is only an instantaneous cross section, in time, of a continuous and ongoing process of flux and change.

일리아 프리고진이 여기서 나와? 자기조직화 참고.

4. Process, The Key to Making Life in Things

"Yes, this daily ordinary things is almost more important than the other."

But it is the two together: the daily pleasure, breathing in the smell of newly cut grass, with the deeper knowledge that goes with it that in this process he is making a living structure, up ther on the ridge of the Berkeley hills.

Once we recognize the possibility that some centers will be helpful to the life of an existing wholeness, while others will be antagonistic to it, we then begin to recognize the possibility of a highly complex kind of self-consistency in any given wholeness.

What is fascinating, then is the hint of a conception of value which emerges dynamically from respect for existing structure. We do not need any arbitrary or external criterion of value. The value exists within the unfolding of the wholeness itself. ... When the wholeness unfolds naturally, value is created.

That is the origin of living structure.

The further I went to understand the actual process which had been used to make the tile, the more I realized that it was this process, more than anything, which governs the beauty of the design. Perhaps nine-tenths of its character, its beauty, comes simply from the process that the maker followed. ... The design is indeed beautiful, yes. But it can only be made as beautiful as it is within the technique, or process, used to make it. And once one uses this technique, the design -- what appears as the sophisticated beauty of the design -- follows almost without thinking, just as a result of following the process.

The "design" of this beautiful work is not more than a tenth of what gives it its life. Nine-tenths comes from the process.

This gradual rubbing together of phenomena to get the right result, the slow process of getting things right, is almost unknown to us today.

5. Our Mechanized Process

반면 오늘날은, ...

They have been designed and constructed with no knowledge of the building at all; they are mentally and factually separate from its existence, but are brought into play only by a process of assembly.

The trouble is that it is mechanical process only, something which subverts the inner fire of true living process.

In a mechanistic view of the world, we see all things, even if for convenience, as machines. A machine is intended to accomplish something. It is, in its essence, goal-oriented.

For in fact, everything is constantly changing, growing, evolving.

Why is this process-view essential? Because the ideals of "design", the corporate broadroom drawing of the imaginary future, the developer's slick watercolor perspective of the future end-state, control our conception of what must be done - yet they bear no relation to the actual nature, or problems, or possibilities, of a living environment.

6. Possibility of a New View of Architectural Process

I shall argue that every good process in architecture, and in city planning also, treats the world as a whole and allows every action, every process, to appear as an unfolding of that whole. When living structure is created, what is to be built is made consistent with the whole, it comes from the whole, it nourishes and protects the whole.

We may get some inkling of this kind of thing by considering what it means to design a building, and to compare it with what it means to make a building.

More deeply, what it means for me to make a building is that I am totally responsible for it.

This is in marked contrast with the present idea of architecture, where as an architect I am desinitely not responsible for everything. I am only responsible for my particular part in the process, for my set of drawings, which will then function, within the system, in a strictly limited fashion that is shut off from the whole. I have limited responsibility.

When I make something, on the other hand, I am deeply involved with it and responsible for it. And not only I. ... In a good process, each person working on the building is -- and feels -- responsible for everything.

I shall prove that a process which is not based on making in a holistic sense, cannot create a living structure.

However, since the distinction between living process and non-living process has now become visible, and since, for the time being, we have no precise conception or definition of living process, it has become urgent that we try to get one.

.

Wholeness, defined structurally, is the inter-locking, nested, overlapping system of centers that exists in every part of space.

Part 1. Structure-Preserving Transformations

In the first four chapters I focus on the idea that a living process always has enormous respect for the state (and morphology and form) of what exists, and always finds a next step forward which preserves the structure of what exists, and develops and extends its latent structure as it creates change, or evolution, or development. This is the process which is "creative."

In chapters 1 and 2, I address these issues for cases in the natural world, and provide the outline of a tentative approach that helps us understand the unfolding of geometry in biology and physics. This theory provides the underpinning for what follows. In chapters 3 and 4, I turn my attention to the BUILT world, to towns and buildings and to the way the emergence of living structure in towns and buildings may be understoode within that context of theory.

1. The Principle of Unfolding Wholeness in Nature

1. Introduction

How does nature create living structure?

It is, in a more general sense, the character of all that we perceive as "nature". The living structure is the general morphological character which natural phenomena have in common.

What I call the living structure of nature is also largely governed by these fifteen properties and their interaction and superposition.

But why does living structure, with its multiplicity of centers and their associated fifteen properties, keep making its appearance in the natural world? Why and how, does living structure keep recurring in these widely different domains? What is the mechanics of the process by which living structure is made to appear, so easily, in nature? What is the process by which this kind of structure repeatedly, and persistently, occurs?

I start by trying to understand nature in a new way. Once we have that understanding, we may have a basis for thinking about architectural process and for creating a living world in the realm of architecture. In a good building, as in nature, there is also living structure. Each living center contains thousands of living centers; and the centers support each other in an intricate pattern.

"To learn how to create living structure in buildings, we had better start by looking at nature."

Note for the Scientific Reader

2. Structure-Preserving Transformations

1. Structure-Preserving Transformations

1장에서, 나는 모든 natural process가 어떻게든 "smooth"하다는 것을 소개했다.

process가 "smooth"하다는 것은 무슨 의미인가? 나는 smooth transformation을, preserve structure and wholeness한 transformation이라고 정의한다. 앞으로 이런 유형의 transformation을 structure-preserving transformation이라고 하겠다.

as a result of the repeated application of structure-preserving transformation to the wholeness which exists.

이 장의 스케치를 봐라.

매 단계마다, 추가(addition)나 주입(injection)이 있다. 어떠한 새로운 center가 도입된다. 하지만 이 새 센터는 foreign body처럼 무작위로 추가되지 않는다. It grows out of what was there before.

나는 존재하는 센터를 강화한다. 비록 그것이 처음에는 숨겨져 있고 약할지라도. 이 센터를 강화함으로써, 나는 센터들의 시스템 가운데 새로운 균형(balance)을 만들어낸다. 그리고 indeed disk를 통틀어 a modified system of centers를 야기한다. wholness가 변화했다. 센터들의 상대적인 강도가 변했기 때문이다. 그 센터들은 대단히 변하지 않았고, 살짝 변했다. 하지만 이 약간의 변화가 전체 구성의 wholeness를 바꾸었고, 그것은 우리가 강화를 했기 때문이고, 새로운 구조는 more highly differentiated than before has been created. 이것이 내가 구조-보존 변화라고 부르는 것이다.

D1->D2로의 변화를 살펴보자.

  1. 이 구조-보존 변화는 유일하지는 않다. 다른, 존재하며 숨겨져 있는 센터들이 강화되기 위해 선택될 수도 있었다. 하지만 그 선택지가 무한히 많지는 않다. 몇 개 되지 않는다.
  2. 새 구조는 이전의 텅 빈 원보다 조금 더 생명이 있다. 대단하지는 않지만, 조금, 하지만 알아챌 정도로.
  3. D2는, D1의 wholeness를 취하고, 그것을 강화하여 도달했다. 다른 말로, it arises from the structure as a whole, not from a fragmented portion of the structure. And it arises from a process that enhances and embellishes that whole.
  4. 이 rudimentary transformation에서도, 새로운 전체(whole)로서, D2가, emerge했고, 몇몇 15가지 속성들은 벌써부터 조금 강하게 나타나기 시작했다. 가운데 작은 원은 CONTRAST를 가지고 있고, GOOD SHAPE을 가지고 있고, 그것의 크기는 선택되었기 때문에, 그 주위의 빈 ring 공간은 BOUNDARY를 형성하는 등이다.
  5. 완전히 새로운 것은 어떤 것도 주입(injected)되지 않았다는 것에 주목하라. 새로움은 이미 존재하던 것을 강화하여 창조되었다. 그래서 그 과정(procedure)은 보존적(conservative. 기존에 존재하던 구조를 존중하기 때문에)이기도 하고 혁신적(innovative. 새로운 구조를 만들어냈고, 그것은 D1의 older structure에서는 보이지 않던 것이다)이기도 하다.

D2->D3, D3->D4, D4->D5, D5->D6, D6->D7 각각의 변화는 동일하게 동작했다. 앞의 다섯 가지 포인트는 매 단계에서 모두 일어났다.

2. Structure-Preserving Transformations Further Discussion

3. Structure-Preserving Transformations in Traditional Society

4. Structure-Destroying Transformations in Modern Society

Interlude

5. Living Process in the Modern Era: Twentieth-Century Cases Where Living Process Did Occur

Part Two: Living Process

6. Generated Structure

7. A Fundamental Differentiating Process

8. Step-by-step Adaptation: Gradual Progress Toward Living Structure

1. Introduction

모든 living process의 가장 기본적이면서도 필수적인 특징(feature)은 점진적(gradualy)이라는 것일 것이다.

살아있는 구조는 천천히, 한 발짝 한 발짝씩 emerge한다. 그리고 프로세스가 한 발짝씩 진행되는 동안, 지속적인 피드백(continuous feedback)이 있어서, 프로세스가 시스템을 더 큰(greater) 전체성(wholeness), 응집성(coherence), 적응(adaptation)으로 이끌게 한다. 생물학자나 생태학자에게는 이것이 self-evident하다.

현대 건축은 이와는 반대이다. process of design도, process of construction도 이렇게 작동하지 않는다. 그 대신에,

어떤 경우에도, the core of all living process는, step-by-step adaptation이다 - the modification and evolution which happen gradually in response to information about the extent to which an emerging structure supports and embellishes the whole. It is a necessary, unavoidable core.

(어떤 면에서는, 고대의 건축들은 기술의 한계 등으로 인해서 매우 천천히, 그리고 여러 시대에 걸쳐서 점진적으로 이루어졌을테고, 그게 living structure를 담지하게 되는데 도움이 되지는 않았을까?)

2. Back to Generated Structure Once Again

living process에 대한 most fundamental thing은, the geometry of living structure는 markedly different in kind from the geometry of design done on a drawing board or on the drafting system of a computer.

수선화를 만든다고 생각해보자. 수선화에 있는 수십억개의 원자들을 미리 설계한 청사진에 따라서 원자 핀셋으로 하나하나 배열해서 수선화를 만들 수 있을까? 그렇게 만들어진 꽃은 죽어있을까 살아있을까?

짧게 말해서, 우리가 살아있는 수선화를 만들려면, 단순하게 구근을 심고, 그것을 자라게 할 것이다. 우리는 직관적으로, 그 growth process가 바로 수선화의 비밀이라는 것을 안다. 살아있는 꽃은 comes from the fact that it has unfolded, step by step.

(살아있는) 건물 만들기도 크게 다르지 않다. 그 경우에도, must be allowed to unfold. 그것은, 수선화와 같이, it must take form step by step, in real time, both before construction and during construction. living structure의 geometry는 정적인(static) 설계나 생산에 의해 만들어지지 않는다. 수선화에서와 같이, it can be created only by the unfolding process itself. ... it really must unfold, in real time.

물방울이 떨어지는 모양. 이것도 어떤 정적인 그림이나 설계로는 그 모양을 만들 수 없고, 공중에서 물방울이 떨어지면서 물리법칙과 끊임없이 영향을 주고받으며 변화하면서 만들어진다.

그 모양은 컴퓨터 시뮬레이션으로 만들어질 수도 있다. 왜냐면 시뮬레이션은, 최소한 원칙적으로는, may resemble the real process by creating a succession of adaptations that build up the shape gradually. 하지만 it cannot be created by a static, non-dynamic act of draftmanship or design. ... 그것의 shape은 동적(dynamically)으로만 만들어질 수 있다. The shape of the water drop has living structure, as defined by 1권에서의 criteria. It is also, from what I have just described, a generated structure, arrived at by unfolding.

우리 시대에 그러한 프로세스의 현대 버전을 가지려면, we must have a process in society that is capable of generating the form of building dynamically, step by step. This must be true both of the process of design and of the process of construction.

3. Getting Things Right

nessary process를 그려(visualize)보자. 문앞 계단을 제대로 만든다고 해보자. 되게 많은 것들이 고려되어야 한다. We may start to visualize the necessary process by considering what it means to build a front doorstep correctly. Suppose I want to make a front doorstep outside a house, and I want to make it just right.

예를 들어, 계단이 편안하게 걸을 수 있는 적당한 높이와 깊이인지 아닌지는 직접 밟아보지 않고는 알 수 없습니다. 하지만 시도해 보려면 걸을 수 있을 만큼 단단한 무언가가 있어야 합니다. (실제 조작할 수 있는 환경을 만들어서, 실험/시도를 해봐야 안다는 얘기) For example, I can't really tell if the step is just the right height and depth to walk onto comfortably without trying it out. But to try it out I must have something which is solid enough to walk on.

I can get an idea of what feels right by using stones or bricks or blocks to help myself find out what seems to work. I can also do it with lumps of woods, with anything almost that gives me some opportunity to test it out, and check it for its comfort. (이런 저런 재료들을 가지고 만들어보고, 느낌을 보고, 편안한지 확인해보고.) 그러면(그제서야) 계단을 만들 수 있다. 또는, I can do the same even while I am building the step: 예를 들어, I can lay a course of blocks or brick, then check it, and then adjust it with an inch of mortar on top if it seems too low, or with an extra half-block of depth if it seems too short. 모든 사건들(event) 속에서, 내가 뭔가 harmonious한걸 원한다면, 나는 이 process of actually building the step이나 process of having it materialize concretely를 분리(separate)하지 못한다, from the process of figuring it out and gradually finding out what to do. I can get an idea of what feels right by using stones or bricks or blocks to help myself find out what seems to work. I can also do it with lumps of wood, with anything almost that gives me some opportunity to test it out, and check it for its comfort. Then I can build the step. Or I can do the same even while I am building the step: for instance, I can lay a course of block or brick, then check it, and then adjust it with an inch of mortar on top if it seems too low, or with an extra half-block of depth if it seems too short. At all events, if I want something harmonious, I cannot separate the process of actually building the step, and of having it materialize concretely, from the process of figuring it out and gradually finding out what to do.

이 프로세스들은 살아있는 센터들(living centers)의 탄생(creation)에 직접 맞닿아 있다. 문앞 계단을 만드는 동안, I am trying to make each part of it a living center. 예를 들자면, 그건 이런걸 의미한다. 맨 윗 계단을 a strongly felt center로 만들 수 있는 정확한 깊이와 너비를 찾고 싶다고 하자. 그러기 위해서는, 이 strong centeredness of the top step은 is created out of the wholeness of 그것을 둘러싼, 나는 반드시 문자적으로 "get" the step - 그것의 크기, 모양, 높이 - from the surroundings, and from the wholeness of the surroundings. These processes tie in directly with the creation of living centers. As I make the doorstep, I am trying to make each part of it a living center. That means, for instance, I want to find the exact depth and width which make the top a strongly felt center. To do it, since this strong centeredness of the top step is created out of the wholeness of what surrounds it, I must literally "get" the step - its size, shape, height - from the surroundings, and from the wholeness of the surroundings. The existence of the step as a center comes about as a function of the centers in the path, wall, garden, ground, and trees all around. It arises from the wholeness of these existing centers in such a subtle way that I could never hope to get it right merely by studying drawings of the surrounding centers, or from memory, or from any other indirect method. It is only when I am actually standing inside the wholeness of what exists that I can reliably create a step which will be a true living center inside this wholeness.

Thus to create a living center at all -- even in this one tiny case -- I must try to do it in the actual place, and be thinking while I do it. Such a dynamic process is a necessity which must be going on in order to make living centers at all.

So, to get a fully adapted world, the same principle has to be extended to cover all scales including even things which are a million times as big.

4. Step-By-Step Adaptation

5. Feedback

6. The Result Must Be Unpredictable

7. Unfolding of a Painting by Matisse

8. Architectural Implications

9. Overall Implications

복잡한 buildings, towns, streets들을 만들어내는데 - 설계와 시공 모두에 있어서 - 한 단계 한 단계씩(step by step) 앞으로, 피드백과 함께, in a minutely careful process of adaptation which can, 연속적으로(continuously), 올바르게 할 때만 getting life하는데 성공할 것이다.

우리의 생산 수단을 완전히 바꿔야 한다. step-by-step adaptation이 가능한 방식으로.

9. Each Step is Always Helping to Enhance the Whole

10. Always Making Centers

11. The Sequence of Unfolding

12. Every Part Unique

13. Patterns: Generic Rules for Making Centers

14. Deep Feeling

15. Emergence of Formal Geometry

16. Form Language and Style

17. Simplicity

Part Three: A New Paradigm for Process in Society

18. Encouraging Freedom

19. Massive Process Difficulties

20. The Spread of Living Processes Throughout Society: Making the Shift to the New Paradigm

21. The Role of the Architect in the Third Millennium

Conclusion

Appendix: A Small Example of a Living Process

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