On growth and form: A review by Kirstie Jackson
Chapter 1
The geometrical construction of a honeycomb can be argued that it was build due to the bee’s natural, psychical instinct over a random act. The bee’s skill and ingenuity are evident in the innovative structure of the honeycomb and can be seen in designs throughout the architecture world, be it in a façade design or even the shape of a window, door or floor layout. Bees build these honeycomb structures and are constantly making amends or improvements, almost like they are building as a solution for future problems. This kind of work ethic is seen in architects and artists as well, as designers we build for the present and future problems that a building or city may have. This can include certain provisions for global warming and climate change, designers design buildings with the future in mind. We ask ourselves; will this material be strong enough to withstand strong winds? Or floods? It could be argued that this way of thinking and designing may be an instinct of ours, or humans learning from the past generation’s mistakes when it came to design. However, without the advances in design throughout the years we would not get to where we are, so this could be the same for bees. They might have learnt from past mistakes from generations before, it could be a biological instinct.
Chapter 2
It is a common fact that through time is when the growth of an object or organism will increase. It is in our biological instinct for us to be attracted to a larger size, in relation to how we view bigger buildings. We will be drawn to a bigger building with a larger floor space, it is in our nature to want to have larger objects in our life. Due to the influences around us, we see large buildings as a sign of wealth. It is the same in nature, a bear will be more drawn to catching a bigger fish than a small one. The bear is probably thinking that a bigger fish equals a better and larger chance of survival. However, there is in fact no absolute scale in nature, for example a ‘small elephant’ and a ‘big rat’. We are made to think that magnitude is a relative matter, when in fact it is not. As designers, we should not think of the bigger the better or the smaller a building it the less value it holds. In nature, scale changes according to the environment around it, this can be seen when a fruit’s dimensions and weight increases this in turn forces the stalk to grow accordingly to fit the proportions. This makes me wonder, did we get our obsessive need to create proportionate buildings from nature? It seems like it is our need to create aesthetically pleasing structures, almost mirroring the way nature forms to adapt with the environment. In the same way we try and create buildings that adapt well both physically and aesthetically to the site.
Chapter 3
This chapter talks of the differing forms of soap bubble cells, and how the ultimate form of a bubble can influences the form of a design – this could include the Eden project. According to Plateau’s surfaces of revolution there are six ‘types’ of forms, these include: the plane, the cylinder, the sphere, the catenoid, the unduloid and the nodoid. There were various experiments such as Worthington’s experiment that was carried out to try and create these different abstract forms with oil and wire rings. These tests showed that different forms can be created with everyday media and can work as a building structure. It is like how we experiment with concept designs when designing buildings and depending on the result the design would be either developed or left alone. Another experiment included dropping a pebble on the water to create a ripple effect, this makes me question if experiments like this inspired designers to create ‘ripple effect’ facades on buildings, artwork and wall designs. Looking at these designs gives you a direct connection to nature and its various beautiful patterns, no ripple will be the same as the next but it’s in human nature to repeat beautiful textures in designs. Architecture is a copycat and develop career, we see a beautiful design in another’s design and cannot help but replicate it and make the design our own. Furthermore, there was an experiment that involved ink being dropped into a bucket of water, and it showed that the ink was flowing through the water creating roots and expanding. This relates to road networks and master planning where they would try and create roots and networks within cities or the expansion of cities. People like to be linked to one another, so they are constantly joining other settlements and expanding the roots of a city or town’s boundary.
Chapter 4
This chapter talks about the forms of tissues and cells. One aspect I thought was interesting were the delicate veins on a dragonfly’s wings because this made me think of the networks and connections on street maps. As I mentioned before, humans have a learnt instinct to create beautiful structures, you can always find organic patterns in man made things such as the lattice work on various facades that act as shading devices for buildings. Additionally, as you can see in a honeycomb structure, there would be a constant uniformed shape. If there are tensions or pressure externally the cells will be fixed by the bees to mold back together again, this is very similar to how slum dwellers fix their self-built houses if they were destroyed. They would work together as a community to fix the problem, we are physically different to bees, but we still manage to share an instinct to help each other as a community. In addition to this, cells will find a way to fit into a limited amount of space and adapt to the space that they are forced into and thus, creating a different form to what they were before. This is very similar, if not the same to how slums are heaped together like these cells. Both inside the houses and how the houses fit with the environment around it. The slums are built in a way where it is space efficient, they do not follow a certain rule when building, if it fits and works, then that is good enough for them. These slums are built for survival and are not planned.
Chapter 5
This chapters contains the argument between form being directly affected by genes and form being affected by physical forces instead. If form is affected by heredity, then it shows in various forms in nature such as a beehive or an ant mound. It is not a coincidence that both these natural forms have the same proportions and very similar (if not the same) shape. It could be argued that the making of the form is a biologically instinct that is passed through the gene, generation after generation. There is a suggestion that there we have a record in our genes that holds ancient events or ways of our race, for example there are a flock of bird that migrate every year through an ocean instead of taking the land route. Could there be a possibility that their genes that have been passed down from their ancestors could be directing them to lost continents, sunken islands or even bridges across ancient seas? Could it be an instinct? Or even a biological memory that is repeated? This theory can be seen in architecture, in a way that we follow the old design techniques from past architects, however, instead of copying it completely we develop and redevelop these ideas. Therefore, most of the time we see that architecture is quite similar depending on what area you are in; an example could be the terrace houses in London. Also, this could also explain why countries have a distinct architectural style, the design styles have been passed on from old traditions and customs. On the other hand, it is argued that forms could change because it is forced to adapt to the constant change in the physical forces in our environment. Within architecture, we can see this being carried out now with the new sustainable technologies that could help lower a buildings carbon footprint and then in turn helping climate change. Designers also mold buildings into forms where it could take advantage of the environment around it, for example, pitched roofs help drain rainwater into gutters. I personally think that form is not caused by just one of these examples, form is produced by both our ‘genes’ or ‘memories; as well as the physical forces around, because we do take old designs of houses and adapt them to the changing climate around us.
Chapter 6
This chapter concentrates on the spirals within nature and references both flowers and trunks of various animals, there are two different spirals covered: Spiral of Archimedes (e.g., snails shell) and the equiangular spiral (a horn or tusk). Spirals can be found in the florets of a sunflower, the outline of a cordiform leaf, the coil of an elephant’s trunk and even a ram’s horn. As mentioned previously, the forms of nature are molded and changed as new particles are added to older particles – you would gradually see these aspects within nature be reshaped but still maintain a spiral shape. This made me think back to how slums have been reshaped and combined into existing and old structures to create new spaces, such as the slums in Giza/Cairo in which the people within the slums have claimed existing reinforced concrete structures and built their home inside. The external force in this case are the slum dwellers, they change the form of the original structure to fit their ideal home inside and they make the most of the space that is given. An example of a spiral in nature is an elephant’s tusks, as they grow older the tusk grows from a ‘soft’ spiral to a more pronounced spiral. The growth of the ‘spiral’ is so gradual that you cannot tell what part of the tusk is old or new, similarly the slums do not seem to have a begin or end. There is no way of knowing when the first slum was built, it is a big mismatch of materials and people that are so condensed that have been merged. However, this type of spiral should not be mistaken as the same as a snail’s spiraled shell. A snail's shell starts from and ‘origin’ point that remains an important and unchanging structure within the spiral, and the spiral then grows from the spiral. This shell is a spiral of Archimedes, in which the spiral’s radius revolves uniformly around the origin. We can relate this to the origin point in cities, and how they are the most important areas which draw people in from all over to come and settle for the various job opportunities, this is how most slums are formed and how they develop a ‘spiral’ of settlements around the cities and large settlements.
Chapter 7
explains the shapes of horns, teeth and tusks. There are three types of horns that are spoken about: a rhino’s horn, a sheep/goat’s horn and antlers. A rhino’s horn is physiologically equivalent to a mass of consolidated hairs, like hair, the horn consists of ‘formed’ and non-living material with living tissues being added continually. As the animal ages the horn changes shape, and as the horn becomes heavier during time the horn will bend down and change direction. This is like how slums have no certain direction of growth as it grows, it is random and inconsistent. The slums are very similar to the living bone (aka. rhino’s horn), as they are both ‘living’ structures that change forms within time. In addition to this, sheep have rings that are formed year by year around their horns and these can be used to represent the age of the sheep. This aspect of a sheep’s horn makes me think of how cities and settlements are formed around a point of interest and as the city grows people make ‘rings’ of settlements around the city, it is a common feature around large areas of water such as the River Thames. However, we may not be able to tell the age of a city just by looking at how many ‘rings’ it has formed but we could see how much a city has physically grown over the years.
Chapter 8
This chapter covers the link between form and mechanical efficiency, mechanical forces operate upon a living structure to modify it to make it mechanically efficient. It starts off with explaining that a cell’s sensitivity towards external and internal forces are a factor to their adaptiveness, this can be seen in slums and how the people who live in them adapt the structures to flow with the environment around them. They are built around cities and the people, like cells, learn to adapt in these poor conditions to survive. It is in our nature to adapt as early as when we were embryos, the soles of our feet thicken without us needing to use them until months after we are born. Also, our bones develop in ways to help maintain the strength to help us walk, when viewing an x-ray of a human femur it was evident that the bone resembled a ‘diagram’ of the liens of stress and directions of the tension and the compression in the loaded structure. This shows that nature played a direct part in creating and strengthening the bone in the manner and direction in which strength was required, when compared to an image of a crane head it is very similar. In the crane head you could see the pressure lines that are grouped in the direction of the pressure until they create a close bundle flowing down the compressed side of the shaft. There are also tensions lines that run up the opposite side of the shaft and spread to the head and links the system of compression lines together. There is a direct connection between how we design these structures and how nature how design us, we build structures to withstand the heavy weights and pressure just like how nature has built us to withstand the weight of our bodies.
Chapter 9
In chapter 9 it covers the transformations and comparison of related forms. There is an example of allometry growth in a fiddler crab. Male crabs tend to have one larger claw and one normal sized claw, the larger claw grows at a faster rate than the rest of its body. This event happens in humans as well, when we are babies our arms and legs grow faster than our heads and our eyes stay the same size. It happens so often that we hardly notice it, but this disproportionate sizing may explain why we find babies cute. I could argue that this can be linked to the pace a city grows at, there could be some areas that a city could grow faster than others, depending on the wealth and opportunities that are offered within this area. Furthermore, there has been evidence to suggest that there is a link between mathematics and nature for example, an equation to a curve. However, sometimes math's cannot help, but we can use it to define the shape of a snail’s shells or the twist of a horn. It is common knowledge that mathematics is used regularly in architecture, both mathematics, physics and art are essential in designing a building. Mathematics is used in the build environment to work our room sizes, floor areas, wall thicknesses, heights and more. This chapter then dives into proportions in nature, it talks about how there are differences between one ‘species’ and another are merely differences of proportion, like how cities are different sizes in each country but are practically the same when it comes to what it provides: such as services and utilities.