October 2015  Isabelle Neubauer

 

 

 

 

 

ABSTRACT

 

This paper will investigate the relationship between the application of optimum generative typologies and ecological systems in regards to morpho-ecological architecture. Ecology is defined by Hensel, Michael & Menges, Achim in Morpho- Ecologies – Towards an Inclusive Discourse on Heterogenous Architecture (2006:16) as the “study of the biological relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surrounding environment1”, whilst morpho-ecology is the direct correlation of morphogenesis and ecology identified as a new framework for architects to formulate a synthesised approach grounded within the biological paradigm inclusive of the conerns of optimum functionality and performance2. This new branch of innovative architecture has emerged fundementally from profoundly differentiated, heterogeneous situations within which antagonostic and unconnected buildings were originally sited as stated by Greg Lynn in Architectural Curvilinarity (1993). By analysing Enric Ruiz-Geli’s Villa Nurbs (2003), it is possible to determine how the application of generative typologies, in particular Nature as a module, materiality as a system, and curvilinearity, combined with a completely technologically mediated eco- system within the building itself can result in an optimum way of living. The exploration of curvature as a typology proposes the significant consequences on the design, production, behaviour and effect of material form. By returning to Nature as a source and module for building, a theoretical reconsideration of how architecture is formally generated, designed, or even grown to be self-sustaining including  organising systems for new types of inhabitation, can be questioned. This proposes an architecture which changes form across space. With time, this strategically nests capacities within the material principles that make up the built environment, in which such an approach can be related from living nature. Rather than design a determined outcome, the focus of morpho-ecology is defining, evolving and instrumentalising the behaviour of a material system, with the typologies as a performer of ecology.​

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Throughout the last two decades, architecture has taken a huge step in the development of new technologies. The crucial role of visualisations, representations, and fabrications have critically progressed through the emergence of sustainable and integrated digital tools. This leads to an increase in the importance and priority of design with a crucial  role in architectural design, offering a new paradigm in levels of education, research and architectural practice. A main goal has been to explore new digital technologies and the contribution they make in solving challenges presented to society through architecture today. Social responsibility demands greater sensitivity to innovation, thus architecture is evolving into far more of an infrastructure capability of taking on a variety of spatial    and functional programs, than the actual physical edifice[1]. Progressing from Modernism and Louis Sullivan’s (1896:403) “form ever follows function”[2], a slight alteration is perceivable in a new law of “form follows performance”. This leads to a new era of sustainable architecture; morpho-ecologies, where buildings are self-sustaining and take on a new level in functionality and performance. Through the investigation of the relationship between the application of optimum generative typologies and ecological systems, Enric Ruiz Geli’s Villa Nurbs can be explored as a key case study in this new stage of technology in relation to morpho-ecological architecture.

 

 

ECOLOGY & MORPHO-ECOLOGY

 

In order to understand the use generative typologies and ecological systems in Villa Nurbs and mopho-ecological buildings, the difference between ecology and morpho- ecology must be determined. Ecology is defined by Hensel, Michael & Menges (2006:16),  Achim in Morpho-Ecologies – Towards an Inclusive Discourse on Heterogenous Architecture as the “study of the biological relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surrounding environment”[3]. Morpho-ecology is the direct correlation of morphogenesis and ecology that has been identified as a new framework for architects to formulate a synthesised approach, one grounded within the biological paradigm inclusive of the conerns of optimum functionality and performance[4].

 

Whilst morpho-ecologies are produced from new architectural technologies, architectural history is still relevant to determine the beginning and inspiration of this new era of architecture. Architectural history explores large number of spatial strategies that relate to the organisation of habitation. The Modernist discourse of Le Corbusier and Adolf Loos explores cellular, labyrinth and universal spatial arrangements, whilst Eisenmann, associated with the Deconstructivism era, remove traces of humanism, playing with absence and buildings without functionality[5]. Both historical movements explore two main spatial arrangements being; 1) the corridor and cellular room arrangement, and 2) the open plan. The cumulative effect of architecture over the last two centuries has been likened to a general lobotomy, one that has performed on society at large and, obliterating vast areas of social experience. The relentless partitioning of space along the corridor and cellular room arrangement has reduced the possibility of rich varied social formations through means of segregation and for the sake of privacy and security. The consequence is an excessively partitioned space that in its   constituents, characteristics and effect is both homogeneous and homogenising in many respects. The morph-ecological approach aims for a more integral design approach to correlate object, environment and subject into a synergetic dynamic relationship.

 

The theoretical and methodological framework is concerned with intensive differentiation of material and energetic interventions that has evolved from specific behavioural tendencies in a given environment. Their mutual feedback relationship and passive modulation strategies are sustainable with speculation on the resultant relationship between spatial and social arrangements and habitational pattern and potentials. The intention is to achieve richly varied heterogeneous spatial arrangements, profusely conditioned by microclimatic variation, that provide for migratory human activities and active social formations. To better understand the emergence of a preference for heterogeneous space, existing and historical performative architectures can be analysed in order to collect strategies for context-specific passive environmental modulation and related dynamic modes of habitation[6]. This allows an improvement in contemporary technological, social and cultural context-specific performative capacities.

 

Architecture has its own ecology and relationships within a building, a system itself. Morpho-ecological buildings mointor how much it sweats, breathes, consumes, how many people us it, and how well it performs. It can be defined a building of optimisation meaning it is a facility management tool and well as a functioning and aesthetically pleasing space. In particular, the skin of the building becomes a performer of ecology and hence it can be looked to ecological systems and nature as the building blocks for a generative typology[7].

 

 

ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

 

Villa Nurbs (2003) questions the possibility of whether an optimum way of living can result from applied generative typologies that are combined with a completely technologically mediated eco-system within the building itself. The inspiration for new technology comes from living ecological systems that surround everyday life. Ecological systems are defined by Brown (1999: 23) as “open systems that maintain themselves far from thermodynamic equilibrium” that is “achieved through the uptake and shift of energy and the exchange of organisms and matter across their arbitrary boundires.”[8] In general, architects have been intent on imitating nature since the very beginning. Rock art marking on cave walls, lotus inspired columns in Egyptians architecture and   Roman’s acanthus columns all imitate Nature. Nature motifs continue to appear in architecture within its history. In more recent times, Enric Ruiz-Geli from the firm Cloud 9, develops synthetic trees and villas that resemble biological cell structures mimicking mitochondrial shapes and nucleic cores[9]. Advancement in technologies has lead architecture to become its own architectural biology, where the subject has become bigger than just the building itself. It is only by theoretical and technical experimentation that it is possible to mitigate the disasters that rational and pragmatic architects have permitted for most of the 20th century.

 

 

VILLA NURBS

 

Villa Nurbs is located in a coastal suburban city, close to Barcelona in Spain. Unlike   folksy yet faux conventional examples of the surrounding houses, Villa Nurbs rises out of the ground like an alien space capsule, packed with technological gadgetry[10]. The only common aspects between the two styles is that they share defensive postures as private encolsed residences (Figure 1).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Burry, Jane., and Burry, Mark. The New Mathematics of Architecture, 197

Figure 1: Villa Nurbs in Context, Enric Ruiz-Geli, 2003

 

Wide asphalt drives connect the architecture to the street. ‘NURBS’, specifically correlates to ‘computer-generate non-uniform rational B-spine surfaces’ where the name relates directly to the built form[11]. Villa Nurbs is an example of the next evolutionary step towards finely tuning individual desires. It is a seismic mental shift, that ignores the history of the dark ages before Modernism. The house is as silent and amorphous as a cloud that functions to smooth our relationship with an increasingly complex and global world as opposed to providing a comforting nostalgia. Each elements of structure, skin, technology and climate are all in complete utopic harmony. Although these ideas have been explored, for example the skin technology developed by Antoni Gaudi, it was not until Enric Ruiz Geli and Cloud 9 developed the impossible digital technology and parametric design that this level of complexity has been designed and built[12].

 

The original idea for Villa Nurbs was a series of pavilions however, as the design evolved buildings amalgamated to one structure that was organised around a central swimming pool. The overall typology for the house was inspired from photographs of melting iceblocks (Figure 2) that were used as a model for the design, upon examing the transformation and movement of solid water to liquid[13]. This is the first appearance of Nature as a module being used as an optiumum typology.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Neubauer, Isabelle, 2015

Figure 2: Villa Nurbs Melting Iceblocks Typology, Enric Ruiz-Geli, 2003

 

 

NATURE AS A MODULE

 

Nature as a source and module is one of the strongest typologies demonstrated in Villa Nurbs. There is a theoretical reconsideration of how architecture is formally generated, designed, and grown to be self-sustaining thus organising a system of new types of inhabitation. Villa Nurbs is an architecture which changes specified ranges and gradient conditions across space, directly responding to the defintion of Morpho-Ecology.

 

Brazlian planner Jamie Lerner (2008:142) discusses urban acupuncture, where “architecture is like a seed. When you plant this seed, it affects everything around it”. This follows the idea of perfomative architecture, that proposes models for organic architecture based on highly refined computer design techniques. Similar to Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye that was defined as a “machine for living in”, Villa Nurbs takes that next step in which the building itself is living[14]. The roof and ceilings are constructed from Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) matrix panels, where the room literally breathes for itself. The panels are inflatable and expand and contract to variant degrees of inflation depending on the building and individual’s needs. These performative panels allow for solar penetration control as well as climatic control. As panels contract and deflate, daylight and solar pentration is reduced, lowering interal temperatures. As panels expand and inflate, the daylight and solar pentration is increased thus, rising the internal temperature. This expansion and contraction is controlled through large ducting systems (Figure 3). The effect resembles a living organism, with an enormous grid of robotic eyes. In time, this strategically capacities within the material principles that make up the built environment, where such an approach can be compared to living nature[15].

 

Villa Nurbs explores the natural contours of the ground below and uses it as an optimum typology. The concrete supports are clearly crafted in the exact same manners as the terraced landscape contour level models back in the sketch design stages. The support columns literally layer level upon level of contours in order to structure the base (Figure 4). Rising up from the ground plane, a sense of continuation and flow is achieved. The continuation of framing of the building rises up quite literally it is read as a typography itself[16]. Its own growing ecological system is represented and the actual framing system as a matrix fundamentally operates. This can be further explored in relation to curvilinearity as a typology, and much like the theme, all three of these optimum typologies overlay and flow into each other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Burry, Jane., and Burry, Mark. The New Mathematics of Architecture, 198

Figure 3: Villa Nurbs EFTE Ducting System, Enric Ruiz-Geli, 2003

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Burry, Jane., and Burry, Mark. The New Mathematics of Architecture, 198

Figure 4: Villa Nurbs Contours as a Module, Enric Ruiz-Geli, 2003

 

 

MATERIALITY AS A SYSTEM

 

It can be suggested that rather than designing a deliberate outcome, the focus of morpho-ecology and Villa Nurbs is to define, evolve and instrumentalise the behaviour  of a material system, where the typologies are a performer of ecology. Nurbs rises out of the ground on two cylindrical concrete legs supporting an oval concrete platform. The main entry and a guest apartment are housed within these legs. The rest of the house is located above where a series of rooms that encircle a courtyard pool. One of the design’s most practical innovations is a long, tapered shed structure at one end of the lot that encloses all of the mechanical systems. The water boilers, pool machinery, cooling and heating systems, vacuum cleaner motor etc., are all confined to this space which is separated from the house by a narrow lawn. In this way the house is segregated and isolated, providing an inner world where the complexities of life can unfold in near perfect silence, where only the clouds above provide inspiration[17]. This shed serves as a life support system, where the removal of the distraction of technology allows for the rest of the building to be preserved as a silence of space. The isolation of the necessary machinery for a household ensures a space for the smooth performance of everyday life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Burry, Jane., and Burry, Mark. The New Mathematics of Architecture, 198

Figure 5: Villa Nurbs Ceramic Tiles Facade, Enric Ruiz-Geli, 2003

 

 

The ability of this technology to liberate people from the irritating and mundane operation required to sustain everyday living is further explored inside. The main living areas wrap around the pool. The living room, kitchen office and spa are located on one side and the bedrooms on the other. The bedrooms overlook the pool area through a glass-enclosed corridor whilst the rest of the house is conceived as a series of interlocking zones. There are no doors at all inside. Instead each zone is conceived as its own microenvironment, similar to the passenger seats of a luxury car. Lighting, temperature, sound and windows can be adjusted by sensors located along the entire space and enclosed under the translucent ETFE skin previously discussed. There are no exterior windows which isolates the building from its surroundings. The north façade is clad in white Corian, a hard translucent plastic that will glow inside during the day and outside at night. This gives the effect of a firefly, lighting up to create a sense of security. The other end is clad in inky ceramic tiles that protect the interiors from the harsh southern sunlight. These tiles are hand painted by Spanish artist Frederic Amat to give the house “an element of random chaos”[18] (Figure 5). The swimming pool’s glass bottom material allows natural light to filter through the water into the column enclosures below[19]. It is the shifts in colour, texture and material that create a lyrical tension between light and dark, hard and soft, inside and out, and what brings the design to life. Through the attempt to create a Venetic natural world within the Villa’s skin, a complete technologically mediated eco system inside the building becomes a world of ambiguities technology. Instead of just using material as an aesthetically pleasing quality, Villa Nurbs explores how these materials can be morphed to create internal and external spaces for systematic activity, as well as using the material as an actual, physical system for comfortability within the living spaces.

 

 

CURVILINEARITY

 

Curvature as a typology proposes significant generative affects on the design, production, behaviour and effect of material form. It emerged fundementally from “profoundly differentiated, heterogeneous situations within which antagonostic and unconnected buildings were originally sited” as stated by Greg Lynn (1993:8)[20]. Both Lynn and Ruiz-Geli believed surface and skin were to be seen as a unified object that is composed as a whole, thus, curving away from Deconstructivism, an Post-Modern architecturual style where skin and surface is distorted and dislocated from the elements of structure. It is often defined as “controlled chaos”[21]. Curvilinearity proposes that the building has no corners and suggests an organic softness in its movement, that relates back to living ecological systems (Figure 6). Villa Nurbs does just this through its form, its skin and the arrangement of internal programming previously discussed. The topological geometry, morphology and morphogenesis of Villa Nurbs has evolved through computer technology. The characteristics and smooth transformation involving the intergration of differences within a continious yet heterogeneous system is achieved through this ‘smoothing’ in which fluidity and blending tactics have been established, relating back to that initial morphological inspiration of melting iceblocks as a typology[22].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Burry, Jane., and Burry, Mark. The New Mathematics of Architecture, 197

Figure 6: Villa Nurbs Curvilinearity Section, Enric Ruiz-Geli, 2003

 

 

The form and programming of the building has been organised through exploring a curvilinearity. The main living area is supported by two large flaring concrete curved columns, where one contains the entrance and staircase, and the other contains guest accommodation and a home office. Running along the sides of the slab are two curved crescent shaped covered areas that enclose a private courtyard and swimming pool. One of these crescents contains the living spaces and the other bedrooms. This internally mimicks the sense of curviture and fluidity in its programming and the continuation of open areas that flow from one to the other. The lack of doors assists in achieving this and as there are no corners, there is a seemless flow of surfaces[23].

 

Returning to materiality, curvilinearity is used as a typology through this as well. The glass walls around the pool have an awkward double curvature to them. Each panel is unique and individually produced but they have been broken several times in the process before successfully being installed in 2003. The glass walls took 2 years to manufacture and continue to achieve a continuing typology of curvilinearity throughout every element of the building. The curvaceous glass walls are etched with a blue dye, that radiates a blue light both in the day and at night[24]. This sense of radiation is similar to that of pulsing veins from a living organism, that relates back to ecological systems in order to achieve an optiumum typology.

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

Innovative computer aided design software provides a new understanding and experience of functioning materiality, one that focuses on the design of surface and texture over volume. Digitalisation has introduced unanticipated issues of scale and rendered tectonics at an increasingly complex facet of architectural representation. In turn this has altered traditional understandings of materiality and the process of design and architecture as a whole. Such shifts and modification will continue as technology develops allowing architects to become more involved in the creation of buildings, building materials and the urban and surrounding environment. A re-evaluation of the architectural discipline has led to an increased sense of moral responsibility that will guide us towards a future in which architecture plays a greater social and political role.

 

Villa Nurbs has solidified this through its re-evaluation of architecture, taking functionality and responsibility to the next level. There is a continuous return to ecological systems as a basis in order to create optimum and generative spaces for living in combination with innovative and new technology through the use of Nature as a module, materiality as a system, and curvilinearity, each as connecting and overlapping typologies. Nature is used to its fullest potential by exploring living, breathing organisms to gain inspiration from in combination with advanced technology. Materiality is extended further in its functionality rather than just aesthetic qualities in order to further encourage spaces for systematic activity as well as the use of the material itself as a physical system in regards to climate control, solar and daylight penetration and overall comfortability within the space. In its own way, the use of materiality as a system becomes its own eco-system. Finally, curvilinearity explores organic softness and movement in form, creating a sense of fluidity, relating back to the initial inspiration to use melting iceblocks and the movement of water as an eco-system as inspiration for its morphological form. Rather than designing a indomitable outcome, Enric Ruiz-Geli has focused his morpho-ecological building, Villa Nurbs, as a defining, evolving, and instrumalising of a behavioural material system, with the typologies as a performer of ecology.

 

 

 

1.M. Hensel., and A. Menges, “Designing Morpho-Ecologies: Versatility and Vicissitude of Heterogeneous Space,”

Archit Design, no. 78 (2008): 102

2.Greg Lynn, “Architectural Curvilinearity,” Architectural Design – Folding in Architecture, (1993): 8

1.Sara Eloy, Maria João de Oliveria, Paio Moreira, Ricardo Vasco, and Basel Verlag, “Prototyping Vitruvius,” Digital Education, Research and Practice Nexus Network Journal, no. 14 (2012): 409

2.Louis Sullivan, “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,” Lippincott’s Magazine, (1896): 403

3.Hensel and Menges, “Designing Morpho-Ecologies: Versatility and Vicissitude of Heterogeneous Space,” 103

4.Hensel and Menges, “Designing Morpho-Ecologies: Versatility and Vicissitude of Heterogeneous Space,” 104

5.John Macarthur, “Experiencing Absence: Eisenman and Derrida, Benjamin and Schwitters,” Knowledge and /or/ of Experience: the theory of Space in Art and Architecture (1993): 99

6.Hensel and Menges, “Designing Morpho-Ecologies: Versatility and Vicissitude of Heterogeneous Space,” 105

7.Chris Brisban, “Morpho-Ecologies” (lecture), Contemporary Design Theory ARCH 2021. recorded September 3rd, 2015. University of South Australia. Streaming Video.

8.James Brown, ‘Complex ecological systems’, in George Cowan, David Meltzer and David Pines, Complexity: Metaphors, Models and

Reality. (Reading, MA: Westview Press, 1999), 54

9.N. Spiller, “Good Natured Stuff,” Archit Design, no.77 (2007): 144-145

9.Nicolai Ouroussoff, “Machienes for Living,” New York Times Magazine, (2008), 112

10.Jane Burry, and Mark Bury, The New Mathematics of Architecture, (London, UK: Thames & Hudsont Ltd, 2010), 196

11.Nicolai Ouroussoff, “Machienes for Living,” New York Times Magazine, (2008), 113

12.Brisban, “Morpho-Ecologies”

13.Nicolai Ouroussoff, “Machienes for Living,” New York Times Magazine, (2008), 114

14.Jane Burry, and Mark Bury, The New Mathematics of Architecture, 197

16.Jane Burry, and Mark Bury, The New Mathematics of Architecture, 198

17. Nicolai Ouroussoff, “Machienes for Living,” New York Times Magazine, (2008), 115

18.Nicolai Ouroussoff, “Machienes for Living,” New York Times Magazine, (2008), 116-117

19.Jane Burry, and Mark Bury, The New Mathematics of Architecture, 198

20.Greg Lynn. Constructing a New Agenda: Architectural Theory 1993-2009. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010), 32

20.Phillip Johnson, and Mark Wingley, Deconstructivist Architecture. (Boston: Brown Little and Co, 1998), 4

21.Greg Lynn. Constructing a New Agenda: Architectural Theory 1993-2009. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010), 33

23.Jane Burry, and Mark Bury, The New Mathematics of Architecture, 198

24.Brisban, “Morpho-Ecologies”

 

 

 

BIBLIOGRPAHY

 

Brisban, Chris. “Morpho-Ecologies.” Lecture. Contemporary Design Theory ARCH 2021. Recorded September 3rd, 2015. University of South Australia. Streaming Video.

 

Brown, James. H. ‘Complex ecological systems’, in Cowan, George A., Meltzer, David., and Pines, David., Complexity: Metaphors, Models and Reality. Reading, MA: Westview Press, 1999

 

Burry Jane., and Burry Mark. The New Mathematics of Architecture, London, UK: Thames

& Hudson Ltd, 2010

 

Eloy, Sara., João de Oliveira, Maria., Moreira, Paio., Vasco, Ricardo R., and Verlag, Basel. “Prototyping Vitruvius” Digital Education, Research and Practice Nexus Network Journal, no. 14 (2012): 409-429.

 

Hensel, M., and Menges, A. “Designing Morpho-Ecologies: Versatility and Vicissitude of Heterogeneous Space.” Archit Design, no. 78 (2008): 102–111

 

Johnson, Phillip., and Wingley, Mark. Deconstructivist Architecture. Boston: Brown Little and Co, 1998

 

Lynn, Greg. “Architectural Curvilinearity.” Architectural Design – Folding in Architecture

(1993): 8-15

 

Lynn, Greg. Constructing a New Agenda: Architectural Theory 1993-2009. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010

 

Macarthur, John. “Experiencing Absence: Eisenman and Derrida, Benjamin and Schwitters.” Knowledge and /or/ of Experience: the theory of Space in Art and Architecture (1993): 99-123

 

Ouroussoff, Nicolai. “Machines for Living.” New York Times Magazine, (2008): 112- 117,142.

 

Spiller, N. “Good Natured Stuff.” Archit Design, no.77 (2007): 144–145.

 

Sullivan, Louis H. “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered.” Lippincott’s Magazine (1896): 403-409