The Fractal Geometry of Nature 1977, Benoit B Mandelbrot.
We do not know enough about this geometry that we can start to use it in every field of life. It is purely symbolic of the natural world when it is engineered into an architectural scheme. Architecture should respond to living first, practically; that is form should follow function in an aesthetically subjective way. I understand it that fractal architecture is young and in a research phase. It is all hypothetical and living through examples rather than actually reaching its objectives.
Maybe it is my interest in how the hypothetical becomes actualized, particularly in fields of living and design, which keep me intrigued by this field of enquiry. Like I would not want to be proven wrong if fractals become so integrated to beautiful schemes of living that the inherent technological disparity that exists in the concept and production disappear (I understand that without Bitches Brew we wouldn’t have Unsigned & Still Major: Da Abum Before da Album). It is this disparity that I find most difficult in fractal architecture. How can you theorize the natural to the point of high-end mathematics and use advanced engineering and construction techniques to produce a static replica? Fractal architecture engages with the idea of organized and linked fractal scales and is supposedly biased on scientific study/rules rather than subjective style, however style, façade, skin, these are the only ways it manifests.
Modernism is wholly anti-fractal. There is evidence of various disorganized and loose fractal scales and geometries at work in vernacular (folk) architectures from around the world. This points to some inherent evolutionary, inbuilt drive toward this thinking and production. In the past, cities have been richly structured at every magnification, where as the contemporary city blows the largest scale of the city out of proportion and has the habit of negating the smaller scales. In this sense ‘fractal’ was a positive urban development, where as here, Modernism interfered with a sincere organic growth.
Quoting Rob McKenzie quoting Christopher L G Hill, “‘Freedom is a state of mind’ and ‘The Personal is Political.’” Slavoj Zizek identifies that the role of philosophy is modest; it is not to ask questions like are we free? but rather to attempt to identify what is freedom? Architectural begins more in the analysis of the human living condition, in allowing room for this experience to develop and influence space. Like Sou Fujimoto and his cave which is a kind of advanced-engineered fractalism in its truest sense, an understood return-to-nature.
James Deutsher
September 2009
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