[courses]

Speculative Biotechnology and Architecture, SCI_Arc

[07.2002]

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This course examines the potential impact of biotechnologies on the architectural imagination, including genetic, genomic and transgenic engineering. We will explore a wide range of theoretical and ethical positions on the dark matter of recombinant design, and will clear the ground for a material architecture based on these complex technologies of self, space and matter.

Recombinant architecture is multiple: the conception of architectonic forms in the image of genetic, biomorphic corporeality (architecture as physiognomic index of the posthuman), the application of artificial biomaterials in the construction of the built environment (architecture as the result of genomic design), and the deliberate fashioning of recombinant bodily forms (genomic entities in the image of architecture) --from bodies to buildings and back again.

Recombinant architecture explodes allegorical relationships between body and structure, incorporating biologic and architectural bodies into indiscrete and reversible interiors and exteriors including cyborgs and transgenic bodies, regenerative tissue medicines, body-architecture hybrids, replicating habitats and genetically engineered architectures and building materials.

The view of this seminar is at once fearlessly speculative and modestly practical. We cannot know in advance what the various biotechnogical revolutions happening all around us will bring, what they will mean, and what we as humans and as architects need to be doing to welcome and challenge the changes. What is clear, however, is that genetic and genomic technologies have already changed how we understand what bodies are and inevitably must change how we understand what habitats are as well.

The premise of recombinant architecture will move from experimental to practical modes of investigation. We will begin by breaking open as wide as possible our own conventional understandings of the fundamental relationships between body and structure, and move toward the possibility of planning and building with the new tools and perspectives of this genetic moment.  

This turn is structured according to six themes:
1) Myth figures, (2) genetic science, (3) semi-living objects, (4) threshold bodies, (5) avant-garde materials, (6) sustaining genomic environments.

The figure of the recombinant body in ancient, and so will begin our investigation of modern recombinancy with a reading of Mary Shelley?s original Frankenstein novel, a study of mythical Chimera, and a screening of Paul Wegener?s rare 1914 film, Der Golem, based on the Judaic myth of a man carved from clay.

We each bring different to this course. We will spend at least two class sessions examining current practices in genetic and genomic science. I?ve arranged for a geneticist from UCLA to come and get us caught up on current technologies and controversies. We will also read the most influential critical texts on the ramifications of genetics on culture as a whole.

The premise of recombinant architecture is based on innovative combinations of what we normally think of as human/ non-human, organic/ synthetic, living/ non-living into hybrid material-objects. We spend a week looking at the current state of such combinations in media arts, philosophy of technology, materials science, and bioengineering.

The convergence of genetics and architecture is a deep challenge to traditional relationships between body and structure. We will examine radical new forms of embodiment and bodily engineering as an inspiration to architectural practice.  

An encyclopedia of genomically designed structural materials already exists. We will spend two weeks investigating and indexing what is already used in practices such as agriculture, medicine and test the usefulness of those that may be good candidates for architectural media.

The specter of a genomically engineered environment raises enormously complex ethical, political, scientific questions. What contribution might architecture have toward clarifying these? Does genomic design enable or cancel the vision of sustainable architecture? We will enter these debates and read the most piercing current polemics. We will do so with open minds, but not afraid to take and defend a position -- always a precondition of architectural innovation.


 Course Structure
1. Figures

May 21. Myth Figures
        Reading: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.
        Screening: Der Golem by Paul Wegener, 1914.
        Assignment One due
    
May 28. Genetics/ Environment
GUEST LECTURER:
RUTH WEST, PhD. UCLA Dept. of Genetics and Dept. of Media Arts.
Readings: Donna Haraway, Modest_Witness at Second_Millenium AND excerpts from Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (IN READER) OR Manuel De Landa, ?Flesh and Genes? from A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History (PURCHASE) + web sites sent via email
Second Assignment Due. First and Second Assignment Due in ?Quark? Template including one paragraph explanations.
        
June 4. Semi-Living Objects
Readings: Bruno Latour, ?A Collective of Humans and Non-Humans? from Pandora?s Hope (In Reader), Manuel De Landa ?Flesh and Genes? from A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History (First Time or Again) + web sites sent via email.
        Third Assignment Due in template form.
        
June 11. (All Bodies are) Limit, Threshold Bodies
Readings: Steven Baker, The Postmodern Animal. Sandy Stone, ?The Empire Strikes Back: Transsexual Manifesto?, Gail Weiss ?The Dur?e of the Techno-Body?, Elizabeth Grosz ?Space, Time and Bodies? (articles in reader) + web sites sent via email.
        Fourth Assignment Due in template form.

June 18. Structural BioMaterials: the Material Avant-Garde
Readings: William McDonough and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking How We Make Things OR Philip Anton The Global Technology Revolution AND excerpts from Julian Vincent Structural Biomaterials and Silver & Christensen Biomaterals Science volumes (On reserve in library) AND Ted Krueger Heterotic Architecture (In Reader) + web sites sent via email.
Fifth Assignment Due in template form.

June 25. Sustaining Biotech Environments
Readings: Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution OR Gregory Stock, Redesigning Humans, Our Inevitable Genetic Future AND excerpts from Critical Art Ensemble The Flesh Machine + web sites via email.
Sixth Assignment due in template form


2.  Forms: Exercises in Recombinant Architecture

    WEEKS 7-9

A. Architecture >> Recombinant

Dwelling
Laboring
Massification or Urbanization
Transportation
Shopping
Disposal and Recycling
Festival and Play
Eating
Unnamed program

B. Recombinant >> Architecture

Skin
Eyes
Genitals or Anus
Bones
Lymphatic system
Leafing
Flowering
Seeds
Unnamed property

Additional reading pending publication: Greg Lynn, Architecture for an Embryologic Housing, Birkhauser/ Princeton Architectural Press, and Forthcoming 2002

Note: For projects, students will choose an architectonic machine from group A, and a bodily figure from group B and will produce an organization-form-system-building that is the result of the genetic multiplication of each choice. Several assignments and exercises will go into this process, and students will be responsible to generate possible structures from at least two combinations.


3.    Course Projects

Students will propose, plan, and design a comprehensive project based on course readings, assignments and exercises. Project topic is open pending instructor approval. Each student  will present project proposal during the sixth week of the semester for class feedback and critique.

I will discuss in detail the structure and focus of final course projects during our meeting, week 5.

I will assign several common exercises for students to undertake toward the completion of their projects, and will give individual students individual assignments as well.

Each weekly exercise (from week 1 to week 12) must be turned in in the provided Illustrator format. These will be collected and edited, along with final course projects for a common course ?book? at the end of the semester.




Readings
We will read selected sections from several texts and will review works by several architects, artists and critics, including.

    Julian Vincent, Structural Biomaterials (on reserve)
    Frederick H. Silver, David L. Christiansen, Biomaterials Science and Biocompatibility (on reserve)
    Philip Anton et al., The Global Technology Revolution: Bio/Nano/Materials Trends and Their Synergies with Information Technology by 2015
    William McDonough and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking How We Make Things
    Greg Lynn, Architecture for an Embryologic Housing
    Manuel De Landa, A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History
    Donna Haraway, Modest Witness at Second Millennium
    Steve Baker, The Postmodern Animal
    Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution
    Gregory Stock, Redesigning Humans, Our Inevitable Genetic Future
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Various Works by
Roy Ascott, Joe Davis, Eduardo Kac, Tissue Culture Project, Greg Lynn, Bruno Latour, Richard Dawkins, Sandy Stone, Natalie Jeremijenko, Lynn Margulis, Sarah Hrdy, Chela Sandoval, Adam Zaretsky, Steven Jay Gould, Eugene Thacker, John Searle, Sandra Harding, Valerie Hartouni, Keith Ansell Pearson, Victoria Vesna, Samuel Delany, Paul Rabinow, Marcos Novak, Terry Dowling, Kathy Acker, Gary Lee Downey, Arthur Kroker, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Friedrich Kittler, Chris Hables Grey, Paul Virilio, Katherine Hayles, Eva Sutton, Elizabeth Grosz, Alphonso Lingis, Samuel Weber, Friedrich Nietzsche, Pierre Levy, Stelarc, Chromos, Ted Krueger, Anthony Vidler, Georges Canguilhem, Gustav Meyrink, Dorion Sagan, Ronald Jones, Elaine Scary, Ed Gein, Eugene Kogen, Bill Seaman, Stephen Gage, Gail Weiss, Bruno Latour, Metabolists, chimeric beings, realdoll.com, Paul E. Brodwin, ed., LA Weekly, Critical Art Ensemble, James Elkins, the government of Iceland, and more.


First Assignment:

Take one thing from your kitchen and one thing from your bathroom and merge them into a single organism-object.

One of the things chosen should be ?live? (organic), and one should be ?dead? (inorganic).

Conceive and construct a hybrid organism-machine.

Devise a ?use? for the device that is entirely alien to what either original source object poses,

Design and present your new organism-machine digitally (as a file of any kind). Build a physical model of your hybrid, or physically blend the objects if you choose or print out your assignment for wall hang-up review. But also bring to class a file on disc to be presented and turned in for our book/site.


Second Assignment:

Take your hybrid-object machine and either ?.

(1)    Trace its hidden genealogy (morphogenetic, utilitarian, thermodynamic, semiotic, sensual, etc.) OR
(2)    Subject it to multiple ?environmental? conditions and map some unexpected pattern in how it interacts with those conditions. Discover at least three unusual or unexpected ways in which it is well suited to some condition(s).

Produce documentation ?text, image, video stills-- of these experiments in the Quark template. DUE IN CLASS, TUESDAY, MAY 28 along with First Assignment both in ?Quark? template.

Tags: sci-arc, architecture, bio media

Published: 07.28.2010

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