Morpho-Ecologies

Michael Hensel and Achim Menges

+ Ecology

- is the study of the relationship between organisms and their environment.

which also suits the discipline of architecture.

+ The ME approach

- requires a critical rethinking of all central aspects of architectural practice today.

: The challenge is to formulate a synthesized approach based on a synergetic relation
between material thresholds and environmental dynamics.

+ problem of today’s architecture

- While plan organization, envelope form, and fittings and finishes may have become more
varied, material and building systems are not being critically reviewed.

Today’s architecture has standardized building system with substantial structure that
defines hard environmental division. The performance of a building unfolds in time and
must therefore be analyzed perpetually.
 Morpho-Ecologies
Michael Hensel and Achim Menges

‘fibrous surfaces’, self interlocking structure

+Material Practice of Architecture

-the intricate relations of morphology and environment

-challenges the traditional relations of space and material as well as the common processes of optimization
that empasise the most efficient performance of a single function for the least amount of material. Natural
systems provide a new conceptual model for these design experiments.

ex) the tubes of plant tissues - transport fluids and nutrients up and down the stem also provide structural
support, also manage the changes in compressive or tension forces in neighbouring tissues.

-Multiple functions are integrated into natural material systems, which are complex hierarchical arrangements
of hierarchical arrangements of material is an important strategy for efficient adaptability.
 Morpho-Ecologies
Michael Hensel and Achim Menges

+How form emerges and how it continually differentiates, transforms and performs in relation to its
specific environment?

-Understanding of material systems as generative drivers in the design process :

development of material system is informed by scale and size specific behavior and related
performance capacities.

-Multiple-performance capacity:
need to understand their behavioral characteristics and capacities with respect to the purpose
they serve both locally and within the behavioral economy of a larger system.

-Learn from connections and transitions between systems and sub-systems of biological entities.

-shift away from

a unit-based design approach -> condition-based design
program as design-defining -> design as program-evolving
 Morpho-Ecologies
Michael Hensel and Achim Menges

+relationship of materialization and biology

-the aim is to understand processes that unfold morphological

complexity and performative capacity from simple constituents
without differentiating between formation and materialization

-cellular differentiation operates on the principle of pluripotency

: the capacity for morphological change in cells whose genetic
material and underlying relationships remain the same

+parametric component

-need to be defined by its relationship to adjacent components,

in terms of assembly logics and adaptation to variable
neighbouring components

-have to incorporate performative capacities:

its possible behaviours and responses to an external
environment.
 Morpho-Ecologies
Michael Hensel and Achim Menges

+rethinking the discourse of heterogeneous space

--rather than designing specific artefact, the focus is on defining,

evolving and instrumentalizing the behaviour of a material system
that becomes increasingly refined and calibrated
 Morpho-Ecologies
Michael Hensel and Achim Menges

+three categories of material system

-proliferated component systems
-globally modulated systems
-aggregate systems

+to become architecture

-further informed by context-specific conditions
-strategies of spatial organization and synthesized structural and environmental performance
-speculations about social formation and programmatic opportunities