The articles of Nonorganic Life and On the Wild Side brought me to think about

underlying rules of the design world and the rule as one of elements effects and
how it interacts with the design, the people and the context. I am trying to use a
model and its three ways of operation to categorize some designs to discuss the
relationship between the material world, the people who interacts with the world
and the operational rules of the world. Design, as an element, would take different
positions in different situations of the model.

(fig.1)Basic model structure

The image shows the basic structure of the model (fig.1). It includes a field which
has some attractors and repellors, as well as, some small balls. Now we can imagine
within this domain, if we drop the balls to the field, the balls and the field will
interact in a certain way following the rules of physics. So the rules here along with
the field and the balls are the three elements we have representing the material
world, the people and operational rules of the world above. Here in this model, the
characters of the field and the balls are not predefined. In the operations following I
will try to give them character.
Operation 1: conventional design
To abstract the model, if we consider the field as what designer produce, which is
physical; and balls are the people who uses the design; and the rules of physics in
the model represents the rules of social, economic, cultural, physics and all other
aspects both people are conscious of and not. (fig. 2)
I think a large percent of the landscape designs in the past fits in this operation. The
designer creates the physical field having the activities of people in mind so that
creates attractors and repellors in the model to organize the behavior of people.
Some of the designs may respond to the existing conditions, so the new field by
designer may leave traces of the place before intervention. In the model, imagine if
we throw the balls a million times, the collision of the balls may cause scratches to

the field and leave imperfections of the design. The disconnection of design and
construction may cause the same problem too. If we zoom in to see the model, the
details of the field, for example: small scratches and grooves may eventually
become significant enough to alter the trajectory of the balls. (fig.3) However,
before the

(fig.2) Operation 1 of the model

(fig.3) Detail on the field

surface that may change the trajectory of the
balls. The cause of the detail may vary from
design, miscommunication from design to
construction, wear and tear by the use of
people.

threshold of changing the final destination of the balls, small trembles along the
trajectory is like the cows pattern in chaos theory that we may not able to trace all
the causes and effects of small imperfections (all the alternatives of cow pattern)
we shall still be able to see where the ball stops (identify a cow pattern from a zebra
pattern).
The quality of design here can be translated to three standards: 1) how strong the
attractors and repellors are to influence the response of people. 2) How complicated
the field is to allow different kinds of responses of people. In landscape, the
responses would be different programs happen in the field. I think this is related to
Melandas idea of reservoir. Designers are building the field which is similar to
filling the reservoir and when certain program happens certain mechanisms in the
reservoir is taken out to perform. 3) How much imperfection the field can bear
that will still allow the field to operate the way the designer intended it to be --resilience of the model.
There is a pre-assumption hidden in the model, when trying to improve the quality
of design, the designer tends to think about how people would react to the place
through rules known to the designer. We are assuming that the rules of the world
are understandable and trying to revel them more then apply them to design to
regulate the peoples response and minimize the imperfection. However, the

number of rules a designer can apply and time period a designer can foresee is
limited, there is a possibility that minimizing imperfection may decrease the
mechanisms in the reservoir.
When maximizing the goal of a design, we must gain more control of the design by
better understanding the operational rules of the model and its context effecting
the operation, then take advantage of them in design. This leads to the second
operation.
Operation 2: design for purposes

(fig.4): Operation 2 of the model

trajectory of Pioneer 11

(fig. 5): The

Using the same model, in this operation, if we consider the balls are the design, the
field in this model is the outer context where the design is going to operate and the
rules of physics in the model the general rules of every aspect in the world. After
renaissance we are reveling more and more about rules of nature and human
society and apply them to achieve our goals. (fig. 4) Designing for a purpose is a
typical situation in most applied sciences fields. In fact, in places like China,
architecture schools, city planning and landscape majors are usually put into the
applied sciences universities.
The example I am using here is the space probe Pioneer 11. After its close
observation to Jupiter, Pioneer 11 took advantage of the strong gravity of Jupiter to
change its trajectory and accelerate itself to its journey to Saturn. The human selfrecognition reached a peak during the space age in believing our cognition to the
world and ability in design to taking advantage of the world. In this operation, the
importance of understanding the rules and responding to the rules and context was
brought to attention.

There is a different way of reading this model, maybe we can join people and our
design into one unit, which is the balls in this operation. So the balls are not only
going to respond to the environment, they can have their own engine and choose
their own trajectory. Here, the consciousness of people is emphasized that they
dont passively respond to design. On one hand, design may bring the
consciousness of people, on the other hand, people can also be rebels of certain
situation. In the operation 3 of the model, this problem becomes more significant.
Operation 3: self-organized design
In the third operation, imagine the field is the environment we are living in, the balls
are the people who are going to interact with the environment, and we are the
designers who are only designing the rules of operation, the rules of physics in the
abstract model, but it can also be rules of management, social and all other aspects
so that the movements of the balls and their interactions with the field are defined
or regulated. However, what makes this operation different is that the field is going
to be soft that can take the impact from the balls and may change its surface shape.
Imagine the field is a waterbed.

(fig.6) Operation 3 of the model

(fig. 7, 8) Almere project by MVRDV

Each Individual has the right to design the place. The organization of the place is self-generated. The
image shows part of the construction material is provided to the residents while they are responsible
for the physical place-making. The construction material represents the rules set by designer.

I think some projects in landscape and architecture have some of the waterbed field
character that allows a certain level of physical adaptability when different audience
is acting on it, starting from the Unite dHabitation followed by lots of adaptive
housing projects after war in Europe. In those designs, the field of waterbed is half
designed by architects and half by residents, while the rules of operation is defined
by architects. Now push it to the maximum in the operation 3. This operation can
easily remind us of the self-constructed cities or even medieval towns. The
architects MVRDV have a similar project in Almere in Netherlands (fig. 7, 8). The
proposal was a development strategy only controls the amount of roads, public
space, agriculture fields and water body. Where those elements are going to be is
not defined at all, not even zoning. People can work individually and or collectively
as they wish. I would like to compare this project along with the colonial cities under
The Law of Indies with the modern self- organized cities like informal settlement in
Medellin. There are a lot opportunities in the self-organized design, as well as a lot
problems.
The opportunities of self-organized design are that it includes everyone in the
system to have the right to operate in the model. The creativity of each individual is
so significant that I believe that is why some other cultural elements are so dynamic
between different places while modern architectures are not. The example I want to
point out is in the culinary world, where almost everyone is involved. It helps to
create the diversity, high level of general understanding of food culture and
identification. When talking about Chinese food, many people would think about
some spicy food with red pepper, even though, pepper was only brought to China
300 years ago. We barely remember what we used for spice before that and we can
easily identify the Chinese way of using pepper from South American way. There
was not standard rule of using pepper given to public when it was introduced. It was
introduced with no more emphasis to any locations than others, but certain places
developed a culinary more dependent on pepper than others in China. The same
can be applied to the role of potato in European food. When unfamiliar ingredients
was brought to places, the general public has the most creativity to cooperate the
new with their existing food culture. Cooking is practiced in every family and the
general public has a high level of understanding to it and that is when people know
what to pick from the outside influence and how to work with it. Design, in the
modern day, on the contrary, is only operated by a limited number of people,
trained in, more or less, the same way. In the situation of self-constructed city like
Medellin, we can easily observe the contrast from designer designed architecture
with the creativity against the everyone involved self-constructed part of the city
(fig. 9, 10). Their structure, materiality and gesture are dramatically different.
Maybe that is where the self-organized part has more energy and local identity.

(fig. 9) Formal architecture in Medellin is

largely influenced by Le Corbusier since
1950s. Most formal architectures in the
city are very large concrete building with
muscular shapes.

(fig. 10) Informal settlement in Medellin. The

architectural typology fits the environment and the
materiality expresses the locality.

However, self-organized design is also problematic. In The Law of Indies, the rule is
to set the central plaza and the location of church looking at the plaza. The housing
part is very much self-organized. More wealthier people organize themselves in the
center while the poor are on the edge. Here, the operational rules are the Law of
Indies itself along with economical and religious disciplines. The church or the
township as an enforcement organization is managing the town to prevent people
going against rules to take up the space at the plaza. While in the MVRDV project,
no community government was designed and the project assumption is based on
the high level of education and understanding of public benefit of Netherlanders.
Without a rule enforcement power, the system is not going to work in places like
China. Relating to the experiment by Kevin Kelly in The Collective Intelligence of a
Mob, an organizer asked the crowd to make a 0. The experiment was successful
that each individual followed the order of making a 0 and they were intelligent
enough to respond correctly to the order and their situation. However, what if there
were some rebels in the crowd that was in a critical position, say the center, decide
not to follow the order? When they were supposed to turn their signs on, they
choose to turn them off. The system, which is other people following the order, can
respond to the rebels by moving the center of 0 but at the same time, rebels can
respond to it too. A small amount of rebels, or people unable to follow order, can

destroy, or at least weaken, the system. Same to the self-organized designs. More
importantly, who is going to take out the rebels if there were no enforcement
power? What if the rebels influenced enough people to destroy the system? What if
the order itself is problematic? If people are all following the order and no rebels
exist who is going to question the validity of the order, then how could this system
evolve? In the design world, for example the MVRDV project, designing the rules by
landscape architects is assuming that the rules hold a further vision than what
general public understands. Can landscape architects all effectively do that?
The model is just a way to understand the position of designer and how could
design respond to people and the environment. It may not be able to cover all the
possibilities of design, but I am trying to give possibilities. All the operations of the
model above is not putting the designer as an agent in the model but as some
power of influence outside. What if designers, as part of the general public in
operation 3 are just one of the balls in the system that has a more powerful engine
and bounced harder, or differently? And leave the question of following designers or
not to the public themselves. I think it is true to the current situation that some
projects are more successful that they appeared at a right time with more
advertising energy to convince more people.

Sources:
Fig. 5: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pio11_8feb2012.jpg
Fig.6, 7: http://www.mvrdv.nl/projects/oosterwold/
Fig. 9: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:La_Alpujarra-Medellin.JPG