Emergence: Morphogenetic Design Strategies

Fit Fabric:Versatility Through Redundancy and Differentiation

There is a need to rethink the design of high-rise buildings, to find an approach that integrates structure and behaviour into material systems that are adapted to vertical urbanism. Michael Weinstock, Achim Menges and Michael Hensel, founding partners of the Emergence and Design Group, argue the case for considering high-rise buildings as surface structures. They discuss the need for flexure and stiffness in the context of natural structures that provide models for geometry, pattern, form and behaviour. Their evolutionary process has produced a design for high-rise structures in which a helical structural system and an intelligent skin are integrated into a versatile material system.

Evolved double-helix structure.

Double-helix tower project section.

‘Will we not attain a more satisfactory insight into the mysterious architecture of the formative process by looking into the following question: How does a surrounding element, with its various specific characteristics, affect the general form we have been studying? How does the form, both determined and determinant, assert itself against these elements? What manner of hard parts, soft parts, interior parts, and exterior parts are created in the form by this effect? And ...