Leveraging nature to envision (functional) space: An Architecture of Machinic Abduction

The emphasise on the visual manifestation of space has determined how architects comprehend the correlation between society and the environment, and ultimately influenced if not dictated the manner in which they perceive, manufacture and develop their ideas into built form. The objectified notion of space – as visually prescribed – prevails in contemporary techniques of representation with, for example, computation being utilised to fuel hyper-real visualisation of projects or produce mute virtual reality environments that visually mimic the physical world. In this chapter a significantly different approach is proposed involving firstly, a challenge to the prominence of sight in our conceptualisation of space generally, followed by the argument that the manner in which computation is employed as a tool in design needs to be reconsidered to account for this challenge to the limitations of the visual. It suggests that the most recent potentialities offered by computation in the field of spatial design conceptually draw on issues of semiosis and the abductive (non-anthropocentric and non-materialistic) nature of living systems that free our understanding of space and the role of computation in its creation and representation. In doing so, it will be suggested that the next steps for the role of technologies in the evolution of architecture may not be visual at all, but rather more fundamental, involving an ever greater potential to mimic, learn and engage with natural systems at a level much deeper than any human sense, most of all the purely visual.