Complexity and Architecture

BIAD_UFo: phoenix international media center


It is funny because, for anyone who has read much about postmodernism, you know that its start was, interestingly enough, just as much grounded in architecture as it was in literature or science. 

Apropos of this point, I stumbled, today, across the Complexitys.com website, which is devoted to the topic of architecture and complexity science.  The ideas running through my head as I clicked through its catalogue of photos was crushing.  Of course, thinking of humans as complex, dynamic, self-organizing systems and of communities as complex networks, and on and so forth is deserving of an architectural response.  But, this point didn't really hit me until just now.  Wow!  I mean, I have been blogging on Tomas Saracano's work and green architecture and so forth.  But, for some reason it really hit me today.  How should buildings and pathways and highways and trains and public transportation and gardens and lawns and parks and stores and recreation and so on fit into all of our emerging notions of complexity? 

In my field of study, health and health care, we talk about the built environment all the time.  And, it is not like this is a new idea in architecture or urban planning.  But, suddenly, looking at these photos the whole thing just overwhelmed me in its measure.