lectors: Zaha Hadid , Patrik Schumacher
topic: parametric urbanism
year: 2007/2008
Nearly five hundred years ago, Leonardo da Vinci found latency in his investigations on turbulence, relating clouds with cities in his sketches (1). At the time, when other artists drew figures via their materialistic outlines, his figures emerged out of the wild behavior in a coherent system. However, in opposite to a sketch, architecture has to become materialized.
In Circavior the material conditions are generic definitions of spaces, at first on an architectural scale. Using the multiplying effect of scripting techniques, this approach multiplies space-behaviors to an urbanistic scale. The connection to a coherent system, (like a topography of events or a map of subjective relations), not only produces a range of spatial differentiation but also produces unexpected readings through the merging of behaviors. Circavior shifts the understanding of a city as an arrangement of dichotomous tectonic divisions and typologies, to the focus on environmental gradient thresholds.
(1) Leonardo da Vinci: Investigations on turbulence in water; 1519
