13 Features of new building methods that are likely to appear if the technique is genuinely able to support a living process
Materials and technology change from era to era. It is in the nature of human society that these things evolve and will be different with each period of history. But within the enormous variation of materials and technique which inevitably change from age to age, we may identify certain invariants that must arise repeatedly, from the fundamental process.
If programming languages and language-specific techniques can be considered the material and technology of building software, and if these are expected to change anyway, then we need abstract pattern languages to describe the generic sequences that can be used regardless of material and technology to build applications.
Ultimately, when all is said and done, a building is made of material substance. It is this substance — the walls, floors, steps, windows, roof, and the configuration of the way these things are made — which governs the character of the building. And it is this substance which permits — or does not permit — the emergence of living centers in the material, and the adaptation of fine structure that is needed to bring the larger whole to life. It is therefore the living character of these materials themselves, their material substance, which determines whether the larger centers in the building can come to life.
An interactive application has a run-loop — a high-level execution structure that repeats and breaks the execution into steps. Each interactive application can therefore be seen as a simulation — an unfolding process itself: it continuously adapts to new input over its lifetime, and such input often is the user’s reaction to former output of the application.
Each step of the execution can often further (and recursively / fractally) differentiated into sub-steps that repeat — sequences within sequences, moving down the levels of scale.
This then gives the material techniques for making — column, wall, base-wall, foundation, floor — very great importance in determining the living structure, or the lack of it, in every building.
To create living structure in our time, both to create the living centers in the building elements, and to allow the fine adjustment of dimensions that living structure requires, we shall need a nearly endless series of new generations of building details arising from materials and techniques which can easily be made to form beautiful centers, which allow local adaptation, thus allowing larger living centers to form in the space and in the material fabric of the building.
Especially, one may say three things:
Invent techniques that allow cheap formation of basic lines, corners, and element positions which set up the configuration of the whole, and then allow the material to reinforce these positions with mass and weight.
Invent materials which are solid and long-lasting for the base structure, with shorter-life materials in between for more temporary structures.
Invent materials which allow very easy cutting, shaping, and change of dimension while making is going on.
#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/16 Continuous invention of new materials and techniques#