Types of Architectural Emergence

This paper presents two methods of architectural conception and articulation based on the idea of type. One method conceives of architecture as a predetermined entity, claiming that architecture has a plan, a programme that determines its emergence based on a specific type prior to its coming into being. The other method, based on digital design processes and genetic algorithms, focuses on the procedures of architectural becoming. The essay claims that while the latter method attempts to release the emergence of the architectural entity from predetermined formal or functional typological definitions, it in fact suggests new ways of defining the historical idea of architectural types. Based on genotypic and phenotypic procedures, the latter method bases the evolution of the architectural type on predetermined typological information, yet at the same time it allows the emergence of the architectural entity as part of undetermined flows. As such, it proposes a new temporal structure in architecture - one that is based on flows and motions.