Liu_Coltrane_222_Ex1.1a

From Object to Field

This section introduces field conditions as influences on a field that promotes collectives of unites. Field conditions introduce local interconnections and reflect complex and dynamic behaviors. Instead of dealing with the final form of the whole collective field conditions deal with the form of the individuals. Field conditions promote objects to create the groundwork for a field to emerge.

Geometric vs Algebraic Combination 

The ideas discussed in this section deal with how fields tend to use algebraic combinations instead of geometric ones to different ends. Most of western architecture deals with a distinct hierarchy that tends to produce geometric qualities like symmetry that doesn’t take great advantage of a field. Algebraic approaches to design lack hierarchy and instead uses relationships between various small uniform parts to create an emergent pattern that is open ended. Geometric patterns tend towards an end product with hierarchies descending into smaller and smaller units, like a fractal that tends towards resolving one shape. Fields can grow and change continuously and maintain constant overall relationships between parts. The parts in a field also deal primarily with local relationships that produce an emergent order.

Walking Out of Cubism

This section deals with the development of post-minimalism from cubism, and its contributions to the idea of fields. It is explained that where cubism dealt with composition syntax (or rules) minimalists dealt with relationships between clear distinct objects and the space between them and the viewer that informed how it was experienced. Post-minimalists dealing with fields took the idea of local relationships and seem to have taken the sequence from minimalism and used it to demonstrate how syntax emerges under particular conditions.

Thick 2D: Moire Mats

Fields offer an explanation and interpretation of figure and ground. Instead of seeing the two as separate, seeing figures as an emergent feature of the ground can help design both as allies to one another. The emergent quality of the figure is distinct from the ground based on underlying qualities of the field. One way to examine the synthesis of these qualities is through moire, which is a superposition of multiple fields. Moires produce apparently irregular organizations that have a complex mathematical basis. 

Flocks, Schools, Swarms, Crowds

  Flocks, crowds, and musical clouds are emergent phenomena based on fields. Small parts in each of these are given basic local tasks that produce a common order collectively. Although crowds behave in a more complicated way they demonstrate the outcome of basic tendencies from each of their parts and can have unique qualities as a whole. Crowds address the dynamics of use and motion and can benefit the design of architecture in a more bottom-up approach. 

Distributed institutions

It is necessary to rethink how we design institutions using the field idea because hierarchical design is destined to erode after reaching its limit. Technology and societal changes are constant and Western principles of hierarchy do not accommodate that inevitability. Fields as a model for those institutions anticipate change and growth.