Emergence – Becoming (informality as a natural process)

The term emergence is critical for understanding informality as a natural phenomenon. Informality emerges, in the beginning as something undefined and it wouldn't be inaccurate to say that the term emergence resembles to the term genesis. Both these terms seem to imply that an output is not the outcome of a process where a creator or a set of creators produce something from scratch but it is an innate property of things (therefore also of space) that preexists in the realm of he possible pending for activation before being actual. Therefore, any kind of informal practice is to be considered as an activation that brings informality from the realm of the possible to the realm of the actual. To make it clearer, it is as if in the story of the three little pigs the causes that made the houses collapse and the danger were already there; the wolf merely activated them and made the potentiality of the collapse to become a reality.

What is critical to understand is that the phenomenon of emergence takes place in an evolutionary way because emergence is a cumulative process and I dare to say that this is not something detached from the formality itself. The combination of formalities and certain necessities is the activator for the growth of informality.

Emergence, no matter that is taking place in the field of the informal is touching both the formal and the informal and seems to be the active connection of the two fields as if the one is the cause and the other the effect with these two roles changing all the time, which means that the cause could be a formality which would have as an effect a particular informality and vice versa. Certainly, there could be a huge discussion about this interrelation and how it works practically, meaning, how formality perceives informality in real and in what extend formality allows informality to grow and inform the formal. But contrary to the actual situation where the formal excludes the informal, formality and informality are in true connected, at least this is how it should be.

Evolutionary dynamics are not an exclusive property of informality, but informality seems to be much more into this process of evolution because of the number of "agents" that participate and also because of the active roles they play. In general, informal emergence is a rather decentralized autopoetic process while formal development is much more centralized which means that any kind of formal production has to go through the filters and controls of an authority or processes of decision making that reduce the number of the active participants and impose technical ends (goals, aims). During the process of the emergence, everything that happens, exists, is or has been produced, no matter if it is formal or informal, function as a latent origin, as a genotype that informs the particular development of the thing, the phenotype, in a dynamic way. The output itself functions then as a possible new origin for a new production. It is as if there is a tank of characteristics that informs every new production and is in turn informed by the new product.

In order to make it more tangible, when talking about the term emergence we need to distinguish three "moments" that are being described below.

a) Origin, Phylogenesis refers to the origin and the evolution of it. Or to be more precise, the origin of the "product", or better, the output of a creation and the origin of the creation process in the same time. The term origin here is not exclusively referring to a historical origin, but to anything that functions as a defining factor, as a data tank that informs the production, or if you prefer the "becoming", of a thing.

b) Activation, Pathogenesis is the reason, the cause that activates the origin and the process of the growth.

c) Growth, Morphogenesis is the form generating process, the result of the activation of phylogenesis by a pathogenesis which creates a topological growth within the active materiality.

The words above are being placed in what could be conceived as chronological order (what happens first what follows etc.) but what actually happens is that the terms are embedded into each other in a way that nothing happens first or second but all together interact simultaneously with each other in a formative way meaning that the one is feeding the other constantly. Somehow emergence is a wave of constant activations of phylogenetic characteristics and a filling in of the phylogenetic tank with new ones.

What follows bellow is an attempt to define more analytically the terms, find their origins.



Genesis (Greek: Γένεσις, having the meanings of "birth", "creation", "cause", "beginning", "source" and "origin") is the first book of the Torah, the first book of the Tanakh and also the first book of the Christian Old Testament.[1]

The word genesis has been connected with the idea of a prefect and ultimate creation. Apart from any kind of metaphysical approach that relates the specific word to a concept of "creation" where idea is considered to be superior to its material representation or where the creation is regarded as the reflection of the omniscience and omnipresence of a creator, the word is absolutely related, if not tied together, with the materiality itself.

Genesis, before any other meaning, means birth. In this text the word is being approached as a singularity that carries other singularities. Therefore, Genesis is followed by the other terms presented in this text (Pathogenesis, Phylogenesis and Morphogenesis). All of them are related to the process of creating not in the sense of constructing by a strict absolute plan but in the sense of giving birth; in the sense of creating the seed for the conception leaving it to grow as a result of a process of becoming rather than making or constructing. Having this "process of becoming" as the main common property the terms below share, all of them consist of the term "genesis" and each of them defines a different stage of the birth giving process.



Phylogenesis (or phylogeny) is the origin and evolution of a set of organisms, usually a set of species. A major task of systematics is to determine the ancestral relationships among known species (both living and extinct).[2]

If we attempt to detach the term phylogenesis from the context of biology and to broaden it we will find its properties extending in any process of formation or "becoming". Phylogenesis as "the origin and evolution" is the concept which helps us understand the relationships between different parts in the formation of a continuum that consists of singularities. It is about the relationships of the general and the particular, the whole and its parts or in the Deleuzian way the universal and the singular and their evolutionary mechanisms.

In essentialism there are general types or fixed categories (such as animal species) and the particular members in each of them share common properties. In the Deleuzian philosophy these fixed categories or types are being replaced by bigger spatio-temporal individuals so that a given species is as singular, as unique, as historically contingent as the organisms that belong to it. "The relation between organisms and species is not one of tokens belonging to types, but one of wholes and parts: singular individual organisms are the component working parts of a (larger) singular individual species."[3]

Here the idea of singularity is rather topological than geometric. One could regard the connection between the origin and the evolution in such a way. The way the origin participates in the evolutionary process is like a genetic algorithm which exists as topological algorithm and not as geometric. What happens is that the process of making or becoming (e.g. the growing of an embryo) of something is taking place in an energetic materiality that consists of spatio-temporal singularities, implicit forms that are rather topological than geometric[4]. Once this something is produced, no matter that the process is never finalized, its extensities and qualities will hide the process under the product and the product in turn will possess and develop a set of new capacities, for example by interacting with other individuals or the environment in creating the preconditions for the evolution.

In that case, an example outside of biology that one can draw is the map of Charles Jencks for the history of Architecture where history is not presented as a linear arrangement of historical facts but is being mapped as a flowing continuum where certain historical periods are interacting with each other, flowing into each other and overlapping, depending on each other, being formed and deformed by each other in a process of perpetual evolution.



Pathogenesis is the mechanism by which a certain etiological factor causes disease (pathos = disease, genesis = development).[5]

The term pathogenesis (παθογένεσις), in its broader sense outside of biology, refers to the mechanism that produces the connections between a cause and an effect, the matter and the form connecting the realm of the potential with that of the real or activating the virtual, in a Deleuzian way.

In the ancient Greek philosophy "potentiality" and "reality" belong to two separate realms. For Plato the ideas exist prior to their representations, prior to form and praxis and they derive from a superior, perfect world.

In the Aristotelian philosophy and in particular in Aristotle's Metaphysics the idea about the relation of cause and effect is illustrated in the concept of substance (ουσία) which is conceived as a combination of both matter and form, or in other words, of potentiality (δύναμις) and actuality or entelechy. The term entelechy traces to the Ancient Greek word entelechy (εντελέχεια), from the combination of the words enteles (εντελές = complete), telos (τέλος = end, purpose, completion) and echein (έχειν = to have). Aristotle coined the word, which could possibly be translated in English as, "having the end within itself." According to Aristotle, entelecheia referred to a certain state or sort of being, in which a thing was actively working to be itself.[6]

The Aristotelian idea of entelechy is connected to the concept of the final cause (τελικό αίτιο). For Aristotle in the concept of the final cause the reason which gives the purpose is the end (τέλος), in the sense of a fulfillment. The end as purpose pre-exists, is being embodied in the things and is being revealed by the process of working towards that end. In order to make more clear the concept of the final cause I will give an example; in the question "why is it raining?" thinking of the natural causes would result to the answer "because water evaporates and creates clouds and they become cold and it rains", while thinking of the final cause might lead to the answer "it rains for the flowers to grow". Aristotle defines his philosophy in terms of essence, saying that philosophy is "the science of the universal essence of that which is actual"[7].

The ideas of Gilles Deleuze about the matter and the form have as fundamental difference the fact that the purpose doesn't preexist, is not predetermined or predominant and is not being conceptualized as an "end" or a "fulfillment". Instead of the "purpose" there is a matter which in the process of working towards the goal is in the same time forming and being formed because of interacting with an entire energetic materiality in constant movement[8]. Contrary to essentialism, for Deleuze the form doesn't preexist to its material realization and the matter is not functioning as a fixed mould that is able to produce forms from the outside. In order to make it clearer I will draw an example from his essay "the society of control" where he clarifies the differences in the formative processes of today's "social control" and the "enclosures" that were taking place in the "disciplinary societies" as he says:

"Enclosures are molds, distinct castings, but controls are a modulation, like a self-deforming cast that will continuously change from one moment to the other, or like a sieve whose mesh will transmute from point to point"[9].

What is important here is the distinction between the mold and the modulation as two different processes of connecting matter and form. The mold could be conceived as analogous to essentialism's idea for how formation acts on things while the modulation, the continuously self deforming cast, illustrates the idea of Deleuze about the same issue. Therefore, for Deleuze, the pathos, the etiological factor, is not something fixed.



Morphogenesis (from the Greek morphê shape and genesis creation) is one of three fundamental aspects of developmental biology along with the control of cell growth and cellular differentiation.[10]

Morphogenesis (also referred in biology as ontogenesis) refers to the process of form generation, while something takes "shape" or "becomes". Several points that concern the issue of morphogenesis have already been referred above which is an indication that borders between the terms phylogenesis, pathogenesis and morphogenesis are not fixed points but rather degrading spaces where the terms are merging together. This gives me the step to say that morphogenesis should be regarded like that, as a process that contains and is being contained to both phylogenesis and pathogenesis. This concept is partially supported but the "recapitulation theory":

During the late 19th century, Ernst Haeckel's recapitulation theory, or biogenetic law, was widely accepted. This theory was often expressed as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", i.e. the development of an organism exactly mirrors the evolutionary development of the species. The early version of this hypothesis has since been rejected as being oversimplified.[11] However the phenomenon of recapitulation, in which a developing organism will for a time show a similar trait or attribute to that of an ancestral species, only to have it disappear at a later stage is well documented. For example, embryos of the baleen whale still develop teeth at certain embryonic stages, only to later disappear. A more general example is the emergence of what could develop into pharyngeal gill pouches if it were in a lower vertebrate in almost all mammalian embryos at early stages of development.[12]

Morphogenesis is the result of an origin which is being activated and actualized through pathogenetic factors. What needs to be made clear again is that the relationship of origin and form is rather topological than geometrical and I will draw an example from DeLanda's "Deleuzian ontology" to describe this concept and how it works in terms of form generation.

There are a large number of different physical structures which form spontaneously as their components try to meet certain energetic requirements. These components may be constrained, for example, to seek a point of minimal free energy, like a soap bubble, which acquires its spherical form by minimizing surface tension, or a common salt crystal, which adopts the form of a cube by minimizing bonding energy. One way of describing the situation would be to say that a topological form (a singular point) guides a process which results in many different physical forms, including spheres and cubes, each one with different geometric properties. This is what Deleuze means when he says that singularities are like "implicit forms that are topological rather than geometric."[13] This may be contrasted to the essentialist approach in which the explanation for the spherical form of soap bubbles, for instance, would be framed in terms of the essence of sphericity, that is, of geometrically characterized essences acting as ideal forms. Unlike essences (or possibilities) which resemble that which realizes them, a singularity is always divergently actualized, that is, it guides intensive processes which differentiate it, resulting in a set of individual entities which is not given in advance and which need not resemble one another.[14]

One could also draw examples from biology and the genotype - phenotype distinction. We consider the origin to be the decisive factor for the genotype of an organism, or to be more accurate, we assume that the genome of an organism is formed by its phylogeny. The genotype is in a certain degree determining the phenotype, which represents the physical characteristics of an organism such as height, weight, color etc. Similarly to the example of DeLanda with the soap bubbles, the concept of phenotypic plasticity describes the degree to which an organism's phenotype is determined by its genotype.[15] A high level of plasticity means that environmental factors have a strong influence on the particular phenotype that develops while a low would mean that the influence was not strong. What this means, wide and large, is that a genotype has probably more than one possible phenotypes. In that sense morphogenesis should not be conceived as a closed, one way form generating process but rater as open-ended and interacting multiply with its surroundings.


Evolving architectures

The process described above where the origin, the activation and the growth meet in the evolutionary becoming of a reality or multiple realities could be the strategic starting point for an extensive discussion about the evolution of building types, as if they were species. Wide and large we could attempt to consider the concept of "building type" as a genotype that informs the production of multiple phenotypes and in the same time is in turn being informed by them (epigenetic) and evolves. Somehow, the "type" (typology) is the epitome (accumulation) of the history and the evolution of a function or a form since the origin is something inscribed in the things in a rather natural way. What I need to make clear is that I refer to the type as the minimum sets of relations that constitute a think and not as if type was a form or a function.

Type is the epitome of formality and its evolution which relies largely in the accumulation of the active dialogue with the informal which deforms the multiple "biased" phenotypes. Of course this attempt to link the concept of type with this of evolution demands extensive research in the fields of the history of architecture, the history of civilization and technology in order to be valid and usable. Additionally, we need to understand that the nature of the evolution of building types is unique and no matter it may seem similar to this of animal species, the establishment of straightforward analogies might be misleading. It is useful to use it as a concept and select some terms that help the understanding of the concept but extracting tools and trying to project the whole theory of evolution on a theory of architecture is wrong and would only lead us to false transpositions.

On the other hand, the problem is that the discussion about evolution of building types architects start the parametric design (programming), producing flowing forms with the use of scripting and tools that are "generating" the final output, using "randomness" in order to simulate the enormous complexity of the topological growth. But topological growth is not something merely random, is the result of multiple causes and effects that are just too complex to observe and to simulate but still play a major role in the process of evolution because they bring the "otherness" (which is the same that informality does). Believing that this is an architecture that "evolves" is rather ambitious.

The proposed "evolution" in that case is rather an arbitrary (αυθαίρετη) parametric "development" of forms or diagrams of functions but not really an evolving architecture since these simulations lack the most important factors of real evolution which is the interaction with the active materiality and the active dialogue with the "type" as an origin. In reality, the natural evolution is the result of the interaction of an origin with an active exteriority which results not only in the morphogenesis but also in the evolution of the origin (the genotype) but in these cases the script doesn't evolve. In all these computer simulations, in the one hand the genotype, which in that case is the script, remains the same and on the other hand the exteriority (which is only the interiority of a fragment) is determined by parameters and interaction settings that are also defined by the script and do not evolve. Therefore, the only way we can consider this processes as evolving is when we regard them as fragmented closed systems that evolve within themselves and in relation to their previous phases. This means that they might be useful as research tools or instruments for analysis but not as methods for synthesis (at least not yet) because once their outputs are decontextualized from their original, artificial environment (this of the simulation) and recontextualized in the reality, this transposition is not valid. The reason is that they were not made through the interaction with the reality, the origin and the particular context.

Additionally, this preset system, no matter its complexity, doesn't allow the appearance of the unpredictable, the "otherness" (l'autre) therefore it is not really evolving. It is rather a simulation of an evolution and this is how we should consider it. Maybe the only way it could be considered as actually evolving is in the manner that all things have evolved and continue to evolve. But this is something outside of the simulation itself, it is rather a part of the spatiotemporal reality. The evolution is to be found in the co-relation of multiple simulations and sets of scripts that become more and more complex through the knowledge we accumulate and through constant re-assessing, reprogramming and the use of combinations (hybrids) of smaller "scripting routines" for the making of more complex ones trying constantly to achieve better results. But isn't this already happening in architecture and any kind of science and literally everything?

Architecture has already been evolving, in the same way that history does, and its actual evolution is taking place within history and in the same time contains the whole history of architecture, the evolution of technology, materials and tools, not merely a fragment of time where a form flows while forming and deforming into a simulated environment. Architecture already has origins that participate, and apart from that has also external conditions that direct its development in evolutionary ways. What is predominant in these evolutionary processes is the involvement of the subject (of multiple subjects). Evolution is not something outside of the subject, the society or the various metaphorical or literal "ecosystems" we live in. The contrary, it is the outcome of the various modifications and alterations of things because of the interaction with the external factors that are to be found in these "ecosystems". This variety of interactions, alterations, transformations and modifications presupposes the existence of multiple subjects (call them agents if you want) that interact with things, alter them and drive it to new unpredictable ends as in the chaos theory. This is where informality is to be found, not only in the notion of participation, but in the active feeding of history with data and new origins through this autopoetic development. The cumulative dialogue of formal and informal is the bridge that connects the origin with the innovation and offers a constant feedbacking that leads to development.

To make it more clear, a formality like a building type, is often nothing more than the result of an informality that has persisted in time and has established itself as a state or a situation because it fits with the external conditions. Once the conditions change the type will evolve and change in order to fit to the new conditions but in order to change it needs to interact with the new conditions. The carrier of this interaction, or better, the mediator between the thing (in the particular case a formality) and the new condition is the subject or multiple subjects. Based on the above I believe that an actual evolutionary architecture is not to be found in parametric design or simulations. It presupposes participation and engagement of multiple subjects (not parameters) into all the levels of the design and production processes. Participation is the key for informal autopoesis which is the carrier of the "mutations" that are beyond programming and this is the key for evolution.

Therefore, the idea is not merely to draw inspiration from nature, but to attempt and really understand it and instead of simulating the natural processes to try and apply them in order to reestablish the lost connection between the realms of the natural and the technical, not merely technicalize the natural or naturalize the technical in a mimetic way. The overall discussion obviously draws the attention towards informality and reveals the need for a further attempt to understand its nature and its role as a bridge between the natural and the technical.Understanding informality sounds misleading and self contradicting in the sense that the informal is not something fixed or stable and the understanding of it, in the traditional sense, is like trying to stabilize something unstable or trying to solve an equation where there is nothing else but variables. Therefore we cannot seek for a final, holistic definition but we can attempt a hypothesis that could remain open for constant reconsideration and development by trying to find the relations of these variables.

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[1] Source Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis

[2] Source Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenesis

[3] Manuel DeLanda, ‘Deleuzian Ontology: A Sketch'. presented at New Ontologies: Transdisciplinary Objects, University of Illinois, USA, 30.03.02

[4] Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. p. 408

[5] Source Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathogenesis

[6] Source Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entelechy

[7] Source Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle

[8] Manuel DeLanda, ‘Deleuzian Ontology: A Sketch'. presented at New Ontologies: Transdisciplinary Objects, University of Illinois, USA, 30.03.02

[9] Gilles Deleuze, Society of control, L'autre journal, Nr. I, Mai 1990

[10] Source Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphogenesis

[11] Source Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogeny

[12] Source Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory

[13] Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. p. 408

[14] Manuel DeLanda, ‘Deleuzian Ontology: A Sketch'. presented at New Ontologies: Transdisciplinary Objects, University of Illinois, USA, 30.03.02

[15] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotype-phenotype_distinction