ADS6: Local Adaptation

Local Adaptation can happen anywhere. Local Adaptation considers the architectural relationship with nature (sun, wind, rain, etc.) as the driving force in a design process that allows specific design outcomes to emerge in response to location. The vernacular buildings documented in Bernard Rudofsky’s book Architecture Without Architects (1964) are examples of Local Adaptation. These structures have been finely tuned to their environment by working within local constraints, and utilising an ingenuity derived from many hundreds of years of testing and iterative improvements. While the buildings Rudofsky celebrated are from a pre-industrial age, ADS6 is not concerned with anachronism or nostalgia. Rather, we are concerned with trying to understand what a locally adaptive architecture might be in our technologically–rich, globally–interconnected world. Local Adaptation offers a method with enough rigour to consider complexity. It should allow architects and designers to follow evidence and not be overcome by preconceptions.

Our ADS6 approach will explore the consequences of taking a highly contextual, highly sensitive approach to investigating and intervening in a place. We believe by looking at something closely enough, valuable information will appear. How can a project emerge from detailed and systematic examination? How can we look closely? How do we keep track of the larger context while looking closely? How far is close enough? ‘Today functional problems are becoming less simple all the time,’ Christopher Alexander wrote in Notes On The Synthesis Of Form (1964), ‘But designers rarely confess their inability to solve them. Instead, when a designer does not understand a problem clearly enough to find the order it really calls for, he falls back on some arbitrarily chosen formal order. The problem, because of its complexity, remains unsolved.’

Although the starting point for a project might be in a particular location, the natural processes that become the focus of Local Adaptation exist at multiple scales – from a planetary scale to the human scale, from the global to the local. By exploring these scales, we can discover our common ground. Ways in which we are all interconnected and inter- dependent. Ways in which we co-exist within a large scale system. A close reading of a place may show us how rainwater falling in Bannau Brycheiniog, Wales, is collected in a valley and depositing sand that has been carried by the wind from the Sahara desert. By identifying and looking closely at the palette of locally available material, it becomes possible to find value in something that is thought to have no value. The constraints of working with local materials can yield interesting and provocative results. New technologies may create new material possibilities. Digital tools can produce new types of makers and new communities of practice.

Coding typically refers to the act of using programming languages to write computer programs that perform a specific task. It is the process of translating logic and instructions into a language that a computer can understand. Adaptation refers to the process of changing, or modifying, something to fit a new situation or environment. The ADS6 architecture of Local Adaptation brings together Adaptation and Coding in an evolutionary process where a sequential instruction becomes better suited to its habitat. Combined, the pairing allows modifications made to concepts, ideas, or methods based on the demands of the user and environment. Digital and manual processes response to the issue of context in varied, yet complimentary ways. ADS6 will look very closely at these ideas and learn from these observations through our use of analogue and digital tools. Digital tools speed up the understanding that is gained from using the analogue tools. We will switch between analogue and digital tools to extend the limits of our own bodies and work outside the timeframe of our own experience. Only once we gain a nuanced understanding of a place will we begin to ‘design’ – ideally, by that point, preconceived notions of ‘design’ will have fallen away, and a project will emerge on its own, directed and curated by us as architects and designers.

Predicting the future is always a near–impossible task. In 2023/24, ADS6 will place the design focus on an iterative process that examines beneath the visible and legible surface. Local Adaptation deals with changes over time. While some changes, such as biological resistance in bacteria, might occur relatively quickly, most evolutionary changes take millions of years. Adapting to environmental change is like a feedback loop in which feedback mechanisms regulate the stability and functionality of natural and human-made constructs. The question of why, and how, we can adapt our built environment in nature occurs over multiple scales. The question of scale, however, is inseparable from the issue of a critical, architectural viewpoint.

For YR1 and YR2 students, our investigation in 2023/24 will begin by focussing on hot dry earth. We will examine the extreme environment of Morocco and the abundant, free and sustainable material of earth. We will develop analogue and digital tools, which specifically respond to this environment, as a way to work with this material and develop a locally adaptive architecture using an immersive hands–on engagement with a place and the strategic use of tools. This investigation will be conducted with Gianni Botsford Architects, which is part of a research team with the engineers Ove Arup & Partners, The Engineering Design and Computing Laboratory, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zurich, as well as earth construction specialist Oussama Moukmir in Morocco, which aims to develop a novel template design and parametric model for single-storey, interlocking, masonry dwelling in the context of low-resource settings.

This design investigation is about low-cost and sustainable dwelling that uses local materials. It is about straightforward construction without high-skilled labour or technology. The design will not require mortar, formwork, or power tools to enable it to be suitable for low- resource settings and will be adaptable to the local context and needs of users through a parametric model that integrates automated simulation. ADS6 will be able to participate in this research and be involved in the construction of the first prototype in Morocco. A unit trip to Morocco will visit a local earth construction specialist and teacher, Oussama Moukmir, and tour his built projects, which use rammed earth, compressed earth blocks, and mud bricks, as well as research vernacular examples of earth architecture that have existed for centuries. We will visit a compressed earth block (CEB) factory outside Marrakech, make our own bricks, and be involved in the construction of a prototype house emerging from the research. We will visit and survey local low-cost housing with students from Marrakech University, gaining an understanding of the pressures to move away from earth construction to concrete based solutions.

In Term 1, students will be introduced to a primer project – ‘Constructed Analysis’. The project will measure and then construct a volume of sunlight within, or around, Grymsdyke Farm using only analogue tools. In doing so, students will learn the power of real time observation of environmental phenomena and the curatorial and design challenges of turning that observation into a full-scale material artefact. Students will learn to use digital tools to extend their powers of observation, including LiDAR Scanner to capture complex geometries and Grasshopper and Ladybug to examine environmental phenomena that cannot be experienced in real-time or place.

In Terms 2 and 3, YR I students will develop a thesis project based on the results of term 1. YR2 students will be asked to choose their own site, and we welcome individual research topics and agendas. Your final projects can evolve in response to actual and virtual analysis and by the testing of propositions through material investigation and experimentation resulting in a set of projects that are uniquely adapted to their context and are holistically sustainable. As a theme, Local Adaptation has been set to help guide students establish their research methodologies and develop and interpret their design projects.

Tutors:

Guan Lee is a practicing architect, lecturer and director of Grymsdyke Farm. He undertook his architectural studies at McGill University, Montreal, the Architectural Association, London, and Bartlett School of Architecture, where he completed his PhD on the relationship between architectural craft, making and site. In addition to his extensive experience as an educator, his own practice explores digital fabrication in relation to hands-on building processes in a range of materials, including clay, concrete and plaster.

Kate Darby is an Architect and principal of Kate Darby Architects. She studied architecture at the Bartlett and the Architectural Association. She has combined teaching and research since 1997. She has taught at the WSA, Cardiff University for the past ten years, and was a visiting tutor for the Design and Make programme at the AA in Hooke Park. She is co-founder of the collaborative workshop, Studio in the Woods and is a collaborator in the design make practice Invisible Studio.

Gianni Botsford is an architect and founded Gianni Botsford Architects in 1996. He studied at Kingston University (82-85) and the Architectural Association, London (94-96), in Professor John Frazer’s Evolutionary Architecture Unit. He has taught at the Architectural Association, London Metropolitan University, and the Welsh School of Architecture, and is a founding group leader of the annual Studio in the Woods. He is the recipient of the RIBA’s Lubetkin Prize and Architectural Record Design Vanguard in 2008. Research projects with Arup into the optimisation and control of sunlight and daylight, and with Arup and ETH Zurich into Low Cost Sustainable Housing using CEB blocks are ongoing.