Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id MAA05967 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 6 Dec 2001 12:22:51 GMT Message-ID: <3C0F624A.27F578DD@mmu.ac.uk> Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2001 12:19:22 +0000 From: Bruce Edmonds <b.edmonds@mmu.ac.uk> Organization: Centre for Policy Modelling X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (WinNT; U) X-Accept-Language: en To: JOM announcements list <jom-emit-ann@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: New JoM-EMIT paper: Darwinian Processes and Memes in Architecture by Salingaros and Mikiten Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: JOM-EMIT@sepa.tudelft.nl
Darwinian Processes and Memes in Architecture:
A Memetic Theory of Modernism
by Nikos Salingaros and Terry Mikiten
Abstract
1 - Introduction
2 - The modernist style
3 - Design as a Darwinian process
4 - Memes and architecture
5 - Explaining the unlikely success of Modernism
6 - Competition among early twentieth-century architectural styles
7 - Encapsulation of images in the mind
8 - The two faces of encapsulation
9 - A complexity threshold
10 - How architecture perpetuates modernist memes
11 - Modernism has become an institution
12 - Conclusion
References
Abstract.
The process of design in architecture parallels analogous
generative processes in biology and the natural sciences. This
paper examines how the ideas of Darwinian selection might apply
to architecture. Design selects from among randomly-generated
options in the mind of the architect. Multiple stages of selection
generate a design that reflects the set of selection criteria used.
The goal of most traditional architecture is to adapt a design to
human physical and psychological needs. At the same time,
however, a particular style of architecture represents a group of
visual memes that are copied for as long as that style remains in
favor. Darwinian selection also explains why non-adaptive
minimalist forms of the modernist style have been so successful at
proliferating. The reason is because they act like simple biological
entities such as viruses, which replicate much faster than do more
complex life forms. Simple visual memes thus parasitize the
ordered complexity of the built environment.
Keywords: adaptivity, architecture, Darwinian process, design,
images, memes, minimalism, modernism, parasitic, selection,
styles, viruses.
Available at:
http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit/2002/vol6/
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