Emergent Urbanism

Rediscovering Urban Complexity

Fractal Architecture

The genesis of complex geometry

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Sun, 06/21/2009 - 23:54, last updated Sun, 11/06/2011 - 00:55

I don't believe that there is a dichotomy between a supposedly modern and traditional architecture. Instead there exist different geometric processes, and while traditionally builders have employed nesting processes in their work, for perhaps no other reason than it came naturally to them, modern builders have restricted themselves to linear geometric processes due to drawing their inspiration from Cartesian science and engineering.

A demonstration of complexity in London

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Sun, 03/09/2008 - 23:52, last updated Sun, 11/06/2011 - 01:14

The immensely productive Physicist-Mathematician-Entrepreneur Stephen Wolfram theorized, based on his studies of cellular automatons in the 1980's, that there exists four classes of physical processes in the universe. Class I is simple continuous behavior (line). Class II is repetitive behavior (checkerboard). Class III is nested, hierarchical-fractal behavior (basic fractals like the Sierpinski triangle). Class IV, the most fascinating, is chaotic behavior (random fractals such as the Mandelbrot Set).

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