Abstract
The contemporary recycling of biological analogy in architecture, in tandem with computational techniques of parametric design and building information models, raise the prospect of a return to a twenty-first century version of biotechnical determinism. This current dalliance with morphology and optimisation, raises the wider issue of how architecture has typically engaged with science: is the use of metaphor or other looser translations more likely to stimulate innovative practice than literal application? This question is considered here in relation to a particular case—the notion of the field, as informed from developments in nineteenth-century physics. An episodic tracing of the influence of field concepts takes in Italian Futurism, urban morphology and the topological to suggest the potency of a multi-various interpretation of science for architecture. The essay concludes with an argument for the concurrent evaluation of the quantitative and the qualitative, through performance simulation and mixed-reality visualisation. That utilisation of a range of analogue and digital technology may enable the balanced evaluation of design quality, architecture conceived in metaphor and poised between pragmatics and poetry.
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