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53
ZEB
annual report 2015
The flocking Starling asks his neighbour “do
you know where we´re going?” The neighbour
replies “I thought you did”.
We at Snøhetta are often asked to describe
our methodology, our process - this being
the very thing that we point out as being the
secret to successful projects. This is no less
the case with the enormous interest around
the realised pilot projects, Powerhouse Kjørbo
and ZEB Pilot House Larvik.
The process around our high-level research
projects is an up-scaled version of one we
already employ. That said, this process is hard
to define - it´s meta - at once tangible and yet
not. Constantly evolving.
Our understanding of architecture behaves in
a very similar way. Entirely dependent on the
unique biography of each individual observer.
Each subsequent observation changes the
boundary conditions for the next. With infinite
and immeasurable exponent.
Architecture at any one moment is perhaps
quite simply put: a uniquely convoluted
aggregate of infinite observations.
In the initial phases of our collaborative
projects with ZEB, researchers, industry
partners, and advisors are understandably
curious to the seemingly chaotic fusion of
multiple disciplines. Yet within this apparent
madness lays precisely the method - we must
simply equip our process to accommodate
multiple volatile agencies.
Flocks of birds, and more specifically
murmurations of starlings, are the parallel that
we draw most closely to the organic initial
phases of complex projects. Craig Reynolds
suggests that “the flocking behaviour in birds
can be explained by assuming that each bird
follows three simple rules:
• “Separation (don´t crowd your neighbours)
• Alignment (steer toward the average heading
of your neighbours)
• Cohesion (steer toward the average position
of your neighbours).”
Quote via John Naughton from C.W. Reynolds “Flocks
and Herds and Schools: A distributed Behavioural model”.
The contrast between the scientific simulation
and our flock or murmuration of ideas, people,
and processes - added to what we call rapid
prototyping - that is: model, manufacture, trial
and error; is arguably the success factor to our
collaborative pilots.
As each member of the pilot team adds their
own unique biography to the evolving project
we must remain open to new, untested
notions. Stimulated by questioning and
reasoning from dynamic groupings of multiple
disciplines - our critical contributions add
THE FLOCK
Kristian Edwards (Snøhetta)