From Typology to Topology: Social, Spatial, and Structural

Patrik Schumacher & Lei Zheng, London 2017

Published in: Architectural Journal, No. 590, 2017/11, Source journal for Chinese scientific
and technical papers and citations; Sponsor: The Architectural Society of China, Chief editor:
Cui Kai

Abstract:
Structural engineering science radically transformed its ontology and methodology
from a typological to a topological paradigm. This implies a radical reset of the
categories that guide engineering practice. The modern forms of engineering
rationality based on system types are now exposed as inefficient while the rationality
of older structural forms based on slowly evolved traditions is now revealed by the
new paradigm. These forms – like the Gothic Cathedrals - often offer higher degrees
of efficiency that were not verifiable via calculations before the advent of the
computational revolution in engineering science. Beyond this revelation and
recuperation of premodern more differentiated and integrated solutions we witness
the proliferation of radically new forms that the new paradigm makes possible. This
radical expansion of structural possibilities – mirroring the endless forms of nature -
is congenial with the requirements of contemporary architectural design where a
much higher degree of versatility is required to meet the challenges of a much more
complex society.

Keywords:
Paradigm shift, typology, topology, optimization, engineering rationality, interdisciplinarity,
congeniality, finite element analysis, redundancy, tectonism, tectonic articulation,
parametricism

We are living in an increasingly dynamic and complex world where social institutions,
social types and identities proliferate, hybridize and indeed seem to blend into each
other, into a continuously differentiated social texture. Stable stereo-types dissolve
and fixed hierarchies have everywhere given way to fluid networks, both in our
private and our working lives. We might summarize this by saying that our modern
social typology has given way to a post-modern condition of social topologyi.

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This new fluid societal condition has a material base: the fourth industrial revolutionii
with its ever more pervasive use of digital computing power crunching through ever
bigger data sets in the quest for ever more subtly tailored adaptive product and
service optimizations. This new social life process is also demanding a new
congenial built environment, equally differentiated and fluid; and naturally this new
built environment can be delivered only via upgraded architectural and engineering
disciplines that are equally empowered by the new digital computing powers. The
new condition implies that each new construction project is characterized by both
complexity and novelty. Routine solutions are out of the question. R&D is now
always involved. This implies a closer collaboration between the various contributors:
developers, architects and engineers.

Intense Collaboration and Strict Distinction between Architecture and

Engineering

There is no doubt that progress with continuously increasing performance - in

general as well as in relation to the built environment - implies the need for an
intensified specialisation and collaboration of the specialists in interdisciplinary
expert teams. However, interdisciplinary work does not imply the dissolution of
disciplinary boundaries. While individual careers might migrate across disciplinary
boundaries, effective interdisciplinarity, demands that at any time the different
competencies that are expected to contribute to the overall success of the project
are clearly demarcated. The premise of our contribution here is thus a double thesis
that implies both the strictest demarcation and the closest collaboration between
architecture and engineering as preconditions for the productive advancement of the
built environment. The underlying division of labour might be posited as follows:
Architecture is responsible for the built environment’s social performance.
Engineering is responsible for the built environment’s technical performance.
Technical performance is a basic precondition of social performance. In this sense
engineering might be argued to be primary. Social performance is the goal. In this
sense architecture might be argued to be primary. Thus the relation cannot be
brought into a hierarchy. Rather it is a relation of mutual dependency and dialectical
advancement. Architectural goals must be defined within a technically delimited

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space of possibilities. Engineering research and development thus expands the
universe of possibilities that constraints architectural invention. However, it cannot be
taken for granted that engineering research and development expands the universe
of possibilities in relevant, desired directions without being prompted and inspired by
architectural goals. In turn architectural goals and inventions might be prompted and
inspired by recent engineering advances. The two disciplines co-evolve in mutual
adaptation. Evidence of this can be found in the congeniality between the
architectural avant-garde style of parametricism and structural engineering’s
contemporary capacity to model and evolve optimizing, smoothly differentiated
structures. However, we have to reflect that for us architects these differentiated
structures enter our considerations as just another set of compositional elements in
our quest to differentiate the spatial scene in accordance with the differentiation of
social situations. Congeniality does not imply the conflation of concerns and
competencies.

Structural Fluidity – From Typology to Topology in Structural Engineering

The digital revolution that brought a series of powerful new design tools into
architecture has also provided structural engineering with new tools to analyse and
calculate structures in the manner that is congenial to the architectural ambition
towards parametric variability that has been unleashed by the new digital design
tools. Traditional and 20th Century modern architecture was a game of assembling
simple platonic forms like cuboids, cylinders, spheres, and pyramids. The key
characteristic of contemporary architecture that challenges engineering is the pursuit
of complex and continuously changing forms. Such fluid forms can no longer be
analysed by means of decomposing them into discreet elements establishing clear
cut structural systems. This is significant because it challenges structural
engineering with respect to its most basic elements and concepts.
Classical modern structural engineering – in distinction to contemporary engineering
- relies on the ability to decompose any structure into clear and independent
structural sub-systems and elemental members. Each sub-system adheres to
standard concepts like column, beam, cantilever, portal frame, arch, slab, barrel
vault, dome etc. This typology was taken to be definitive. Each of these concepts is
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characterised by a clearly typified geometric schema with its attendant configuration
of loads, supports and forces. Each can be further characterized by more detailed
system choices, i.e. a beam might be articulated as truss, vierendeel beam or box
beam etc. Within each simple subsystem the active forces can be easily ascertained,
and great care is taken to control the transference of forces from subsystem to
subsystem by the precise articulation of the joints that only transmit a particular, well
defined force. The overall arrangement of forces can then be traced step by step.
This strategy of clear and distinct decomposition sacrifices efficiency and
redundancy for analytical clarity and tractability. This strategy of decomposition is
then aligned with the strategy of uniformity within each system, eschewing
differentiation. Both decomposition and uniformity are strategies for the reduction of
complexity that recognises the narrow computational capacity of the pre-digital era.
Uniformity recognizes also the industrial fabrication system of the Fordist era.

Mies van der Rohe, Crown Hall, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago 1956. The primary structure
here uses the portal frame as distinct structural system type. A sequence of our large-span portal
frames - bound together by secondary beams – make up the structure.

Mies van der Rohe, National Gallery, Berlin 1968. The structure is a beam grid on 8 columns with
hinge joints. In both examples the modern structural principles are clearly in evidence: Distinct system
type, uniformity, decomposition into discrete elements with controlled load/force transmission at the
joints. Yet another aspect of modern engineering becomes evident here: These principles owe their
historical rationality as much to the Fordist fabrication logic of mechanical mass reproduction of
standardized industrial elements like the I-beam.

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In contrast with this modern typological approach contemporary engineering has
become topological and can thus better serve the new architectural style that aims to
create spaces which are morphing different spatial sections into a seamlessly
differentiated continuum that resists any decomposition into discrete spaces that
could be conveniently structured by discrete structural systems. In traditional
structures the ability to analyse and calculate the behaviour of the structure is
premised upon the purity of structural type and the severing of all redundant
connections. However, conceptually distinct structural system types - beam vs arch
etc. – are disappearing from engineering due to the new modelling techniques like
Finite Element Analysis. We thus witness a radical conceptual shift - a paradigm
shift – within engineering. This is also an ontological shift as it revolutionises the
most basic entities that constitute a structure. I would like to call this paradigm shift
the shift from typology to topology. It is at the same time a conceptual shift from parts
to particles with respect to the mode of decomposition for calculation. This shift in
structural engineering has not been triggered by the new architectural style but
rather follows from the internal logic of structural science in the pursuit of structural
optimization, in combination with the computational empowerment that makes this
pursuit feasible.

A very similar but initially independent shift has also transformed architecture: the
pursuit of higher levels of variation and complexity in response to the new societal
conditions, again in combination with the computational empowerment that makes
this pursuit feasible.iii It is precisely the idea of typology – the thinking in clearly
defined spatial types – that is also disappearing from contemporary architecture,
especially within the movement and style of parametricism. In fact, “From Typology
to Topology” was one of the early key slogans of the tendency within contemporary
architecture that has since (since 2008) been termed parametricism. This implies
that contemporary architecture escapes all modern engineering procedures. With
new engineering tools like Finite Element Analysis, which break the structures into
particles rather than into parts, the engineer is able to capture the ever shifting
arrangement of forces. The universe of potential force patterns becomes boundless.

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Zaha Hadid Architects, detail of villa project, undisclosed location. This mushroom-like roof structure
follows no standard structural system type. The integration of structural analysis via Finite Element
Analysis during the design process allows for structural feedback during the sculpting process. The
stress distributions and deformational impact is modelled and becomes dependent upon the
differentiated sectional profile. This is a first step towards optimization. Here structural calculation is
not reduced to identify critical points that determine the dimension of a priori forms but all points
become potentially “critical” points.

The mushroom roof shown here is similar to (but more complex) than Felix
Candela’s concrete umbrella roofs. What Candela achieved via empirical test series,
namely an optimized thickness distribution, can now be computed via Finite Element
Analysis.iv
“From Parts to Particles” is another key slogan of contemporary architecture.
Structural engineers can now analyse mixed, hybrid systems. A tool like Finite
Element Analysis can also cope with dense, redundant interrelations of the parts of a
structure. We no longer need to sever and isolate the structural components or
subsystems. This means that we can harness the structural efficiency of an
interconnected network, where parts work together rather than remaining
independent from each other. The re-tooled engineer allows the structural forces to
flow freely through the surfaces provided by the architect. This is the era of structural
fluidity.

It thus becomes evident that the architectural style of parametricism is congenial with
the most advanced (topologically based) engineering thinking, and indeed that
parametricism is the only style that fully utilizes the new engineering intelligence.
I would like to cite Zaha Hadid Architects’ Phaeno Science Museum in Wolfsburg as
an early example where the structural systems morph as much as the architectural
forms. Here we can observe a mixture of spanning, cantilevering and vaulting within
a waffle slab whereby spans and cantilevering dimensions are continuously
changing. The cones flare into the waffle-slab rather than remaining discreet props

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that pick up their load at distinct points of contact. The space frame above is
continuously differentiated whereby each member within the space frame has a
different angle (the grid fans in two directions) so that each cell of the space frame
has a different size. In a complimentary move each member has a different
thickness and weight. Obviously, this nuanced optimisation can only be coped with
by means of computers, both with respect to the calculation of forces as well as with
respect to the handling of the complex geometry and manufacturing schedules.

Zaha Hadid Architects, Phaeno Science Centre, Wolfsburg, Germany 2000-2005. Two structural
systems – the waffle slab for the main floor and the vierendeel space-frame for the roof – are
correlated via the structural cones as inhabitable mega-columns. Both systems are non-uniform
subsystems, whereby the spaceframe is more subtly and extensively differentiated as the structural
gridlines fan in both directions in adaptation to the trapezoidal global roof shape. Each cell of the
vierendeel space-frame is thus unique and each member profile is individually sized according to the
varied load conditions.

The next stage in structural design sophistication is the methodology of Topology

Optimisation whereby the analytic capacity of Finite Element Analysis (FEM) is
turned generative by means of being looped into an evolutionary algorithm.v The
starting point is usually a simple block shape that connects loads with support points.
The FEM reveals the stress distribution under the initial condition. Regions of low
stress are then removed and the FEM is run once more on the new shape which is
then again further eroded according to the new stress distribution etc. The initial
bounding shape to which the topology optimisation algorithm is applied might itself
be already a complex structurally optimized shape, like a shell form generated by the
form-finding technique of mesh relaxation. As example might here serve an
experimental structure created by Zaha Hadid Architects’ CODE group.

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Zaha Hadid Architects’ CODE group, experimental structure using a shell form as basis for the
operation of the application of the topology optimization algorithm. Mexico City, 2013. Here the
perforation pattern is a geometrically rationalized translation of the topology optimization.

As another recent example I would like to point to my AADRL parametric tower

research. The ambition here is to replace the typological structural thinking in terms
of a choice from a list of structural system types like core-type, out-rigger type and
structural tube type with the idea of a tower structure that morphs across these types
via a series of gradual ‘phase changes’. Usually the tower structure is assumed to be
a single, uniform system selected in accordance with the height or slenderness ratio,
i.e. up to a certain height/slenderness the tower’s stability can be secured by mere
framing without core or bracing, while a somewhat higher tower would rely on a
uniform core as stability system, while beyond this height/slenderness the outrigger
system would be selected, and very tall/slender towers would be designed as a
structural tube. The unquestioned presumption here is always that a tower should be
conceived as a singular, uniform system without any systemic differentiation along
the vertical axis of the tower. This a priori of systemic uniformity must be exposed as
irrational. Its seeming rationality is the rationality of a bygone era. In former times a
topology optimized and thus more complex and differentiated design was neither
computable, nor buildable. However, now this default condition of system uniformity
leads to a materially wasteful result. The accumulation of loads and moments
towards the bottom of the tower suggests that bottom, middle and top of tower
should be treated rather differently. This structural differentiation - whereby only in
the lower parts of the tower the full outer surface is activated as structural tube and
the upper areas might be structured rather differently – allows for a congenial
programmatic differentiation. Neither programmatically, nor therefore architecturally,

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is uniformity any longer a desired default condition. This example once more
demonstrates the congeniality of architectural parametricism and topological
structural engineering.

These diagrams describe the modern structural principles for high-rise construction. Discrete and
uniform system types – framework, endo-skeleton (outrigger system), exo-skeleton (structural tube
system) – are selected according to a series of tower height thresholds. The underlying, unquestioned
a priori stipulation or presumption here is the uniformity and discreteness of the systems.

The a priori of modern engineering rationality is thus blind to the possibility of differentiating the tower
structure along its vertical axis, either by gradually varying the pattern within a given system, for
instance within the exo-skeleton, as displayed in diagram figures a and b, or by shifting and blending
between different systems as shown in the elevation of ZHA’s residential tower scheme above,
whereby what starts as a structural tube at the bottom transforms into a simpler framework structure.
The possibility of such optimizing differentiations exposes the relative irrationality (structural
inefficiency) of the modern structural rationality.

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From Engineering Inspiration to Architectural Style: Tectonismvi

In recent years the protagonists of parametricism have increasingly engaged

themselves with design methodologies inspired by the structural form finding
techniques pioneered by Frei Otto. This is due to the availability of new digital
physics engines that can simulate the material/structural form finding methods
similar to Frei Otto’s experiments with physical models. These new tools, mostly
available as ‘grasshopper’ plug-ins, include RhinoVAULT for complex compression-
only shells, ‘kangaroo’ to approximate shell or tensile structures, or analytic tools like
‘Principle Stress Lines’ analysis in ‘Karamba’ that can also be turned generative.
Even structural topology optimisation tools have become readily available within the
‘grasshopper’ world. These tools deliver a quick structural form finding capacity to
designers who are now able to explore these structurally disciplined, yet still
sufficiently versatile, new design worlds and are able to gain an intuitive grasp of the
structural logics at play. The same also starts to happen with environmental
engineering parameters, and more recently also with respect to new fabrication
constraints that can be encoded within the digital design tools. Various fabrication-
and materially based geometry constraints can be embedded in generative design
processes that are then set free to search the characteristic solution space delimited
by the constraints. At ZHA CODE we are developing a lot of our own custom tools to
model the particular constraints of particular fabrication processes.
The architects’ use of these new design techniques involving engineering logics
within the form-finding process does not imply that architects have become
engineers, as it were re-unifying what the increasing specialisation of disciplines had
severed starting in the 19th century. Architects are designers and their use of
engineering-based form-finding tools is just their way to start the collaboration with
engineers on the right foot. The structural intelligence behind those tools is the
intelligence of the engineering sciences, and the final structural design and liability
remains exclusively the engineers’ responsibility. However, the new crop of
architects pose as ‘proto-engineers’ who challenge and push the professional
engineers to the frontier of their discipline, getting them involved in the new
adventure of parametricism.

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This new way of working has generated a new characteristic range of architectural
morphologies. These morphologies are rather divers, due to the proliferating
diversity of new materials, structural approaches and fabrication techniques.
However, despite their proliferous variety, these new morphologies are recognisably
of a peculiar, unmistakeable cast. They share a sense of organic intricacy. This
should perhaps be not too surprising after all: all these works adhere to the general
principles of parametricism and furthermore share this new additional commitment to
computational form finding on the basis of engineering constraints. There is an
unmistakeable unity that operates across this diversity. This recognisable formal
unity, together with the unity of methodological principles and values justifies the
positing of a stylistic variation of parametricism: Tectonism. The creations of
tectonism are indeed as recognisable as the endless forms of nature are
recognisable as such.

Zaha Hadid Architects – CODE, Primary Stress Lines inscribed and extruded onto a hypar shell form.

Zaha Hadid Architects CODE, Experimental Pavilion for Beijing Biennale 2013. Project is constituted
by three hypar shells configured reminiscent of Felix Candela’s Chapel of St. Vincent de Paulvii in
Mexcio City. These shell forms were translated as layered grid shells whereby the gridlines are
configured according to the computed primary stress lines. Stress densities were translated
approximately via the number of grid-line layers: one, two or three layers. The system was visually
further articulated via the differential colouring of the layers.

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Tectonism implies the stylistic heightening of engineering- and fabrication-based
form-finding and optimization processes. To be clear, despite its dependency on
engineering logics, ‘tectonism’ is an architectural style. In fact, the concept of style(s)
is a category that only makes sense within the discipline of architecture, as it
necessarily refers to recognisable visual characteristics, albeit without thereby being
reducible to matters of visual appearance.viii With respect to the engineering
sciences the analogous term is paradigm (rather than style). So we can say that
structural engineering’s recent topological paradigm is congenial to architecture’s
style of parametricism, and in particular to its most recent manifestation: tectonism.
Tectonism is the currently most prevalent and promising subsidiary style (sub-style)
within the overarching paradigm and epochal style of parametricism. In retrospect we
might distinguish tectonism from earlier phases of parmetricism like foldism and
blobismix. In contrast to these earlier sub-styles tectonism is embedding a series of
technical rationalities that secure both greater efficiency as well as greater
morphological rigour, while maintaining sufficient degrees of design freedom to
address programmatic and contextual contingencies. Since the principles tectonism
utilizes are inherently plural and open ended, this additional rigour comes along with
additional tectonic variety and thereby offers a new reservoir of morphological
physiognomies. This empowers designers to give a unique, recognisable identity to
individual projects. Tectonism thus delivers much more expressive variety than
foldism or blobism, without descending into arbitrary form invention.

While the overarching general design agenda remains parametricism’s pursuit of

adaptive differentiation, tectonism pursues these with a much richer set of parametric
drivers and constraints than earlier versions of parametricism. These drivers
originate in sophisticated computationally empowered engineering logics that are
now available to architects at early design stages via the structural form-finding tools
mentioned above.
As a substyle of parametricism, tectonism partakes in the superior social functionality
of parametricism with respect to the purposes and challenges posed by our fluid
contemporary societal conditions. This superiority resides in the adaptive versatility
of parametricism with respect to the complex programmatic mixes that need to be
intricately woven into complex urban sites. This implies complex, irregular forms,

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interpenetrating spaces, multiple simultaneous contextual affiliations and gradual
spatial transformations etc. This is what we might call spatial topology in the service
of social topology.
Parametricsim has the formal repertoires to shape and fit buildings so as to meet
these complex requirements in ways that can also maintain legibility in the face of
these unprecedented complexities. Tectonism can do all this and more: It can
achieve all this while simultaneously meeting structural and environmental
optimisation criteria. Furthermore, the morphologies that result from this pursuit gain
– as if by serendipitous coincidence – additional visual legibility advantages. How is
this possible? Well, it is the very rigor of the engineering logics that ruthlessly impose
their selection criteria at every point across the overall form and that thus not only
sponsor a formal unity across the project but also insure that the morphological
variations are rule-based and thus predictable despite their complexity.

Tectonic Articulation – Making Engineering Logics Speak

The demarcation between architecture and engineeringx rests on the distinction of

the built environment’s social functioning from its technical functioning. While the
technical functioning considers the physical integrity, fabrication constraints, and
physical performance of the building in relation to its users understood as physical-
biological bodies, architecture must take into consideration that a building’s social
function. The social function of architecture is the ordering of social processes. This
is achieved via spatial organisation. However, buildings function only by empowering
users to find their way and each other within this organisation, i.e. the building must
function as ordering and guiding communicative frame, and is thus functioning via its
appearance and legibility. The core competency of architecture comprises thus,
besides organisation, the crucial task of articulation. Legibility involves two aspects:
the perceptual palpability and the semantic-informational charge. Accordingly the
general task of articulation bifurcates into the two specific tasks of phenomenological
articulation and semiological articulationxi. Both aspects need to guide the designer’s
decision making process in the context of the proliferating options that emerge from
the engineering discourse. Semiological articulation presupposes a successful
phenomenological articulation. Phenomenological articulation pursues the visual

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decomposition of the (increasingly complex) urban scene by making the relevant
functional units (units of interaction) conspicuous. This concern with the visual
decomposition of a complex composition motivates us at Zaha Hadid Architects to
work with curves and curved surfaces. Shells, like blobs, remain traceable spatial
units even if they start clustering, intersecting or fusing. The size of blobs or shells is
communicated locally via the degree of their surface curvature. Inside versus outside
are encoded as concave versus convex. Zones of overlap between such spaces
clearly reveal their constitution. All these informational capacities enhance the
inherent information richness and legibility of such compositions in contrast to
orthogonal or cuboid systems. This is our architectural motivation to utilize shell
structures. The structural efficiency of shell structures is of course very welcome too
and implies that we do not have to fight with our structural engineers. However, the
happy coincidence between structural and architectural motivations does not imply
their conflation. Our architectural reasoning proceeds as follows: The perceptual
identification of functional units and their interrelations is facilitated by the use of
convex forms like shells. The use of convex (and concave) surfaces with various
degrees of curvature gives useful orienting information. The use of structural form-
finding logics disciplines the spatial morphologies in ways that are advantageous for
the task of articulation, i.e. the task of elaborating a systematic spatial language.
Semiological articulation can then map significant programmatic distinctions onto
conspicuous morphological distinctions so that morphological differences indicate
programmatic differences. The formal unity of a structural morphology range can be
perceived and help users to recognize a programmatic unity across varied
instantiations. Tectonic articulation – in the style of tectonism - is thus making
engineering logics speak, via a designed visual code that selects a sub-set from the
set of all conceivable structural morphologies and orchestrates these into a telling
language. This language orients users as a navigation aid and tells them about the
social offerings at hand. The built forms are not speaking about their structural
performance (which is of no interest to users) but about their social purposes, and
this communication facilitates these very purposes. Visual communication is
exclusively the architects business, not the engineers. The engineer’s business is to
ensure, by means of the very same forms, their silent physical functioning. That’s
why the collaboration between architects and engineers has to be so close and
congenial: Their very different responsibilities have to be met simultaneously, by the
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very same building forms. This collaboration between architects and engineers has
to become especially intense within the style of tectonism. This style has the
ambition to show, rather than to cover up and hide, the structural patterns, members,
and details. These structural patterns, structural members and structural details
become here articulate instruments of communication. They lead a double life,
namely serving both physical-technical and cognitive-social functions.

Tectonic articulation is here thus proposed as the concept for the strategic
articulatory utilization of the morphological differentiations that emerge from
engineering logics like structural engineering, environmental engineering and façade
engineering.
The history of architecture abounds with examples where architectural elements and
features with technical functions become the object of articulatory or “ornamental”
endeavours. However, we need to understand the instrumentality of ornament, i.e.
we need to grasp ornament not in contrast to performance but as a special type of
performance: communicative performance. A technically efficient morphology thus
assumes also an articulatory, communicative function.

King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, 1446 – 1515, Gothic style fan vault. The variety and
expressiveness of Gothic vaults clearly build upon structurally motivated patterns, and clearly
heighten these patterns into an ornamental expressive state that communicates the special purpose
and dignity of the space. These spaces are thus examples of what we are theorizing here as tectonic
articulation.

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The articulatory integration of the morphological consequences of technical
requirements is always the more elegant solution than the attempt to fight and deny
them by hiding or obfuscating them. This latter stance would require the invention of
additional communicative features because social distinctions desire and require
expression. However, the utilization of the initially technically motivated
morphological features for the characterization of spaces is not only more
economical but leads to a higher level of credibility of the communication because
the morphological signifier is already an index rather than a merely arbitrary symbol.
Thus, in the terminology of Charles Peirce, tectonic articulation transforms ‘indexical
signs’ into ‘symbolic signs’. This process too gives degrees of freedom to the
designer in the selection of the indexical features that might be heightened and
systematized to become elements of a semiological system of signification.xii In order
for architects to pursue tectonic articulation they need to guide and orchestrate the
engineering investigations and then select the engineering options that most suit
their primary task, namely to fulfil the posed social functions via framing spatio-
morphological communications. The adaptive differentiation of load bearing
structures as well as the adaptive differentiation of volumes and envelopes according
to the building’s environmental performance (with respect to its exposure to sun,
wind, rain etc.) as well as differentiations that stem from fabrication logics (e.g.
tessellations) afford many opportunities for differential tectonic articulation. A thus
lawfully differentiated built environment would be much more legible and navigable
than the modernist, isotropic order of repetition. With the development of
sophisticated computational design tools - both within architecture, within the
engineering disciplines, and within the construction industry - the scope for nuanced
tectonic articulation has much increased. The adaptation of structural morphologies
to the force distribution within a structural system offers a fantastic opportunity for
architectural articulation. In turn the more complex architectural orders proposed
within contemporary architecture are reflected and potentially accentuated by
sophisticated, adaptive structures. The realization of this potential requires an
intensified collaboration between innovative architects, engineers and fabricators.
Although there can be no doubt that architecture remains a discourse that is distinct
from engineering and construction, a close collaboration with these discipline’s, as

16
well as the acquisition of reliable intuitions about their respective logics, are
increasingly important conditions for the design of contemporary high performance
environments. These environments will no longer be based on a typology of fixed
stereo-types. These environments will be topological environments: socially, spatially
and structurally.

Zaha Hadid Architects, design for a palace, undisclosed location. The Palace is designed as a cluster
of shells. Both the external shell forms as well as the internal ribbing and perforation patterns are
based on structural optimization algorithms. There are many ways to set up and compute the
structural optimization and thus this design method delivers a rich variety of articulations that can then
be instrumentalized for the expressive semiological articulation and characterisation of the various
spaces like central entry lobbies, grand ballroom etc. Some of the ribbing patterns also function as
internal orientation lines indicating primary entry points and spatial centre points.

End.

17
Notes:

i
The originally mathematical concept of topology implies gradual variation and transformation and its
metaphorical expansion can thus serve us here as suggestive counter concept to the concept of
typology.
ii
Klaus Schwab, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, World Economic Forum, 2016
iii
It becomes clear here that the invention and proliferation of computational information technology
has been the decisive original underlying factor that has been and still is transforming not only
architecture and engineering but all disciplines and arenas of professional and social life and thus
underlies the global transformation of society.
iv
POWELL DRAPER, MARIA E. MOREYRA GARLOCK and DAVID P. BILLINGTON, STRUCTURAL
OPTIMIZATION OF FÉLIX CANDELA’S HYPAR UMBRELLA SHELLS, JOURNAL OF THE
INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR SHELL AND SPATIAL STRUCTURES: J. IASS, 2010
v
X.Huang & Y.M.Xie, Evolutionary Topology Optimization of Continuum Structures – Methods and
Applications, John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, UK, 2010
vi
Patrik Schumacher, Tectonism in Architecture, Design and Fashion – Innovations in Digital
Fabrication as Stylistic Drivers, Published in: AD 3D-Printed Body Architecture, guest-edited by Neil
Leach & Behnaz Farahi, Architectural Design, Profile No 250, November/December 2017, 06/Vol
87/2017
vii
Metcalfe, Ballard, A Structural Optimization of Félix Candela’s Chapel of St. Vincent de Paul in
Coyoacán, Mexico City, Princeton University Undergraduate Senior Theses, Civil and Environmental
Engineering, 2014
viii
For a full elabotation of the concept of architectural style(s) see: Patrik Schumacher, The
Autopoiesis of Architecture, Vol.1: A New Framework for Architecture, John Wiley & Sons Ltd.,
London 2010, section 3.6 Architectural Styles
ix
These older sub-styles are still practiced, just as during the era of Modernism the earlier white
Bauhaus style continued in parallel with the later Brutalism.
x
Patrik Schumacher, The Autopoiesis of Architecture, Vol.1: A New Framework for Architecture, John
Wiley & Sons Ltd., London 2010, section 2.5 The Necessity of Demarcation
xi
Patrik Schumacher, The Autopoiesis of Architecture, Vol.2: A New Agenda for Architecture, John
Wiley & Sons Ltd., London 2012, section 6.6 The Phenomenological vs the Semiological Dimension
of Architecture
xii
A certain drawback here is that the articulatory repertoire is thereby somewhat constrained, so that
this strategy might not succeed if the task of articulation is very complex.

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