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D-B . A: Digital-Botanic Architecture

by Dennis Dollens. Lumen Books, Santa Fe, NM, U.S.A., 2005. 96 pp., illus. Paper. ISBN: 0-930829-54-9.

Reviewed by Rob Harle

recluse@lis.net.au
 
Digital-Botanic Architecture (D-B. A) is another wonderful and inspiring book by Dennis Dollens. It extends and further develops Dollens’ previous exploratory design work concerning the digital manipulation of various biological forms as starting points for the creation of "grown" architectural structures.

Whilst it is a slim volume, every paragraph is jam packed with information and concepts which open up exciting, unique vistas for our future architecture. Dollens is no waffler, he says in a mere hundred pages what many other authors would take three hundred pages to say. Consequently, reading this book is a bit like a roller coaster ride, hold on and enjoy the thrill of philosophy, traditional architecture, computer software description and evolutionary concepts of Richard Dawkins all woven into a brilliant vision of biomimetic architecture.

Dollens’ latest work is intimately connected with the philosophy of the great American architect, Louis Sullivan, especially his, A System of Architectural Ornament. Through the use of various computer software applications (XFrog, Rhino and 3DStudio Max) Dollens generates new digital-botanic forms from some of Sullivan’s organic plant-forms. The results are astounding. His Fibonacci Spiral Stairway (p. 87) is simply a stunning form, either as a stand alone sculpture or to be transposed into a real stairway as part of a building.

The software, XFrog, is explained in some detail, it is Dollens’ main tool for generating the growth of forms. The program was not originally intended as architectural design software, however, it produces forms, "...that may, with interpretative work, be grown over or into Platonic solids and thus used to experiment with botanic-like elements that are woven into 3D architectural units" (p. 39). After these forms are created they can be ported to the Rhino software which can further enhance them. For example, by rendering, they may then be sent to a 3D Thermojet printer or rapid prototyping machine to produce real 3D models. As an aside, the potential of 3D Thermojet wax models is considerable for small sculptures to be cast in metal.

The book is lavishly illustrated with black & white drawings, screen shots and photos, not only of Dollens’ work but also of Duncan Brown’s (virtual game architectures) and SymbioticA’s (wet-ware, living biological artworks). These are spread throughout eight sections with the following titles: Biomimetic Architecture - Introduction; Seeding a Digital-Botanic Architecture; Growing with XFrog; Growing Game Space; SymbioticA; Biomimetic Bridge; Digital-Botanic Specimens; and Conclusion. There is a good Bibliography but a rather poor Glossary.

I have three minor criticisms of the book: (a) I would have liked the book to be longer, simply so I could enjoy it more; (b) the glossary could have been far more extensive, some of the terms used in the book are quite idiosyncratic, very new and not mainstream. This would have made it easier for the reader to understand some of the technical aspects of Dollens’ philosophy; (c) Dollens’ incorporation of the metaphysics of Leibniz (especially his monadology) into his own architectural philosophy is not as developed as it perhaps could be, or at least it is not explained in sufficient detail to make it clear. Dollens’ work is clearly holistic, mainly because of its grounding in biological natural forms - forms symbiotically related to that which they were generated from and to that which in turn are further generated from them. Yet Leibniz, as I understand him insists that, "...true unities are absolutely independent of one another"?

Dollens is a visionary and a thinker who clearly has no desire (or possibility) of perpetuating much of the unimaginative, soul destroying architecture of the modernist and the postmodernist periods. He teaches in both America and Spain. His previous book with Ignasi Pérez Arnal & Albero Estévez , Genetic Architectures/Arquitecturas Genéticas, was a result of this relationship in Barcelona at the ESARQ. I only hope his students appreciate the importance and liberating consequences of him planting such digital-botanic seeds within their psyche. The book is essential reading for all architectural students and for that matter anyone interested in or involved with design, sculpture, biomimetics or simply the appreciation of beautiful structures.

 

 




Updated 1st June 2005


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