Neoplasmatic design and protocell architecture: Two architectural discourses for the future

The progress, which can radically change people's life in the future, greatly affects studies in the common field of architecture, science and technology. In this way, scientists and thinkers undertake the tasks suchs as making visible the deeper meaning of human existence and understanding and redefining human's nature. These people who discuss these developments, can be defined as new-generation-intellectuals. The subjects which are dealt by the people who works on science and technology, inevitably require the opening of the borders between different disciplinaries. Stem cell research, cloning, sequencing the human genome and artificial intelligence are some of the examples for these subjects. In this pluralist environment, a team of architects and scientists notice the innovations which can affect greatly human's life and especially architecture. In this direction, they constitute architectural discourses and practices which are developed thanks to expanding relationships between architecture and other disciplinaries such as biology, chemistry etc. Advances in genetic science and technology, have a very significant effect on the occurence of the possible architectural discourses of the future. Generally speaking, in a group of discourses which is called Genetic-Architectures, the effect of advances in the context of biological paradigm on architecture is investigated. Various notions in Genetic-Architectures are borrowed from different disciplinaries such as biology, chemistry and medicine. With these notions, new thinking systems are generated for the architectural discourses which can be described as marginal according to main paradigms in architecture. The thoughts which are created in the different discourses, sometimes intersect each other and also sometimes those are seperated from each other. When these thoughts intersect each other, there can be homogenizations, affinities and antipoles. Genetic-Architectures propose a major way of thinking which can possibly generate a breaking point for architecture. In the form-oriented-architecture, the material is seen as a tool, which is dictated by architectural form. Genetic-Architectures are process-oriented. In the process-oriented-architecture, architectural form emerges from specific correlations in which the material is controlled, manipulated and grown. As mentioned above, architecture's expanding relations with other disciplinaries such as biology and chemistry, leads it to the formation of different perspectives and manifacturing techniques. The thesis study is carried out exactly in the range of these architectural discourses and practices, which are affected by the given expanding relations. Neoplasmatic-Design and Protocell-Architecture are two futuristic architectural discourses, which constitute the main framework of the thesis. Here, the word "future" refers that these discourses which describe different practices from the main paradigms of architecture, are not yet fully reflected on the dimension of reality. According to its proposals for architectural practice and discourse, Neoplasmatic-Design belongs to the Genetic-Architectures. Protocell-Architecture uses the technology of Protocells which is unrelated with DNA and outside the boundaries of genetics. Because of that, Protocell-Architecture is partially not included in the scope of Genetic-Architectures. Still, in the context of the thesis, Protocell-Architecture is accepted as it is included in Genetic-Architectures, because those have a great common area in architectural thinking and practice. Both Neoplasmatic-Design and Protocell-Architecture, focus on material technologies while developing the approaches which is affected by the expanding researches at the intersection of different disciplinaries, for possible architectures of the future. The potentials of Neoplasms which are partly grown and partly engineered, semi-living materials for architectural practice, are the main concern of Neoplasmatic-Design. Similarly Protocell-Architecture's main concern is the potentials of Protocell which is an output of advances in synthetic biology, chemistry and physics, unlike genetics. Neoplasm and Protocell, are two notions which are created as a result of scientific and technological advances in some disciplinaries that differ from the architecture. These notions are transferred by some architects to their own discipline and used as the tools for generating architectural discourses. These notions are used both metaphorically and in real sense for these mentioned discourses. Those are used as a metaphor for putting forward new ways of thinking in architecture. In real sense, those are new materials which emerge as new tools and processes in architectural practice. Architects who construct their discourses with the notions of Neoplasm and Protocell, aim to propose new worlds with the aid of mentioned materials, tools and processes and they try to have visions for the possible futures of architecture. Just like Genetic-Architectures, the architectural design products which belong to Neoplasmatic-Design and Protocell-Architecture, are process-oriented instead of being form-oriented. Considering the existing architectural discourses, including Genetic-Architectures in general, it is difficult to mention about a chronologically one-way thought process. Together with the intellectual linear progress in time, flashbacks, bidirectional progress, forward and backward leaps and breaking points can also be realized. This situation reveals the complex structure of architectural knowledge. Also today's pluralistic environment does undeniably have the impact on this situation. In this environment in which everything changes and is consumed rapidly, it is not easy to resolve the complexity of architectural knowledge. In order to show the complexity of architectural knowledge and to create an example for this issue in a narrowed frame, a systematic comparision of two interrelated architectural discourses are made within the scope of the thesis. Neoplasmatic-Design and Protocell-Architecture are comparatively examined in the research study. According to these comparisions, it is aimed to put forth the similarities and diversities between the two discourses and to present the effects, potentials and the risks of these. In a confined space, this study is carried out for representing the complex situation at the intersection of architecture, science and technology. First to make this mentioned comparative examination, it is tried to create a historical background for Neoplasmatic-Design and Protocell-Architecture. Accordingly, in the second part of the study, advances which are outside and inside the disciplinary of architecture and are effective in the formation of the two discourses, mentioned briefly in chronological order. At the end of this chapter, the formation models and objectives of Neoplasmatic-Design and Protocell-Architecture are described. For the comparision of Neoplasmatic-Design and Protocell-Architecture which is the main focus of the thesis, the bottom-up approach is used as a method in the study. Accordingly, in the third part of the thesis, two discourses are compared as divided in sub-categories. These sub-categories are people as important figures for the discourses, notions which are used in the discourses, architectural design products which supports the discourses and are grouped according to different scales and finally methods for design, representation and manifacture of these products. In the chapter of results and evaluations of the study, with the outputs of the comparisions, the effects, the potentials and the risks of these two discourses are discussed. Throughout the thesis, it is not intended to answer the question, whether these discourses really exist in the future, or not. Instead of that, at the end of the thesis, the differences and the similarities between these two discourses are reintepreted with a general approach, so that the architecture's present complex situation which is originated from scientific and technological advances, is partially photographed as it is intended mainly in the study.