Books reviews
Spiral Dynamics – Mastering values, leadership, and change. By Don Edward Beck, Christopher C. Cowan.

This book draws on biologist Richard Dawkin's concept of 'memes' and Clare W. Grave's 'Levels of Existence Theory' to lay out a framework for understanding and managing the differences in people in an organisation. The book is aimed that global managers specifically and the people around us. It uses 'value systems' or 'levels of psychological existence' theory, in other words it is an approach towards managing complexity within systems.

In section two, the book introduces Spiral Dynamics, which is basically describes the intricacies of the dynamics of change, leadership, complexity, alignment and integration. MEME's are used as protocols in the system, to identify people and the differences in the minds of the people in an organisations. “What biochemical genes are to cellular DNA, Meme's are to our psycho-social and organisational 'DNA'.” (pg4).

In section three, the book lists the different types of meme's as appose to categorically describing what the characteristics of a general meme is. 8 meme's are posed as being in the dynamic spiral system. The Instinctive, clannish, egocentric, purposeful, strategic, relativist, systemic and holistic meme. It then goes into describing the characteristics of these memes.

The book like most books on memetics construct there own take on what memetics is. This book goes as far as mapping how the dynamics of memetics work. The different conditions a memes go through, the implications of change, the implications of systems being at odds with each other. i.e. old world vs new world. The reason its called 'Spiral Dynamics', from what I gather from this book, is because with time memetics spiral and converge parallel systems that create conditions different the previously posses.

The book tries to unravel perceived anomalies in systems through a big psycho-social map. Lots of diagrams, colour coded meme types. Arrows and all sorts trying to make sense of a framework that creates an endless spiral. Though, the book is mostly aimed at cooperations, different types of people and at inter-disciplinary organisations from a psychological and neuroscientists basis.  The book read like a manual, with numbered principles defining the actions and roles of memes.

Principle 1: Humans possess the capacity to create new Memes.
Principle 2: Life conditions awaken Memes which may emerge, surge, regress or fade in response.
Principle 3: Memes ziz-zag between express-self and sacrifice-self themes.
Principle 4: Meme emerge along the Spiral in a wave-like fashion.
Principle 5: Memes spiral up and down through level of complexity.
Principle 6: Memes coexist within our 'onion'-like profiles.
Principle 7: Memes cluster in Tiers of six along the spiral.

I think this book could be used to describe the affect a meme has on the creative process in an architects studio. The above principles are later used to describe how systems change, and explain the dynamics of the change in a system. The problem here is 'the creative process' in an architects office is not necessarily a system, and doesn't change as much or have the same level of dynamics a  organisation does. It also suggests memes go through life conditions that vary, and could kill the meme off.

A the Theory for Practice : Architecture in Three Discourses.
This book focused on architectural practice, Hubbard's book is anecdotal, more journalistic than scholarly. His "theory for practice" consists of a three-way analysis of architecture focused on verifiable results, shared values, and design order. These correspond to the needs of the three primary actors in architectural design: users, clients, and designers. Ultimately, however, despite its style and provocative analysis, this study has limited appeal to the general public, but this book will help me, in making references to the architectural practice. A general book really, on architectural practice experiences, it would help in grounding the research into the architectural practice and not it deviate elsewhere as much as it probably would. The book outlines the thinking process of making a building, the values to and the results to be expected. How to think about Architectural Practice.




Darwinian Processes and Memes in Architecture: A Memetic Theory of Modernism
By Nikos Salingaros & Terry Mikiten

1) Darwinian selection process in architecture takes place among competing ideas in the mind of the architect.
2) A Darwinian process also occurs in the society of consumers, between styles where certain styles win over others.

The criteria are a mixture of human needs and irrelevant stylistic fashions. Meme propagation and encapsulation explain why these two disparate sets of selection criteria can coexist or displace the other.

There are two main points to this thesis, (1) Darwinian processes combining variation and selection are important to architecture. (2) the specific case of modernist architecture corresponds to a parasitic meme, in spite of its non-adaptive use for people using the modernist buildings. The first point seems obvious to most readers but has important implications in the design process in general. The second point is more controversial, and the thesis goes on to say that modernist styles, although having gone through competition memes (styles) always win because of the lack of information in the design, or controversially the lack of functionality in modernism.

The thesis suggests that to study how architectural memes spread in a society, and how competing memes are selected requires a knowledge of the factors affecting meme propagation. Francis Heylighen (a belgian cyberneticist) has identified a list of these, Simplicity, Novelty, Utility, Formality, Authority, Publicity and Conformity in the context of architecture. The thesis decides to add one more to this list “Encapsulation”. The proposed 'Encapsulation' factor describes how memes link with other memes to increase its virulence, and protect it from threatening memes. The linking of memes can form a structure that can set out too discredit other styles, making it stronger, which may be done through encapsulating it within a shell of negative associations.

I propose this as being farcical. I say, imagine 'nothingness' as being a meme .. this particular meme can be Simple, Novel, Useful, Formal, Authoritative, Public, Conforming and even  'Encapsulating'. Would this meme actually be propagated? Even if it scores high in all the above factors? .. Lets cut the pseudo sci-fi bumbo jumbo. A meme is information, the only property I propose a Meme has, is the value of Feedback its received from the number of recipients. If nothingness has a high value of feedback, this meme, could be called “Silence” … Silence can be propagated by the number of recipients adhering it to it. Anyways... I don't know what kind of paradigm the research would take yet but some of the memeticists out there need varying points of views, rather than concatenate something  to what the last person said. Having looked around at memetist blogs and susan blackmore's ted conference, most of the information out there seems to be keeping memetics in its infancy. Although susan blackmore does raise some good points about the implications of memetics, but memeticists have really made something that Dawkins said (a unit of culture) into something pseudo-cybernetical fantasy machine. I want to bring it back down to reality. Just as the environment decides the fate of the genes, so does the person (receptient) decide the fate of the meme.

Memetics always boils down to a simplified version of the brain (i.e. 101010/info ) .. you cannot map the entire world, this would take the above factors and turn it into  a spiral of more factors as time goes by. My take on memetics is its a culture of unit just as Dawkins said, and it replicates by the value of its feedback property. How prone is it to replicate, well ask what do people think of it? Do people respond bad, or good to it. The longevity of a meme is based upon the concurrent response of the meme. If the meme say has 200 good responses and 140 bad responses, the exposure rate would be 60, 60 of those have a 50% probability of passing that meme in some way, giving a probability of 30 people replicating that meme. The strength of the meme aside, the other value it would have is the info it holds, (colour, parent info, category, so on), now the 30 people who would have replicated that meme, would have replicated it not in its exact same state, which is were the darwinian design process of selecting variations come in.

I didn't like this thesis, because it proposed things without any evidence. I think it was just incomplete to be honest. It was very speculative whilst having an objective tone. “Each image has a set of attributes that makes it more or less likely to stick in memory and to be transmitted to others.” All the factors on what makes a meme more propagative are subjective too. Such as where the thesis says “Yet another factor is FORMALITY: the more formally an idea is expressed, the more likely it survives in transmission” Which is subjective, trends that are not formal still propagate such as street graffiti art.

The thesis goes onto say the success of a meme is based upon how well it has integrated itself into society.

The essay was following the Externalists School of thought as oppose to the Internalists. The Internatlist adhere to Richard Dawkins definition of a memes as a cultural unit, following memetic engineering, whereas the Externalists redefine memes as observable cultural artefacts and behaviours. Since the 8 different factors introduced above are very observable, I choose to follow the internalists school of thought.

Redefining the role of computers in architecture: from drafting/modelling tools to knowledge-based design assistants
By Yehuda E. Kalay
The use of computers for automating the processes of design and manufacture promised significant improvements in designer's productivity and products' quality, neither of which, so far, have been realized in architectural design.
This paper argues that in order to realize such improvements the modelling/drafting role computers have been assigned in architectural design should be changed, so that computers will become intelligent assistants to designers, relieving them from the need to perform the more trivial design tasks and augmenting their decision making capabilities.
To support this argument, architectural design is modelled as a search process in a space of alternative solutions, seeking one or more solutions that satisfy certain design criteria. Design is shown to be a special case of general problem-solving processes, and thus comprised of two major components: design states and the generator/test cycle that facilitates transitions between them. It is then shown that the symbolic representation capabilities of computers qualify them to simulate such design states and the generate/test cycle, using techniques that were developed independently in the fields of geometric modelling and artificial intelligence. A conceptual framework of a knowledge-based computer-aided design system, which brings these techniques to bear on architectural problems, is presented, and its potential for increasing the utility of computers in the design of buildings is discussed.


INTEGRATION AND INTERDISCIPLINARITY IN THE DESIGN STUDIO, AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH
This paper explores the integration of these concepts in education through presenting a novel and experimental approach for integrating sustainability issues into architecture and interior design curricula, which introduces students to integrated, collaborative, and interdisciplinary design and utilizes state-of-the-art simulation tools. The results of the experiment showed a strong potential for integrating simulation tools in design studios, especially with increased professional interest in BIM. Both the quality of the student work as well as student feedback indicated that interdisciplinary work can lead to better understanding and mutual respect of the complexities of different professions, and eventually result in higher quality project delivery.




computer aided ideas using memes as ideas through architectural process of design. A design assitant.

The mutation of the meme in the design lab. (participation, model making, social networking)

Say what your takes on memetics since its such a new field.

Participation and the Manipulation of the Authoritative Meme. Analysing the taking of the meme.

Memetics reconfiguring from behind the computer would be different in replicating else where.