Michael Weinstock is an Architect, currently Director of Research and Development, and Director of the Emergent Technologies and Design[1] programme in the Graduate School of the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. Born in Germany, lived as a child in the Far East and then West Africa, and attended an English public school but ran away to sea at age 17 after reading Conrad. Years at sea in traditional wooden sailing ships, with shipyard and shipbuilding experience. Studied Architecture at the Architectural Association 1982/88 and has taught at the AA School of Architecture since 1989 in a range of positions from workshop tutor, Intermediate and then Diploma Unit Master, Master of Technical Studies and through to Academic Head.
Over the last decade his published work has arisen from research into the dynamics, forms and energy transactions of natural systems, and the application of the mathematics and processes of emergence to cities, to groups of buildings within cities and to individual buildings. Whilst his principal research and teaching has been conducted at the Architectural Association, he has published and lectured widely, and taught seminar courses, studios and workshops on these topics at many other schools of Architecture in Europe, including Brighton, Delft, Rome, Barcelona, Vienna, Stuttgart and at ETH in Switzerland; and in the United States at Yale,Rice,USC and at Berkeley and California College of Arts. In 2008 he received the Acadia Award for Excellence for Innovative Academic Programme[2]. His contribution to the discourses of architecture, to the pedagogies of the discipline, and on practice, have been focused on Emergence. He has been a leader in bringing awareness and understanding of natural systems and the historical and current impacts of complexity, climatic and ecological changes on human architectures at all scales, and of the natural and human dynamics that are currently driving changes in all the systems of nature and civilisation.
Publications on Emergence and Architecture include:-
Weinstock, Michael,The Metabolism of the City: The Mathematics of Networks and Urban Surfaces article first published[3] by Wiley, July 2011 in 'The Mathematics of Space' ed. George Legendre How might we best track the accelerating demands of global urbanization? A mathematical approach is proposed in this article to uncovering the dynamics of cities, a dual method that reveals any city's particular metabolism by simultaneously mapping its physical parameters of form, compactness and densities - and its flows of energy, information and materials.
Weinstock, Michael, The Architecture of Emergence: The Evolution of Form in Nature and Civilisation, Book first published by Wiley 2010[4] - the book challenges established cultural and architectural histories. It expands the conventional worldview by placing human development alongside ecological development: the history of cultural evolution and the production of cities are set in the context of processes and forms of the natural world. The emergence of the human species and the evolution of culture are shown to be closely coupled to the changes in climate and ecology, while it is described how humans have extensively modified the surface of the earth, the ecological systems that exist upon it, and the climate. As expansive in its thinking as its reach, The Architecture of Emergence draws from the life sciences, the complex systems of the physical world, anthropology, archaeology and the evolution of human culture. The first half of the book is focused on the complex systems of the physical world – the forms and processes of the climate, the land surface of the earth, the emergence and evolution of all living species and of genetics, followed by the dynamics of individual and collective metabolisms from which intelligence, social and spatial orders emerge; while the second half of the book is focused on the evolution of human culture in relation to climate and ecology. The emergence and proliferation of cities and systems of cities is traced, and as their metabolic systems extended across the world the episodic and irregular expansions, consolidation, collapse and subsequent reorganisations are plotted against coeval changes in climatic and ecological systems. Weinstock’s synthesis proceeds from the recognition that to study form is to study change, and that all forms of the world are energy and material systems that have a lifespan, exist as part of the environment of other active systems, and are one iteration of an endless series that proceeds by evolutionary development. Energy, information and material flow through all the forms of the world, and the forms of cities and cultural systems have coevolved and developed within those flows. The world is within the horizon of systemic change that will cascade through all the systems of nature and civilisation, and the potential outcomes of the current transitions through the critical thresholds of the complex systems of nature and civilization are set out.
Weinstock, Michael, Metabolism and Morphology Article first published Wiley 2008[5] that presents an account of the thermodynamics of mammalian, marine and plant metabolisms and their relations to morphology and scale, to behaviour and to the environment. The relationships between living organisms and their environment is analysed in terms of the vectors of energy and material flows in populations, habitats and ecosystems. A new model of Metabolism for buildings and cities is set out that unfolds concepts, systems and relationships for groups of environmentally intelligent buildings, with interlinked systems of material and energy flows.
Weinstock, Michael,Morphogenesis and the Mathematics of EmergenceArticle first published Wiley 2004[6] that reviews the mathematical basis of the processes that produce emergent forms and behaviours, in nature and in computational environments. An argument is set out for a more comprehensive mathematical approach in architecture, in the context of a review of the origins and instruments of emergence in biology, physical chemistry and mathematics. The architectural consequences of this paradigm are outlined.