Page 53 - ZEB AnnualReport 2015

THE FLOCK

Kristian Edwards (Snøhetta)

The locking Starling asks his neighbour “do and immeasurable exponent. • “Separation (don´t crowd your neighbours)
you know where we´re going?” The neighbour
replies “I thought you did”. Architecture at any one moment is perhaps • Alignment (steer toward the average heading
quite simply put: a uniquely convoluted of your neighbours)
We at Snøhetta are often asked to describe aggregate of ininite observations.
our methodology, our process - this being • Cohesion (steer toward the average position
the very thing that we point out as being the In the initial phases of our collaborative of your neighbours).”
secret to successful projects. This is no less projects with ZEB, researchers, industry
the case with the enormous interest around partners, and advisors are understandably Quote via John Naughton from C.W. Reynolds “Flocks
the realised pilot projects, Powerhouse Kjørbo curious to the seemingly chaotic fusion of and Herds and Schools: A distributed Behavioural model”.
and ZEB Pilot House Larvik. multiple disciplines. Yet within this apparent
madness lays precisely the method - we must The contrast between the scientiic simulation
The process around our high-level research simply equip our process to accommodate and our lock or murmuration of ideas, people,
projects is an up-scaled version of one we multiple volatile agencies. and processes - added to what we call rapid
already employ. That said, this process is hard prototyping - that is: model, manufacture, trial
to deine - it´s meta - at once tangible and yet Flocks of birds, and more speciically and error; is arguably the success factor to our
not. Constantly evolving. murmurations of starlings, are the parallel that collaborative pilots.
we draw most closely to the organic initial
Our understanding of architecture behaves in phases of complex projects. Craig Reynolds As each member of the pilot team adds their
a very similar way. Entirely dependent on the suggests that “the locking behaviour in birds own unique biography to the evolving project
unique biography of each individual observer. can be explained by assuming that each bird we must remain open to new, untested
Each subsequent observation changes the follows three simple rules: notions. Stimulated by questioning and
boundary conditions for the next. With ininite reasoning from dynamic groupings of multiple
disciplines - our critical contributions add

ZEB annual report 2015 53