121 ...both biological evolution and
technological evolution are proc- esses attempting to optimize sys- tems riddled with conflicting constraints. Organisms, arte- facts, and organizations evolve on correlated but rugged land- scapes. (Kauffamn,1995:179) As a type of organization, the city too can be an evolving system, as long it is occupying that edge between complex- ity and chaos.
The landscape Kauffman refers to is a ‘fitness landscape’- a type of phase space where all possible forms of the unit are represented in the x-y plane. The z dimension rises and falls, creating hills and valleys, according to how well each particular variation on form (perhaps more accurately speaking, phase) at that point is adapted to its environment. Evo- lution constantly probes the fitness landscape
to find new peaks. When the new peaks are found, the whole popu- lation moves towards these new peaks. (Kauffman,1995:154). The fitness landscape is not a stable or inert place, as the development of other units changes these peaks in the landscape. For example, the evolution of the tin opener increased the fitness peak for the tin can. As improved tin openers evolved, from crude tin shears to ergonomically efficient openers, the fit- ness of the tin cans for their environment increased; their form did not change but people’s ability and willingness to use them did.
For the organism, the artefacts and presumably the cities, “it is con- straints that create rugged fitness landscapes.” (Kauffman, 1995:192). Kauffman points out that intention is a part of our exploration of the land- scape of artefact, missing in biological evolution. I see this intention as part of the work of the designer. The designer is an explorer of the fitness land- scape, creating mutations or hybrids of existing artefacts. Through design, we therefore not only ‘evolve’ the biota, the artefacts of culture, but we move culture itself through to new fitness peaks, to new places in phase space.
One result would be that careful, lengthy observation of the systems we design in, culture and society is very important. According to Kauff- man, seeing the overall fitness landscape is impossible. But the purpose of so many of our tools of observation and investigation is to allow us to see the patterns outside our immediate and obvious perceptions, that so many of our tools of all kinds – history, science, literature, art – are ways of send- ing observational balloons up above the fitness landscape to glimpse some-
thing of the surrounds of our immediate place in phase space.
Theories and generalisations may not be good substitutes for observation; an inherent quality of complex systems is their unpredictability:
...the theory of computation tells us that such a device [a real non-equilibrium com- puter] might be behaving in such a way that it is its
own shortest description.
The shortest way to predict what this real physic-
123 physical system will
do is just to watch it.... But cells, eco- systems, and economic systems are also real non-equilibrium sys- tems. It is conceiv- able that these, too, behave in ways that are their own shortest description.
(Kauffman, 1995:22) Another result of the idea of design continuously evolving in response to feed- back would be that designers need to pay close attention to the feedback loops activated by our working process. Money is one feedback device, as is pleasing clients: peer rec- ognition another. Photogra-
phy is often the device for enabling a peer recognition feedback, and it is possible to think of the ways in which disciplines such as architecture and landscape architecture are evolving towards pho- togenic designs as a result of this. The seeking of feedback
through juried competitions, too, plays a part in determining the direction and manner of the evolutionary process.
Meaning is both created and expressed by this system. De- sign is communication and human communication "...involves a continual coordination of behaviour, and because it involves con- ceptual thinking and symbolic language it also generates mental images, thoughts, and meaning. Accordingly, we can expect net- works of communications to have a dual effect. They will gener- ate, on the one hand, ideas and contexts of meaning, and on the other hand, rules of behaviour or, in the language of social theo- rists, social structures" (Capra, 2002:83).
Form is not an arrange- ment of matter forever fixed in a static manner Form is
always subject to the processes of the system in which it is embedded. When we attempt to pre- serve objects by careful curating, we are forced to isolate them from their surrounding processes. We isolate them from moisture evaporating and condensing, from changes in light, we protect them from insects and chemicals and from the touches of people passing.
Landscape architecture attempts to embrace the multiple processes in which their designs are embedded. The illusion of creating form without considering process is hardly plausible in contemporary landscape architecture.
Complexity theory gives an understanding of all form as morpho-ecological whereby form is co-created by the processes of their contextual networks. A morpho- ecology is the coupled system of form, agent and process. This close and interactive cou- pling means that not only is the form stable and fixed, rather, it is changed by the agents and the processes but also the agents and processes are changed by the form. This under- standing erases ideas of form as inert, independent and fixed.
With this also comes the understanding that systems can learn, evolve and adapt (Cohen and Stewart, 1994, Capra, 2002, Kauffman, 1995). Processes alter form over time,