A CASE FOR NEW ORDER:

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A CASE FOR

NEW ORDER:

An Urban Biomimetic

Cognitive System

H00255986

SARAH ASIF

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TABLE OF

ABSTRACT

Since the beginning of time, we as hu-mans, pursue a fundamental feeling of safety attained through a shelter encasing us, our families, society. In the beginning, it was nature and now we have evolved to making and crafting our very own artificial human ecosystem. This domain consists of various urban agents that interact within it and with their environment. This artificial environment follows a particular order and as time passes by, this term must evolve to adapt to the current needs and demands of the changing environment. Our climate is ever changing and the human ecosystem that we reside in is severely affected and in some cases degrading; due to the harmful actions of human beings. To mitigate this loss; an urban designer must move away from the inefficient prevalent ordering sys-tem and embrace a sysfrom the inefficient prevalent ordering sys-tem that is sensi-tive to its environment and its surrounding ecosystems. Cognitive examples from the natural world are compared and analyzed with the existing human ordering system to bring about different skills and meth-ods that could be incorporated in our cit-ies, a special case are the social insects. The environment demands to be treated sensitively during such stressful times. By addressing the climatic crisis the urban bio-mimetic cognitive model proposed would be discussed intensively to streamline its

benefits for its urban agents and its envi-ronment. _{Illustrating the Biodiversity and symbiotic nature of the Coral reef an ecosystem to}

take inspiration from. (Alexander, 2016)

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INTRODUC-TION

The dissertation aims to examine and em-brace the principles of biomimicry for de-signing a sustainable environment that progresses towards translating ecological knowledge into practical research meth-odologies for architectural design, these of which would help to mitigate the causes of loss of biodiversity and climate change. The causes of loss of biodiversity and cli-mate change are many and form a complex system that originate from the way we hu-mans live, comprehend and relate to the world we are living in. The built environ-ment and the methodology used behind designing it could have a prominent role in the behavior of a human referred to as one of the urban agents.

As architects we strive to create the op-timum built environment in whatever con-ception we think justifies as “good”. Our creation of the built environment strongly streams through our perception of the way we picture the world and each one of us possesses a special image. The sky, the leaves swaying on the tree all of which pos-sess an articulate order that we as human grasp and appreciate. All systems in the living world comprise of components ar-ranged in hierarchies that may progress in complex order systems (Alexander, 2002). The existing ordering system is first dis-cussed by addressing the complexity an environment could possess. The research

then begins to breakdown the ordering systems to the components that compose it by heavily discussing the urban agents of the environment - being the users, wheth-er human or animal. By addressing the need for a change in the ordering system, the findings are streamlined to be inves-tigative by searching for answers in our neighboring animal societies and gaining insight on how our societies could evolve to follow suit. The cognitive capabilities of the agents in an environment are heavily discussed in each section to produce a fi-nal urban biomimetic cognitive model that addresses the needs for the urban agents and the environment. The investigative approach uses primary resources and is backed up by experiments carried out by like minded researchers.

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Fire ants that construct rafts together to escape from floods. (Ratch, 2017)

Ensuring the survival of the entire colony (Ketchell, 2017).

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ORDER

Order and Complexity

Order, a word often heard repeatedly in

the field of architecture; falls under several interpretations and principles that reflect its character based on the elements with which it is composed of. In the very begin-ning the mundane term order, was simply seen and understood as different processes. These were varying from our morpho-genetic processes that composed us as living systems, to the creation of stars, matter, galaxies, the interplay and creation of atoms, molecules, particles and so on. To understand the world around us as a system and to design a system wherein there exists a constant interplay between varying agents- biotic and abiotic; one must often understand the order with which the system is created and the interplay of the existing agents that aid in the creation of the ordering system.

The idea of order can be traced all the way back to Descartes in 1640. His speculation was if we want to understand how some-thing works we must begin to see it as a machine, we begin to isolate the compo-nents relevant to our study and then you progress towards crafting a mechanical “toy” which follows a certain set of rules which replicate and translate the behavior of things (Alexander, 2002).

Similarly, during the lecture “What is Life?”at Trinity College Dublin, 1943; Er-win Shrodinger approached this question

in reference to entropy, that matter is al-ways subject to the second law of ther-modynamics.“How would we express the marvelous faculty of a living organism, by which it delays the decay into thermody-namic equilibrium (death)?” His answer included the process of metabolism ob-served in all living organisms. His view of life suggested that “organization is maintained by extracting ‘order’ from the envi-ronment”, this led to the notion of ‘order out of chaos’ (Portugali & Stolk, 2016). When studying human ecosystems one often understands the different levels of complexity that exist within the domain. These could simply be understood as hy-brid systems that compose of biotic-biotic, abiotic-biotic and abiotic-abiotic systems of interactions that exist as human agents or as collectives with their artifacts of various scales built by them. While understanding these ecosystems one can breakdown the domain based on the hierarchy of the sys-tems overlayed, the constant interplay al-lowance of different agents, the boundary of the systems present and the growth and decay of different components.

An urban designer must always design cit-ies keeping in mind the nature of the self organizing aspects of the systems set for-ward by the urban agents in the domain. These urban agents with their unique cog-nitive capabilities, take role in the urban

planning of the domain and generate complexity.

Several theorists from then on, set out on a quest to under-stand the complexities and or-ganizational systems that com-pose a city. Peter Allen and his group of like minded research-ers, developed a set of com-plexity theories of cities (CTC). They have displayed how cit-ies; despite being hybrid sys-tems, possess properties of natural complex systems vivid-ly: they are complex, open and self organized, and are often chaotic and fractal (Portugali & Stolk, 2016). All these char-acteristics serve as prominent principles in natural systems. One can study these complex cognitive systems, hierarchi-cal systems and map them against our own to understand the similarities as well as the areas with which we could blur the lines between different ecosystems.

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ORDER

Urban Agents

Order and Complexity

The city referred to as the human

eco-system here is an artificial product that is complex in its nature, not because of its design but due to its urban agents interac-tions with it and amongst themselves. The urban designer would be responsible to how these urban agents are placed within the system and how the city allows them to interact with all components - biotic and abiotic.

Turner a prominent researcher, when asked about what an urban planner must keep in mind while designing; aptly an-swered that the role of designing is not to force or impose an ordering system but to facilitate it. He further went on to explain the role of a citizen or a biotic agent with-in an environment that the urban design-er has crafted; “The ability of the many cognitive agents-citizens-that make up our cities to judge their environments for themselves and their many individual judg-ments of how they can best construct their environments” (Turner, 2002). An urban designer thereby possesses the power to directionally manipulate the cognitive agents, being the citizens and their inter-play amongst other agents. This principle can be enhanced to cater better towards improving the health, sustainability, effi-ciency, transport and so on of a particular niche in our ecosystem.

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A transect from Ankara, Turkey. Planned urban fabric. (Stephen Marshall, n.d.).

A transect from Ankara, Turkey. unplanned urban fabric. (Stephen Marshall, n.d.).

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ORDER

Chronesthesia

Order and Complexity

A hypothesis set forward by Tulving (1983),

suggested the concept of Chronesthesia also referred as mental time travel. The no-tion sprung originally in relaalso referred as mental time travel. The no-tion to episodic memory which begins by explaining how an urban agent possesses the ability to “mentally travel” to the past, present and the future while encountering the ordering system laid out and designed by the archi-tect. This hypothesis is related to several principles of cognition.

One amongst the many, that would be ex-tensively discussed here is cognitive plan-ning. This principle deals with the ability of the urban agent - humans to observe the order of an area and to think ahead to the future which influences the action of the present (Miller et al, 1960; Das et al, 1996l Morris and Ward, 2005; Portugali, 2011; Chap, 13). Similar to the concept of Stig-mergy - which deals with the ability of an individual agent or a collective that perform actions that influence the succeeding indi-viduals actions, observed in several eco-systems such as the social insects.

A second domain of cognition deals with prospective memory, this concept explores how urban agents remember to perform a particular task or action, due to the arrange-ment and hierarchy in the environparticular task or action, due to the arrange-ment that it encounters. Studies suggest that unlike other urban agents - organisms excluding humans; we humans spend half of our

days mentally travelling in time, “thinking about what is not going on around them, contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or will never happen at all,’’ (Killingsworth and Gil-bert, 2010).

The suggestion implied through this research is that the planning of complex cit-ies are directly linked to the manifestations of an urban agents chronesthetic memory. This phenomena is closely observed in oth-er urban agents, from closely related apes, to social insects. By studying and predict-ing the chronesthetic memories and pre-dicting movements; urban planners could better plan the composition of cities.

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Chronesthesia (Chung, n.d.).

Brain activity due to Chrones-thesia (Zyga, 2010)

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ORDER

THE NEED FOR A SHIFT IN THE

ORDERING SYSTEM

Since the beginning of time the term ‘or-der’ has been used for defining various principles, movements and defining sys-tems - ranging from the classical times, to the simplistic hierarchical movements. But with time, urban designers are faced with several other factors to consider while de-signing; that demand a sensitive interplay between the urban agents which include all organisms within the domain. These factors mainly stem from the actions of ur-ban agents that include pollution of oceans, atmosphere, waterways and soil that lead to changing climate and the constant strug-gle for survival, amongst the lesser urban agents of the domain. With these rising challenges an urban designer must design differently to address them.

Our neighboring ‘natural’ ecosystems crafted around us have grown and have adapted to the changing environment suc-cessfully. Over 10-30 million species have evolved over the past billion years; each have adapted to their own unique environ-ment and have specialized functions that could be utilized as design principles to produce a logistic ordering system (Dietzel, 2016).

This particular approach of understanding the principles of functioning in a natural ecosystem, gaining insight and translating it in our human ecosystem would help us address the changing environment within

which we live upon and help blur the lines and instigate harmony between the order-ing systems from macro to micro scales. This phenomena when practiced is known as biomimicry.

How could this practice be observed amongst urban designers? As mentioned above, urban agents of an ecosystem possess the power to manipulate the ur-ban agents in the domain. This principle is prominently observed during the late 1950’s in Tel Aviv. An urban agent began to predict or utilize her/his chronesthetic memory to perceive the future condition of his/her balcony being realized as an open balcony as a half room. The urban agent re-alized the design and set forward the “the butterfly effect of Tel Aviv balconies”. This then led to mass self organization follow-ing the actions of the anonymous urban agents. It takes a single idea that seems plausible in the minds of the urban agent to manipulate and follow suit for all compati-ble urban elements to follow suit (Portugali & Stolk, 2016). This phenomenon can then be realized by a mimicked natural principle from nature, thereby increasing the sus-tainability and efficiency of the design over a wide scale.

Termites known as one of the most so-phisticated animal architects have their own unique swarm cognition with which they cooperate to construct and maintain

the complexity of the mounds (Turner, 2010, p.20). These mounds are constructed in coordination to regulate gas exchange and balance the ho-meostatic condition in the site. Birds, gorillas, beaver dams, termite mounds, all of which consist of their own uniquely evolved urban agents that cog-nitively react to their urban ele-ments and adapt them to their specific needs manipulating them and starting their own “butterfly effect”, to ensure survival in their domains (Por-tugali & Stolk, 2016)

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Tel Aviv balconies (Anony-mous, n.d.)

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BIOMIMICRY

THE ORDERING PRINCIPLE -

GENERAL BIOMIMICRY

Biomimicry is an old notion that took root

years ago. The early greek mythological legend of Icarus was based of Daedalus experimenting and mimicking the flight of birds to escape the prison they were en-closed in (Ovid, 2004; Lurie-Luke, in press). The flying machine designed by leonardo da vinci was the perfect example of trans-lating natural functional movements of birds and bats. George de Mestral was tak-ing a stroll through the Alps with his dog and was fascinated by the burrs attached to the dogs fur. Later on he studied it closely that inspired him to create Velcro (Benyus, 1997; Lurie-Luke, in press). Many organiza-tions within the living world use different model of sustainability for increased resilience and better organization of urban fab-rics. The application of biomimicry would provide the designer the right study of dy-namic natural systems specific to a region that holds the potential of ecological equi-librium which is tested through millions of years of evolution.The Standard approach to Biomimetic design has always been to scan the biological studies for functional analogies that might be of use to a design-er.

The largest structures present on the plan-et are not our creations but are rather the coral reef ecosystem that are thousands of miles long (Gould and Gould, 2007). These coral reefs are components of colonies

that house tiny animals and form one of the most diverse ecosystems on the plan-et.“Likewise the tallest buildings are less than three thenths of a mile in height, and the deepest wells are less than five miles deep” (Hanley, 2015). Individual termites are less than a tenth of an inch in length, they possess the capability of construct-ing towers 25 feet in height. At a human ecosystem scale, this would be about 2 ½ miles tall. These creatures can also digg wells that are about 150 feet deep that leads them towards water resources at a human ecosystem scale this is equal to nearly twenty miles deep (Gould and Gould, 2007).

The Lament for Icarus, Herbert James Droper, 1898; from : Tate (2015)

Velcro, Biomimicry (Funther, 2016)

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SOCIAL

IN-SECTS

AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL

INSECTS

Cities and ecosystems when viewed from

the perspective of their cognitive swarm display an untold story that leads an urban designer to better integrate their urban sys-tems with the existing urban agents of the domain. In simpler terms, the first basic as-pect of the urban designer is to understand the workings of the existing urban society - primarily being humans.

Human societies are not the only notable examples for their structure and ordering system as compared to other societies such as social insects. Amongst these social insects the social habit of forming a society is found in two special classes, namely : the Hymenoptera, which com- prises of wasps, ants and bees and Isop-tera that comprises of termites. These so-cieties have evolved at different eras and have drastically adapted to the changing environment. The Isoptera or the termites appeared in between the “age of the am-phibians” also known as the Paleozoic era and the “age of reptiles”, also known as the Mesozoic era. These termites are also coined as monophyletic which roughly means that all 4000 species that belong to the class Isoptera can be linked back to a single origin root. This basically implies that this particular cognitive swarm developed its social habits and social structure all the way back to the Paleozoic era. The Hyme-noptera class are also coined as mono-phyletic; from a common stock of wasps

that developed to advanced bees, ants and wasps of today. Despite the difference of origin of both the classes - Hymenoptera and Isoptera social habit structure of these classes have evolved to be similar (Portu-gali & Stolk, 2016).

These species are characterized by their dy-namic system of social behavior commonly known as eusociality. This incorporates a cohesive yet complex social behavior that initiate cooperative behavioral order within a particular colony.The communal behav-ior in this ecosystem is seen prominently where individual species share common nesting habitats. The behavior of eusocial is a form that overlaps generations that care for brood that are brought about by a single female. The remaining individuals within the colony are sterile or inactive. These social insects organize themselves into colonies; each with their own king and queen and a cluster of their sterile off-springs that are also coined as the workers. The king and queen have a much longer life span and the entire role of this group of social insects is the reproduction of ster-ile offspring. The social insects and their organization serves as the perfect system to relate to the urban human ecosystem. There are over 750,000 insect species cat-alogued globally, while many more are yet to be identified and discovered. The suc-cess of the system is proven through the

many years of resilience in the natural environment that have led them to achieve a level of equilibrium (Scheffer, et al, 2001).

The social structures of these insects benefit all members of the colony. Colonies of social insects are categorized and or-ganized according to division of labor and then they are unit-ed by a communication sys-tem. These workers possess the capability to switch from task to task when demand rises. Social insects display a level of organization that is not inherently hierarchical as seen in human centric organization. In a social structure of insects, no individual directs behavior of another (Culos, 2015). Tak-ing the example of weaver ants, their nests are brought together using leaves that are strewn together by larval silk. The level of cooperation be-tween groups of ants that pull leaves while the other group move the larvae secreting silk between themselves require a whole new level of cooper-ation amongst the individu-al species. The cooperation

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AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL

INSECTS

SOCIAL

IN-SECTS

amongst these individual members arises from the concept of stigmergy where the chain of leaves if larger or longer would attract more workers to join the construc-tion, the smaller the chain of leaves the less inclined the workers are towards the construction of the chain (Culos, 2015). Social insects have a closed communica-tion system within their insect colonies. They are based on feed-forward behaviors which are beneficial for not just an individ-ual member of the colony; but the colony as a whole. This closed communication amongst social insects include trophallax-is, broad case pheromonal signaling, indi-vidual contract that display behaviors that towards the end are beneficial to the entire colony (Culos, 2015).

While considering the urban fabric, tak-ing inspiration from the complex societal structure of social insects, our neighbor-hoods could be designed in a similar man-ner. Zoning out areas of functions or jobs needed and governmental incentives for people of that occupation to house the zones could be incorporated. In this sense we can factor in reducing transportation of people of different occupations. Planners could then use task allocation inspired by social insects to thereby reduce the eco-logical footprints of the urban fabric The question then arises if we as architects could embed a form of societal structure

whether by zoning of allocated tasks, or by zoning of transportation that increase soci-etal exchange by studying the interactions of the urban agents. The answer then lies back relating it to the perception of order discussed earlier and factoring emotional response.

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Example of ant morphology. (Hanley, 2015)

Example of termite morpholo-gy. (Hanley, 2015)

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SOCIAL

IN-SECTS

SWARM COGNITION AMONGST

SOCIAL INSECTS

By understanding and studying how

so-cial insects respond to the environment, we can draw up the similarities observed amongst human agents responding to their evolved artificial worlds. Each mem-ber of the colony in the class of Isoptera or termites, exists as a cognitive entity; that holds the power to sense and per-ceive its own local environment and aptly respond to it. Generally amongst termites there are two forms by which these in-sects communicate amongst one another, namely : chemical and tactile communica-tion. Termites build their mounds keeping in mind the core principle of water balance followed by gas exchange in the mound. It is the demanding need to transport the excess water that percolates into the nest during monsoon seasons that provide the initial signal for the urban agents - termites to begin mound exchange. Therefore, the mound first begins as “rough draft”, cater-ing towards fixmound first begins as “rough draft”, cater-ing the water issue which is then shaped by redefining the mound according to other environmental factors that interfere or affect the working lives of the urban agents. For example, while transporting the excess water the mound is exposed to turbulent winds, this leads termites to repair the high pressure zones, and drill holes to let out warm air, form-ing a venturi effect phenomena within the mound to ensure sufficient gas and wind exchange. In this manner a termite mound is constructed (Portugali & Stolk, 2016).

Another interesting phenomena in relation to cognition amongst these specialized in-sect societies is when there is a damage in the mound. How do all the termites in the mound collectively address and cogni-tively respond to such a crisis? Once the termites communicate the crisis to one another through chemical or tactile means of communication they first move on to phase 1; being recruitment. The workers in the termite colony are informed of the damage and begin to enter the mount to inspect. This is followed up by a decision making process whereby the nest workers begin to propose hypotheses of where ex-actly the mound is damaged. This process induces perturbation, which is embedded in the termites behavior due to which they begin to lay down moist dollops of soil on the assessed and collectively decided damaged surface. The first dollop of soil laid out by the first phase of perturbation-induced building consists of an attractive pheromone known as the cement phero-mone. This pheromone stimulates the oth-er nest workoth-ers to build upon it. This pro-cess is known as stigmergy, an action that influence the action of the next organism. In this manner the damaged surface is col-lectively and cognitively repaired (Portugali & Stolk, 2016).

This process of mound repair and mound construction are remarkable in such societ-ies. What is insightful to be taken out of this

is the complete absence of the “initial plan” for the mound, or how the construction pro-cess is to be carried out. Each of these mounds serve as the outcome resulting from a multi scale cognitive phenomena.

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HUMAN

AGENTS

SWARM COGNITION AMONGST

HUMANS

Now taking all these insights into urban

planning for human societies we can be-gin to map out similar cognitive patterns amongst human urban agents. For exam-ple; A personal experience documented by the author Portugali (2016), begins by narrating the heavy chaotic traffic flow of Bangalore, a city in India. The urban agents of the domain that the narrator travels through do not abide to the traffic rules set by the government. The roads and streets were designed in such a manner that did not dictate or allow directional flow of the pedestrian nor the movement of animals such as cows. There was an instance at which a car began to travel against the traffic flow, the drivers responded to this change with cool indifference. Throughout the authors journey, there were several instances that could’ve developed into an accident, but throughout the journey there were no collisions.

It is expected that a city like Bangalore, that is highly congested, with areas of poor urban planning of streets and roadways would be ranked high for the number of accidents in the region. Surprisingly, accord-ing to World Health Organization statistics, the traffic fatalities in India rank amongst the lower tiers of accidents world wide (Portugali & Stolk, 2016).

Now it is well known that one of the most dangerous traffic in the world is found in

Namibia, a country in the continent of Af-rica. The country along with their urban agents follow the traffic laws and are pro-vided with efficient good infrastructure along with well planned streetways and roads. Despite all these provisions Namib-ia is one amongst the many to have high traffic fatality rates.

These anecdotes serve as perfect exam-ples by which a particular design is devel-oped further by the urban agents them-selves. These complex urban systems emerge from the behavior of all urban agents within them. In the case of Ban-galore, the swarm cognition between the drivers displayed as a set of emotive re-sponses in the form of sounds and signals reduces the number of accidents. The cog-nitive response of the urban agents are as such that they modify their environment. In areas of high pedestrian flow, the driv-ers have an embedded cognitive ability to be attentive and respond with cool indif-ference, thus creating a pedestrian walk-way generatively that was not designed by the urban designer. The “initial design” of which would have been way different and sought out if the urban agents cognitive abilities and actions were studied closely, to provide an environment that is flexible and adaptive such that an urban agent can modify to their own needs. The aim of the urban designer is to facilitate the ability of

the urban agents cognitive abil-ities to judge their surrounding environments. The individual response and judgments of these urban agents collectively provide the palette for design-ing the city.

Similar to the termite mounds, the initial response of the ur-ban agents need, to extract the excess water was addressed, followed by the nest workers facilitating the cognitive abili-ties of the other members of the colony by building up the mound to their reaction to the external environmental factors such as wind, gas exchange, solar and so on.

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HUMAN

AGENTS

SWARM COGNITION AMONGST

HUMANS

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Indian roadways, showing heavy traffic flow, cognitive signals, generative route creation, cluster of urban agents

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BIOMIMETIC

MODEL

DEFININF THE URBAN BIOMIMETIC

COGNITIVE SYSTEM

While planning a city, or constructing a

mound, burrows and so on; the urban de-signer must first consider what inherently defines a home for the urban agents of the society. The home of these urban agents is essentially a physical construct that serves as a form of residence, housing different functions for the urban agents (Portugali & Stolk, 2016).

When designing the position and spatial-ly planning out how this space is situated on the site, the urban designer must keep several factors in mind; from the behaviors carried out within the home for the particular urban agent, to the allowance of creat-ing an identity in the space, building a safe haven for the urban agent and designing the routes and landmarks, aiding the ur-ban agent to cognitively map out the entire landscape where its home is situated in. While there exists several differences be-tween human urban agents and animal ur-ban agents, the essence with which the emotive response of home can stream several similarities, and this biobehavior-al systems could provide converging ap-proaches to designing the spatiotemporal essence surrounding the “home”

Hediger (1964), began to explain this ha-bitual spatiotemporal behavior in the form of animal territory. The territory according to Hediger, is a set of locations within an

urban landscape in which an animal or a human agent performs specific behaviors. These set of locations defined by the urban agents themselves are interconnected by a set of paths, some of which progress to be personal regular paths to certain urban agents (Hediger, 2964). Thereby, all urban agents - Human and animals alike possess the need to determine a specific location and develop it in its essence as a home. The urban agents once determining the position of their home would then begin by memorizing its location by first locating specific landmarks, then spatial informa-tion derived from the order of the routes that directs it away and towards its home. From analyzing the cognitive aspects with which animal urban agents design their landscape, The urban design model pro-posed in simpler terms is listed below: 1. Understanding the home-related behav-iors of the physical construct of home 2. Mapping out routes in relation to the to-pography and the functions (per the urban agent) demanded by the urban agents 3. Mapping out the routes directing to-wards the home to aid easy cognitive map-ping and having the landscape designed in such a manner that the perception of the

landscape aids for easy re-membrance 4. Mapping out zones for high-er exp4. Mapping out zones for high-eriential quality A CAS E FOR A NEW ORDER

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BIOMIMETIC

MODEL

_{HOME AND IT’S FUNCTIONS}

In our natural environment all urban de-signers including human and animal urban agents should design considering various factors; such as, other urban agents(oth-er species), food resources, prospective home locations, physiology, topography and social rank of the society (Portugali & Stolk, 2016). For a human urban agent, the word home, can take different terms and scales, rang-ing from a house, to a cluster of houses, an outdoor location for a homeless person and so on. On a macro scale, it can be a hometown, town or a country. This per-spective can narrowed to its very physical essence of possessing a structure, a size and a prominent location. For a human ur-ban agent a house would possess the basic functions : living room, bedrooms, kitchen, washroom, etc. Whereas an animal urban agent such as a rat when introduced to a large area begins to spatially organize the space into food stores, latrines, nesting sites and runways (Leonard and McNaugh-ton, 1990). While considering rats, the home serves as a terminal for round trips undertaken in the environment. The func-tional partitioning of these spaces in both animal and human urban agents remains the same (Portugali & Stolk, 2016).

A female polar bear is observed to dig a 600 cm long den that usually comprises of a single entrance that leads to an oval

chamber; consisting of ventilation holes. These particular dens vary from space to space according to cognitive abilities of the polar bears and their navigator skills in re-lation to the existing topography (Portugali & Stolk, 2016). We as humans are often accustomed to manipulating the existing topography to benefit the spatiotemporal aspect of our homes, this method has ad- verse effects on the surrounding topogra-phy destroying the habitual spaces of the biodiversity that exists in those spaces.

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Polar bear den near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, 10 April 2000.

Durner et al. (2003)

Burrow system

of a mole rat. The position of mounds is depicted by circles, and the nest locations by large circles (based on Erez 2005)

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BIOMIMETIC

MODEL

THE ROUTE AND

CHRONES-THESIA

Once establishing the notion of what home

is perceived as within an urban domain we must consider the periodic pathways and period returns to this very home. While trav-eling in routes, urban agents would situate and cognitively map their routes either by internal or external cues. These cues, help in navigating the urban agent through the environment by forming a cognitive map. For example, when considering external cues, we can consider deep aquatic envi-ronments, where the visibility of the space is relatively poor (Portugali & Stolk, 2016). In such a case, the urban agent or the de-signer would create a landmark, a visually distinctive urban element, one where the chronesthetic element of the urban agent is reduced. This landmark would then help the urban agent to understand distances and directions to the destined locations in their environment. This principle can easily be perceived in our urban landscape.

While walking around in a city, the urban agents moving about do not only perceive the buildings, landscape, streets, but also begin to think of the expected urban elements (Portugali & Stolk, 2016). This phe-nomena along with an urban agents abil-ity to construct cognitive maps leads the agents to behave not only in response to the present existing city but also to the part of the city that hasn’t materialized yet.

So how does one manipulate the informa-tion perceived in the ecosystem designed by an urban designer. This heavily depends on the levels of information displayed at “first glance”. For example, let’s consider a street where all urban typologies are sim-ilar and of the same height, the information perceived at “first glance” of this urban morphology would be low, and the chron-esthetic level of this experience would generally be higher as the urban agent be-gins to predict the typology ahead. Let’s consider the information level being high-er this time, as displayed in the figure; the chronesthetic level of experience would be lower, unpredictable, and would be harder to cognitively map out the urban plan of the domain. This phenomena is widely used in the best interest of the urban planner to play with the chronesthetic or episodic memory of the urban agent and the allow-ance of the person to cognitively map out their surroundings, this has to be mapped out against intriguing urban agent as well to spatially enhance the experiential quality of the urban morphology laid out.

In the case of the Dubai skyline, one pre-dicts unconsciously the order of the sys-tem while passing through and the order-ing system to follow. To a common urban agent with no knowledge of their surround-ings the urban sprawl appears to be too similar thereby losing their essence of en-hancing the unpredictability or the unique-ness of the urban design. As compared

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round trips to the house and the trajectories of returns to the house- gerbil-like rodent (Portugali & Stolk, 2016).

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BIOMIMETIC

MODEL

THE ROUTE AND

CHRONES-THESIA

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Dubai, predictable Chronesthesia

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THE ROUTE AND

CHRONES-THESIA

BIOMIMETIC

MODEL

to the Sienna landscape that consists of one landmark that distinguishes it from the ordinary typology and surprises the urban agent thereby manipulating the chrones-thetic memory of the urban agent.

Similarly beavers build dams when they re-quire their burrows to have access points that are present under water (Gummell, 1998). Beavers never build only one form of dam, of any one type of material. These animals cooperatively work together to modify their environment and increase the episodic memory of their urban agents (Portugali & Stolk, 2016).

Now by understanding the ubiquitous need for cognitive mapping towards the home; It is then necessary to understand the be-havior of urban agents from their homes to specific locations. This ubiquitous phe-nomena by which an urban agent sticks to a particular route is seen across all agents including aquatic organisms to primates. Baboons, woolly monkeys, spider monkey all travel through a specific route that has an equal balance of experiential quality and chronesthesia along their routes. In certain cases, the bearded sakis appear to create specific landmarks that enable to reach food patches (Portugali & Stolk, 2016). There exists classical models that over years of study have begun to map out the human spatial behavior or human

mo-bility patterns (HMP), this uses Brownian motion also known as random walk to de-scribe these patterns (Camp et al, 2002; Groenevelt et al, 2006). This model pres-ents human movement patterns by assum-ing a successive amount of random steps, in terms of direction as well as distance. This particular study has been enriched over the years to the added date and tech-nological input from mobile usage. The findings and patterns were supported by GPS data. This particular model was then used for for studying behavioral patterns in existing street networks and examin-ing the persons motive to ‘move’ from one place to another. The resulting study

found out that the probability of movement of the agents is entirely dependent on the number of intervening oppor-tunities (landmarks, typology difference) that arise from the origin of movement to the ur-ban agents destination. This analysis then proved that the physical distance between the origin and destination was a factor that was considered way below then the urban de-sign intervention in the agents routes (Camp et al, 2002; Groenevelt et al, 2006).

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CONCLU-SION

There are millions of species in our natu-ral world that exhibit functions that offer stability within their regional environment. This lets them reach an overall resilient fac-tor that we as human kind have in a way failed to achieve in our human ecosystem (benckiser, 2010). Human agriculture orig-inated about 10,000 years ago which ca-tered towards population growth and urban existence (Holldobler and Wilson, 2009). In contrast, ants made this particular shift about 60 million years ago which led to-wards ecological dominance. Along with this shift and many others, the stability of the ecosystem domain of ants were maintained to bring about ecological equi-librium within their specific environments and this brought about the advantages of resilience(Scheffer et al, 2001). The urban planner whether in the human world or the animal ecosystem possesses the main role to subtly define the existing typography to afford the agents within it to interact and carry out their functions. This particular role in the human ecosystem, at times loses its meaning, whereby the order of the urban design is as such that it not only confines and harms the agents in its environment but leads to other harmful effects such as loss of biodiversity and climate change. By adapting to the urban biomimetic ap-proach, the designer cognitively lays out the environment in a sustainable and effi-cient manner that enables the survival of all urban agents through all ecosystems.

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(Jáchym Pešek,n.d) Swarm urbanism

Softwares encoded with specific algorithms to mimic agent cognition and inter-action with the environment, resulting in better urban planning according to the Urban Biomimetic Cognitive model. Image (Fran Castillo, 2012)

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BIBLIOGRA-PHY

Alexander, C., 2002. The Nature of Ordern - The Phenomenon of Life. 11 ed. California: The Center for Environmental Structure. Benckiser, G. (2010) Ants and sustainable agriculture. A review. Agronomy for Sus-tainable

Development, 30(2010): 191-199.

Benyus, J. M. (1997) Biomimicry: Innova-tion Inspired By Nature. 1st ed. New York: Perennial.

B. Leonard, B.L. McNaughton, Spatial rep-resentation in the rat: conceptual, behav-ioral, and neurophysiological perspectives, in Neuro-biology of Comparative Cognition, ed. by R. P. Kesner, D.S. Olton (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, 1990), pp. 363– 422 Culos, R., 2015. Wikipedia. [Online]

Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Merremia#/media/File:Merremia_aurea_ MHNT.BOT.2015.34.119.jpg

[Accessed 1 December 2019].

Dietzel, K., 2016. Correlating patterns in the urban landscape, Michigan: Michigan state university.

E. Tulving, Elements of Episodic Memory (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1983)

G.A. Miller, E.H. Galanter, K.H. Pribram, Plans and the Structure of Behavior (Holt Rinehart &

Winston, New York, 1960)

Gould, J. L., and C. G. Gould. (2007) Animal Architecture: Building and the Evolution of Intelligence. New York: Basic Books. Hanley, R., 2015. Biomimicry and Sustain-able Communities : The Urban Challenge, Cambridge: Research gate.

H. Hediger, Wild Animals in Captivity (Do-ver Publications, NY, 1964) J. Portugali, Complexity Cognition and the City (Springer, Heidelberg, 2011) J.S. Turner, The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal-Built Structures (Har-ward University Press, 2002)

M.A. Killingsworth, D.T. Gilbert, A wan-dering mind is an unhappy mind. Science 330(6006), 932

(2010)

Ovid. (2004) Metamorphosis: A New Verse Translation. 1st ed. London: Penguin Clas-sics.

Portugali, J. & Stolk, E., 2016. Complexity, Cognition, Urban planning and Design. 1

ed. Tel Aviv: Springer Interna-tion Publishing Switzerland. R. Morris, G. Ward (eds.), The Cognitive Psychology of Plan-ning (Psychology Press, Hove, 2005), pp. 53–70 Scheffer, M., et al. (2001). Cat-astrophic shifts in ecosystems. Nature, 413(6856): 591-596 T. Camp, J. Boleng, V. Davies, A survey of mobility models for ad hoc network research. Wirel.

Commun. Mobile Comput. 2, 483–502 (2002)

Alexander, C., 2016. Constan-tine Alexander’s Journal. [On-line] Available at: https://www. c o n s t a n t i n e a l e x a n d e r . n e t / 2 0 1 6 / 0 5 / c o n t i n e n - tal-drift-created-biologically-di-verse-coral-reefs.html’ [Accessed 29 December 2019]. Anonymous, n.d. CTC, Social Theory Oriented Urban.

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Available at: https://www.dodho.com/ chronesthesia-by-hsuan-chung/

[Accessed 29 December 2019]. Funther, S., 2016. MNN. [Online]

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A CASE FOR NEW ORDER:

A CASE FOR

NEW ORDER:

An Urban Biomimetic

Cognitive System

H00255986

SARAH ASIF

TABLE OF

CONTENTS

1.ABSTRACT

2.INTRODUCTION

3.ORDER

3.1 Order and Complexity

3.2 Order and Complexity Ur

ban agents

3.3 Order and Complexity

Chronesthesia

3.4 The need for a shift in the

ordering system

4. BIOMIMICRY

4.1 General Biomimicry

5. SOCIAL INSECTS

5.1 Introduction to social

insects

5.2 Swarm cognition amongst

social insects

6. HUMAN AGENTS

6.1 Swarm cognition amongst

human agents

7. BIOMIMETIC MODEL

7.1 Defininf UBCS

7.2 Home+Functions

7.3 Routes+Chronesthesia

8. CONCLUSION

9. BIBLIOGRAPHY

pg. 3

pg. 4

pg.5

pg. 6

pg.7

pg.8

pg.9

pg.10-11

pg. 12

pg. 13-14

pg. 15

pg. 16

pg. 17-19

pg. 20

pg. 21-22

ABSTRACT

INTRODUC-TION

ORDER

Order and Complexity

ORDER

Urban Agents

Order and Complexity

ORDER

Chronesthesia

Order and Complexity

ORDER

THE NEED FOR A SHIFT IN THE

ORDERING SYSTEM

BIOMIMICRY

THE ORDERING PRINCIPLE -

GENERAL BIOMIMICRY

SOCIAL

IN-SECTS

AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL

INSECTS

AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL

INSECTS

SOCIAL

IN-SECTS

SOCIAL

IN-SECTS

SWARM COGNITION AMONGST

SOCIAL INSECTS

HUMAN

AGENTS

_{HOME AND IT’S FUNCTIONS}