Thesis Project, topic: „Robofarm. Traditional polish manor transformation using contemporary tools in Maków Mazowiecki district.”
This thesis attempts to deal with the consequence of information society residing in rural areas. It proposes a modified environment where the key role is played by intelligent crop harvesting system. Mixed crop planting according to specific algorithms results in the formation of parametric patterns in the fields, which are based on Lindenmayer’s system used to model the process of plant development. The consequence of encoding information in the fields has its reflection on the formation of garden and further – the house. Resulting complex geometries discover new beauty and perhaps new aesthetics in the rural land.
The advancements of technology are proposed in a wise way where natural processes take place in case of growing crops but intelligent machinery is used only for maintaining the plants. Huw Price, professor of philosophy and one of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk founders in Cambridge university posed that ” At some point, this century or next, we may well be facing one of the major shifts in human history (…) when intelligence escapes the constraints of biology”. This thesis is developed as an opposition to Price’s statement. In the designed settlement human is the factor shaping the surrounding, where robotic interaction in considered only on the level of performed tasks, robots are only used as tools for developing the environment.
Moreover, an attempt is made to propose a new settlement where the layout of the houses is arranged around commonly shared land that applies similar geometric rules of baroque garden compositions, except its using complex fractal geometries to which discovery – a polish mathematician Wacław Sierpiński made great contribution. Inspired by the work of William J. Mitchell and George Stiny on Palladio villas, the design investigates possibilities of extracting shape grammar rules of traditional polish manors. Further modifying these rules and incorporating ideas of Greg Lynn’s embryological house a new plan is composed.
The project is an investigation of alternatives to the genetically modified organism production, seeking what technologies can offer us not only in harvesting safe crops, but also in transforming our degraded rural landscape in Poland. Alvin Toffler wrote in his Third Wave that we are beginning to impart our environment not as „dead” or „alive” but rather intelligent or non-intelligent. The design attempts to visualize a new environment that correlates to natural systems, while using advanced technology, it’s both pleasant in visual perception and intelligent in its performance. It’s an attempt to tackle the threats of technological progress, proving that implementing technology in the countryside doesn’t have to draw a dreadful and melancholic visions of the future.
