Complex simplicity

by Prof. Ulrich Königs / koenigs@uni-wuppertal.de

The concept of emergence as an explanation for the genesis of complex systems has established itself as an alternative to determinist models. In architecture, allowing the design process to take place in an emergent manner contrasts fundamentally with classical compositional strategies inasmuch as emergent systems can only be initiated, they cannot be formed. Viewing practice as research, the article examines two buildings that embody this principle.

The increasing complexity making itself felt, at least subjectively, in every segment of life frequently gives rise to highly complicated solutions that create problems not only in the area of acceptance but also in that of susceptibility to error and breakdown. Such solutions are counter-productive. But there is a correlative in the shape of the complexity theory that has made great inroads in the academic world since the early 90s. The generation of complex systems – consisting, like all other systems, of a series of individual components – is seen to be a common goal of both nature and technology. Simple in structure, such systems are stable and robust, manifold and adaptable. Given the similarity of conditions prevailing at their starting point, they could potentially provide valuable impetus for the development of an architectonic method.

As an alternative to deterministic models, the concept of emergence has begun to provide an attractive explanatory framework for complex systems. It is applied to those many cases in which a set of individual components is seen to generate a whole that is of greater value than the sum of its parts. In architecture, basing a design process on emergent qualities contrasts fundamentally with classical compositional strategies inasmuch as emergent systems cannot be formed – one can only define their initial parameters and allow these to develop in their own way.

Fig. 1: St. Francis’ Church, Regensburg. Exterior view.© Christian Richters, Münster

The strategy can be applied in many ways. In urban planning it leads to open source principles and participatory models. I have described elsewhere an attempt to apply principles of emergence to spatial programming, and the same research approach can be taken to adaptive and self-organizing architectural systems. The following paragraphs will illustrate the application of principles of emergence in two buildings planned by our architectural bureau – examples of research in practice and practice as research. (Ulrich Königs, Christoph Heineman, Christoph Schmidt: “Divercity – Strategien zur Entwicklung des urbanen Raumes“. In: strategischer Raum – Urbanität im 21. Jahrhundert, IFG Ulm, Frankfurt 2000. // Ulrich Königs: “The Geometry of Rethinking”. In: rethinking geometries – review 4 , Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; Salzburg 2006. // Ulrich Königs: “Adaptive und Selbstorganisierende Systeme in der Architektur”. In: GAM 02 Design Science in Architecture; Vienna 2005.)

Fig. 2: St. Francis’ Church, Regensburg. Interior view.© Christian Richters, Münster

St. Franziskus (St. Francis), Regensburg is a new parish church situated at the edge of this Bavarian city in an area marked by the straggle typical of urban outskirts. Externally the church is scarcely recognizable as an ecclesiastical building. The simple rectangularity of ground plan and elevation would excite little notice if it were not for the churchyard outside, and perhaps also the inherent mass and atypical window arrangement of the building.

Entering the church through the porch, however, the visitor is confronted with an utterly different spatial geometry and incidence of light from what he or she might have expected on the basis of the external view. The dominant impression is determined by the gently curving, non-geometrical contours of the interior, the constantly changing slant of the walls, punctuated by various asymmetrical openings, and the diffuse daylight falling from the elliptic cut-out of the ceiling. Continuity is provided only by the use of the same material, smoothly rendered brick, inside as out. The tension between profane exterior and sacral interior linked by the monochrome continuum of the building material constitutes the basic architectural concept of the work.

Out of the incongruence of inner and outer arises a third, intermediate element, that of mass, into which the autonomous volumes of ancillary service rooms and conch-shaped chapels are cut. The continuously changing slope of the interior walls is determined by the deviation of the floor line from that of the elliptic ceiling. Only at the two moments of transition – from inward to outward inclination and vice versa – is the wall actually vertical. The impression is of a monolithic mass dense with gravity, scooped out by an inner hand.

Fig. 3: St. Francis’ Church, Regensburg. Plan.© Königs Architekten, Köln

The simplicity of this principle, the inexact hollowing out of an orthogonal box, follows the logic of emergence. The disjunction between the two geometries, each provided with its own characteristic fall of light and statement of function, generates the qualitative boost indicated above. But this is not created by an act of composition; it arises of its own accord from the setting of the initial architectonic parameters of the process.

Daylight entering the interior of the church is filtered by the translucent membrane of the ceiling, made of woven lengths of coated fiberglass material welded together at the edges, and suspended freely across the elliptic opening of the upper walls. Two meters above this a glass and steel sawtooth roof spans the entire rectangular box of the building. Running east-west its teeth allow a differentiated light to fall into the interior over the course of a day. The ceiling membrane is sufficiently opaque to obscure the view of the roof structure from the interior, and the structure is in any case invisible from the exterior. Only its effect is visible in the immaterial play of light and shade on the membrane.

St. Franziskus is not, therefore an example of ‘readable’ architecture of the sort demanded (and long imposed on architects) by the rational postulates and underlying cognitive theory of modernism. Emergent systems are not reciprocal in the sense that they can be logically reduced to their original components – that the parts can be deduced from the whole. With its spatial tensions and subtly concealed lighting the church remains, therefore, a place of quiet meditative concentration on essentials.

Also a parish church, the new Kirche am Meer (St. Mary’s Seashore Church), Schillig, is situated directly on Germany’s North Sea coast, separated only by a dyke from the UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site of the Wattenmeer mudflats. A bird’s eye view reveals the simplicity of the spatial topology: a classical cruciform plan inscribed on a rectangle. Here however, in contrast to St. Franziskus, whose external box completely encloses and conceals its complex inner geometry, the two elements remain separate. The rectangular frame forms – and is confined to – the base of the building; above it the cruciform shape of the main church space is clearly visible. The external impact of the building, in other words, already contains the key to deciphering the simplicity of its complexity.

Fig. 4: St. Mary’s Seashore Church, Schillig (North Sea coast). Exterior view.© André Rethmeier, Köln

However, the straightforward extrusion of a rounded cross from a rectangular base would hardly justify the concept of qualitative emergence at all if it were not for a further factor. The development of formal complexity from the simple plan depends decisively on the excision of a broad curvilinear wedge cut, as it were, in a single downward and upward sweep out of the cruciform body of the church. The result is a surprising multiplicity of forms. The term ‘cut’ must be understood as referring to a quasi-Boolean process of architectonic conception. The three determinant elements of the building – (a) rectangular base, (b) cruciform space, and (c) curved cut – create an emergent complex of space and mass that refers both to the received typology of the church and to the local environment of the sea. Interestingly, the readability of the simple forms generates a sense of natural relationship, but those same forms achieve a multifaceted and by no means univocal level of abstraction that opens them out to the observer’s personal images and associations.

In contrast to the Regensburg church, the walls of the Kirche am Meer are not made of monolithically rendered masonry but consist of a load-bearing concrete shell separated by a layer of insulation from an outer skin of brick. This method was chosen not only to ensure optimal insulation but also, in this case, to set the exterior of the building apart from the interior in the materials used. For the external walls so-called Oldenburg bricks (220 x 105 x 52 mm) with a density of 20 kN/m3 – a very hard material suited to the extreme weather conditions of the North Sea coast – were laid in Danish bond, a pattern that approximated local usage while not imitating it and that supported the specific geometry of the building.

Brick has been used for centuries, and there may seem some contradiction in making complex demands of so simple and traditional a material. In fact a degree of transformation analogous to that of the process of conception described above was necessary before the outer wall bricks could be integrated wholly into the emergent process of complexity. In order to meet the demands of this process the bricks were fired a second time, although from a purely technical point of view they were ready for use after the first firing. A single firing, however, would not have given them the extreme strength and special finish necessary for adequate support of the building’s geometry.

The second firing used an elaborate traditional procedure, nowadays almost forgotten, in which extrinsic oxygen is excluded from the oven and, as a result, the firing extracts the oxygen inherent in the material. The brick oxidizes, turns black and takes on a blue-green, or sometimes even silver sheen like a piece of gleaming iron, and salt deposits may crystallize on the surface. The emergent process is hard to control and not predictable in every detail, but it generates the additional qualitative values that enable the material to play a central architectonic role in the building.

A further level of emergence is apparent in the roof construction and incidence of light. The surface created by the Boolean operation described above is both monoaxially curved and inclined, as if a hot knife had sliced through butter – a simple cutting action that immediately generates a complex geometry of edge, line and surface, with all the ensuing constructional problems. The surfaces thus generated were fully glazed, but – as with the second firing of the bricks – a further action was necessary to achieve the complexity of light desired for the interior. This action consisted in allowing the struts spanning the roof space to taper toward the middle and then broaden again, instead of remaining linear. And the strategy itself was not applied in a linear fashion either: it culminated at the central point of the cruciform and gradually diminished toward the extremities of the nave.

Like that of the Regensburg church, the generative process of roof and ceiling structures aimed to achieve a dynamic, changing pattern of light and shade throughout the day and year. Light entering from the glass roof passes through the gradually widening curved spaces between the struts and falls on the smoothly curved interior walls – a geometrical superscription of two curved surfaces standing at right angles to each other. The resultant pattern of dynamically distorted wave-bands of light determines the atmosphere within the church. The decisive point, however, is that the observer cannot, without precise analysis of the situation, trace the origin of the phenomenon. In the ideal case he or she will not even try to but, as in a Baroque counterpart, will simply enjoy the emergent impressions of a ‘Seashore Church‘ without asking from what, and in what genetic process, they arise.

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