1974
Ralph Knowles
Energy and Form
Ralph Knowles was among the first to systematically apply the performative response to the sun as an analytical framework for the development of urban form. Energy and Form documented a wide range of research work done with architecture students from Auburn University and the University of Southern California in the late 1960s, heavily influenced by Eduardo Catalano’s studies on the ‘impacts of natural forces on buildings’, Kevin Lynch’s discussions of legibility in urban form from The Image of the City, and D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s ‘diagram of forces’ (Knowles, vii).
Drawing inspiration from the environmental performance of Longhouse Pueblo at Mesa Verde, Colorado and Anasazi communities at Acoma Pueblo and Pueblo Bonito in New Mexico, Knowles systematically deconstructed adaptive behaviors in construction practices of Native American settlements (Knowles, 20). Furthering this line of inquiry in a case study of Owens Valley, California, he proposed an empirical methodological approach to ecological community planning based on solar orientation chief among other environmental factors (topography, geology, temperature, wind, water, and vegetation) (Knowles, 50). This research led to a quantitative framework for generating performance-based form and articulated a compelling argument for formal diversity as a quality of an ecologically robust city.
The quantitative framework developed from this research was driven primarily by the link between susceptibility to environmental stress factors and the intrinsic capacities associated with characteristics of formal organizations (Knowles, 68). By the developed method, land was divided into discrete areas, described with specific values denoting a composite of known site conditions [variation network], assigned diversity, potential, and control coefficients according to each discretized area’s relation to its associated edge conditions [interval network], and analyzed to generate generalized building specifications for future development (Knowles, 104).
With the resulting information from these case studies in hand, Knowles created a framework for generating “optimized” built form arrangement and projected growth from empirical, systematic ecological network analysis (Knowles, 124). Through order level, structure level, and system level analysis, Knowles explained his method as offering “control over the critical adaptive mechanisms; size of building as a function of location, complexity as a function of form, and sequence as a function of metabolism” (Knowles, 132). The formal associations Knowles generated from this methodological analysis led to early elaboration on the solar envelope concept he developed more completely as a process in 1981’s Sun Rhythm Form. In Energy and Form, though, Knowles played the quantitative analysis straight and visualized the projected results from his systems analysis as megastructural lattices, reminiscent of D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s ‘diagram of forces’, and akin to those egg-crate structures he would have built while working with Buckminster Fuller (Knowles, 145–54).
Finally, as a synthesis of the research put forth in the book, Knowles relates his quantitative, empirical approach to urban structures and associated patterns of development to historical and contemporary precedents across the world (Knowles, 174). Again with Owens Valley as a case study, the growth and formal principles are played out to speculate resulting succession patterns to “develop not the greatest number of parts, but the greatest distinction among parts, the highest degree of diversity, and the greatest probability of associations among adjacent parts…with common regard for land resources and for the need not just to increase individual choice, but to provide a basis for that choice” (Knowles, 188).
References
Knowles, Ralph. (1974) Energy and Form: An Ecological Approach to Urban Growth. Cambridge, MA.
