WHY WE
DESIGN
We are not building buildings.
We are building the immune system of the city.
The Era of Metabolic Urbanism
We are leaving the age of "Static Architecture" and entering the age of Metabolic Urbanism.
Cities are Organisms
They have flows, pulses, and fevers. Traffic is circulation. Data is the nervous system. Energy is metabolism.
→ Urban Systems LabArchitecture is Biology
Buildings are cells within a larger tissue. Facades breathe. Structures adapt. Spaces evolve with their inhabitants.
→ Adaptive DesignDesign is Behavior
We design for "life," not just "looks." How do people move? Where do they gather? What patterns emerge?
→ Behavioral ResearchThe Multi-Scale Journey
From furniture to city. From the intimate to the infinite. We treat design as a fractal continuity where every scale influences the next. It is not just about size; it is about the resolution of reality we choose to engage with, and how that choice ripples through the entire system.
Fractal continuity: from intimate to infinite
FURNITURE
At this resolution, architecture dissolves into pure craft. Every millimeter matters, every tolerance is felt. The detail is not decoration—it's where forces become visible.
The joint is the origin of all ornament. Every chair is a building in miniature and every building is a detail amplified.
ROOM
The first container of social interaction. We apply Edward Hall's proxemics to define invisible boundaries of intimacy and publicness within a closed system.
Space shapes behavior. We design not just walls, but the probability of interaction within them.
APARTMENT
The dwelling is a complete domestic ecosystem. We analyze typologies to optimize the delicate balance between the private self and the collective family.
The unit is a "tiny city." Each room relates to the whole as a cell relates to an organism.
BUILDING
Individual units stack to form a vertical community. At this scale, we engage with systems: structural loads, HVAC networks, and circulation paths.
The building is an environmental filter. Returns on investment are measured in energy, comfort, and social capital.
COMPLEX
Architecture becomes territory. Multiple structures negotiate shared ground. We deploy agent-based simulations to predict emergent crowd behaviors.
The whole exceeds the sum of parts. An assemblage of heterogeneous elements creates a new urban texture.
DISTRICT
Architecture becomes sociology. Street networks and public spaces define the invisible boundaries of community. We map these flows to design connectivity.
Urban tissue is not static layout but a frozen moment of social negotiation.
CITY
Pure systems scale. Traffic, energy grids, waste streams. The city is a living organism constantly processing matter and information.
The city is a strange attractor: seemingly chaotic but governed by deep, recursive patterns.
How It All Connects
Computational Roots
Our work is positioned within a specific intellectual lineage—from cybernetic theory to architectural experimentation.
Form & Computation
Frei Otto
Form-FindingMunich Olympic Stadium's tensile canopy. Soap film experiments finding minimal surfaces. Otto proved that nature optimizes form through physical constraints—not stylistic preferences.
David Rutten
Grasshopper CreatorBefore Grasshopper, parametric design required programming expertise. Rutten created a visual interface that lets architects think algorithmically without writing code. A design democracy revolution.
Experimental Architecture
Peter Eisenman
Process & DiagramHouse I through XI: a decade of systematic formal experimentation. Each project explored one rule pushed to its logical conclusion. Eisenman showed that architecture can be a form of research.
Daniel Libeskind
Narrative GeometryArchitecture as storytelling through geometry. The Jewish Museum Berlin—voids, angles, fractures—demonstrates that spatial experience can carry meaning beyond function.
John Hejduk
Poetic RigorMasques, wall houses, the discipline of reduction. Hejduk's drawings are architecture distilled to its conceptual essence—pure spatial poetry.
Urban Metabolism
Kenzo Tange
Metabolist Movement1960 Tokyo Bay Plan: infrastructure as tree branches, neighborhoods as cells, city as organism. The Metabolists proposed that urban planning should follow biological—not mechanical—logic.
Rem Koolhaas
S,M,L,XLOMA's multi-scale practice spans from furniture to masterplans. S,M,L,XL codified cross-scale thinking: Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large as a continuous design spectrum where each scale informs the others.
Jan Gehl
Human-Scale Urbanism"Cities for People." Gehl's pedestrian studies, public space research, and advocacy for walkable urbanism changed how we measure urban quality.
Philosophy & Systems Theory
Deleuze & Guattari
A Thousand Plateaus"The Fold" reimagined space as continuous transformation. "A Thousand Plateaus" gave us the Rhizome—non-hierarchical networks that grow in all directions—and the Body without Organs: a field of pure potentiality before organization imposes structure.
Gregory Bateson
Mind & NatureCybernetic epistemology: the pattern that connects. Bateson saw mind not as brain, but as the relationship between organism and environment. Ecology of ideas.
Our Approach
Fraktal exists at the intersection of computational precision and architectural intuition.
We don't choose between data and design—we synthesize them. Every project begins with research: environmental simulations, behavioral modeling, parametric exploration. From this foundation of knowledge, form emerges not as arbitrary gesture, but as optimized response.
01 We begin with deep Research, collecting data and analyzing precedents to understand the problem space.
02 We then Simulate environmental forces, using CFD and solar analysis to inform the geometry.
03 Algorithms help us Optimize for multiple objectives, evolving thousand of variations to find the fittest solution.
04 Finally, we Manifest the design with precise documentation and fabrication-ready data.
ENABLED BY FRAKTAL INTELLIGENCE STACK
Theoretical Implications
This shift from object-making to system-designing fundamentally alters the architect's agency. We no longer author static forms; we author the genetic code of the built environment. We determine the DNA of the city.
By manipulating these parameters, we don't just solve immediate problems; we enable the built environment to evolve over time, adapting to user needs and environmental shifts.
Predictive Intelligence
Designs that anticipate future adaptations.
Material Efficiency
Geometry optimized for minimal resource consumption.
Social Resonance
Spaces tuned to human behavioral patterns.
FIG 04.2: COMPUTATIONAL SYNTHESIS MODEL
Core Principles
Computational Rigor
Every design decision backed by data. Intuition informed by simulation.
Cross-Scale Thinking
From furniture to city. From material to ecosystem. Scale is a spectrum.
Adaptive Systems
Buildings that learn. Spaces that respond. Architecture that evolves.
Open Knowledge
Sharing research, tools, and methodologies. Growing the field together.
Why Now?
The old paradigms are failing. A new approach is not optional—it's survival.
Housing Crisis
The global housing deficit is projected to impact 1.6 billion people by 2025. Rising costs and zoning inefficiencies have broken the social contract. We need a new model of density that is affordable by design, not by subsidy.
Climate Infrastructure
Our cities are built for a climate that no longer exists. Heat islands, flash floods, and energy volatility are now the baseline. Resilience requires infrastructure that acts as a living buffer, not a static barrier.
Mobility Collapse
The car-centric city has reached its mathematical limit. Congestion costs billions while severing communities. We are moving toward multimodal, decentralized networks where proximity replaces velocity.
The Fraktal Response
Metabolic Urbanism: We treat the city as an organism, not a machine. By using data to model these complex interactions, we design interventions that heal rather than just accommodate.
Concept → Form → Build
Question → Simulate → Optimize → Form
"Technology is the answer. But what was the question?"— Cedric Price
"The street is the river of life of the city."— William H. Whyte
"Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea."— Paul Rand
Join the Research
Interested in collaborating on computational design research?
We're always looking for partners, clients, and fellow explorers.