The Strata/Machinic Assemblage and Architecture

Much of the literature exploring the intersection between Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy and architecture have focused on abstract theory, experimental projects and practices at the margins of the profession. But, one may ask, what of the mainstream, commercial practices that produce the offices, housing, shops, schools and community buildings that we see and engage with in our day-to-day lives? What of the everyday design decisions made by professional architects and technicians sitting at their desks and drawing boards? Are these to be excluded from architecture's engagement with Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy? As I will show in this paper, Deleuze and Guattari's proposals for the strata and the machinic assemblage are drawn from their underlying attempt to expand Hjelmslev's planar composition from a tool used to analyse language to a conceptual framework used to analyse the formation and evolution of all things. There is nothing within the conceptual framework of the strata/machinic assemblage to suggest, therefore, that they should not be used to analyse such practices. With this in mind, this article considers how these concepts can be translated through and help provide new insight into a real-world design sequence taken from mainstream, commercial architectural practice. In doing so it will show how such practices can offer Deleuzo-Guattarian scholars a more nuanced insight into this conceptual framework and the concepts that form it.

Optimum Design of RC Footings with Genetic Algorithms According to ACI 318-19

Engineers usually use trial-and-error approaches for dealing with design problems where they need to find the most economical design of a structural element in terms of its material cost while satisfying all the safety requirements imposed by the design codes. In this study, we employ a genetic algorithm (GA) with a dominance-based tournament selection technique for dealing with this design challenge. The methodology is applied in the design of reinforced concrete rectangular-shaped isolated footings in accordance with the American Concrete Institute ACI 318-19. First, the footing is encoded into a set of decision variables and an objective function is defined to compute the total cost based on the different construction materials. Then, the compliance of the design with the ACI 318-19 code is enforced by a constraint function that takes into consideration all the demand–capacity ratios for the different resistance requirements such as the allowable bearing pressure of the supporting soil, and the shear and flexural capacities of the footing, among others. Two numerical examples are presented where the results show a significant advantage in terms of material-cost and design-time reduction in comparison with the commonly used trial and error approach, proving the applicability of optimization algorithms (OAs) into the everyday design routine of the structural engineer.