Greg Lynn’s Embryological House Project: The “Technology” and Metaphors of Metorsmof Architecture

This paper offers a close reading of one architectural text engaged in “knowledge transfer”: the use of evolutionary biology discourse as an explanatory account and authority claim supporting Greg Lynn’s Embryological House Project (2000). This essay addresses the twin conference themes of knowledge transfer and the potential threat posed to the specificity of architectural techniques. By offering a detailed reading, this paper argues that information transfer is not an innocuous activity, but involves the critical transformation of source material. This paper argues that technology transfer should acknowledge the workings of an ever-present technology, the “technology of architecture”. This term designates the set of techniques governing the reworking of material from domains exterior to architecture, into material pliable for architecture. In this paper architecture’s evolutionary theory borrowings, provides an exemplary instance of information transfer marked by displacement, not straightforward transmission.