"Kant described a mechanism as a functional unity, in which the parts exist for one another in the performance of a particular function.
An organism, on the other hand, is a functional and structural unity in which the parts exist for and by means of one another in the expression of a particular nature.
This means that the parts of an organism – leaves, roots, flowers, limbs, eyes, heart, brain – are not made independently and then assembled, as in a machine, but arise as a result of interactions within the developing organism."
— Brian Goodwin, How the Leopard Changed His Spots
If we try to cross this lake by following only the stepping stones that lead toward our objective, we’ll soon get stuck. But what if we let go of our objectives? What if we focused on trying to find new stepping stones instead? This is novelty search. Instead of looking for something specific, you look for something new.
Novelty search isn’t just random, it’s chance plus memory. Together, these ingredients do something interesting.
...Stepping stones are also combinatorial. Each new stepping stone we discover expands our potential to find even more stepping stones. Collecting stepping stones is a luck maximization algorithm. By collecting and combining stepping stones, we might arrive at our destination by accident, or somewhere more interesting!
Tange put Tsukiji as the centre of his plan, which now seems grandiose and delusional. His design for the Dentsu building had much in common with the Metabolist philosophy of the 1960s, which maintained that buildings needed to continually evolve in a flexible way.
...With [the Nakagin Capture Tower], Kurokawa's Metabolist philosophy was fully realized. After it was completed, however, it became almost impossible to switch over the capsules - indeed, since its completion, not one of the capsules has been moved. As a result, the Metabolist movement has been forgotten. Yet its core principles, which sought to draw architectural lessons from living organisms, has much inspiration to offer society today.