Discussing landscape machines in the light of evolutionary thermodynamics

How can designers deal with sustainable green infrastructure if they don’t take into account relevant scientific knowledge on, for example dissipative structure and self-organization? We do not claim to have the solution ready. Rather, we will revisit the concept of the landscape machine (Roncken et al. 2011) and converge architectural imagination with scientific insights. A recent design proposal for a landscape machine will be assessed making use of key concepts from evolutionary themodyamics and energy systems diagrams. A question that concerns the design of landscape machines and environmental design at large is how much of this scientific knowledge penetrates the design community. We stress the need for a bidirectional convergence- that is: designers exploring systems science (see e.g. Stremke and Koh, 2011) and scientists translating their knowledge so it can be applied in design (see e.g. Pulselli and Tiezzi, 2009)