Sublime

I look at a forest from afar, I see a dark green velvet. As I move toward it, the velvet breaks up into trunks, branches and leaves: the bark of the trunks, the moss, the insects, the teeming complexity. In every eye of every ladybug, there is an extremely elaborate structure of cells connected to neurons that guide and enable them to live. Every

Collectivities of humans, moreover, take a myriad of shapes, from small groups to organizations and transnational corporations. This is not even to mention the curious possibilities pursued in and among the more-than-human world. The dynamics we are describing, then, are scalar in nature and have wide conceptual purchase accordingly.

A new metaphor: organizations as living systems

“The behavior of the individual social insect evolved with reference to what it contributes to the community, whereas the genetic fitness of a human being depends on how well it can individually use the society. We have become insect-like only by extreme contractual arrangements.”

understand our architecture as a self-contained, self-organising system of something called biotensegrity.