In this text Negroponte talks to us about the idea of making an architectural machines, not only machines that can solve specific problems with step by step instructions where the result is unquestionably attributed to the designers creativity, but a machine that is cable of learning how to learn. This machine should be able to learn about architecture and have a dialogue between itself, man and other machines in order to produce an evolutionary system.

The evolutionary machine should be self-improving in order to have better chances of making its computational and informational abilities relevant, to achieve these the machine needs to learn to be adaptable. According to Negroponte the 5 particular subassemblies: would be part of an architecture machine:

1)      A heuristic mechanism – heuristic is gained from analogue situations where the machine drastically limit the search in order to reduce time and search for alternatives of solutions.

2)      A rote apparatus – a rote mechanism can retain the circumstances of usage when similar situations are next encountered. This helps solving repetition of sub problems in architecture.

3)      A conditioning device – repetitious responses will become habits, the machine will respond with a combination of rote apparatus and a heuristic mechanism to develop its own conditioned reflex.

4)      A reward selector – the designer overviewing the machine must exhibit a response of his satisfaction with the design in order for the machine to know when the operation has been successful.

5)      A forgetting convenience – The machine should learn to forget. Obsolescence occurs over time with irrelevance.

These five items are just pieces, the entire body will be a group of mechanisms interconnected with the designer and a parent machine. The parent machine will have a powerful processor and extensive memory, the reasons to have a parent machine are to acquire large burst of computational power, acquire stored information and communication between designer and other architecture machines. Negroponte states that in order for the machine to have a design solution 3 properties are necessary: an event, a manifestation and a representation, these 3 properties form the interface. The event is how we perceive the situation with our senses, the manifestation measures the event with appropriate parameters and the representation is the act of mapping the information to be compatible with receiving organisms.

Negroponte speaks of an idea really ahead of his time, he proposes the idea of artificial intelligence and a profound connection and relationship between man and machine. The idea of a machine that can perceive what humans perceive with their senses it’s a possible topic that interests me for my personal research, finding a way or a link how humans can transmit or machines can perceive human emotions because that’s part that machines lack in the design process. The designer sometimes makes decisions based on emotion or sensations that may not be understood or rational to the machine, in order for this solution to not be obsolete for the machine, the machine needs first too able to learn and measure emotions in order to approve these solutions.

Philippe Rahm stars the text by compering sustainable development policies with the transformation of design by digital technologies, he mentions that the difference between the two is their visual impact, this is because sustainable development may not affect the physical structure or appearance of a building because it affects things that we don’t see like space and energy. He also mentions the big roll the building industry plays harming the environment with greenhouse gases during their process of climate control in building interiors.

The main idea of the text ranges in the link between function form and climate and the order in which these three word are prioritized. In the 19^th century the idea that “forms follows function” gave architecture an “appropriate form” to function in a predetermined way at the social, technical and ergonomic levels, architecture being simply the expression of a program. In the 1960s this idea was challenged by Louis Kahn and others, who asserted that “function follows form”. The idea rises because needs and activities can change, this means that architectural programs and functions are continually in flux, so a system of hierarchies was proposed. These hierarchies determine an ensemble of spaces in which each one was define in relation to the others, giving rise to a system rigid in structure, but flexible in terms of program. Philippe Rahm proposes that the aim of our work is to consider the form/function relationship from the point of view of architectures contingent relationship with climate.

The idea Rahm purposes of “form and function follow climate” is based on the idea of making architecture free of formal and functional predeterminations, this means going back in time, working towards a traditional approach to design in order to achieve a new spatial organization in which function and form can emerge spontaneously in response to climate. An example of architecture where form and function follow climate are houses in the old neighborhoods of Bagdad, these are vertical stratifications that produce interior spaces that varied in temperature humidity and luminosity. In these houses one could find in the vertical way temperature variations that go from 30⁰C in the cellar up to 50⁰C on the roof, humidity variations that go from 70% in the cellar up to 15% on the roof, and light variations where in the cellar you get almost no light on the roof you’ll get many. According to the season and time of day, occupants moved from the cellar, the rooms in between and the roof in search of the appropriate environmental conditions.

Philippe Rahm concludes the text mentioning that our interest should be how an architectural problem or solution has the potential to give rise to new or unforeseeable ways of living. We should be able to do this by opening interpretation and freeing architecture from function, facilitating its response to a climatic problem, the rise of new technologies or a new function.

A possible topic for my personal research could start from the idea of opening to interpretation and freeing architecture from function, proposing the idea that “form and function follow the problem”. In the present the problem our society is focused in repairing is climate change, but if in architecture this issue is always attended and becomes a daily process in design, other new and unforeseen problems could be addressed by architecture. The main idea is to be able to prevent this new problems or at least be prepared to confront them with architecture.