Architecture Machine

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Will our profession be still needed in the era of technological development and the 3rd industrial revolution?   Can human work be totally replaced by machines?  We would like to present the concept of Architecture Machine.

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Architecture Machine would be able not only to follow designer’s instructions, but also to learn by itself.  It would be self-improving, adaptable and a complex organism consisting of five main pieces:

  • A heuristic mechanism – streamlining the process of finding solutions, basing on comparing various situations
  • A rote apparatus – storing the event and associating it with the response
  • A conditioning device – repetitious responses becoming habits what predefines responses
  • A reward selector – a designer evaluating responses from the machine, to direct it towards successful outcome
  • A forgetting convenience

Architecture Machines could exceed a human potential in many fields, being able to work 24 h per day, having almost unlimited memory and processing capabilities. They would create an ideal evolutionary system-  a group of interconnected mechanisms.  At the top of this hierarchy is a parent machine conquering a large burst of computational power and stored information. Other machines and designers would communicate with it.

BDD 1075 – BAD
Beirut (Lebanon), 2011
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The BDD 1075 projected designed by BAD architects consists of two towers located in Beirut, Lebanon.
The most fascinating fact about the project is that it’s interior space can react individually on specific requirements due to it’s parametric design.
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The whole building structure is adaptable through specific parameters which can be modified, as for example height of floors.
The building volume is divided into 3 functional units: residential, furnished apartments and offices. The distribution of these functions can be adjusted according to the client’s wishes.
Talking about architecture machines before, this project is dealing with a technology which is able to act quite autonomous, for example by calculation the optimal solution for a building. It is as example where technology can offer individual solutions and contribute to the architect’s work.
Parametricist Manifesto, Patrik Schumacher
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In Patrik Schumacher’s Parametricist Manifesto he often refers to the ‘style’ of parametric design, yet only rarely mentions why architecture should be parametric.  He states several aesthetic heuristics that young designers should follow.  The architect has become the architecture machine, and the computer is merely an optimization tool that enables the artist to build whatever forms they want.  With that said, the first proposal on his future agenda is an interesting one: to move parametricism from single system differentiation (like a facade) to holistic differentiation where changing inputs can reconfigure the entire result (structure, mechanical systems, circulation).
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An example is how every termite mound looks different depending on certain factors.  The solar heat gain parameter modifies the ventilation capacity required for the colony, and the blind, sexless workers modify their building behaviours by swarm mechanics just like agents in Processing software.

 

 

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