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

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.

Text under study: Toward a Theory of Architecture Machines, Nicolas Negroponte

Will our profession be still needed in the era of technological development and the 3^rd industrial revolution?   Can human work be totally replaced by machines?  Who would be responsible for machines outputs if they take control of designing the new world?

Nicolas Negroponte presents the idea of architecture machines which would be able not only to follow designer’s step-by-step instructions, but also to learn about architecture and perhaps even learn about learning about architecture.   Architecture machine would be a complex organism consisting of five main pieces:

• A heuristic mechanism which streamlines the process of finding optimsal solutions, based on comparing various situations
• A rote apparatus storing the event and associating it with the response, useful when similar situation is encountered in the future
• A conditioning device – repetitious responses become habits, so that a machine predefined responses
• A reward selector – a designer observing and evaluating the responses from machine should exhibit his response to direct machine towards successful outcome
• A forgetting convenience- the ability of forgetting when obsolescence occurs

To achieve a design solution three properties are required: an event (how we perceive the situation with our senses), a manifestation (measuring the event with appreciate parameters) and a representation which jointly form the interface.

According to Negrodonte’s work, architecture machine would be self-improving and adaptable.  It could exceed a human potential in many fields.   Nowadays, the architects can’t handle particularly complex problems and sometimes they also ignore small scale problems.  In light of this, a machine is able to work 24 hours per day, having almost unlimited memory and processing capabilities.

Negroponte presents an ideal evolutionary system, where the entire designing body consists of a group of interconnected mechanisms.   At the top of this hierarchy is a parent machine with powerful processor and extensive memory.   The reason to have a parent machine is to conquer a large burst of computational power and stored information.  A communication between parent machine, designer and other architecture machines is crucial to achieve the evolutionary system.

All articles involved in the debate have relationship with digital logics and also some connection between each other. Toward a Theory of Architecture Machines is similar to the idea of data in/ data out where a parent machine is a perfect example of base for network of information. The evolutionary system shows the associativity of part to whole.  A heuristic mechanism and a rote apparatus are strongly connected with typological transformations.

I noticed a connection between Negroponte’s article and a fragment from the book On growth and form.  Aspirations of finding a basic roles and general trues of the world by using mathematics remind me again of the architecture machine constructed to obtain the huge base of information and able to use them in the future to speed up the process of designing.

I have no doubt the machine can become a full-fledged artificial intelligence.  We can teach it elasticity, adaptability, diversity and ingenuity.  It even seems possible to program it to imitate human senses.  One thing, which in my opinion we are not able to teach the machine are personal emotions.

Would any machine be able to design a building such as Bruder Klaus Field Chapel designed by Peter Zumthor? The building which moves our hearts and souls when we enter its interior? The building which interacts with every small element of our mind and body?

Is it possible to write a script of creating a space which induces human emotion?  In my opinion no machine can be comparable with human mind abilities: sensitivity and emotions.  I believe that advanced technology can be a great tool, but not a  replacement for human.

This article inspired me to do a further research in the areas where the machine is not able to replace a human being: sensitivity, emotions, compassion and other soft skills.  I would like to prove taht is not possible to design a mashine totally identifying with the human mind. It would be a good opportunity for me to explain why life in a world ruled by machines could turn into a nightmare.

The construction industry leaves a significantly negative environmental footprint.  It is one of the main contributors of greenhouse gases production, which leads to a global environmental disaster.  How should we act to stop the ecosystem devastation before it will be too late?  What our priority should be nowadays during the design process? Phillip Rahm answers this question with two simple words:  sustainable development.

The idea of sustainability is to ensure that our present actions would not inhibit the opportunities of future generations.  Sustainable architecture must take into account future forecasts.  It should also take into consideration a limited capacity of the ecosystem and the necessity to maintain its functioning.  Nowadays, an architect has to adjust his role to space and energy use manager.  His goal is to reduce building’s non-renewable energy consumption.  His focus is not only on the esthetical aspects of the building, but also on its guts and skin.  In other words, his role is to optimize the functioning of the building as if it was a complex organism.

In the essay “Form and Function Follow Climate” Rahm presents designing priorities of the last century:  Sulivan’s dictum “form follows function” – a credo of functionalism and “function follows form”- a doctrine of Luis Kahn, who treated architecture as a system of hierarchies and relations.  Rahm opposes above statements to his designing philosophy in which form and function follow climate.  His objective is to literately built space from functional determinations, to leave it interpretable, to permit architecture to be driven by climate, leading it to discover innovative forms and functions.  The following quote is a thorough summary of his thesis:

“What we are working towards is a reversal of the traditional approach to the design in order to achieve a new spatial organization in which function and form can emerge spontaneously in response to climate”

Form and Function Follow Climate, Phillip Rahm

Case study house related to Rahm’s philosophy is called Never Never Land and was designed by Andres Jaque in 2007 on Ibiza.  It corresponds perfectly with the idea of interpretable space, liberated from functional determinations.  The main assumption of the project refers to sustainability philosophy.  Never Never Land maintains the continuity of the valley’s natural base, its arboreal mass and the cycles of matter in the soil. Designing process was started by making accurate path analysis which took into account all existing arboreal mass. The building is fitted into the free space between the greenery, raised on piles, which minimizes trees removal and disturbance to the ground.  In terms of relational logics that are given between advanced architecture and the environment, in this case we can explore the existence of positional relation.  The form put between the trees stays in strong relation with them e.g. in terms of shading.  In my opinion, there is also a disturb relation- Never Never Land shows how we can alter the relation with nature and its elements.

Is the Never Never Land a good example of advanced architecture?  In my opinion, it is not.  Architecture is always connected with other various fields.  The more connections it has, the more advance it is.  In Jaque’s design I cannot notice many other aspects than maintaining the continuity of the valley’s natural base.  Moreover, his assumption is realized without consistency.  The house is raised on piles to avoid disturbance on the ground and at the same time a huge concrete cube with tank is installed in the ground.  Other drawback is a lack of eco construction materials.  Sustainable house should not be made from tons of steel and glass.  I think that advanced architecture is about complexity which is perfectly described by the following quote from the Metapolis Dictionary of Advance Architecture: “The complexity of a real object is measured by the wealth and variety of the parts that make it up and by the wealth and variety of the different states it can take on”.

In light of the above conclusions, the area of my personal research which I would like to explore deeper is a relation between function, form and climate in housing.  This would help me to understand how these connections were established during the history, what events triggered those transformations, how these relations would look in the future and what would be their consequences.