A Critical Analysis of “Toward a Theory of Architecture Machines” by Nicholas Negroponte

This article by the well-known technological advocate Nicholas Negroponte was published in 1969 in the Journal of Architectural Education.  It essentially posits that as computers become more advanced they will achieve the capability to learn and to find their own methods of solving architectural problems.  The view of the author is that architects are incapable of solving these problems for themselves since they are either too large and complex, or too small and insignificant.  After highlighting some of the known qualities of the computers of the day (they are formidable clerks), Negroponte establishes five mechanisms that could result in a computer achieving what we know as “artificial intelligence”.  His learning machine would be capable of applying its early lessons, evaluating them with the assistance of humans, and then repeating only successful actions.  The computer would eventually assume the role of the “master designer”, working 24 hours a day alongside the human architect whose function has become interpreting the computer’s instructions to other humans for construction.

Negroponte then takes his theory of the “thinking” computer one step further by giving it the sensory capacity to become what he considers a “seeing” machine.  He breaks this concept down into three stages: the event, the manifestation and the representation.  Essentially the computer senses the event (a broad category presumably including reading plans and conversing with clients) and inputs the information as a manifestation before churning out a response.  If it is beginning to seem like Negroponte’s vision of the future consists of androids behaving exactly like humans, that’s because it is.  He imagines the “architecture machine” wandering about the city absorbing information.  Understanding the limited computing power of the present, Negroponte suggests that a computer may first observe a human building 10 block castles and construct the 11th of its own design.  Similar to engineers designing buildings, this is a prospect that must surely make all practising architects shudder.

The eager and optimistic prediction that computers can receive their high school lessons from a human and then become functioning architects with artificial intelligence has not yet come true, despite the many years of Moore’s law transistor evolution.  Perhaps this article should be read as an ironic critique of architecture during modernism rather than as an honest vision of technological utopianism.  Certainly there are limitations to what a single architect can accomplish, but that is why architects now form teams where the weaknesses of one are offset by the strengths of the others.  Architects working with digital tools are capable of producing far more complex and responsive solutions than ever before, but this can only come along with an understanding of the processing structure of the computer’s brain.  It is interesting to note that Negroponte never mentions the word “nature” in his piece, since in an apparent paradox, the clerk-like processing ability of computers has enabled humans to emulate the logics found in the work of the greatest designer of all.

The Line of Research

To that end it may be appropriate to analyze some of the great accomplishments achieved by the human mind in the realm of quantum mechanics (also known as the study of the way things really are).  The creative power of great minds in physics, such as Bohr, Einstein, Gell-Mann and Hawking, deserves to be understood by architects who are by nature fascinated by abstractions of reality.  There is no place more abstract than the multi-dimensional mathematical universe constructed by the beautiful equations of physicists.  Therefore it is worth noting that while a computer randomly outputting characters could eventually write E=mc², its true usefulness is that of a tool; although one so powerful it can demolish our preconceived illusions of the universe like so many walls surrounding us.

The Moriyama House by the Office of Ryue Nishizawa, located in Tokyo, Japan. The main idea was to rethink traditional Japanese architecture and create a project that can be inhabited by the owners and at the same time easily rented. This idea became possible with the space structure that consists of a group of rooms different in size, scattered around the site. Garden or courtyard here works as a bonding element within the rooms. Basically each room and garden in this compound is a space in which a person may enjoy his daily life. The project was designed in the special way for the rooms to stand apart from each other and maintain privacy. None of the windows face each other, they either face the wall or the sky. In this house owner can decide which cluster of rooms will be used as residence or as rental rooms.

Stanford Kwinter talks in his ‘Cooking, Yo-ing, Thinking’ how nature and technology can exist together. He disagrees with a saying that computer is just a tool. He compares them to the stone tool that once started the evolution of human kind. This “tool” changed the way we think, the way we perceive things and even the way we live. Computers allow us to see things in a different way, it helps us to understand the world better. They create digital environment that helps us to communicate and interact with each other and nature. He said in his topic that computer should be used to bring humankind closer to nature and create a bond between cultural, natural and digital environments.

The subject for my personal research that I would probably like to develop in the future will be about how modern architecture could be incorporated with nature. This is something that Stanford Kwinter talked about in his ‘Cooking, Yo-ing, Thinking’. Since technology is a big part of modern architecture I would like to see how these two elements will exist together with nature. And how this architecture will possibly help people to get closer to nature and not push us further apart from it.