1Introduction
DOI: 10.4324/9781003181101-1
Today the World is message, codes and information. Tomorrow what analysis will break down our objects or reconstitute them in a new space? What new Russian doll will emerge?
(François Jacob)
For the past 50 years, the advancements of technology have equipped architects with unique tools that have enabled the development of computer-mediated design methods, digital fabrication techniques, and new architectural expressions that challenge the traditional notions of space and design. Such developments define a well-defined line of research in architecture that I call digital architecture (alternatively called digital design, computer-based architecture, computational design, or computational architecture in the professional and academic circles). The origins of this field can be traced back to the decade of 1960s in some British and American universities, but it has gained momentum during the last four decades – initially thanks to the appearance of the first computer aided design (CAD) software packages and the democratization of computers, and lately due to the growing interest of architects in the exploration of new design and construction methods based on programming, digital fabrication techniques, and other emergent technologies.
In general terms, I use the concept of digital architecture to refer to the architectural practices that have promoted a research agenda engaged with the exploration of the intersection of informatics and design issues. Such practices involve the development of alternative design and construction paradigms based on data analysis as an input of the design process, the use of dynamic procedures to deduce the architectural form in virtual or real environments, the automation of design through the implementation of algorithmic techniques, and the production of space by means of the use of computerized numerical controlled machines. As pointed out by the architectural theorist Branko Kolarevic, globally these investigations include the use of topologic and non-euclidean geometries, the definition of new design methods grounded in genetic, kinetic, and non-linear systems, and, crucially, the exploration of a connectivity logic in design.1 In other words, what Kolarevic claims is that the field of digital architecture involves the construction of design issues in reference to new aesthetic and technological considerations, but also in reference to ideological questions. As a matter of fact, since 1960s the investigations of digital architecture have promoted new frameworks and explanations of the disciplinary problems that, in reference to the discourses of information in vogue since the dawn of computer science, have redefined radically the customary conceptions of design, of the built environment, and of the role of architects.
Cybernetic Architectures aims to be a contribution to the comprehension of the shifts of architectural practice connected to the introduction in the profession of information technology during the last decades. With this purpose, the book presents a panorama of the dominant models that have shaped the field of digital architecture since the early investigations on the use of computers, in design until today. The book follows a hint opened by Antoine Picon, who claims that these shifts must be studied from a broader perspective that includes, among other aspects, the attempts to rethink architecture within the cybernetic framework.2
Such reading of the field of digital architecture aims to show how some of the most influential visions of design issues fostered by digital architects embody the core ideas of a model of thought that conceives the world as a great system of information exchange. From this perspective, paraphrasing the French biologist François Jacob, it can be claimed that the world of digital architecture is a world of messages, codes, and information. Accordingly, the main interest of this book is to explore to what extent the informational paradigm is the framework within which the computational perspective in architecture has developed. The study focuses on tracing the connections that can be established between the use of information technology in design and the constructions of the disciplinary problems that digital architects have promoted, as they can be deduced from their discourses and projects. As it was mentioned above, such constructions include several crossed references to the key themes promoted by cybernetics and a body of knowledge directly connected to this framework. As we will see, the field of digital architecture has evolved along with the advances of information technology for design and construction, but it has also progressed along with the evolution of cybernetic ideas and the spread of these ideas to different influential theories, thought models and fields of knowledge. So, to comprehend the evolution of digital architecture it is crucial to understand the key cybernetic ideas as well as the cybernetic ascendancy of a body of knowledge that has deeply influenced the productions of digital architects.
To explain the penetration of cybernetic thinking into architectural thinking, I adopt Geof Bowker's concept of “triangulation effect,” which describes the cognitive interaction among cybernetics and different fields of knowledge, as well as the primacy of information discourses in contemporary thinking. The comprehension of the transition of cybernetic ideas to a series of theories and scientific models, which in turn enter architectural knowledge, permits to consider the evolution of digital architecture as the result of the feedback among various factors that include disciplinary issues, technical aspects and a variety of references to techno-scientific discourses directly connected to the cybernetic paradigm.
This mode of analysis of digital architecture also draws from the work of scholars such as Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, and particularly, N. Katherine Hayles, who have attempted different explanations of the construction of knowledge as the product of a permanent feedback among the world of technique and the world of ideas.3 According to these authors, technology and ideology are two faces of the same coin, and there is not a radical separation between one and the other. In consequence, they challenge the very idea of technological determinism because they show that technology determines cultural productions as much as cultural productions determine the evolution of technology. As a matter of fact, they even deconstruct the idea that there is a difference between culture and technology because from their perspective technology itself appears as a cultural production.
For instance, the mode of analysis proposed by Latour in his influential essay Nous n'avons jamais été modernes aims to dismantle the modern myth that suggests that there is a separation between what the author calls the “pole of nature” and the “pole of subject/society”; that is, the supposed division existing between the natural sciences and culture in modern society. In return, the author proposes a reading of the construction of knowledge according to which science and culture converge and define each other in a process that he defines as a “work of mediation.”4 Similarly, Hayles, proposes an approach for analyzing the evolution of knowledge that considers that the permanent feedback between technologies and perceptions (artifacts and ideas) is an essential aspect of the relationship between ideology and technology. According to Hayles, conceptual fields evolve in parallel to material culture due to the constant feedback between concept and artifact.5 From this perspective, artifacts express the concepts they reproduce and at the same time, the construction of artifacts give way to the formulation of new concepts. Finally, Haraway sketches a theory that designates the social relations between science and technology and that should include “the systems of myth and meanings that structure our imaginations.”6 According to Haraway, “the boundary is permeable between tool and myth, instrument and concept, historical systems of social relations and historical anatomies of possible bodies, including objects of knowledge. Indeed, myth and tool mutually constitute each other.”7
According to the previous approaches, the restructuring of the world through the social relations of science and technology does not constitute a technological determinism, but it is a system of structured relationships mediated by technology. Then, it is assumed that technology does not determine, but makes possible certain forms of organization. From this perspective, Cybernetic Architectures challenges a common trend, among practitioners and critics of digital architecture, to consider technology as an autonomous and central factor that determines and directs the changes in architectural practice. Take, for instance, the introduction to the ACADIA conference Disciplines & Disruption held in 2017 at MIT's School of Architecture and Planning, an important research hub in the field of technologically mediated architecture. The organizers introduced the conference by claiming that “For the past 30 years, distinctive advancements in technologies have delivered unprecedented possibilities to architects and enabled new expressions, performance, materials, fabrication and construction processes,” and that “Driven by technological, data and material advances, architecture now witnesses the moment of disruption.”8 A similar discourse about the determinant role of technology in the transformation of the discipline appears in a paper recently published by Design Studies, where Rivka Oxman, one of the leading theorists of digital design, argues that “emerging media and technology-related models of design have resulted in the rapid development and change of the concepts, content and procedures of digital thinking.”9 In addition, Oxman claims that the early changes in models of design thinking related to the development of computer-based design techniques “occurred first as media technological developments.”10
The above discourses suggest that the driving force of digital architecture is the advance of information technology. By extension, from these claims it can be deduced that to comprehend the changes in architectural practice connected to the use of emergent technologies the essential element is to understand its technical aspects. At least, they clearly suggest that when it comes to understanding the changes in architectural practice related to the use of new technologies, the technological aspects come first and content follows.
In my opinion, assertions like those cited above are problematic because they obscure the key role that the ideological aspects of the information revolution have played in the construction of the field of digital architecture. Indeed, those claims remind me of a question raised by the French sociologist Philippe Breton. In his history of informatics, he wonders if the comprehension of the integration of informatics in society can be limited to the understanding of the technical aspects of digital technology.11 The answer he offers is that to limit the study of informatics to its technical aspects would be to negate the scope of the very idea of digital culture. With respect to the study of computer-based architectural practices, Breton's question could be restated in the following terms: can the productions of digital architects be analyzed merely from the comprehension of the technologies they display? The answer that this book offers to this question is the same as the one proposed by Breton. My take is that to reduce the matter of the integration of information technology into architectural practice to its technical aspects would be to deny the profound influence of digital culture in the design professions. To assess such influence, it is fundamental to overcome the deterministic conceptions of the role of technology in design, which leave aside a fundamental aspect of computer-based architectural practices as important as their technical factors; namely, how have been translated into architectural knowledge the epistemological changes and the set of values and ideals embodied by the emergence of information technology.
Crucially, cybernetic thinking – an interdisciplinary framework which emerged from the premise that several phenomena can be explained as information exchange systems – represents the set of values, assumptions and ideals underlying the development of informatics. It is for this reason that the study of cybernetics should be useful to understand the cultural productions grounded on the use of informatics.12 The former seems quite evident for the study of the field digital architecture, due to the obvious connections that can be established between the emergence of information discourses and information technology. But, in general terms, the comprehension of the cybernetic framework is useful for any study concerned with the transformations of the architectural landscape during the last decades. The reason is that the expansion of cybernetic thinking has been so vast that it is hard to find a field of western knowledge that has not been influenced by this framework – and, as we will see, the influence of cybernetic thinking can be traced in several architectural expressions that do not situate the use of the computer at its core.
In what concerns the evolution of the computational perspective in architecture, the influence of cybernetics is unavoidable. The reason is that since the first explorations about the use of computers in architecture, design issues have been constructed around a series of ideas that evoke the main concepts, ideals, and values advanced by the cybernetic model. For instance, among the themes shared by most practices of digital architecture are the definition of buildings as systems and as self-regulated artifacts, the conception of design as a data-driven process, and the investigation of design methods that explore concepts of automation and artificial intelligence. Last but not least, most practices of digital architecture are grounded on narratives that evoke notions such as information, feedback, homeostasis, system, emergency, self-organization, and complexity, among others. These concepts, which represent the key ideas advanced by the cybernetic model (and also the conceptual changes that took place throughout the development of this framework), are at the core of the dominant models that have directed the evolution of digital architecture. More importantly, they are reminiscent of the evolution of the technical aspects of the digital productions of architecture.
The study of digital architecture demands the understanding of the origin of these narratives and, especially, how they operate in architectural productions; that is, what is the connection between the informational explanations of design issues fostered by digital architects and the artifacts they create. I aim to explain this connection by situating cybernetic thinking as the framewo...
