“Technology is the answer, but what was the question?” – A paradigm shift in the architectural profession.

“Each narrow cell in which we dwell Is a foul and dark latrine, And the fetid breath of living Death Chokes up each grated screen, And all, but Lust, is turned to dust In Humanity´s machine.” The Ballad of Reading Gaol; Oscar

Abstract The remarkable rise of “smart” as a buzzword in the last few decades requires us to take a fresh look at the 20th century foundation of architectural theory. At the same time, new ICT technologies and man-machine-interfaces were invented at a prolific pace. Much of what was deemed utopian in the 1960s or earlier, has become today’s reality. The research proposal aims to bridge the gap between historical architectural visions and today’s “smart city” movement and to discuss the paradigm shift occurring in the architectural profession. It will address Cedric Price’s famous quote “Technology is the answer, but what was the question?”

Keywords #Cybernetics, #Smartness, #Computation, #Data, #Utopia

Introduction: Smartness in architecture is nowadays achieved by data which oscillate between human and machine. The city’s smartness is a vehicle towards continuous improvement of quality of life and competitiveness amidst constantly changing circumstances. Using the new possibilities of data gathering, exchange and analysis, the smart city is one that enables all of its components to adapt to the changing conditions of its internal and external systems. In a smart city, decisions are informed and participatory. Citizens, infrastructure, services, and the natural environment become communicative, self-regulating the urban metabolism. The metaphoric concept of a smart city is therewith close to the interpretation and function of the human brain. This leads to a new intrinsic and immersive world of complexity in the field of contemporary architecture and creates a paradigm shift for architects. But “smartness” has not sprung Phoenix-like from the ashes of an earlier world. Since the early ’80s, when computers became affordable, we have adopted them to many different fields including architecture. This change has made a huge impact on our society and on the way how we proceed with architecture, which has resulted in the birth and evolution of several architectural genres, such as the well-known „blob architecture“ and the new CAD software.  But it wasn’t until the late ’90s, that computation became a specialised field spearheaded by entrepreneurs like Nikolas Negroponte (“from atoms to bits”), Gordon Pask and John Frazer. They made digital architecture related to communication fashionable and since then it has become a daily tool in our life. A vast majority of our historical knowledge has been digitalised and stored in virtual space. We are now developing programs for programs in programs to achieve a higher complexity but also a higher degree of freedom in the way how data is processed and manipulated. I argue that we should consider computation as a given tool, which can be used in architecture and urban planning, as in our reality most processes are already based upon virtualisation, but we need to create the knowledge and understanding about the background of computation and were the utopian ideas of the 60ties and earlier has led us, if we talk about smartness. The awareness of how we use these technologies is mandatory, if we want to understand the complexity, architects are dealing with, nowadays.This new rising buzzword called “smartness” is deeply linked to the history; it is not a new style, or a formal language, far more it is a network which alters the space of architects, in which they are working in. We are surrounded by networks plus their data and we can know react in real-time to certain conditions. The new paradigm proclaims that architects have to interact through networks rather than through locations first (Michael Batty). The myth that architecture is a slow profession which cannot react on the fly to new trends, is gone. However, we have to reduce the complexity first. Therefore we differentiate between knowledge and understanding (David Deutsch) to grapple this nightmare of complexity. The understanding how data is generated, how it is computed, who is using it and for which goals is essential. The evolution of computation shows that in the last 30 years mankind has optimised the machines to fulfil their function by direct or indirect calculation of the CPU.  The meaning of BC is no longer „Before Christ”, it now stands for „Before Computers“. Funny enough it was Charles Babbage, the father of computers, who said that he needs a running „difference engine” in order to finish his design of the first Difference Machine. In other words, he needed a working computer to finalise the design of the first computer. With Charles Babbage’s unrealised Difference Machine, conceived in 1822, mankind stepped into a new era of philosophical thought. Since the invention of the computer chip and its development, the mankind finally succeeded in opening the gates of hell. They created a new era where technological innovations appear at an ever increasing pace. The future of the architect as we know starts to become questionable. The human need of passing genotypes into future systems has been bound up through man-machine interfaces in a world of electronic circuitry. The human body has become virtually extended; the body is displaced in its environment. Authenticity is no longer grounded in its individuality, but rather “in the multiplicity of remote agents” that it hosts, which is known as data. It falls into a dimension based on human errors. 

It is analogous to hell, committing to the lost body, an orgy of torture, rape and depravity. There is no more need for human senses. Compared to industrialisation there is an analogous result: the alienation of the human body. Data is degrading mankind to the status of an object; mankind is becoming fragmented through its data reduction, its decomposition and re-composition in a constantly fleeting space each time the body alters its location. This research calls for a new profession in architecture, which might have been already proposed indirectly by Cedric Price. We need to close the gap for architects between design, social needs, insertion of new technologies into the urban boundaries and steering communication through networks. ”Cities are devices that help us to communicate” (Michael Batty). This quote underlies the importance of Cybernetics and articulates architecture as spatial interface, a continuous negotiating conglomerate of the ephemeral digital brave new world and our build physical urban environment. Architects have to unveil the secrets of big data, which provides a treasure for new ways of analysing and modelling, before starting to design. It aims to articulate smart understanding as experiment to render the wildest amalgamations of our new hybrid environment in specific cultural and utopic context, which is today’s reality.

Methodology The presented research is based on a trans-disciplinary and participative approach, which converges a wide range of expertise and knowledge, both on the academic and professional level. This is going to be applied through personal interviews and site visits around the globe, as well as by attending to conferences.