Autonomous architecture

Abstract

Abstract Krueger (1996) argued for an intelligent and interactive architecture conceived of as a metadermis, a socially inhabited body, referencing recent work in the fields of robotics, intelligent structures and skins, and interactive materials. These developments serve both as a source of technical information and as a methodology by which architecture may develop capacities, which are currently available only within the organic realm. The present paper extends the characterisation of architecture as a body to consider the evolution of an independent entity. Recent developments in artificial intelligence research indicate that increasingly complex behaviours can be obtained only with an increase in the autonomy of the agent — that functionality comes at the expense of control. It is argued that goal‐directed behaviours on the part of the agent imply a degree of self‐awareness and that this awareness is given by the sensing capacity of the organism. The availability of a wide range of sensing technologies suggests that the kind of awareness developed by architectural entities may be foreign to human experience.