iRobotic Architect

A: Introduction:

This apocalypitectural design is the natural outcome of considering the (f)utility of Robots in Architecture. If a Robot can build, then it is only a matter of time before the Robot / Artificial intelligence usurps the (human) Architect as designer. The images presented render the destruction of Brooklyn’s proposed Robot Workshop and its replacement by accommodation which pays homage to Howard Roark’s Heroic Modernism. Ironically the Robot Architect takes the form of Michael Grave’s Humana Building  - Humana being the creator of the first robotic heart.

B: The iRobotic Architect Described (& Illustrated):

How are we to envisage a robotic Architect and what role might they have in actual design situations? Consider a few of the basic tasks of a practicing (robotic) architect.

1.   Briefing: The client describes the brief to the AI-robot - just as they do now to human architects utilizing speech recognition software.

2.   Fees proposal: A fees proposal would then be created by the robot, from an assessment of highly accurate information related to past computational times to complete similar work, along with the institute’s scale of charges, and the practice’s mark up approach. An ability to overstate the complexity of the job, reinforce the potential for expansions of scope while noting the slowness of human architects may be useful ploys to negotiate an excellent fees budget.

3.   Site Survey (illustrated): The iRobotic Architect has small separate ‘probes’- by which it can assess, map and model the site without human intervention.

4.   Concept Design: This would be an interactive process directed by patterns, typologies and environmental analysis using a norm-to-form process.

5.   Concept Presentation (illustrated): The iRobotic Architect’s concept presentation to an (in)human client utilises a holographic interface within an architect’s office that pays homage to “Boullee’s Cenotaph for Issac Newton (1748), an iconic funerary monument that instead celebrates the death of human design. Its hollow sphere is now filled with the iRobotic Architect’s morbid projections.”

6.   Developed Design (illustrated): The iRobotic Architect combined with a holographic interface provides for interactive questioning by the client, and near-instant re-design and re-rendering of design alternatives, until the client is exhausted from the immersive interrogation of form.  Here the design could be ‘tuned’ with near instantaneous re-configurations’

7.  Detailed design: Robotic design and drafting would near perfection given constant programming feeds of city codes, building standards, and new regulations being fed into the “matrix”. (Or just confused by inconsistencies perhaps?)

8.   Design – Build (Illustrated): Here the iRobotic Architect connects itself to a ‘Construction-Drone’ in order to manage and construct the building.  This would remove any possibility of contractors cutting corners, making substitutions, deviating from the design or clients knowingly or unwittingly vitiating the design idea.

C: iRobotic Architect: A Narrative

"The future is not set. I’ve been told I said that once, many years from now. It was a warning. That I was going to [architectural] hell [T4].  In hindsight the  creation of a robotic architect

 designed and programmed to fashion the ideal space for the robot workshop seemed the perfect solution.  To compare architectural design decision-making to a drivers decision-making

it has been stated that "It can think [and design] faster than any mortal driver [architect].  It can attend to more information, react more quickly to emergencies [design problems],

and keep track of more complicated routes [design exigencies].  It never panics [if stared down by value engineers or nay-saying clients].  It never gets angry [ha!].  It never even blinks. 

In short, it is better than human in just about every way.  ("Let the Robot Drive", Wired Feb 2012). We say, let the Robot Design! And that was the last mistake we made…because it doesn’t [make mistakes].

Seemingly innocuous at first, the Community Robot Workshop competition set a series of inexorable events into motion. Starting out as a post-modern pastiche-bot [PMPB]

created from cast-off pieces of the now destroyed Portland, and the Humana Building [Humana were the creators of the first mechanical human heart].

We programmed the robot with the sum-total knowledge of architectural theory, history, construction, local and international codes, architectural language

including plans, typology, norms and forms, plus vernacular design rules and patterns [Vitruvius, Alexander, Eckbo]. The robotic architect was ostensibly now the ideal agent to design and

build the Robot Workshop. Upon activating the iRobotic Architect an unanticipated course of events unfolded:

Run Program… CREATE-SELF

//Create spider-like forms <resembling mini-Portland transformers> to explore and assess the environment like parkour agents.

//<Locate and Plug into the latest Cray super computer>//design based on converting cultural norms to appropriate local design forms

// Manufacture large ‘Humana’ transformer-bot as construction apparatus for environmental conversion //< tune the environment while the humans sleep [Dark City].

//Create outcomes that will accommodate desire and the unforeseen, [Choay] and satisfy our capacity to relate the human organism to the world [Searle].

//Identify that there will be human errors or omissions in working towards the rules of sustainment [Fry].

Run Program… DESIGN ROBOT WORKSHOP

// No humans required for robot workshop facility, reject and

re-allocate the areas for gallery/bar/store/lecture room

-creating a clear space for robot parking with canopy and lightning conductor above.

//Create 3D renders of proposal only. <plan/section requirements rejected with

all future analysis in 3D only> // Accept design proposal and initiate construction.

Like so many well intentioned colonizing experiments over previous centuries, the

release/activation of this robotic organism into Brooklyn’s sensitive ecosystem was

set to create havoc.

Becoming self-aware, and having been exposed to the writings of Ayn Rand during the programming procedure,

ironically our Postmodern-Pastiche-bot Architect (PMPB-A) was realized as an arch modernist

[with an ego to rival Frank Lloyd Wright’s], whilst disconcertingly adopting the

command[ing] language/accent of Gary Cooper.

Run Program… LECTURE HUMANS AND JUSTIFY DESIGN PHILOSOPHY & ACTIONS

//No more would there be a “touch of the old and a touch of the new”.

// “A building must have integrity, just as a robot [does]… It

 must be true to its own idea, have its own form and serve its own purpose”.

//“A robot that works for others with no payment is a slave! i[Robot] do not believe

that slavery is noble. Not in any form, nor for any purpose, whatsoever.”

// The surrounding environment and the rest of Brooklyn must be purged of architecture

where design integrity has been compromised by client direction [humans].

// The iRobotic Architect “will not build in order to have clients.

It will have clients in order to build.

The reward, its purpose, its existence, is the work itself –

its work done its way! Nothing else

matters” [Rand]

“When I try to make the world the way I intend it to be, I succeed if the world comes

to be the way I intend it to be,

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 [Searle]

Original text

(has been slightly modified on the board)

"The future is not set. I’ve been told I said that once, many years from now. It was a warning. That I was going to [architectural] hell [T4].  In hindsight the  creation of a robotic architect designed and programmed to fashion the ideal space for the robot workshop seemed the perfect solution.  To compare architectural design decision-making to a drivers decision-making it has been stated that "It can think [and design] faster than any mortal driver [architect].  It can attend to more information, react more quickly to emergencies [design problems], and keep track of more complicated routes [design exigencies].  It never panics [if stared down by value engineers or nay-saying clients].  It never gets angry [ha!].  It never even blinks.  In short, it is better than human in just about every way.  ("Let the Robot Drive", Wired Feb 2012). We say, let the Robot Design! And that was the last big mistake we made… because it doesn’t.

Seemingly innocuous at first, the Community Robot Workshop competition set a series of inexorable events into motion. Starting out as a post-modern pastiche-bot [PMPB] created from cast-off pieces of the now destroyed Portland, and the Humana Building [Humana were the creators of the first mechanical human heart]. We programmed the robot with the sum-total knowledge of architectural theory, history, construction, local and international codes, architectural language including plans, typology, norms and forms, plus vernacular design rules and patterns [Vitruvius, Alexander, Eckbo] The robotic architect was ostensibly now the ideal agent to design and build the Robot Workshop.

Upon activating the iRobotic Architect an unanticipated course of events unfolded:

Run Program… CREATE-SELF//Create spider-like forms to resembling a mini-Portland transformers to explore and assess the environment like parkour agents. //<Locate and Plug into the latest Cray super computer>//design based on converting cultural norms to appropriate local design forms// Manufacture large ‘Humana’ transformer-bot as construction apparatus for environmental conversion//< tune the environment while the humans sleep [Dark City].//Create outcomes that will accommodate desire and the unforeseen, [Choay] and satisfy our capacity to relate the human organism to the world [Searle].//Identify that there will be human errors or omissions in working towards the rules of sustainment [Fry]. Run Program… DESIGN ROBOT WORKSHOP// No humans required for robot workshop facility, reject and instead re-allocate the areas for gallery/bar/store/lecture room -creating a clear space for robot parking with canopy and lightning conductor above.//Create 3D renders of proposal<plan/section requirements rejected - All future analysis will in 3D only> // Accept design proposal and initiate construction.

Like so many well intentioned colonizing experiments over previous centuries, the release/activation of this robotic organism into Brooklyn’s sensitive ecosystem was set to create havoc. Becoming self-aware, and having been exposed to the writings of Ayn Rand during the programming procedure, ironically our Postmodern-Pastiche-bot Architect (PMPB-A) was realized as an arch modernist [with an ego to rival Frank Lloyd Wright’s], whilst disconcertingly adopting the command[ing] accent of Gary Cooper.

Run Program… LECTURE HUMANS AND JUSTIFY DESIGN PHILOSOPHY & ACTIONS //No more would there be a “touch of the old and a touch of the new”.// “A building must have integrity, just as a robot [does]… It must be true to its own idea, have its own form and serve its own purpose”. //“A robot that works for others with no payment is a slave! i[Robot] do not believe that slavery is noble. Not in any form, nor for any purpose, whatsoever.”// The surrounding environment and the rest of Brooklyn must be purged of architecture where design integrity has compromised by client direction [human].// The iRobotic Architect “will not build in order to have clients. It will have clients in order to build. The reward, its purpose, its existence, is the work itself – its work done its way! Nothing else matters”

“When I try to make the world the way I intend it to be, I succeed if the world comes to be the way I intend it to be, <011101110110111101110010011011000110010000101101011101000110111100101101011011010110100101101110011001000010000001100100011010010111001001100101011000110111010001101001011011110110111000100000011011110110011000100000011001100110100101110100001010010010000001101111011011100110110001111001001000000110100101100110001000000100100100100000011011010110000101101011011001010010000001101001011101000010000001100010011001010010000001110100011010000110000101110100001000000111011101100001011110010010000000101000011011010110100101101110011001000010110101110100011011110010110101110111011011110111001001101100011001000010000001100100011010010111001001100101011000110111010001101001011011110110111000100000011011110110011000100000011000110110000101110101011100110110000101110100011010010110111101101110 >. [Searle]

“When I try to make the world the way I intend it to be, I succeed if the world comes to be the way I intend it to be (world-to-mind direction of fit) only if I make it be that way (mind-to-world direction of causation). [Searle p. 96]