Architectural robotics, inevitably

Abstract

centrally controlled heating and ventilation (an innovation of the 20th century), we are now to a point that science fiction writers and futurists have long foreseen: architectural robotics—intelligent and adaptable built environments that sense, plan, and act. The prospect of what we call architectural robotics was presciently anticipated by architect and MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte 40 years ago in his vision of “...a man-made environment that responds to and is ‘meaningful’ for him or her” [1]. Former Wired editor Kevin Kelly has since imagined a “world of mutating buildings” and “rooms stuffed with co-evolutionary furniture” [2]. And while Bill Gates forecasts “a robot in every home” [3], the late William J. Mitchell, former dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning and head of its Media Arts and Sciences Program, envisioned homes not as “machines for living” but “as robots for living in” [4], Information and communication technologies (ICT) extend a long line of emerging technologies that have reshaped our built environment and, consequently, society, over millennia. In antiquity, Roman arches afforded greater freedom of movement, physically and socially. In the Middle Ages, flying buttresses allowed light to magnificently penetrate once heavy walls. And in the Industrial Age, reinforced concrete, structural steel, and free-plan organizational systems accommodated mass gatherings of people at work and play. In our Information Age, ICT is increasingly embedded into the physical fabric of the built environment in order to intelligently control heating, air conditioning, and lighting, as well as to transform building facades into vast computer displays. But while ICT can intelligently move temperature-controlled air through building interiors, and digital bits across building surfaces, it also promises to move physical building elements to create intelligent, adaptive built environments responsive to the challenges and opportunities of a digital society. Beyond operable windows and movable partitions (new technologies of past centuries) and in te ra c ti o n s J a n u a ry + F e b ru a ry 2 0 1 2