Machines have long been integral to architectural discourse. Vitruvius concluded his ten books with a meditation on war machines, and Le Corbusier published on his industrial muses just over 100 years ago. Yet something is different today. We have always learned from machines—our societies are fundamentally shaped by their processes—but now, machines learn. We live in paradoxical times. Machinic processes, computational algorithms and artificial intelligence have never been so proximate, direct, and intimate to daily life, yet we are many steps removed from their practical operations.
This issue of Volume, the third in our Learning series, seeks to take one small step in the direction towards understanding the contemporary relevance of machines for architecture, and one giant leap for mankind. Volume #49: Hello World! also includes In Loving Support, a 32-page insert produced with Het Nieuwe Instituut on living and working with algorithms.
Over the coming weeks Volume will share a curated selection of essays from this issue on ArchDaily. This represents the continuation of a partnership between two platforms with global agendas: in the case of ArchDaily to provide inspiration, knowledge and tools to architects across the world and, in the case of Volume, "to voice architecture any way, anywhere, anytime [by] represent[ing] the expansion of architectural territories and the new mandate for design."
Contributions
- Editorial: Going Live / Nick Axel
- The Rational City / M. Christine Boyer
- Out of the Loop / Doug Spencer
- On Automation in The Stack / Benjamin H. Bratton
- Architecture After the Event Horizon / Kazys Varnelis
- Demo Life / Orit Halpern
- Hausbaumaschine / Nader Vossoughian
- The Ultimate Industrial Revolution / W J McKee
- Animated Aberrations, Rebellious Objects / Shannon Mattern
- Welcome to FutureLand / Victor M. Sanz
- Robots on Screen / Volume
- Insert: In Loving Support
- The Smart City of Gaza / Francesco Sebregondi
- We, Robots / Kas Oosterhuis
- Social Physics and Democratic Suprematism / Philippe Morel
- The Promethean Gift Economy / Troy Conrad Therrien
- Machine Learning from Las Vegas / Pierre Cutellic
- Domestic Machines / Nicholas Korody
- Machinic Apprenticeship / Sara Dean and Etienne Turpin
- Drive / Ed Keller and Carla Leitao
- Here and Anywhere in the World / Valle Medina and Benjamin Reynolds
- Where the City Can't See / Tim Maughan and Liam Young
Volume is an "agenda-setting" quarterly magazine, published by the Archis Foundation (The Netherlands). Founded in 2005 as a research mechanism by Ole Bouman (Archis), Rem Koolhaas (OMA*AMO), and Mark Wigley (Columbia University Laboratory for Architecture/C-Lab), the project "reaches out for global views on designing environments, advocates broader attitudes to social structures, and reclaims the cultural and political significance of architecture."
The latest issue can be purchased here.
