Subversive machines

Abstract

This project forms an exploration of the way in which architecture, as a discipline, might come to a distinctly architectural application of computational design techinques. In particular, it questions the external nature of these techniques to the field, and how the discipline might come to formulate its own critical technicity. This is premised on a systems-view of technical development, which highlights the importance of time and situatedness for any consideration of change, genesis or becoming. In order to then construct an architectural technicity that can grapple with the external character of technical development, I argue using the philosophy of technology of Gilbert Simondon and Stafford Beer’s management cybernetics that what is needed for this is a radical opening-up of the architectural process in the form of a democratization, to augment architecture’s capacity for producing alternate futurity. The design project continues from this with the formulation of a notion of an open architectural system. This is premised on the idea by that taking the passage of time into consideration in architectural interventions the social nature of the processes through which these interventions arise are made explicit: it is therefore an attempt at elaborating a design-, building- and organizational process that continuously engages with the system-environment that constitutes the proposed design location – a concrete plant on the outskirts of Amsterdam. The design is intended as a system that plugs into the existing system on site, gradually supplanting the concrete plant and using it to fashion a material landscape that functions as the substrate for an open residential cooperative. This material landscape is designed as a system that functions to support all processes and flows necessary for the maximization of freedom in architectural expression for the occupants of the site, with the intention of subverting market logic and financialization in Amsterdam’s housing system.