数字时代的“活”建筑

卡洛·拉蒂/Carlo Ratti

母卓尔 译/Translated by MU Zhuo'er

突如其来的技术飞跃所引发的突变总是将建筑史打断。15 世纪中期的建筑以手工艺为基础，在此背景下，阿尔伯蒂把数学方法运用到图像表达中，从而开启了文艺复兴时期的古典主义：建筑开始注重精确性与绘图表达，抛弃了工匠式的粗略建造。4 个世纪之后，布鲁内尔、帕克斯顿爵士和埃菲尔用钢铁与玻璃设计出创新大胆的建筑结构，突破了建造的极限。技术的飞跃带来了建筑与工程相结合的新美学。

在那之后的一代建筑师迎来了机械时代的巅峰，勒·柯布西耶把大规模生产的工具与形式运用到建筑中，并宣称“住宅是居住的机器”。建筑不仅在设计与结构工程的角度得到了优化，也在大规模生产与社会功能方面得到了提升。

技术的剧变推动着建筑的进步。勒·柯布西耶曾梦想城市“和谐地演变成为机械文明的象征”，而今天的文明已经从机械时代进入到信息时代。将物理世界的比特与虚拟世界的原子相结合的数字化革命有望给建成环境的设计、建造与运营带来有史以来最彻底的颠覆性变革。正如机器曾带来标准化与高产出一样，数字化工具可以带来活力、变化与快速响应能力。现在我们面临的问题是：数字时代的建筑将如何演变？

为应对这一问题，建筑师们最早尝试从形式入手，为数字时代创造动态的建筑。一些建筑师创造出了具有独特视觉特征的精妙建筑雕塑，例如，弗兰克·盖里设计的标志性建筑毕尔巴鄂古根海姆博物馆，以及他遍布全球的其他类似项目。盖里的作品开创了不规则有机建筑的新美学，通常被称为“团状”建筑。这种新的形式语言很大程度上依赖于参数化设计软件来实现：建筑师用数字工具编写建筑形式的内在逻辑，输入一些数据（客观环境因素、规划条件、功能要求等），然后运行算法来协调各项条件，最终生成形式极其复杂的建筑形体。建筑师不再需要手动计算来解决各种复杂问题，而是用计算机来生成高度精确的结果。

参数化设计软件开辟了一个新的领域，让建筑师可以从根本上质疑一些传统的建筑形式。建筑师们热情而高效地探索可能性的边界，他们认为在理性与有机的对立之下，非网格化的复杂形式能带来更多的活力。早期的参数化建筑理论家开创了一种新的形式感知，旨在“最大限度地强调显著的差异性”[1]。

备受瞩目的2004 年威尼斯建筑双年展以“变形”为主题，探讨了“当代建筑在理论和实践领域以及新技术运用方面正在发生的剧变”。展览汇聚了参数化设计领域前沿的建筑师、学者、研究者和评论家。虽然展览的叙事基调是个性差异与实验尝试，但如果带着质疑的目光审视参展的项目，则会发现它们之间的差异性是非常肤浅的。“计算机终于能够实现各种不同的建筑形式，并且实现难度与从前的标准形式并无二致。然而，这些雕塑般的新形式非常相似，并没有根本上的创新。这些建筑与结构往往具有感性的折叠、扭曲与弯曲的表面。整个展览看起来更像一个国际电脑艺术节……可以说，双年展体现出来的最重要问题是形式过剩。”在创新的幌子下，双年展中出现了许多类似的对复杂几何进行的可预测操作，却并没有激发对建筑真正有意义的动态性。

参数化工具赋予了建筑师前所未有的力量，使他们能够利用算法生成空间，形成一种充满活力的形式语言。然而，尽管自以“变形”为主题的威尼斯双年展以来，参数化设计趋势在不断发展，建筑师却很难找到有意义的数据来提供给算法设计过程。一个例子是日本的某个邮轮码头的设计，其概念源于传统绘画中波浪的几何形状，特别是“葛饰北斋的巨浪”。建筑师说，设计灵感来自于“本土画家的一幅画，我们在设计竞赛阶段沉迷于对它进行几何操作和思考如何建造，当时一直在这幅画上做文章”[2]。此外，在很多情况下，建筑师对参数化软件的应用仅仅停留于建筑表皮的设计。算法可以对数以千计的元素进行计算，把原本标准化的墙体变得令人眼花缭乱。无论是由地理空间数据驱动还是由复杂的关联矩阵驱动的参数化设计都可以创造出十分新颖的作品。

现在，发展势头盖过物理空间的虚拟空间正在涌现出大量的数据，其中一些数据被建筑师用到程序脚本中，他们希望利用这些数据来“培育和发展新的建筑形式，以应对结构、气候和功能等方面的一些限制因素。虽然这种做法带来了十分有趣的形式结果，但它们也凸显了概念与过程上的局限性：用于生成这类新建筑的设计工具可能是动态的，但生成的建筑本身却依然是静态的”[3]。在给定的条件下，建筑师可以生成无数的建筑形式方案，但这些十分复杂而又规模巨大的建筑方案却并不一定是有意义或有生命的。“人们可以用算法生成类似自然的形式，但这些形式却几乎不具备任何生命本身的行为特性和可以适应环境的复杂性。”

算法生成的建筑是对高度复杂性的静态可视化。在固定的实体空间中激发数字空间的流动性，也就是要把一个动态的过程冻结，正如在一个动态序列中按下暂停键以停留在单个帧一样。即使是能量和活力的高潮，当它被静态画面捕捉时，也只能传达出动态整体的一丝影子。

虽然我们可以计算出视觉复杂度，但除了外在吸引力以外，它还能带来什么呢？人们真的喜欢视觉上复杂的东西吗？数字时代已经让我们的世界充满无数的流动、层次和复杂性，而灵活可塑的建筑形式只会让建成环境看起来更加混乱。数字工具可否真正与建筑整合，突破目前仅应用于饰面和增加光泽度的局面？如何整合数字设计系统来实现真正的动态建筑？“数字化不仅是在设计过程中使用计算机，也不是为了让一件东西看起来很‘数字化’。它是一种日常状态，就像接电话和听MP3一样简单。”[4]也就是说，数字时代的建筑应该成为人类生活中不可或缺的一部分。建筑不仅要看起来像一个活的有机体，它也应该如同一个活的生命系统运作着。

创造“活”建筑的最早曙光可以追溯到20 世纪中期的可移动建筑的实验。当时，一批年轻的日本建筑师，即新陈代谢派，为战后日本不断增长的人口提出了有生命的建筑的构想。他们提出，可以通过社会的动态力量来塑造动态的建筑。新陈代谢派建筑师的作品通常模拟生物模型以实现动态性，例如，采用主干与分支的结构和细胞分化的巨型形态。建筑师会建立一个主程序（如同DNA），它可以根据一个结构模式系统不断地自我衍生。

新陈代谢派建筑师的设计作品建成的很少，但有一个很重要的建成案例是黑川纪章设计的位于东京市中心的中银胶囊塔，它被看作新陈代谢派的代表作。这座建筑有一个中心主轴，各个住宅胶囊与之连接组合。理论上讲，胶囊的无限组合与连接方式可以形成大小不一的空间，满足不同家庭、不同预算的需求，以及随时间而变化的居住需要。然而，中银胶囊塔的概念在实际中却有很大的缺陷。这座建筑自1972 年建成以来，从没有一个胶囊被移动或组合过i。20 世纪还有很多类似的可变建筑的尝试：从里特维尔德的施罗德住宅到建筑电讯派的插件城市，它们要么未被推广，要么未被建造。一个完全可变的建筑仍然依赖有想法的居住者才能实现它的可变性。可惜在实际生活中，大部分可变建筑都丧失了可变的功能。

虽然可变建筑并不一定能让人们积极参与其中，但它的出现至少让数字科技重新进入了建筑领域，从而有助于实现人类与建成环境之间更加细腻、便捷和积极响应的互动。在建筑学科之外，前沿计算机科学家和数学家早在20 世纪中叶就开始探索控制论。这门新兴学科以网络为研究目标，尤其关注系统中相互依赖的行动者之间的沟通与联系。致力于在建筑师中推广控制论的学者戈登·帕斯克认为，控制论研究的是“系统如何自我调节、自我繁殖、进化和学习，其重点在于系统是如何自我组织的。”这一概念框架也可以运用于建筑领域。控制论可以用作一种实用的设计策略，用于协调一系列相互关联的因素，让它们作为一个动态系统共同发挥作用。“设计总是没有明确的目标，‘控制者’也不再像这个名称所暗示的那样，是一个专制的机构。相反，控制者是由催化剂、支持者、记忆和仲裁者组成的一种独特的混合体。我相信这些都是设计师应该嵌入他设计的系统（控制系统）中的特性。”也就是说，建筑师应该担当动态变量的编排者，而不应该撰写一个确定的最终结果。

大约在同一时期，建筑学科内的一些前沿建筑师开始大力推广交互的概念。建筑逐渐变得声色并茂、时髦有趣，并不断进化发展。在他们看来，建筑是容纳行为和互动发生的场所，是可以激发事件与交流、让人愉悦的动态场景。既是建筑师又是先锋艺术家的塞德里克·普莱斯的作品“发生器项目”就是展现这种新态度的代表作。这个未建成的项目本来被设想为一座休养与活动中心，它是由150 个预制立方体组成的系统，每个立方体边长365.76cm（12ft），可以移动和重组——就像中银胶囊塔的胶囊一样。但关键在于，这些立方体会以动态的方式进行交互。项目中有一个早期的软件系统用于监测建筑的活动，一旦建筑长时间保持静止，软件就会自动执行“无聊程序”，重组自身的结构并煽动（或干扰）用户令其活动起来。为了增强建筑中人的体验，建筑自身扮演了一个积极挑衅者的角色。该项目是一个促进对话与相互响应的系统，是对新陈代谢派所宣扬的“用户-变化-建筑”的线性观念的一种超越。这个作品在很多方面都体现了控制论思想在建筑领域的应用：它创造了一个对于输入和行为能动态地作出自组织响应的系统。

如果说第一次工业革命的重点在于为特定的任务创造优化的机器，那么相比之下，控制论关注的是一种新的（也许是非机械的）“机器”，它自身就可以适应不断发展的功能需求。“我们关注类脑人造物，关注进化、成长和发展，也关注思考和认识世界的过程。头戴应用科学之冠，我们的使命是创造……新的工业革命的工具——能够自己制定计划的控制机制”[5]。应用到建筑学领域，控制论意味着建筑作为适应性学习的主体，可以不断与用户进行对话。

与最近流行的以形式为重点的所谓动态建筑相比，“活”的网络化建筑是截然不同的尝试，它可能会照亮另一条前进的道路。“今天，许多建筑师已经抛弃了曾风靡20 世纪末的一些概念，例如速度、去物质化、小型化，以及用浪漫而夸张的形式来表达复杂性的做法。毕竟，复杂性也是有极限的，超过这个极限……复杂性就会适得其反”[6]。与其用数字工具来针对视觉感受计算复杂性，交互空间可以用数字工具来激发一种新的复杂性：体验的复杂性。从精心设计的建筑转向动态的建筑，需要建筑作为（而不是看起来是）“活”的有机体来运行。

计算的用途将不会局限于根据参数来生成复杂的形状，计算将成为建筑的一个组成部分，按预设程序与用户互动。建筑的这种界面功能运用的是嵌入式技术，而不是生成性技术。除了设计平面和剖面以外，未来的建筑师将可以根据一系列动态的体验和功能要求，自由地设计一个由相互关联的传感器、操作和动作组成的系统，这样的循环将给建筑带来生命。以通信和学习系统为基础的传感器网络可以将建筑转变为智能代理，它能够从用户身上学习并与之共同生活。当建筑把人类、环境、基础设施和个人设备整合到一起时，动态空间的梦想就终于可以实现了。

正如移动网络依赖无处不在的传感器（如众包地图和坑洞检测）一样，建筑也可以更好地利用穿行其中的人流。我们将从“生活在家里”转变为“与家一起生活”。建筑将成为一种界面，在虚拟环境和物理环境中都扮演着积极的角色。“我们的目标是尽可能地促进从快到慢、从虚拟到物理、从大脑到感官、从自动到手动、从动态到静态、从大众到小众、从全球到本地、从有机到无机、从专有到通用的无缝过渡，这只是其中的一些较为极端的变化”[6]。通过整合数字元素，建成环境将成为一种实现空间控制论的界面，把迥异却共存的虚拟世界与物理世界连接在一起。

建成环境正在变成物理世界的用于居住的互联网，它是一个赫兹空间——一个与数字设备密不可分的空间。“赫兹空间是一种连接物体、发送信息和内容的方式。但建筑是一种可以居住、享受和探索的环境”[7]。在新的交互式数字化建筑中，细节、动态和复杂性（曾经是参数化设计的野心所在）是可以体验的设计结果，而不是设计的出发点。交互为建筑注入了生命——建筑的震撼力和活力体现在时间维度上，而不是其外部视觉特征上。

正如智能手机是通往更大系统的门户一样，建筑的角色可以是介于日常的、人类尺度的功能和巨大的、人性尺度的网络之间的调解者。“几千年来，建筑师们一直关注着以皮肤为界限的身体及其直接接触的环境……现在，他们必须考虑电子增强的、可重构的、虚拟的身体，这种身体可以在远端进行感知和行动，但也仍然部分地生活在周围的环境中”[8]。前数字化时代的人类生活于直接接触的物理环境中，但今天的人类已成为以智能手机为仿生手的赛博格，以截然不同的方式居住在空间里。当我们在物理环境与虚拟环境之间切换时，尺度和环境都变得模糊了。有时一个房间里明明只站着自己和其他3 个人，但在数字—空间网络的帮助下，这个房间里可能同时还有隔壁餐厅的两个好友，或仅在一个街区之外的暗恋对象。尽管人和物理空间仍然是我们关注的重点，但人类所生活的虚拟空间的界限已不可避免地向外扩展，而建筑必须能够容纳这种虚拟空间的广度，无论它如何变化。与此同时，建筑必须仍然关乎人类本身。这是皮康提出的问题。

建筑师应该如何应对这个似乎充斥着活力和表现力的电子信息时代？与机械化早期阶段的现代建筑所面临的挑战相比，数字时代的到来对建筑设计而言是一个更大的挑战。也许这是历史上第一次，建筑必须面对非建构的现实。在这样的情况下，建筑师如何才能与构成数字世界骨肉的无形的信息流保持步调一致？

建筑的创作过程可以成为一个迭代链条，而不是一个完全线性的过程。现在，建筑设计、文档编制、施工和居住构成了建筑生命周期中的不同阶段，每个阶段都由不同的专业人员使用不同的工具来完成。随着建筑生产链的每一步都过渡到数字系统，整个过程将合为一体。通过精简信息，使不同阶段互通，构建一个协作的反馈系统，并最终实现全面协同，建筑的全过程将逐步得到整合。这个方向已经有了初步尝试，例如，在某些项目中，特制的智能手机应用可以用来组织具有数以万计独特组件的复杂外墙的制造、运输和安装；还有一些项目让居民参与到设计、施工和运营的所有阶段，把建筑的开发和居住结合为一体。人体互联网和有生命的建筑将是共生的。

“所有的进化都是共同进化：单个物种及其生存的环境在平行的路径发展进化，不断交换信息”[3]。思想、身体、人口和环境之间曾有的明确界限现在变得模糊，“被更复杂和非线性的城市发展模式所取代，以应对新信息技术的传播”[9]。我们所做的每一个选择都会在数字空间中产生影响，它们反过来又塑造我们的物理环境。基于赛博格状态的人体互联网最终可能会让建筑环境成为一个社会过程和关系过程。

将数字系统充分整合到建筑中的最重要意义是让技术和建筑环境重新聚焦于人类本身。在动态交互的空间中，一个有生命的控制论程序可以把建筑变成身体的延伸——正是赛博格的“工具”使环境能够作出响应。增强现实的“活”建筑是一种大型硬件，它由数字—物理赛博格创造、插入并与之交互。“活”建筑既为生命提供环境支持，又是社会的催化剂，还给人们提供动态的体验。当预设的数字系统与人类生物学完美整合时，仿生设备可通过实时信息流与数字化增强环境对接。空间互联网和人体互联网相互促进、共同创造、互为接口。最终，技术退居幕后，而交互被带到了台前。建筑无需是华丽而震撼的，它可以很简单，但更重要的是它是一个有活力的整体。

数字网络以及其他自下而上的进程，最终可能实现建筑的开源化。开源建筑有赖于所有相关方参与到设计过程中。历史上的建筑（例如，哥特式大教堂）往往是本地社区自发建造的。在这个意义上，开源建筑实际上是对过去漫长的建造方式、匿名化和本土化的生产方式的再发明。帕尔文认为，在未来我们可能会将单一的、自上而下的、金融资本化的、一刀切的建筑生产模式视为人类工业发展中的一个尴尬的、青春期的昙花一现。大众利用自己的社会与金融资本来自下而上地建造因地制宜、可复制的类型建筑，是旧时代的传统，在这种理念下，建筑技术发展到了开源建筑之前时代的工业化“盖谷仓”的方式。很多人把开源建筑看作是一种创新，但它实际上只是过去的建筑传统在互联网时代的重生。

虽然挑战迫在眉睫，但我们目标明确，并已经拥有实现目标的技术。那么，我们的任务是思考“未来的传统建筑”对经济发展、社会公正、资源稀缺、劳动力经济、规划系统和专业人员的角色的潜在影响。数字时代的建筑领域不能闭门造车——有很多人已准备好以自下而上的方式在这个领域深耕。□（本文改编自已发表著作：“Living Architecture”The City of Tomorrow，详见参考文献[10]）

The history of architecture has been punctuated by sudden transformations sparked by sudden technological leaps.During the mid-1400s,into the context of a craft-based architectural tradition,Leon Battista Alberti introduced a mathematical approach to graphic representation.In so doing,he paved the way for Renaissance classicism:architecture focused on precision and representation through drafting rather than approximate construction by artisans.Four centuries later,steel and glass enabled engineers like Isambard Kingdom Brunel,Sir Joseph Paxton,and Gustav Eiffel designed daring and innovative structures that shattered the limits of what could be constructed.Soaring feats of technological prowess became a new aesthetic at the nexus of architecture and engineering.

A generation later,at the crest of the mechanical era,Le Corbusier appropriated the tools and forms of mass production,and concluded that the house is a machine for living in.Architecture was optimized not only from the standpoints of design and structural engineering but also from the viewpoints of mass production and social function.

Technological upheavals are the lurching steps of architectural progress,its driving force.Le Corbusier dreamt of"realis[ing],harmonically,the city that is an expression of our machinist civilisation." Yet our civilisation today has transitioned from mechanization to computation.The digital revolution-the convergence of bits and atoms-is poised to be the most radically disruptive change that has ever recast the design,construction,and operation of our built environment.Just as machines brought standardization and high output,digital tools can bring dynamism,variation,and responsiveness.The question now becomes,how will architecture evolve in the digital era?

Initial attempts to address this question-to create dynamic architecture for the digital age-have been form-based.Designers have created evocative architectural sculptures that shout distinctive visual identities:Frank Gehry's iconic Guggenheim Museum Bilbao,for example,and the similar projects he has scattered around the world.These have ushered in a new aesthetic regime of irregular and organic buildings,often called "blobby" architecture.This new formal language was enabled in large part by parametric design software:digital tools that allow the architect to script an internal logic,input data values (objective contextual factors,zoning,or functionality requirements),and run an algorithm to negotiate those constraints and produce formal,often extraordinarily complex artifacts.Rather than detailing intricate specificities by hand,the architect writes parameters,and the computer churns out highly elaborate results.

Parametric software opened a new arena where designers could radically question inherited formal assumptions about architecture.They explored the boundaries of possibility eagerly and productively,assuming that-given an opposition between rational and organic-non-gridded and complex forms have a more vibrant quality.Early theorists of parametric architecture characterised a new sensibility that aimed for "maximal emphasis on conspicuous differentiation"[1].

The highly visible 2004 Venice Biennale of Architecture,titled Metamorph,explored the "fundamental changes under way in contemporary architecture,both in the theoretical and practical design field,and in the use of new building technologies." The event brought together architects,academics,researchers,and critics at the forefront of computational design.Individualism and experimentation defined the collective rhetoric,but a more cynical view of the menagerie of projects found the differentiation to be superficial."The computer has finally made possible forms that are different,at the same cost as the standard forms of old.A newness of very similar forms though,more sculptural than radical,buildings and structures with sensual folded,twisted and curving surfaces.It looks more like an international computer art festival…and the most important theme to come out of the biennale was the question of redundancy." Under the guise of novelty,the common denominator that emerged was predictable manipulations of complex geometry rather than meaningful dynamism.

Parametric tools have granted architects an unprecedented power to generate space using algorithmic functions and to appropriate a rhetoric of vibrancy.As the trend has developed since Metamorph,however,architects have been hard pressed to find meaningful data to feed into algorithmic design processes.A cruise ship terminal in Japan,for example,was informed by the geometry of waves in traditional paintings,specifically "the Hokusai Wave." The designers were inspired by "a drawing from a local painter that we had been toying with while we indulged in geometric manipulations and construction hypotheses during the design phase of the competition entry"[2].Furthermore,the application of parametric software,in many cases,goes no deeper than the skin of a building.Algorithms can compute thousands of unique elements to compose a dazzling facade on an otherwise standard structure.Parametric design promises a certain novelty,whether it is driven by geospatial data or by complex matrices of associations.

The virtual dimension that now blankets physical space is burgeoning with data,some of it appropriated by designers to plug into scripts as they seek "to grow or evolve new formal configurations in response to specific forces and constraints:structural,climatic,or programmatic.While this has produced compelling formal results,there are conceptual and procedural limits.The design techniques used to generate these new buildings may be dynamic,but the buildings themselves are static"[3].Architects can generate an almost infinite number of formal solutions in a given situation,but complexity and magnitude are not inherently meaningful or living."The forms generated may resemble nature,but they retain little of the performative or adaptive complexity of life itself."

Algorithmically generated architecture is a static visualiation of larger complexities.To evoke the fluidity of digital space in an inert physical object is to freeze a dynamic process,as if pressing Pause to find a single frame in an action sequence.Even the climax of energy and vibrancy,caught in a still frame,will convey only a shadow of the dynamic whole.

Visual complexity can be computed,but can it deliver anything more than curb appeal? And is that even desirable?The digital age has already suffused our world with innumerable flows and layers and intricacies,and formal plasticity only adds visual chaos to the ambient complexity.Could digital tools be integrated with architecture,beyond veneer or gloss? How,then,to integrate digital systems to achieve true dynamism?"Being digital is not primarily about using a computer in the design process,nor about making this use visually conspicuous.It is an everyday state that goes in hand with gestures as simple as being called on a cell phone or listening to an mp3 player"[4].That is,architecture should become an integral and responsive part of human life.Architecture must do more than just look like a living organism:it should perform as a living system.

The earliest glimmers of this possibility date back to experimentation with moveable structures in the midtwentieth century.A group of young Japanese designers,the Metabolists,imagined living architecture for the growing population of postwar Japan.Buildings,they proposed,could be shaped dynamically by the pushes and pulls of sociodynamic forces.Metabolist structures used biological models,attempting dynamism through,for example,spine-and-branch arrangements or cellularly subdivided megaforms.The architect would establish a master program (or "DNA") that could propagate itself according to a patterned structural system.

Few of their structures were ever built.One notable exception-Kisho Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower,located in central Tokyo-is a paradigmatic example of Metabolist theory.It is conceived as a central spine,onto which individual housing pods can be attached and rearranged.In theory,infinite combinations of pods and connections between them allow residents to create larger or smaller spaces in response to different families,budgets,or changes in housing demand over time.Yet the Capsule Tower reveals a deep conceptual flaw:since the building's completion in 1972,not a single pod has been shifted or combined.The twentieth century is dotted with similar attempts at mutable architecture-from Gerrit Rietveld's Schröder House to Archigram's Plug-In City-but they invariably fall into stasis or remain unbuilt.An entirely flexible structure still requires inspired occupants to take agency.In practice,mutable buildings go largely unchanged.

Flexible structures may not spark active participation,but it is here that digital technologies reenter the playing field,enabling a more gentle,intuitive,and responsive interaction between humans and the built environment.Far outside the discipline of architecture,pioneering computer scientists and mathematicians of the mid-twentieth century started developing a theory of cybernetics.The emergent discipline sought to explore networks,focusing on communication and connections between interdependent actors in a system.Cybernetics,according to Gordon Pask,the academic responsible for popularising it among architects,is "how systems regulate themselves,reproduce themselves,evolve and learn.Its high spot is the question of how they organise themselves." This conceptual framework could be productively applied to architecture.As a practical design strategy,cybernetics is about negotiating a set of interrelated factors such that they function as a dynamic system."The design goal is nearly always underspecified and the 'controller' is no longer the authoritarian apparatus which this purely technical name commonly brings to mind.In contrast the controller is an odd mixture of catalyst,crutch,memory and arbiter.These,I believe…are the qualities [the designer] should embed in the systems (control systems) which he designs." The architect becomes a choreographer of dynamic and adaptive forces rather than scripting outcomes in a deterministic way.

Around the same time,architects at the fringe of the discipline took the idea of interactivity and sensationalised it.Architecture became loud,fun,hip,and constantly evolving.Buildings were thought of as venues for action and interaction,as dynamic scenes that could incite events and connections and evoke delight.The Generator Project,by the architect-provocateur Cedric Price,was a clear exemplar of this new attitude.An unbuilt concept for a retreat and activity center,the project consisted of a system of 150 prefabricated cubes,each twelve feet on a side,that could be shifted and reconfigured-much like the pods in the Nakagin Capsule Towerbut,crucially,would also interact in a dynamic way.A primitive digital software detected inactivity,and if the building remained static for too long,the software automatically executed "The Boredom Program" to reconfigure its own structure and incite(or perturb) users.The architecture itself took an active role as provocateur,with the aim of enhancing human experience.This was a system for dialogue and mutual reaction,beyond the Metabolists' linear user-changes-building idea.In many ways,this work was an application of cybernetic ideas to the field of architecture:it created systems that would dynamically selforganize in response to inputs and actions.

If the first industrial revolution was concerned with creating machines optimised for a specific task,cybernetics,in contrast,was concerned with a new kind of (perhaps nonmechanical) "machine" that could satisfy an evolving program."We are concerned with brain-like artifacts,with evolution,growth and development;with the process of thinking and getting to know about the world.Wearing the hat of applied science,we aim to create…the instruments of a new industrial revolution-control mechanisms that lay their own plans"[5].Translated into architecture,cybernetics means buildings that function as adaptive learning entities living in a kind of dialogue with their inhabitants.

Active and networked architecture is starkly opposed to recent form-focused attempts at dynamism and may illuminate an alternative path forward."Today,many designers have turned several late twentieth-century infatuations on their heads,for instance with speed,dematerialization,miniaturization,and a romantic and exaggerated formal expression of complexity.After all,there is a limit beyond which…complexity simply becomes too overwhelming"[6].Rather than using digital tools to mathematically calculate complexity for the visual sense,interactive spaces can use digital tools to generate a new form of complexity:experiential complexity.A shift away from elaborate structures and toward structural dynamics entails buildings that perform as (rather than appear to be) living organisms.

Computation will not be used only to define intricate shapes according to parameters but will also become an integral part of the building,interacting with users according to a program.This interface functionality points to embedded rather than generative technology.In addition to plans and sections,architects in this future will be free to specify a system of interrelated sensors,operations,and actions-loops that bring architecture to life,based on a dynamic set of experiential and functional requirements.Grounded in communication and learning systems,sensor networks can transform buildings into intelligent agents with the capacity to learn from and coexist with their occupants.The dream of dynamic spaces can finally be fulfilled as buildings weave together humans,environment,infrastructure,and personal devices.

Just as mobility networks are taking advantage of ubiquitous sensors (as with crowdsourced maps or pothole detection),so too will buildings take advantage of the human flows running through them.We will shift from living in a home to living with a home.Architecture becomes a form of interface,playing an active role in the human environment,both digital and physical."The goal is to facilitate as seamless a movement as possible from fast to slow,virtual to physical,cerebral to sensual,automatic to manual,dynamic to static,mass to niche,global to local,organic to inorganic,and proprietary to common,to mention just a few extreme couplings"[6].Integrating digital elements will allow the built environment to become a connective tissue between the distinct but coexisting realities of bits and atoms-an interface that enables spatial cybernetics.

The built environment is becoming a physically habitable Internet,a Hertzian space-one that is inextricably intermeshed with digital devices."Hertzian space is…a way of linking things,of sending information and content,etc.But [architecture] is an environment that can be inhabited,enjoyed,and explored"[7].In the newly interactive,digitally laced architecture,detail and dynamism and complexity (formerly the ambition of parametric scripting) are the experiential consequence of design,not the justification.Architecture takes on life through response-it becomes shocking or vibrant in time rather than in its external visual character.

Just as smartphones are a portal to larger systems,architecture can function as a mediator between daily,humanscale functions and vast,humanity-scale networks."For millennia architects have been concerned with the skin-bounded body and its immediate sensory environment…Now they must contemplate electronically augmented,reconfigurable,virtual bodies that can sense and act at a distance but that also remain partially anchored in their immediate surroundings"[8].Predigital humans navigated their immediate physical surroundings,but today's cyborg (with prosthetic smartphone) inhabits space in profoundly different ways.Scales and contexts are blurred as we slip elastically between them.At any given moment,we may be standing in a room with three other people,but now the digital-spatial network can also reveal two close friends in a restaurant next door or a potential love interest only a block away.People and physical space are still a central anchor,but the upper and lower bounds of human reality have exploded outward,and architecture must encompass this breadth of spaces-in all of their active dynamics-while still relating to humans.Picon sets forth the question.

How should the designer cope with an electronic and informational reality that seems to possess a dynamism and an expressive quality? The advent of the digital represents an even greater challenge for design than what the early stages of mechanisation had meant for modern architecture.For the first time perhaps,architecture has to confront itself with a profoundly non-tectonic reality.Given these premises,how can the designer be in deep accordance with the invisible flows of information that constitute the bones and flesh of the digital world.

The very process of creating architecture could become an iterative chain rather than a directly linear process.Today,design,documentation,construction,and inhabitation are distinct phases in the life of a building,each carried out by a different specialist using different tools.As each step of the architectural production chain transitions to digital systems,the whole process will be unified.Integration will happen incrementally,by streamlining information,enabling the different phases to inform one another,structuring a codependent feedback system and,ultimately,a full merger.Initial steps have been taken in this direction-for example,with project-specific smartphone apps that organise the fabrication,shipping,and installation of complex facades with tens of thousands of unique components.Implicating inhabitants in all stages of the design,construction,and operation chain will graft the development and inhabitation of architecture together into a single experience.The Internet of Bodies and active architecture will be symbiotic.

"All evolution is co-evolution;individual species and their environments change and evolve on parallel courses,constantly exchanging information"[3].What was formerly defined by a clear separation between mind,body,population,and environment is now entangled,"supplanted by a more complex and non-linear pattern of urban development in response to the spread of new information technologies"[9].Each choice we make has ramifications in digital space that,in turn,shape our physical environment.The Internet of Bodies,grounded in our cyborg condition,may ultimately realise the concept of the built environment as a social and relational process.

The most important implication of radically integrating digital systems into architecture will be to refocus technology and the built environment on humans.A living,cybernetic program in spaces of dynamic interaction will make architecture more like an extension of the body-and it is cyborg "tools" that enable the environment to respond.Augmented or "living"architecture is the large-scale hardware that digital-physical cyborgs create,plug into,and interact with.Active buildings are at once an environmental life support,a social catalyst,and a dynamic set of experiences.While congenital digital systems integrate seamlessly with human biology,the same prosthetic devices interface with the digitally augmented environment through real-time information flows.The Internet of spaces and the Internet of Bodies enable and co-create each other-each is the interface to the other.Ultimately,technology recedes into the background,and interaction is brought to the fore.Buildings can be simple-rather than voluptuous and shocking but even more integrally vibrant and living.

The result of digital networks,and more bottomup processes,can ultimately lead to what we can call open source architecture.Open source architecture relies on all interested parties being involved in the design process.In the past (for instance,in the case of Gothic cathedrals) this emerged naturally in local communities.In this sense,open source architecture is really a re-visitation of a timeless way of building,of forms of production that yielded anonymous or vernacular architecture.Parvin speculated that in the future we may look back on the monolithic,top-down,financiallycapitalized,one size-fits-all models of architectural production as an awkward,adolescent blip in mankind's industrial development.The idea of bottom-up,locally-adapted,copied typologies,produced by citisens using their social capital as well as their financial capital,is the opposite of new.In many ways it is bringing technology to pre-open source industrial "barnraising" approaches.Open source architecture is presented as an innovation,but it is really just the vernacular with an Internet connection.

The challenge is looming,goals are clear and technologies for achieving them exist.The task,then,is to reflect on the potential implications that "future vernacular" will have on economic development,social justice,resource scarcity,labor economies,planning systems,and the role of professionals.The discipline cannot remain hermetically sealed forever– there is a critical mass of people,ready and willing to work in a bottom-up way.□（This text is an adaptation of the following publication:"Living Architecture" The City of Tomorrow,See Reference[10].）

编者注/Editor's Note

i 部分已拆，有新变化，详见2021/07，p7简讯。