Architecture for Cyborgs

What is the role of architecture in an age when our technology is radically transforming us?

While our technology (and our architecture) has always been closely linked to who and how we are, it seems to be moving increasingly closer to us to the extent that you might even say we are becoming cyborgs! A number of important changes are taking place: the extent that we are becoming embroiled in large unfathomable networks is causing disindividuation and re-mystification; the merger of physical reality with virtual reality (the emergence of mixed reality) together with transcendence of the purely visual interface are causing a more harmonious relationship to develop between mind & body; the split self, or ecological model of self is supported by technologies that structurally divide attention, opening the potential for ironic attitudes towards truth, and more pervasive acceptance of plurality and multiplicity.

The architect can play several roles in all of this.

First, it is the architect’s responsibility to carefully calibrate our relationships with larger ecological networks. Given the alienating potential of digital technology, the architect must pay close attention to the scale of the body (or machine-body, or whatever) – to craft and to detail, and to the sensuous engagement between cyborg machine-body and its immediate ecosystem. The architect must also strive to accommodate those aspects of our cyborg-becoming, as listed above, which offer promise for the future. Our architecture must suit the ironic mind. If it structures a way of living and eternalizes images of the ideal life, let them be tolerant and liberal, and open to multiplicity. If the architect must imply stories in the architecture, let those stories have blurred boundaries and multiple endings. Let them be stories instilled with irony.