EVOLVE OR DIE?
A Manifesto for a Post-Human Architecture
2014
Evolve or die? Either way the future never arrives, so get there quicker. Do it all better and do it right now.
We, as humans, are much more intelligent than what our built environment portfolio presents. We are the first species on our planet to have reached the point in our evolution where for the first time, we can prevent our own extinction. Through utilizing man-made technologies as the driving force, we as a race can shape our own destinies and control and accelerate our own evolution.
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We established our connection to time with the wristwatch and we have now established our connection to everything else with the smart phone. Although these technologies exist no more than a few millimeters away from our bodies, they still remain peripheral. Increasingly advanced technologies will soon become integrated within the body in order to upgrade and improve it. Self-controlled evolution is the future.
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The ideas of Industrialism must be forgotten, paving the way for pure applied science uncorrupted by a Capitalist economy that only serves to restrict and corrupt thinking and decisions. Greed should not contribute to our evolution; greed should not become an architectural meme or a dominant gene that carries on in our built environment genome as a cancer.
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Technology should not be developed to be solely whored out to its highest bidder, leaving the majority in a state of technological poverty. Technology should not be chopped up and disseminated into small Capitalist parcels in order to extract its maximum possible monetary value. Technology should be used to evolve our species and we should all be able to benefit from its advancements.
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It is astonishing to think that throughout this whole technological debate architects remain uninvolved.
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Allen Ginsberg once described the construction and anatomy of his progressive1955 poem ‘Howl’ as communicating as one would in an everyday conversation. This is how we should approach architectural design; choreographing, tempering and delighting located space, inspired by but not lost within abstract theoretical assumptions, whilst resisting the temptation to confuse the graphic quality of ‘the drawing’ with false representations of spatial atmosphere.
The most influential design developed in this generation has materialized at the micro scale, predominantly by the technology start-ups of Silicon Valley. By embracing the technological age and the World Wide Web, they have positively influenced millions of lives through technological anthropology, delighting many with everything from improved connectivity, to beautiful tangible products of industrial design.
Architects however see design as existing exclusively within university walls. Going into practice is seen as an abandonment of ambition and creativity. We must, once again, be part of a profession that contributes to the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, not ‘junk space’. Architects should be infatuated with design, exercising stimulated and agile minds in a state of Presque Vu and the public should expect nothing more than design excellence. Architects must begin to engage with the technology age if they are to remain relevant, integrating a whole range of design practitioners outside of architectural circles into their processes and begin to contribute to nationwide debates.
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The next generation of architects must immerse themselves within near future technologies and theories, before pollinating the city’s fabric with integrated, passive solutions. We must force out Roman technologies in order to promote demand for superior materials as the rising middle class of super economies enter the fray, poised to drastically affect the fragile balance of both the world economy and environment. As human beings take yet more leaps into foreign domains both on our planet and beyond, the construction of space elevators, space stations and space ships that utilize cutting edge materials, forces me to ponder upon what impact they may have at a city scale on this planet.
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Posthuman technology such as cybernetic programs will continue to blur the boundaries between animal and machine by increasing the communication between the two, elevating sentient artificial intelligence to new levels. This technology should be capitalized upon, at a city scale, through a distributed agency between man and machine. A dynamic exchange between the two, through live coding, should be utilized to monitor and maintain these systems.
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For too long we have acted with cowardice both spineless and powerless, ruled by capitalist fools. As a result of this, poor design quality of our urban environment is the outcome and with the majority of our built fabric now here for another 150 years, it would seem that we have already dug our own miserable, city-sized graves. It is almost inhuman for example, to think that mans greatest achievement “the city”, is the greatest contributor to pollution, a cancer slowly and painfully strangling the world and our existence within it. We can do so much better. The question now stands as to how we will retrofit this existing environment with heightened technologies, enabling us to live in our desired technological utopia.
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In order for us to exist in harmony alongside this high technology, we must pack as much digital intelligence and processing power into our public and private realms as possible. We must remove technology from the consumer market. It must be developed outside of military control and developed ethically within a balanced cultural atmosphere, with the aim of connecting with humans on a higher level with revolutionary interfaces.
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We must strive to live within a posthuman technological utopia; a twitching, responsive, adaptive fabric. A sentient city with a terraformed, instrumentalised physical world with the capability to monitor our actions and everyday lives, collect data, process it and more importantly, respond to peoples needs accordingly. This dematerialised city will never be a static, heavy temple of the past with strict and strangulating planning policy, view corridor protection and listed structures that bind cities to their past and limit their futures. Instead, we must strive for a kinetic, lightweight and permeable city with a less prescriptive planning process and a focus on the creation of quality urban ‘places’. Contributing to these place-making schemes must be a host of both design and construction professionals. Joining them should be technology practitioners, contributing their varied skills and experiences to a rich mixing pot that will ultimately contribute towards a wholesome, legible and harmonious posthuman urban environment with active ground floors and public spaces injected with energy, culture, beauty and technological sophistication.
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We must accelerate the technology-enabled evolution of both our environments and ourselves, before it is too late. Act now. Evolve!
