Towards a virtual architecture: pushing cybernetics from government to anarchy

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to discuss the possibility of joining cybernetics and architecture as a continuous and open process, bridging design, construction and use, in that which is called cyberarchitecture.

Design/methodology/approach

It develops the hypothesis that cyberarchitecture can benefit from taking the virtual into account in the design process, so that the architect is no longer the author of a finished architectural product, but of a set of instruments with which users can design, build and use their own environments simultaneously.

Findings

A set of design principles is systematised and examined in three practical realms of design: urban, building, and relational, showing cyberarchitecture's embryonic feasibility.

Practical implications

Cyberarchitecture implies that architects are no longer authors of finished products and users, becoming designers of their own spaces.

Originality/value

Cyberarchitecture avoids the usual cybernetics approach based on control‐system, indicating a less predictive and, ultimately, anarchic path for architects and users. It focuses on architecture's intrinsic value as an event, indicating the possibility of a process‐based system, which only exists (or is organised) in present‐time, when users and instruments (or structures) interact.

Citation

Baltazar, A.P. (2007), "Towards a virtual architecture: pushing cybernetics from government to anarchy", Kybernetes, Vol. 36 No. 9/10, pp. 1238-1254. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684920710827265