Perspectives in Architecture and Urbanism 1 (2024) 100019

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Perspectives in Architecture and Urbanism

journal homepage: www.keaipublishing.com/pau

Review article

The materiality of architecture, between the rise of the Digital Age

and the advent of the Anthropocene ]]
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Antoine Picon
Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

a r tic l e info abs tr ac t

Keywords: This paper explores questions of materiality in contemporary architecture in

Materiality light of emerging developments in the discipline, building on the author’s
Materials previous work on the subject. After presenting a conceptual distinction be­
Digital Age tween matter, material, and materiality—here defined as a socially con­
Sustainability structed, relational phenomenon—the paper examines ongoing and potential
Anthropocene shifts in the materiality of buildings driven by the rise of digital design and
the adaptation to the challenges of the Anthropocene. Key topics include the
movement from form to process in contemporary design, the renewed cen­
trality of materials, the “material turn” in the humanities and social sciences,
and the return of ornament. In conclusion, architecture is described as both a
medium and a regulator of the human relationship to the material world.

1. A most material art

Architecture is supposed to be the most material of all the arts. "The material of architecture is matter itself in its
immediate externality as a heavy mass subject to mechanical laws," Hegel (1993, CIX) famously declared. It seems as if
its chief objective were simply to order masses of materials—brick, stone, steel, or concrete (Fig. 1). Order may be far
more fundamental to architecture than proportion—this key notion according to Vitruvius. It is both pervasive and
usually taken for granted, just like we take for granted the services performed by infrastructure when it operates
properly. Hence Walter Benjamin’s famous observation that we usually perceive architecture in a state of distraction
(Benjamin, 2002, pp. 119–120). This is especially true of urban architecture. Beyond circles of specialists, who pays
close attention to Haussmannian buildings, despite their importance in shaping the visual identity of Paris?
This common state of distraction does not prevent architecture from reaching out to humans. Its ordering of matter
is inseparable from an ambition of self-expression, as if buildings were accompanied by an insistent whisper. Hence the
recurring notion among architectural theorists and practitioners that architecture is attempting to “speak.” However,
the term might be too strong, and its linguistic connotation might not correspond to the most common scenario. In

E-mail address: apicon@gsd.harvard.edu.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pau.2024.100019
Received 15 October 2024; Received in revised form 28 October 2024; Accepted 28 October 2024
2950-2675/© 2024 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
A. Picon Perspectives in Architecture and Urbanism 1 (2024) 100019

Fig. 1. Le Corbusier, Secretariat Building, Chandigarh, India, 1952: front entry. Photo by the author.

simpler terms, we could say that architectural works seek to establish a relationship with humans, and that this
relationship is inseparable from their very material character.
This idea plays a central role in my book on the materiality of architecture (Picon, 2020). Although this article is
centered on a slightly different topic—namely the tension between the digital and architecture’s necessary adaptation
to the challenges of the Anthropocene—I will begin with a point that is fundamental to the book: the distinction

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A. Picon Perspectives in Architecture and Urbanism 1 (2024) 100019

between matter, material and materiality. This initial discussion may seem a bit abstract at first, but it is a necessary
step towards the core of my argument.

2. Matter, material, materiality

Matter, material, materiality: we tend to use these terms with interchangeably. However, it is useful to clarify what
we mean by each. “Matter” is the most generic of the three, extensively used by philosophers and scientists to des­
ignate the substrate from which things are made. We have both an intimate and distant experience of matter. It is
everywhere, it reaches our senses, yet it remains an abstraction. To conceive of matter in its generality, as Descartes
famously suggested, we have to strip the things that surrounds us of most of their qualities. According to the philo­
sopher, the vortices that animate matter, by extending it in space, gradually transform it into a universe. Even if we no
longer subscribe to these ideas, our everyday experience of matter is still marked by a paradoxical mix of evidence and
elusiveness.
“Materials” such as wood, iron, or concrete, correspond to matter that is intimately associated with certain
properties— color, texture, and mechanical strength, to name just a few. More importantly, materials are generally
associated with human uses. Some, like stone, are provided by nature, while others, like steel, result from complex,
often industrial, processes. What materials have in common is that they are mostly defined by their properties, which
can be harnessed to achieve specific goals. Some of these properties are entirely natural, while others will depend on
how the material is extracted and/or produced, as well as on testing procedures, like in the case of concrete. In other
words, materials are always—to a certain extent—socially constructed.
“Materiality” cannot be approached in the same way as the two previous notions. It does not correspond to a
preexisting substance, either without or with definite properties. Rather, it usually designates the material dimension
of a phenomenon, thing, object, or system, in relation to human thought and practice. It should be not confused with
matter or with materials, as it is relational in its essence. Materiality characterizes the kind of rapport that we, as
humans, maintain with matter and materials, and more broadly, with the physical world around us— the phenomena,
things, and objects we perceive as fundamentally material. In the general field of materiality, architecture is especially
attuned to its visible and tangible aspects, which fall within the realm of the senses. Architectural design is about
imagining how our relationship with the physical world can be both evidenced and modulated in a specific place or
building. For example, Louis Kahn’s Exeter Library is very much about how we relate to concrete, brick, and wood, as
well as to shadow and light.
What is key about materiality is that it not only mediates our relationship with the physical world—how we
perceive it and understand it—but, through this mediation, tells us something about who we are as humans. The way
we understand the physical world is inseparable from how we understand ourselves, a connection explored by many
philosophers and psychologists, from the eighteenth-century sensationalist thinker Condillac to the twentieth-century
psychologist Jean Piaget, and beyond.
Condillac perhaps provided one of the best introductions to this question in his 1754 Traité des sensations. Here, he
described a statue endowed with intelligence but deprived of the senses. By successively granting the statue smell,
hearing, taste, sight, and finally touch, the philosopher evokes its gradual awakening to the world of sensations and
ideas. Each sense incited its own set of discoveries, but the real tipping point came with the acquisition of the sense of
touch. Through touch, the statue discovered the existence of obstacles beyond itself; the external resistance of things
coincided with its realization that it possessed a body to interact with those things (Picon, 2020).
Experimental psychology sheds light on the role that encounters with various objects play in the development of
children. The material world acts not only as a stabilizer of our behavior, as Hannah Arendt (1958) noted in The
Human Condition, but also helps us become human and reveals something irreplaceable about what this entails.
These considerations suggest that architecture not only frames our relation to the physical world but also tells us
something about who we are. This is the true content of what buildings whisper to our ears. It makes inhabiting
possible, for to inhabit means to relate to the physical characteristics of a place and to be partially defined through our
relationship to that place.
Even more than materials, materiality is socially constructed. It depends to a large extent on our tools, techni­
ques, and culture. What seems material today is different from what it meant in previous periods, and architecture
reflects some of these changes. Faced with environmental challenges, the discipline has, for instance, become much
more sensitive to phenomena such as gradients of temperature and humidity—an evolution that has led some de­
signers to speak of a shift from mechanics to thermodynamics (Ábalos & Sentkiewicz, 2015). For architect Philipp
Rahm (2023), design should reorient itself around ambiances and atmospheres (Fig. 2). A history of the regimes of

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A. Picon Perspectives in Architecture and Urbanism 1 (2024) 100019

Fig. 2. Philippe Rahm, Convective Apartments, Hamburg, Germany, 2010: diagram of cold and warm air exchange. From: (Rahm, 2023). Climatic
Architecture. Actar Publishers. Copyright by the author.

Fig. 3. Zaha Hadid Architects, Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku, Azerbaijan, 2012: complex computer-controlled geometries. From: (Picon, 2020). The
Materiality of Architecture. University of Minnesota Press, p. 121. Photograph: A. Zykov. Copyright by the authors.

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Fig. 4. Gramazio Kohler Research, Robotic arm in operation, Zurich, Switzerland, 2008. From: (Picon, 2020). The Materiality of Architecture.
University of Minnesota Press, p. 108. Copyright by Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich.

materiality that prevailed in different cultures and times is possible. Another history of architecture, centered on
materiality, is possible.

3. Contemporary architecture, between digital hubris and the call for sustainability

Let me now turn to contemporary architecture and the tensions that have arisen in the past decades between two
powerful trajectories of development. The first is the spread of computers and, more generally, digital tools in ar­
chitecture, opening up new perspectives for the discipline. It is both a relatively old story and a recent one. On the one
hand, experiments with computers in architecture began as early as the late 1950s and early 1960s. On the other hand,
the widespread use of computer started in the mid 1990s. This decisive second phase was itself marked by several key
episodes. First, came innovations in the geometries that architects could employ. Computers quite literally freed
architects from geometric limitations. Practices like Zaha Hadid Architects built their reputation on the sleek, in­
novative forms of their buildings—forms that would have been very difficult to control without computers (Fig. 3).
Around 2008–2010, the digital revolution in architecture took another turn with the rise of digital fabrication.
Architects Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler, for instance, led a series of experiments on the potential use of robots
in construction (Gramazio & Kohler, 2014) (Fig. 4). Their example was quickly followed. With digital fabrication came
the promise of a rationalization of construction that would no longer be synonymous with the dull repetition of
standardized parts.
Recent years have been marked by the rise of artificial intelligence. The perspective of AI was present in the very
first experiments on the use of computers in architecture, some 40 years before the widespread adoption of digital
tools. MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte envisioned it in the pioneering work of his Architecture Machine Group in
the early 1960s (Steenson, 2017). When computers became commonly used in architecture around 2000, they were
primarily seen as drawing tools and not as active contributors to architectural conception. This began to change in the
mid 2010s with the development of neural networks. Recently, this change has accelerated with the emergence of
generative artificial intelligence and the striking images it can produce. It is worth noting, however, that we are still far
from achieving true 3D generative artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, AI is increasingly being used to stimulate
imagination or, in the case of practices Coop Himmelb(l)au, to mine previous projects for new ideas (del Campo &
Leach, 2022).
A second powerful developmental trajectory is tied to the rise of environmental concerns. This, too, is both a
relatively old story—with a long series of experiments on the use of alternative materials and the design of thermally
efficient or solar-powered buildings—and a more recent one, gaining strong momentum with the climate crisis.

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Fig. 5. Simón Vélez, Cathedral of Our Lady of Poverty, Pereira, Colombia, 2002; interior space. Photograph: D. von Schaewen. From: von Büren
(2013). Simón Veléz ins Bild gesetzt. Espazium. <https://www.espazium.ch/de/aktuelles/simon-velez-ins-bild-gesetzt>. Copyright by the
authors.

Fig. 6. Wim Goes, Refuge II, Flanders, Belgium, 2014: façade with straw bale panels. From: Goes et al. (2020). Reverse Perspective. Graphische Cel.
Copyright by the authors.

Interestingly, the start of this recent phase coincides with the spread of digital tools. In the early 2000s, questions
regarding the energy consumption of buildings gained new relevance as concerns about the dire state of the planet and
the perspective of global warming intensified.
Since then, energy aspects have become both more prominent and complex. The focus is no longer just on the
energy consumption of buildings during use but on the total energy required from material extraction and trans­
portation to final disassembly. The greenhouse gas emissions associated with this entire process have become a central
issue. How to ignore the problem when the building sector accounts for approximately 36 % of global energy con­
sumption and 37 % of CO2 emissions? Of course, understanding the scale of the problem does not make its solution
any easier. Currently, debates are raging between the proponents of technology-intensive active solutions and ad­
vocates of passive systems.

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In connection with the energy question, renewed attention has been paid to materials and the violence of extraction
processes on which many of them depend. The challenge of using more bio-sourced, recyclable materials—such as
wood, adobe, bamboo, and straw—is now a widely discussed issue in architectural education and practice. Bamboo
has been used in several path-breaking projects, such as those by Columbian architect Simón Vélez (Fig. 5). The use of
straw also gained popularity among architects, leading to some remarkable achievements (Fig. 6). How to expand the
use of bio-sourced, recyclable materials beyond these experiments? The answer is, of course, not simple. For instance,
while it is common knowledge that concrete is problematic in terms of energy consumption and greenhouse gas
emissions, how to dispense with it?
The quest for a more sustainable architecture has taken on new dimensions with pressing challenges such as rising
sea levels, which call for specific design measures, such as the broader use of pilotis. However, one should not view the
pursuit of sustainability and climate change adaptation as mere technical problems. Like the digital revolution, but in a
different way, it challenges the very foundations of the architectural discipline. What happens, for instance, when we
think of architecture more in terms of atmosphere and microclimate than built masses?
Both the digital and the quest for environmental sustainability are reorienting the practice of architecture, yet they
seem to operate in different, almost contradictory directions. Architectural education and practice reflect this duality
despite the various calls for a more unified approach to the challenges that the discipline faces in coming years. In
schools of architecture, digital wizards and sustainable buffs do not belong to the same tribes, and their respective
approaches to research remain strikingly separate, even if some claim to be doing both. The same applies to design
practice.
This divergence can be apprehended from various perspectives. Let me begin with the question of materials. Digital
architecture often relies on relatively conventional building materials, despite multiple experiments on innovative uses
of wood, for example. Sustainability, on the contrary, is usually associated with the desire to distance oneself from
conventional materials and explore more unconventional ones. I mentioned straw, but mycelium has also become an
area of frequent experimentation in past years. Interestingly, mycelium is one of the few non-conventional materials
where digital approaches converge with sustainability-oriented ones.
At a more general level, digital architecture is inevitably technology-oriented, while the quest for sustainability
often aligns with a low-tech approach. However, the most striking difference lies in their diverging attitudes toward
building programs. For better or worse, digital architecture has often been associated with high-end programs, fol­
lowing the model inaugurated by Frank Gehry’s celebrated Bilbao Guggenheim. The same applies to Zaha Hadid
Architects, which I mentioned earlier. In other words, digital architecture has been closely associated with the rise of
the architect star system, even though it cannot be reduced to that alone. For instance, in recent years digital fabri­
cation has led to experiments with a clear social agenda, such as 3D-printed houses for the Global South. Yet, these
experiments remain somewhat marginal within the broader field of digital design.
The quest for sustainability, on the other hand, is much more socially engaged. It advocates for systematic reuse
over new construction, as well as practices such as urban mining and material recycling. Several emerging practices
have brilliantly illustrated what can be accomplished from this perspective. Notable examples include Assemble
Architects in the UK, as well as BC architects and Rotor in Belgium. Assemble Architects have specialized in extreme
adaptive reuse projects, such as their unexpected transformation of a former gas station into a cinema. BC Architects
and Rotor have taken an even more radical approach. In addition to its sustainable architectural practice, BC
Architects has created a sister company, BC Materials, which “mines” the city to promote the systematic recycling of
soils and materials. Rotor does the same with building parts, while also offering design services for those wondering
how to reuse these materials.
Between digital hubris and a quest for sustainability that champions modesty as one of its core virtues, the ar­
chitectural discipline stands at a crossroads between very different paths. Architecture seems split between two dif­
ferent worlds: an essentially computable world, full of wonders waiting to be harnessed by designers, and a limited
world threatened by pollution and global warming. There seems to be little common ground.
This first impression, however, is misleading. There are significant points of convergence between these two tra­
jectories, despite the divergences I have just outlined. I will argue that these points of convergence all involve changes
in the materiality of architecture. Indeed, they all relate to an evolving relationship between humans and the physical
world, as well as to a renewed understanding of what it means to live in the age of the Anthropocene.

4. Towards a new materiality

In any given context, materiality is akin to a field, expressing different and sometimes contradictory versions of our
relationship to the physical world rather than a unified series of conceptions and practices. The same applies to the
more specific question of the materiality of architecture. The tendencies I will describe are not universally shared by

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Fig. 7. Herzog & de Meuron, De Young Museum, San Francisco, US, 2005: detail of the sheet metal cladding. Photo by the author.

all architects. Like the digital shift in architecture and the quest for sustainability, they simply correspond to emerging
developments that signal a probable reorganization of the discipline.
A first tendency is the move from forms to processes, common to both digital and sustainable architecture.
However, the processes that we will consider are not the same in these two domains. In the digital realm, they are
embracing the multiple possibilities of the computer, such as partial or full digital fabrication, parametric design, and
broader applications of robotics. In the context of the environmental crisis, processes are envisioned on a much larger
scale, encompassing everything from the extraction, manufacturing, and transport of materials and building compo­
nents to their eventual recycling. In both cases, the shift from form to process reflects an understanding of the physical
world as even more fluid than in the past.
In such a context, form becomes less relevant: architectural objects must always be replaceable at the intersection
of the various processes that make them possible. There is something paradoxical about this, as it runs parallel to the
architectural star system that has led—conversely—to a multiplication of spectacular objects and geometries. It is as if
architecture exists in a state of tension between the traditional conception of design as the top-down imposition of
form upon matter and a more open understanding of design as temporary convergences and assemblages.
Another important tendency, perhaps even more decisive, is the renewed attention paid to materials. Unlike
nineteenth-century architecture, modernism and—above all—postmodernism were not particularly attentive to the
potential of materials. Today, they have once again become an essential component of design. In some cases, they
receive more media attention than any other aspect of a project. Take, for instance, Herzog & de Meuron’s De Young
Museum in San Francisco: more has been written about the surface treatment of the sheet metal cladding than on the
building’s overall organization (Fig. 7).
Both in digital and sustainable design, special attention is being paid to the structural and thermal properties of
materials. For the general public, these properties may sometimes appear as counterintuitive, almost magical—like
when discussing the strength of structural glass. Add to this a heightened sensitivity to their visible effects—texture,
color, and the way light interacts with surfaces—and it becomes clear that today’s attitude towards materials is
entirely different from how they were viewed not so long ago.
The increased importance of materials reflects two broader phenomena. The first is a technological revolution, a
mostly silent one that is rarely discussed outside of scientific and specialized circles. Not only do we have a better
understanding today of how materials are constituted and operate at all scales, but materials can now also be “designed.”
Designing materials rather than structures is becoming increasingly common in contemporary technology—the devel­
opment of composite and smart materials is a testament to this trend.
The second phenomenon is the “material turn” in the humanities and social sciences. While not every architect has
been directly impacted by this trend, many share concerns that align with the foundational intuitions and aspirations
of the “material turn.” Chief among these is the desire to break from the traditional conception of matter as essentially
passive. Following the ideas of thinkers like Timothy Ingold or Richard Sennett, many digital designers describe their
work with materials as a collaboration—rather than the top-down imposition of form upon matter that I mentioned

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Fig. 8. Ruy Klein, Klex 1 [installation, CNC-milled high-density foam finished in pearl ChromaLusion], New York, US, 2008: image from the in­
stallation. From: Gannon et al. (2015). The Object Turn: A Conversation. Log, (33), 90. Copyright by the author.

earlier, an authoritarian bending which Ingold characterizes as the "hylomorphic model." The same is true for many
environmentally conscious designers, who believe that both materials and non-human living beings should be treated
with respect, again, in a spirit of collaboration.
This attitude reflects and reaffirms a progressive weakening of architectural form and an increasing focus on
process. It is often tinged with nostalgia for a supposed authenticity in our relationship with matter and living things
that technological and architectural modernity has seemingly compromised. Hence the popularity of the idea of a
return to the values of craftsmanship, which also explains the generally positive reception of Richard Sennett’s book on
this topic in design circles (Sennett, 2009). Similarly, Ruskin’s interest in the productive hand of the artisan has been
claimed as a reference by some theorists of digital architecture (Spuybroek, 2011).
This nostalgia presents paradoxical features. Digital architecture seeks both to reestablish an authentic connection
with materials based on collaboration and, at the same time, to compel those materials to comply with its intentions in
far more forceful ways than in the past—especially through certain digital fabrication techniques. Early 3D printing,
for example, had little to do with a spirit of collaboration with matter and materials, and this remains true today in
many cases. Digital architecture tends to reaffirm the spontaneity of matter and materials from a vitalistic perspective,
while simultaneously treating them quite violently in practice. As for sustainable architecture, one of its currently most
popular expressions is the planting of walls, balconies, and terraces—an ornamental practice that I will address
shortly. This approach is difficult to fully reconcile with a genuine consideration for non-human life. Once again, the
new materiality that is emerging, also through the mediation of architecture, is not without contradictions.
A final tendency I would like to highlight is precisely the return of ornament, which had been banned by modernist
architecture following Adolf Loos famous "ornament and crime" argument (Picon, 2013). While postmodernism at­
tempted to rehabilitate ornament, it did so with limited success. Over the past couple of decades, however, there has
been a widespread resurgence of ornament, one that is closely linked to the rise of digital tools, and their use in
designing complex textures, which can be then realized with mills, 3D printers, or robots. Experiments in digital
fabrication often possess, by the same token, an ornamental dimension (Fig. 8).
Contemporary digital ornament is quite different from the ornaments of old. It no longer serves as a paroxysmal
expression of architectural order, as it once did—a connection epitomized by the common etymological root of the
Latin words for order (ordum) and ornament (ornamentum). Ernst Gombrich’s famous analysis of ornament as order
does not really apply to present-day practices (Gombrich, 1979). Beyond this disconnection, contemporary ornament
has also lost much of its symbolic character. In short, one might broadly characterize it as “meaningless.”
Nonetheless, two dimensions still relate contemporary and traditional architectural ornaments. The first is their
material character. Ornaments magnify the material—its grain, texture, and play with light and shadow. The

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Fig. 9. Stefano Boeri, Bosco Verticale, Milan, Italy, 2014: view of the balconies with plants. Photograph: C. Barbalis, 2016. Source: Wikimedia
Commons. Copyright: CC0 1.0.

second—perhaps most important—dimension is the pleasurable experience ornaments are meant to offer. Though this
experience, ornaments connect to issues of subjectivity, or rather issues pertaining to the relationship between subjects
and objects. However, in contemporary ornaments this relationship has shifted. With its primarily tactile and haptic
qualities, digital ornament seems to dissolve the traditional distance between subject and object that was fundamental
to the architectural discipline as it emerged from the Renaissance. The distance that made perspectival representation

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Fig. 10. Promotion picture for the movie Ex Machina (Garland et al., 2014). From: Jolin (2014). Ex Machina Review. Empire. <https://www.
empireonline.com/movies/reviews/ex-machina-review/>. Copyright: Creative Commons.

possible has been replaced by an affective continuum between subject and object, substituting observation with
participation. This evolution aligns with the diffuse vitalistic attitude of contemporary architecture. Life ignores
boundaries and frontiers, so why should architecture enforce them when they are unnecessary?
Generally, the quest for an environmentally friendly, sustainable architecture is far less ornamental. However, it
has still led several architects to designs that possess an ornamental dimension. Planted buildings are one notable
example. The plants, bushes, and trees that adorn terraces and balconies have a distinctly ornamental character. Italian
architect Stefano Boeri’s Bosco Verticale in Milan ranks among the most popular expressions of this trend, though
many others exist across Europe and Asia (Fig. 9).
Despite their differences, what connects these two iterations of contemporary ornament is their shared attempt to
erase distances, boundaries, and frontiers, replacing them by mediation, communication, and participation. The broad
success of plant-covered buildings is inseparable from a desire to blur the sharp modernist distinction between human
and non-human. This approach is also more aligned with the role and meaning of ornament in nature—at least in the
botanical world—where, according to philosopher Emmanuele Coccia (2016), plants use ornaments such as flowers for
pollination, a process often involving interspecies communication.
From materials to living beings, the dimension of communication—as opposed to distant observation—is on the
rise in contemporary architecture, particularly in two domains that epitomizes its most significant evolutions. This
dimension has been recently reinforced—in the digital realm—by the emergence of artificial intelligence. How will
humans adapt to the presence of, and collaboration with, artificial intelligence? Interestingly, architectural space plays
a key role in many fictional explorations of this question. The 2014 film Ex Machina offers a striking example of the
heightened presence of architecture in this context (Garland et al., 2014). It seems that the question of how we will live
with artificial intelligence is inseparable from the question of how we will share space, or, in other words, how we will
dwell together (Fig. 10).

5. Design and the understanding of the human

I have gradually arrived at the question of the human and how architecture, through the exploration of materiality,
engages with it. In this respect, my position is not distant from the remarks of architectural theorists and historians
Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley in their 2016 essay Are We Humans? that "design always presents itself as serving
the human but its real ambition is to redesign the human" (Colomina & Wigley, 2016, p. 9). However, the ambition to
redesign the human is not a systematic one in architecture. There have been episodes in history that lean in this
direction—such as the connection between Modernism and eugenics—but these are exceptions rather than the rule.

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What is more common is architecture’s contribution to how humans understand themselves, a contribution that is
inseparable from their relationship with the physical world.
The interpretation of the human suggested by architecture often reflects the way architects see themselves, the
relationships they have with each other, and their modes of practice. We live in an era still dominated by star ar­
chitecture, with big names plastered on prestigious buildings all over the world, such as opera houses, museums, and
university campuses. Star architecture is synonymous with ultra-personalized signature design based on strict hier­
archies of competence within architectural offices. At the same time, less hierarchical and more collaborative practices
are emerging among younger generations of designers. These architects see themselves less as individual artists and
more as mediating structures that enable the convergence of various forces and actors—some humans, other non-
human, like natural resources. Rather than positioning themselves as classic creators, these new architects identify as
coalition builders and gatherers. Practices like Assemble Architects, BC Architects, and Rotor, which I mentioned
earlier, are emblematic of this shift.
These professional trends help explain the success of Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory among contemporary
designers (Yaneva, 2022). They also clarify why artificial intelligence is perceived, for the most part, not as a dan­
gerous competitor but as another actor whose power must be acknowledged and collaborated with. In short, the
architect is no longer viewed as a solitary, heroic figure—always a myth more than a reality, an ideal of personal
success set against what has always been a collective practice.
Breaking with the myth of the solitary architect is part of a broader shift in our understanding of what it means to
be human. Humans are no longer seen as fundamentally separate from their surroundings. Instead, they appear as
porous subjects, encircled—and, to some extent, penetrated—by their environment, challenging conventional notions
of subjective interiority.
In the digital field, the way ornaments challenge the very idea of a distance between subject and object—replacing
it with the notion of affective continuum—goes precisely in this direction. Even more striking is the demise of the
modernist idea of space as void that enabled the transmission of emotions. The affective continuum that replaces it
assumes that a subject is not reducible to the volume occupied by its body, but is spread—or rather distributed—across
all networks of communication, many of them electronic, with which the subject engages.
Despite their profound differences, the subjects of digital architecture and environmentally conscious design share
a common porosity. The modalities of their engagement with the world differ: on one hand, communication networks
increasingly inhabited by forms of artificial intelligence; on the other, bacteria and other living non-humans. Both
contemporary approaches emphasize a conception of the human as a mediator between its own realm and that of the
non-human, a conception already present in Bruno Latour’s famous essay We Have Never Been Modern (Latour, 1993),
and in Rosi Braidotti’s reflections on the posthuman (Braidotti, 2013).
Present-day developments in the age of the Anthropocene are full of potential and compel us to clarify our many
links with the environment—both natural and artificial. Yet, they also entail risks. One such risk is the temptation to
completely dissolve the distinction between subjective interiority and environment in favor of a fusion between the
two, a view often promoted by advocates of a truly ecological thought.
Here, the danger lies in forgetting that the relationship between the human and the non-human remains is in­
evitably somewhat conflictual; to be human implies always a difference, a gap that we may seek to fill, but that
continuously recreates itself. Architecture is also about this gap. Likewise, the collaboration between designer and
matter has its limits. In one of his treatises, seventeenth-century French engineer and architect François Blondel (1683)
referred to the "resistance and obstinacy of matter." Addressing this obstinacy is what architecture does in order to
create an arena for human destiny. Without it, without the resistance it poses to human spontaneous movement,
Condillac’s statue would not have become aware of itself as distinct from the outside world.
Ultimately, what is design about? It is not only about providing shelter in a convenient way, not even about moving
the soul, as Le Corbusier famously declared—mitigating his earlier statement about the house as a machine for living
in. Even if perceived in a distracted state of mind, as Walter Benjamin had it, architecture regulates our relationship
with the material world. It also carries, most often implicitly but sometimes explicitly, a series of questions about what
it means to be human.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Antoine Picon: Writing – original draft.

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A. Picon Perspectives in Architecture and Urbanism 1 (2024) 100019

Declaration of Competing Interest

The author Antoine Picon is an Editorial Board Member for Perspectives in Architecture and Urbanism and was not
involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article.

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Biography

Antoine Picon is the G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology at Harvard GSD where he is also Chair of
the PhD in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning. He teaches courses in the history and theory of architecture and tech­
nology. Trained as an engineer, architect, and historian, Picon works on the relationships between architectural and urban space, technology,
and society, from the eighteenth century to the present.

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