MICHAEL WIHART
The Architecture of Soft Machines
M
y thesis thesis speculates about the
possibility of softening architecture through machines. In deviating
from traditional mechanical conceptions of
machines based on autonomous, functional and purely operational notions, the thesis
conceives of machines as corporeal media
in co-constituting relationships with human bodies. As machines become corporeal
(robots) and human bodies take on qualities
of machines (cyborgs) the thesis investigates their relations to architecture through
readings of William S. Burroughs’ proto-
cyborgian novel The Soft Machine (1961) and Georges Teyssot’s essay Hybrid Architecture:
An Environment for the Prosthetic Body
I have developed a series of experiments,
ranging from soft mechanical hybrids to
soft machines made entirely from silicone and actuated by embedded pneumatics, to speculate about architectural
environments capable of interacting
with humans. In a radical departure from
traditional mechanical conceptions based on modalities of assembly, these types of soft machines are based on integrated behavioural designs and composite
construction in order to infuse the machines with notions of flexibility, compliance,
sensitivity, passive dynamics and spatial variability.
Challenging architecture’s alliance with
(2005). The research thus argues for an
notions of permanence and monumentality,
continuum of architectural machines as
typologisation of architecture (walls,
update of architecture’s long historical well as architecture’s anthropocentric
mandate. As purely mechanical models of
architectural machines are being superseded by models that incorporate digital sensing
and embedded actuation as well as soft and compliant materiality, the promise of softer,
more sensitive and corporeal conceptions of technology shines onto architecture.
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my thesis formulates a critique of static
floors, columns). In proposing an embodied architecture, the thesis concludes by speculating about architecture as a
capacitated, sensitive and sensual body
informed by the reciprocal conditioning of constituent systems, materials, morphologies, and behaviours.