Last month, I wrote about how automation and Al are dramatically changing all four fundamental relationships between buildings and machines. For example, nanotechnol-ogy, which manipulates individual atoms and molecules to assemble things, could make the modernist metaphor of a "machine for living in" into reality, since the building would actually be composed of many tiny machines. In fact, that's not quite accurate. The definition of "machine" is "an apparatus using or applying mechanical power and having several parts, each with a definite function and together performing a particular task." So machines are made of distinct parts, cobbled together to fulfill a function. They are characterized by their composition, as assemblages of singular bits and pieces in which the whole is greater than the sum. But nanotech will completely change this. When entire buildings can be shaped from microscopic components, the visible distinction between the individual parts will evaporate. A structure built from invisible machines will not appear to be a machine at all, since it no longer will be perceived as an assembly of parts. An edifice made of congealed cybernetic butter will look to be all whole, no parts. The very concept of a "building" could become meaningless, since it will no longer be "built" in any traditional way. Remember "Terminator 2"? Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800 is a machine: steel and servos wrapped in human skin. Robert Patrick's T-1000 is made of liquid metal ("mimetic polyalloy"). He's like sentient mercury, morphing into any shape he needs. A nanotech building ("nanotecture"?) would make conventional structures seem like Robby the Robot (of "Forbidden Planet" fame).
展开▼
