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Volume 28 - 2

Editorial

The Inter net

Arjen Oosterman

of Things

5 The Common Sense

Literally

every-

Mark

shepard

t h i n g in the

W O H dl n t e r v i e w e d

by

Vincent Schipper

is getting

connected theses

Parallel Universe

, days,

yOUrstephen Gage

c h i l d r e n , dog, car,

f r i d g e ,

e v e n t h e i O Touching the Interspace

trees

i n

the park

.Carola Moujan

Connecting,

transmitting,™

The Devil Is in the Details:

exchanging,

Critical

Knowledge About Emerging

responding,

reaCt-lnformation Technologies

i n g ,

adjusting

-S h l n t a r o Myazaki

being connected

iS a t the COre.16 Noo-Architecture & the Internet

of Things

Does this

Change

Deborah

Hauptmann

architecture?

DoeS t h i s prOVide20

An Axis of Innumerable Connections:

n e w OpROrtunitieS

the Mundaneum

tO d e s i g n and

lMina Larsen

create? Does it

affect the

V e r y 2 5 Tracing Concepts

material

arChi-Edwin Gardner and Marcell Mars

t e c t s w o r k with?

Insert

Turbulent a n d

e X C i t i n g t i m e s in«9 Smart Environments

WhlCh a neW

Ken

Sakamura

practice l o o m s

i nt e r v i e w e d by Cloud Lab

t h e horizon: c o r

-relation designing

.52 Revisiting Yesterday's Future: the 1960s and the Internet of Things Lara Schrijver

56 Architecture as a Multi-Agent System

Tomasz Jaskiewicz

61 The City Is Becoming

Ben Cerveny, James Burke, Juha van't Zelfde

66 Play Design

Ben Schouten

70 Check-In Urbanism

Jeroen Beekmans and Joop de Boer

72 Hylozoic Ground

Philip Beesley

80 Being Somewhere

Ole Bouman

81 Trust Design - Part Two: Internet of Things

Insert

128 Shadow Project

Nortd Labs

130 The Color of Ideas Tuur van Balen

134 Meeting in the Middle

Ruairi Glynn

Interviewed by Vincent Schipper

138 Virt-Oral History:

A Story from Seven on Seven Justin Fowler

140 All That Is material Will Be Standard

and All that Is Personalized Will Be Virtual Eduard Sansho Pou

142 The Tragic Lost

Vincent Schipper and Christiaan Fruneaux

148 The Act of Disconnection:

Just Because I Do Not Send a Message within a Matter of Minutes Does Not Mean I Am Dead Amelia Borg and Timothy Moore

152 Unlocking the Secrets of

a 'Forbidden City' Lorna Goulden

155 21st Century City

156 Data and Owner

Usman Haque and Ed Borden

158 Digital-Material Practices:

Adaptive Architectures for an Idealization of the Soft

Mette Ramsgard Thomsen

162 Res Sapiens

Dimitri Nieuwenhuizen

166 Urban Content Management

Mark Dek

169 IOOO - the Internet of Obsolete Objects

Dietmar Offenhuber

172 Coders & Architects Do Not Communicate

Vincent Schipper

174 Losing Ground

Arjen Oosterman

176 Colophon

121 Permission Taken for Granted

Bart-Jan Polman

124 The Importance of Random Learning

Hiroshi Ishiguro

Colophon Volume 28

VOLUME Independent quarterly for architecture to go beyond itself Editor-in-chief Arjen Oosterman

Contributing editors Oie Bouman, Rem Koolhaas, Mark Wigley Feature editor Jeffrey Inaba

Guest editor Vincent Schipper

VOLUME is a project by ARCHIS + A M O + C-Lab + ...

A R C H I S Lilet Breddels, Jeroen Beekmans, Joop de Boer, Amelia Borg,

Anais Massot, Vincent Schipper, Kai Vöckler - Archis advisers Thomas Daniell, Joos van den Dool, Christian Ernsten, Edwin Gardner, Bart Goldhoorn, Jonathan Hanahan, Rory Hyde, Markus Miessen

AMO Reinier de Graaf

C - L a b Jeffrey Inaba,Justin Fowler, Eric Barr, Lucienne Canet,

Björn Ehrlemark, Elizabeth Nichols, Susan Park, M a t t Shaw, Evelyn Ting, Amanda Vincelli

Materialized by Irma Boom and Sonja Haller Insert Tracing Concepts Oscar David Quijano Robayo Insert Trust Design Roosje Klap

V O L U M E ' S protagonists are

ARCHIS, magazine for Architecture, City and Visual Culture and its predecessors since 1929. Archis - Publishers, Tools, Interventions - is an experimental think tank devoted to the process of real-time spatial and cultural reflexivity. www.archis.org

AMO, a research and design studio that applies architectural thinking to disciplines beyond t h e borders of architecture and urbanism. A M O operates in tandem w i t h its companion company t h e Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, www.oma.nl C-Lab, The Columbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting is an experimental research unit devoted to the development of new forms of communication in architecture, set up as a semi-autonomous think and action tank at t h e Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation of Columbia University.

VOLUME is published by Stichting Archis, The Netherlands and printed by Die Keure, Belgium.

English copy editing David Lee, Billy Nolan

Administrative coordination Valérie Blom, Margel Nusbaumer Editorial office PO Box 14702,1001 LE Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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Subscriptions Bruil & Van de Staaij, Postbus 75, 7940 AB Meppel, The

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are available through Bruil & van de Staaij

Advertising marketing@archis.org, For rates and details see:

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VOLUME has been made possible with the support of Mondrian Foundation Amsterdam

ISSN 1574-9401, ISBN 09789077966280

Contributors

Tuur Van Balen is an artist who uses design to explore t h e political

implications of emerging technologies. He lives and works in London.

Philip Beesley MRAIC OAA (associate professor School of

Architec-ture, University of Waterloo) is an architect developing responsive kinetic architectural environments that approach nearliving functions.

Ed Borden (@edborden) has spent over a decade in startups designing

and marketing products on t h e bleeding edge of technology and t h e internet. He currently serves as VP, Business Development at Pachube.

Ben Cerveny, James Burke, Juha v a n ' t Zelfde make up VURB,

based in Amsterdam. It is a European framework for policy and design research concerning urban computational systems. The VURB founda-tion investigates how to use networked digital resources to change t h e way we understand, build, and inhabit cities.

Cloud Lab is directed by Toru Hasegawa and Mark Collins. The lab

resides at t h e Graduate School of Architecture Planning & Preservation, Columbia University.

Mark Collins is an architect, designer and programmer. He co-directs

t h e Columbia GSAPP Cloud Lab and Proxy, a design firm specializing in innovative design t e c h .

Mark Dek (@archad1a) is an architect and a researcher.

www.archadia.nl / www.markdek.nl

Stephan Gage is Professor of Innovative Technology at The Bartlett

Faculty of t h e Built Environment.

Edwin Gardner is an architect and writer based in Amsterdam.

He is researcher at t h e Jan van Eyck Academy.

Ruairi Glynn is an installation artist, curator, writer and teacher. He is

Lecturer of Interactive Architecture at t h e Bartlett Faculty of t h e Built Environment and Associate Lecturer on MA Textile Futures and MA Industrial Design at Central Saint Martins, University of Arts London.

Lorna Goulden is Creative Director Philips Design, Supervisor

of ' L i g h t - S ' - an innovative public lighting programme for Strijp-S in Eindhoven, and Member of t h e European think tank Council: Internet of Things.

Usman Haque (@uah) is an award winning architect, interactive

technology designer, and entrepreneur. He currently serves as CEO of Pachube, a company he founded in 2008. www.pachube.com

Toru Hasegawa is an architect amongst others. He co-directs the Cloud

Lab at the Columbia University GSAPP where he is an adjunct assistant professor. He is also t h e co-founder of Proxy.

Deborah Hauptmann is Associate Professor of Architecture at TU

Delft's Delft School of Design. She has recently published: Cognitive

Architecture: From Biopolitics to Noopolitics (co-editor W. Neidlich).

Tomasz Jaskiewicz is an architect, urban designer, and academic

researcher and educator at TU Delft.

Marcell Mars, aka Nenad Romic is a free software advocate, cultural

explorer and social instigator. Mars is one of the founders of Multimedia Institute - mi2 and net.culture club mama, both located in Zagreb. He is researcher at t h e Jan van Eyck Academy.

Dimitri Nieuwenhuizen w i t h Thomas Castro and Jeroen Barendse

founded LUSTlab in 2010, a research laboratory for media and technol-ogy, to develop new communication tools, man-machine installations and physical products using digital content.

Shintaro Miyazaki, holds an M.A. in Media Theory, Philosophy and

Musicology of University of Basel, Switzerland. He is PhD Researcher at Chair for Media Theory at Humboldt University Berlin and founder of t h e Institute for Algorhythmics.

Nina Stottrup Larsen is a graphic designer and researcher based

in Amsterdam, educated at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and t h e Jan van Eyck Academy.

Nortd was founded as an international open source collaborative,

w i t h an output of artistic research and scientific development.

Dietmar Offenhuber is a research fellow in the Senseable City Lab

at t h e Department for Urban Studies and Planning at MIT.

Bart-Jan Polman holds a Master's degree in architecture f r o m Delft

University of Technology and Columbia University. He currently works for Bernard Tschumi Architects in New York.

Eduard Sancho Pou combines his work as an architect with his

strategic consultancy activities. He has recently been awarded a Grant from the Graham Foundation 2011.

Ben Schouten is Professor in Playful Interaction at the faculty of

Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology as well as Lector Serious Game Design. He is a member of t h e Council for the Internet of Things, a think-tank of designers, scientist and artists.

Lara Schrijver is an assistant professor at t h e Faculty of Architecture

of t h e TU Delft. She is one of three program leaders for a new re-search program in the department of architecture, 'The Architectural Project and its Foundations'.

Mark Shepard is an artist, architect and researcher whose

post-disciplinary practice addresses new social spaces and signifying structures of contemporary network cultures.

Mette Ramsgard Thomsen is an architect working w i t h digital t e c h

-nologies. She is Associate Professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen, where she heads the Center for Information Technology and Architecture [CITA].

Disclaimer

The editors of Volume have been careful t o contact all copyright holders of the images used. If you claim ownership of any of t h e images presented here and have not been properly identified, please contact Volume and we will be happy to make a formal acknowledgement in a future issue.

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> 52

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potential for change. Nevertheless, there are distinctions between how the Smithsons and Constant handle infra-structure and networks. Many of the proposals for new cities (including those of Archigram and the metabohsts) follow the Smithsons: they offer a relatively stable infrastructure that can be expanded and accommodate change. Constant takes this a step further by elevating the notion of flux to the very essence of his city order (where the formal expression of the city is dependent on the actions of its occupants). He believed an ever-changing life necessitated an ever-ever-changing environment: the instability of his city was a great adventure that . would encourage homo ludens to emerge.

Archigram's explorations of the changing aspects of the urban environment were shown in the 1963 Living City exhibition. It offered seven areas, or 'gloops', that questioned the relation between the inhabitant and the city As a follow-up, Archigram 5 was devoted solely to the new metropolis: the growth-based crystalline city as proposed by the Japanese metabolists, cluster cities, network cities, Yona Friedman's spatial city - the issue is filled with projects that no longer form a closed system. Their cities can grow to whatever dimensions and in whatever direction necessary, unlike the more rigorous formal boundaries of the Corbusian city. Although the Corbusian grid is in principle endless, in his images he shows virtually no possibility of variation within the as-signed scheme. In the 1960s, terms such as 'flux', 'flexi-bility' and 'freedom' were introduced in opposition to the rigid forms of the modernist city. They represent a need to manifest individuality (as opposed to the mechanical collectivity of the modernist city), as well as the need to address the failure of universal form (thought possible by modernism) and the desire to replace a static and per-manent design with space for changing conditions. Yet both approaches are still based on what Herbert Gans

s e e : H e r b e r t j G a n s,c a| |e cj t n e fallacy of physical determinism,

'

u

3SS

whether

e* pr e s s e d i n a n e e d f o r c l a r i t y t h r o u g h

D eSptonS,£iayson'ratlonar architecture or a need for change

Urban Problems and 4 . , . « . - .

s o i u t i o n s ( N e w Y o r k : B a s i o| .n r o Ugn 'flexible architecture.

B o o t e , 9 6 8 ,'P P The emphasis on growth and change in the 1960s

confirmed the continuing speed of social transformation, but also opposed the mechanical orientation of modernism by inserting a reference to the natural and human world in particular. While the idea of change accommodated a desire for individual expression and the potential to trans-form the idea of growth suggested a shift toward the city as a living entity. The city was to become more amenable by reformulating the very nature of the architectural environment, approaching the city as a tree or a field of flux Nevertheless, the metaphors of growth and change proved no insurance against a final definition of city form. More importantly, underlying questions remained unanswered: Is it the role of architecture to express the psychological conditions of society or its occupants? Can architecture evoke behavior through form, and is this de-sirable? Whether stable or dynamic, these projects con-ceptualize the environment as a constantly changing field, yet make transformation a material reality. In doing so they demonstrate the tension between the physical pre-sence of the city and the continually changing life within it The focus on growth and change - the logic of the organism rather than the machine - paved the way for re-thinking not only what technology might do but also how it was incorporated. The blurring of the boundary between technology and the human subject, the shift to the cyber-netic organism, also finds a precursor in the 1960s.

Archigram: Embedding Technology

While the city itself is in flux in order to accommodate the human beings within it, technology is seen as a way to bridge the gap between people and their surroundings. Many Archigram projects show cheerful visions of future

s e e also Lara schrijver^gchnoiogjes that catch a certain Zeitgeist.

E S f f i S ^ o n e might even argue that Archigram's

R u cf c s Z ^ Tomato can be seen as one of the

a n d Embodiment. ( O x f o r d : . . . _ i _ * U «AI ^ J -DisdpSeariiest precursors to the ambient technology

PreSS\°haTunderlies the loT. It forms an interface to the world,

as does its companion project, the Manzak, which is described as a personal object that can venture out to do shopping (or even hunt and fish) while we stay at home. The Electronic Tomato is a project of sheer suggestion, an object that connects to its owner to give them the wildest buzz'. The wires extending from the tomato to a preson suggest a permanent state of being plugged-in. With such cheerful pop imagery it is no wonder that Reyner Banham saw the work of Archigram as emblem-atic of his 'second machine age', which expressed the transforming nature of technologies and a shift in how it was approached. As technology became less an external instrument and more a prosthetic, the newer domains of cybernetics and networking technologies promised an increasingly organic and integrated technological envi-ronment. Archigram incorporated these technologies in architectural visions of a networked environment, com-bining them with pop cultural references and reflecting Banham's own predilection for the phenomena of pop culture, such as American cars and their styling.

Popular Imaginary

Rethinking our relationship with technology is impossible without addressing popular culture, as the two have gone hand in hand since the advent of the printing press. Each technological innovation is deeply entwined with the

(unexpected) uses to which it is put by a broader group of people. The internet, originally constructed as a net-work to link scientific and military institutions so as to more easily communicate scientific progress, is now the domain of a reconfigured virtual public. It is not limited to military secrets or obscure scientific discoveries, but has been inundated with everyday functions such as shopping and chatting. Marshall McLuhan's motto 'the medium is the message' is nowhere more appropriate than here The members of Archigram express technology in such a visually powerful way that it becomes laden with the kind of symbolism we would traditionally expect from a purely aesthetic endeavor. In this aesthetic technology, Archigram displayed the same kind of undisguised and unapologetic joy as its predecessors in the possibilities of technology and media, in the various manifestations of the spectacle society.

Although this pop-culture technology incorporates direct attacks on earlier forms of technological idolatry, it is not so much destroyed as sidestepped by introducing a different form of expression. This work poses some critical questions: Should we want to live in a mechanistic world? Should we want to standardize our environment? Should we want to follow only engineering rules, and if so should those rules dictate our aesthetics? If we want to appeal to functionalism, should this offer a functional appearance, or simply 'be' functional? Yet in the end, technology remains both a symbol of a better world soon to come and a neutral instrument that requires little more than some well-designed guidance to help us achieve utopia. Archigram has envisioned many different potential

potential for change. Nevertheless, there are distinctions between how the Smithsons and Constant handle infra-structure and networks. Many of the proposals for new cities (including those of Archigram and the metabolists) follow the Smithsons: they offer a relatively stable infrastructure that can be expanded and accommodate change. Constant takes this a step further by elevating the notion of flux to the very essence of his city order (where the formal expression of the city is dependent on the actions of its occupants). He believed an ever-changing life necessitated an ever-ever-changing environment: the instability of his city was a great adventure that would encourage homo ludens to emerge.

Archigram's explorations of the changing aspects of the urban environment were shown in the 1963 Living City exhibition. It offered seven areas, or 'gloops', that questioned the relation between the inhabitant and the city. As a follow-up, Archigram 5 was devoted solely to the new metropolis: the growth-based crystalline city as proposed by the Japanese metabolists, cluster cities, network cities, Yona Friedman's spatial city - the issue is filled with projects that no longer form a closed system. Their cities can grow to whatever dimensions and in whatever direction necessary, unlike the more rigorous formal boundaries of the Corbusian city. Although the Corbusian grid is in principle endless, in his images he shows virtually no possibility of variation within the as-signed scheme. In the 1960s, terms such as 'flux', 'flexi-bility' and 'freedom' were introduced in opposition to the rigid forms of the modernist city. They represent a need to manifest individuality (as opposed to the mechanical collectivity of the modernist city), as well as the need to address the failure of universal form (thought possible by modernism) and the desire to replace a static and per-manent design with space for changing conditions. Yet both approaches are still based on what Herbert Gans

S e B: H e r b e n j G a n s ,ca| |ed t h e fa| |a c y 0f physical determinism,3

Urban Vitality and the * •

Fallacy of p h y s i c a iwnetner expressed in a need for clarity through

Determinism, in People ~ —

ondPtons £ s s o y s o n'r at i o n a r architecture or a need for change

Urban Problems ana

S o'0"b?sS^Y°r k^a?fthrough 'flexible' architecture.

Books 1968), pp. 23-ÓÓ. &

The emphasis on growth and change in the 1960s confirmed the continuing speed of social transformation, but also opposed the mechanical orientation of modernism by inserting a reference to the natural and human world in particular. While the idea of change accommodated a desire for individual expression and the potential to trans-form, the idea of growth suggested a shift toward the city as a living entity. The city was to become more amenable by reformulating the very nature of the architectural environment, approaching the city as a tree or a field of flux. Nevertheless, the metaphors of growth and change proved no insurance against a final definition of city form. More importantly, underlying questions remained unanswered: Is it the role of architecture to express the psychological conditions of society or its occupants? Can architecture evoke behavior through form, and is this de-sirable? Whether stable or dynamic, these projects con-ceptualize the environment as a constantly changing field, yet make transformation a material reality. In doing so they demonstrate the tension between the physical pre-sence of the city and the continually changing life within it. The focus on growth and change - the logic of the organism rather than the machine - paved the way for re-thinking not only what technology might do but also how it was incorporated. The blurring of the boundary between technology and the human subject, the shift to the cyber-netic organism, also finds a precursor in the 1960s.

Archigram: Embedding Technology

While the city itself is in flux in order to accommodate the human beings within it, technology is seen as a way to bridge the gap between people and their surroundings. Many Archigram projects show cheerful visions of future

see also La™ s c h r i ] y a rt e c n n 0|0q je s t n at c atch a certain Zeitgeist."

'Designing the N e t w o r k e d » ~

Environment i n : A d a m won e might even argue that Archigram's

Ruch, Ewan Kirkland (eds.) ^ ö w

posthumanity: Mergedectronic Tomato can be seen as one of the and Embodiment. (Oxford:

„T h e™;D i s cSn«earliest precursors to the ambient technology

Press 2010), pp. b ö - b ö . ~

that underlies the loT. It forms an interface to the world, as does its companion project, the Manzak, which is described as a personal object that can venture out to do shopping (or even hunt and fish) while we stay at home. The Electronic Tomato is a project of sheer suggestion, an object that connects to its owner to give them 'the wildest buzz'. The wires extending from the tomato to a preson suggest a permanent state of being plugged-in. With such cheerful pop imagery it is no wonder that Reyner Banham saw the work of Archigram as emblem-atic of his 'second machine age', which expressed the transforming nature of technologies and a shift in how it was approached. As technology became less an external instrument and more a prosthetic, the newer domains of cybernetics and networking technologies promised an increasingly organic and integrated technological envi-ronment. Archigram incorporated these technologies in architectural visions of a networked environment, com-bining them with pop cultural references and reflecting Banham's own predilection for the phenomena of pop culture, such as American cars and their styling.

Popular Imaginary

Rethinking our relationship with technology is impossible without addressing popular culture, as the two have gone hand in hand since the advent of the printing press. Each technological innovation is deeply entwined with the (unexpected) uses to which it is put by a broader group of people. The internet, originally constructed as a net-work to link scientific and military institutions so as to more easily communicate scientific progress, is now the domain of a reconfigured virtual public. It is not limited to military secrets or obscure scientific discoveries, but has been inundated with everyday functions such as shopping and chatting. Marshall McLuhan's motto 'the medium is the message' is nowhere more appropriate than here. The members of Archigram express technology in such a visually powerful way that it becomes laden with the kind of symbolism we would traditionally expect from a purely aesthetic endeavor. In this aesthetic technology, Archigram displayed the same kind of undisguised and unapologetic joy as its predecessors in the possibilities of technology and media, in the various manifestations of the spectacle society.

Although this pop-culture technology incorporates direct attacks on earlier forms of technological idolatry, it is not so much destroyed as sidestepped by introducing a different form of expression. This work poses some critical questions: Should we want to live in a mechanistic world? Should we want to standardize our environment? Should we want to follow only engineering rules, and if so, should those rules dictate our aesthetics? If we want to appeal to functionalism, should this offer a functional appearance, or simply 'be' functional? Yet in the end, technology remains both a symbol of a better world soon to come and a neutral instrument that requires little more than some well-designed guidance to help us achieve

utopia. Archigram has envisioned many different potential ₅₄

t o b e f o u n d i n R a c h e iT n e c rjtj qu e 0f Archigram was aimed at the

one-technologies, but the gadgetry it revelled in prevents a careful assessment of how these technologies impact everyday life. What appears necessary here is a form of critique that can navigate the McLuhanesque condition of contemporary technology, a critical position that simultaneously acknowledges how strongly technology has become embedded in our world.

The hybrid understanding of technology as both medium and message is endemic to contemporary society: we can no longer isolate ourselves from technology, yet since it is such an integral part of our daily existence we cannot examine it as an autonomous object. This prob-lematic is colored by the fact that we maintain an instru-mental understanding of technology and a progressive stance towards the machine. In the optimistic years of the 1960s this was taken to indicate that we were again moving 'forward', that a new step in human evolution had

T hp™redailsfeSya r r i v Scepticism toward modern technology

ByraesphitTSiSdS'gnal'ed a change in our relation to technology,

* » £ S o f Sb " tthe transformation concerned its form

siS^!i^^S-ra^er than its fundamental role in society. The

*Kot;ew?ukiTa^ that technological progress was good,

filmAn«*rtorerd'ingas l o n9 a s its potential was utilized in the right

of this quick d o w n t u r n in.

the belief in t e c h n o l o g y

is t o be f o u n d in Rachel'

Carson's Silent Spring

( B o s t o n : H o u g h t o n M , f f l i ndimensiona| u s e o f t e ch n o l o g y in modernism

and the symbolic use of technology in modernist archi-tecture. We need to incorporate instead an essence of technology in architecture. This was expressed through new uses of technology that were closer to the body (scale and presence of body), through the form of tech-nology (organic form), and through an acknowledgement of the shifting space of technology (the medium is the message and consumer society). Yet Archigram's approach remained instrumental. It did not address the problematic condition of autonomy and how this was either enforced or destroyed by technology. It did not seem to grasp that the very notion of autonomy was, as Petran Kockelkoren

P a t r a n TeCcrTnotogy.:SU9gests, an 'exponent of mediation'.6 McLuhan's

A rondT°leot"es u99e s tions perhaps most closely approach

N A i P u b i i s ' h e ^ o o ^3 fundamentally revised relationship with

tech-nology, acknowledging its instrumental and autonomous character simultaneously, which can only truly be addressed through its material reality.

Autonomy and mediation cannot be conceived of separately in this day and age. They are entwined with the increasing 'unseen networks' that form our world and have an enormous impact upon our everyday existence. Thus the physical manifestations of technology are as important as their intellectual constructs, be they visual or conceptual. The physical becomes embodied in un-expected forms of technology, be they in entertainment, new media, or the digital world of the Internet. This introduces them in a different fashion than typically addressed within architecture discourse. Although the members of Archigram had a good intuition for alterna-tive forms of technology, and their attention to popular culture sensitized them to unexpected uses, they main-tained a belief that the answer lay within a new form of technology and not in the complex interrelationship of architecture, technology and culture.

Archigram's work displays the new vision that co typically accompanies the advent of new technologies.

1 Although usually the subject of heated debates, it is 2 the technologies that silently become part of everyday > life that fundamentally transform how we live. Many

55 of these issues still resonate today in part because they

raised questions still facing us, such as how to maintain individuality in an increasingly massive and technological world. If the city is indeed to become an organism, its role as environment is transformed. Embedded and ambient technologies are central to this transformation. The Internet of Things promises an altered and deeply connected future - and in the meantime, ambient tech-nologies are silently becoming part of our everyday lives. We need to attend to these consequences. The Internet of Things adds a new dimension to this question, not only positioning people in an increasingly interconnected world, but also incorporating them into its network of ambient technology.