(UN) Building codes: Architecture and the limits of artificial intelligence

Advanced software and robotic fabrication tools have made possible an unprecedented level of formal complexity in design. So pervasive is this development that many architects today consider matter and the productive forces shaping it, as central to the meaning and purpose of their work. A “new materialism” now constitutes the founding metaphysics for most of the discipline. But as the capabilities of technology continue to evolve, difficult questions about the limits of computation and the nature of intelligence inevitably arise. This runs thinking directly into the philosophical impasse of the mind body-problem. What happens then to the veracity and cultural value of the digital avant garde when subjective mental states resist persistent attempts to reduce them to physical processes in the brain? If the term “spirit” implies the quest to understand who we are and how we fit into the natural order, then architecture will have to become more than just a material practice.