Reviewed by:

• Architectural Intelligence: How Designers and Architects Created the Digital Landscape by Molly Wright Steenson
• Orit Halpern (bio)

"Computing isn't about computers anymore. It is about living." MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte's words appear prophetic to many of us, glued to our screens for work, consumption, sociality, and health reasons amid a global pandemic. To survive, the need for ubiquitous computing seems unquestionable. It should not be. Our current acceptance and even desire for these mediated conditions are historically situated and contingent. As terms like "reboot" circulate with increasing frequency, we might question what it is we are rebooting or reviving and if we want the future to look like the past. At such a time, it is essential to look back at how we have designed and imagined our computational environments.

Within this context, Molly Wright Steenson's Architectural Intelligence is an excellently researched and accessible invitation to engage with histories of design and computation. To the growing body of literature investigating how digital technologies impact and transform architecture, Steenson offers an alternative perspective. Challenging technophilic approaches to the history of architecture, the book's narrative does not ask if computing has changed architecture, but rather demonstrates that architectural concepts have shaped how we design and imagine digital technologies. The author does so by examining the work of four individuals: Christopher Alexander, an innovator in concepts of object oriented programming and applying computing to urban design; Richard Saul Wurman, founder of the TED conferences; Cedric Price, speculative designer and architect; and Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT Media Lab. What these individuals have in common is their training as architects, although their architectural thinking is not always shared by the field.

Uniquely, the book challenges conventional histories of both computing and architecture. Steenson redefines what constitutes architectural practice and demonstrates how spatial practices and thinking informed digital technology and design. To this end, the inclusion of individuals like [End Page 1265] Wurman is original. His work creating conferences and formats such as TED invites us to consider design as inclusive of such practices as structuring conversations and knowledge production and dissemination. In acknowledging the informatic nature of digital ecologies, Steenson urges us to consider media formats and knowledge infrastructures as central to spatial practices in our present. She argues that architectural thinking since the 1960s has reformulated the concept of space as interactive, adaptive, responsive, and intelligent—ideas that are now universal in the world of digital media.

What constitutes intelligence, of course, is historically contested. Architectural Intelligence clearly sets out to revise commonly held notions of the term. The text's central argument is that each of the figures tracked had different ideas about intelligence. For Alexander, "hyperstability" and maintaining equilibrium were the goals of urban design through computation. For Price, "life conditioning" and interactivity were the measure of success, or what we might label the "intelligence" of a design. For Negroponte, intelligence equated with "self-organization" and "problem worrying." The relationship between the machine and the designer was a "conversation" that would produce new forms of design, creating a human-machine process that could learn and evolve. These differing concepts of intelligence remind us that the work of architects informed our contemporary understanding of machine learning systems, thus influencing design. While all three architects shared influences from cybernetics and the communication and computational sciences of the post-war period, their differing visions of software and design might serve as lessons for the present. Whether we see a technology as having to preserve stability or disrupt social order, also has a bearing on its design. This is particularly important in our contemporary (particularly American) automation and digitization of medical, urban, social service, and environmental management systems. As ideals of data driven planning and self-organizing systems replace centralized and democratic infrastructures, we are left questioning the ethical and political consequences of such discourses and imaginaries.

One critique of this book, is that it only engages in a limited manner with the ethical and political consequences of Architectural Intelligence. Steenson is careful to note her...

审核人：

• 建筑智能：设计师和建筑师如何创造数字景观作者：Molly Wright Steenson
• 奥里特·哈尔珀恩（生物）

“计算不再与计算机有关。它与生活息息相关。” 麻省理工学院媒体实验室创始人尼古拉斯·内格罗蓬特（Nicholas Negroponte）的话对我们许多人来说都是预言，在全球大流行中，这些话贴在我们工作，消费，社交和健康原因的屏幕上。为了生存，对普适计算的需求似乎毫无疑问。不应该这样。我们目前对这些调解条件的接受甚至渴望是历史悠久的和偶然的。随着诸如“重新启动”之类的术语越来越频繁地传播，我们可能会质疑正在重新启动或正在复兴的是什么，以及是否希望未来像过去一样。在这样的时候，回顾我们如何设计和想象我们的计算环境是至关重要的。

在此背景下，莫莉·赖特·斯汀森（Molly Wright Steenson）的建筑智能是研究和计算历史的优秀研究和可访问的邀请。对于越来越多的调查数字技术如何影响和改变架构的文献，Steenson提供了另一种观点。挑战建筑历史的技术方法，这本书的叙述并没有问计算是否改变了建筑，而是证明了建筑概念已经塑造了我们设计和想象数字技术的方式。作者通过考察四个人的工作来做到这一点：克里斯托弗·亚历山大（Christopher Alexander），面向对象编程概念的创新者，并将计算应用于城市设计；TED会议的创始人Richard Saul Wurman；Cedric Price，投机设计师和建筑师；以及MIT媒体实验室的创始人Nicholas Negroponte。

独特地，这本书挑战了计算和体系结构的传统历史。Steenson重新定义了建筑实践的构成，并展示了空间实践和思维如何为数字技术和设计提供了信息。为此，包括[End Page 1265]这样的个人沃曼是原创。他创建会议和TED等格式的工作邀请我们考虑设计，其中包括构建对话，知识生产和传播等实践。在认识到数字生态学的信息性质后，Steenson敦促我们将媒体格式和知识基础设施视为当前空间实践的核心。她认为，自1960年代以来的建筑思想已经将空间的概念重新定义为交互式，自适应，响应式和智能化的概念，这些思想现已在数字媒体世界中普及。

当然，从历史上讲，构成智力的东西是有争议的。建筑智能明确提出要修改该术语的常用概念。文本的中心论点是，所追踪的每个人物对于智力都有不同的想法。对于亚历山大来说，“超稳定性”和保持平衡是通过计算进行城市设计的目标。对于Price而言，“生命调节”和交互性是成功的量度，或者我们可以称呼设计的“智能”。对于内格罗蓬特来说，智力等同于“自我组织”和“问题令人担忧”。机器与设计者之间的关系是一种“对话”，它将产生新的设计形式，从而创建可以学习和发展的人机过程。这些不同的智能概念提醒我们，建筑师的工作为我们当代对机器学习系统的理解提供了参考，从而影响了设计。尽管三位建筑师共享战后控制论，通信和计算科学的影响力，但他们对软件和设计的不同见解可能会成为当前的教训。我们是否将技术视为必须保持稳定性或破坏社会秩序，也关系到其设计。这对于我们当代（尤其是美国）的自动化，医疗，城市，社会服务和环境管理系统的数字化尤其重要。随着以数据为驱动的计划和自组织系统的理想替代了集中的民主基础设施，

对该书的一种批评是，它仅以有限的方式参与了建筑智能的伦理和政治后果。斯汀森小心地注意到她。