
THE SMART LANDSCAPE: INTELLIGENT ARCHITECTURE
WILL THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION leave architecture behind? The new, networked technologies that are transforming the way we experience space and time seem resolutely intangible, a universe apart from bricks and mortar. Yet such technologies are increasingly embedded within our walls, even within the very ground on which we stand. From environmental sensors, adaptive thermostats, and cloud-connected security systems to massive computerized farmsa particularly stark example of which is depicted on this issue’s coverthese apparatuses are catalyzing a nearly invisible shift in architecture that is nevertheless far more profound and ubiquitous than the stylistic trends that have been the primary effects of digital technology on the discipline thus far. To explore the largely unheralded impact of so-called smart technology on our built environment, Artforum turned to REM KOOLHAAS, an architect who is celebrated equally for his buildings and his manifestos, and who is known above all for his relentless critical reflection on architecture’s evolving place in the world.
AFTER A DECADE AND A HALF, the twenty-first century is beginning to reveal some of its likely essences. Architecture has entered into a new engagement with digital culture and capitalwhich amounts to the most radical change within the discipline since the confluence of modernism and industrial production in the early twentieth century. Yet this shift has gone largely unnoticed, because it has not taken the form of a visible upheaval or wholesale transformation. To the contrary: It is a stealthy infiltration of architecture via its constituent elements.
Architects first embraced digital