MAN.MA.T.I.C

02 / STUDY

STUDYING A MOVING SUBJECT

Machine systems, artificial intelligence, automation, and data infrastructures are evolving faster than conventional architectural research methods can fully examine.

ManMaTIC began from this methodological paradox: How can architecture study and design for human–machine integration while the subject itself continues to change?

03 / IMPLICATION

THE ARCHITECTURAL IMPLICATION

Most buildings are still conceived primarily around human occupation, while machines, data systems, and technological infrastructure are accommodated as supporting systems. As machines continue to evolve in capability, presence, and their relationship with human activity, architecture may no longer remain organized in the same way. What might architecture become through this evolution, and what place will the human occupy within it?

05 / RELATIONAL NETWORK

ACTOR–NETWORK THEORY: READING ARCHITECTURE AS A RELATIONAL NETWORK

Actor–Network Theory emerged from sociology and science and technology studies through the work of Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, and John Law. The theory understands any system as a network formed through relations among human and non-human actors. People, technologies, institutions, objects, infrastructures, and environments all participate in shaping how that network operates.

In ManMaTIC, this framework was used to identify humans, machines, data, infrastructure, institutions, and environmental conditions as interconnected actors. These actors were then organized within three primary components—human, machine, and ground—forming the relational field through which the project could be examined.

Within this field, ground carries the site’s environmental, infrastructural, historical, and territorial conditions. Machine introduces operational, spatial, and technical requirements, while human brings occupation, needs, judgment, and social use. The field also extends beyond the immediate site, connecting these interactions to wider urban and institutional effects.

At this point, the project had established the actors and the relationships between them, but it had not yet produced an architectural response. The next question was: how could these relationships be translated into program, space, and operation?

06 / OPERATION

MACHINE BEHAVIOUR: THE BUILDING AS AN OPERATIVE MACHINE

Machine Behaviour provided the framework through which the relational field could be read architecturally. Its four dimensions—mechanism, development, function, and evolution—examined how the relationships among human, machine, and ground operate, develop, produce function, and change over time. This reading generated the program, spatial relationships, and operational logic of the proposed typology from the conditions of the field. It also established the conceptual basis for understanding the building as an architectural machine connected to its ground.

Actor–Network Theory identified the actors and relationships shaping the project, while Machine Behaviour translated how those relationships operate, develop, produce functions, and change over time. Together, they established the conceptual framework through which ManMaTIC could be developed architecturally.

A fixed thesis document was therefore insufficient. ManMaTIC required a living framework capable of absorbing new knowledge and translating it into architectural criteria and design decisions. This need led to the development of the ManMaTIC Field.

08 / METHOD

BUILDING THE FIELD

EVIDENCE → THESIS → CRITERIA → DESIGN TESTS → FIELD