






































Towards a post-human era? - 
DIGITAL ARCHITECTS AND THE Future 
OF MANkind

Marion Roussel

In this age of  unprecedented technological 
progress, we can no longer ask “what is man?” 
without examining what we think man will become. 
In the field of  architecture such an examination 
necessitates considering both what and for whom 
we will be building in the decades to come. Since 
the expansion of  information and communication 
technologies in the beginning of  the 1990s, the 
most forward-thinking architects have been 
asking these very questions. More specifically, 
digital architects have been among the first in the 
field, if  not the first, to become interested in the 
effects of  technological advancements not only on 
architectural design and the built environment of  
the future, but also on society as a whole and on 
our physical, psychological, and cultural evolution. 
Thus they have constructed future world visions 
often impregnated with post-humanist and trans-
humanist currents of  thought.

These future world visions are valuable 
resources in our quest to grasp and understand 
the contemporary conception of  mankind and 
of  mankind’s possible futures. Through such 
commentary this paper aims to show how digital 
architects have been imagining mankind’s future 
from the 1990s to the present. It will attempt to 
shed light upon our current state of  evolution 
and its expected outcomes, regarding especially 
how we relate to the natural and to the artificial. 

we can 
no longer 

ask ‘what 
is man?’ 

without 
examining 

what 
we think 
man will 

become

“

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These relationships have already been profoundly transformed by new 
technologies and they will be transformed more and more. From the 
possibility of  new modes of  being made possible by cyberspace, which 
architects dreamed of  during the 1990s, to the fantasy of  a world populated 
by a new bio-mechanic species of  life and truly living buildings, the 
statement made by the artist Roy Ascott that “[w]e are only interested in 
what can be made of  ourselves, not what made us” takes its full meaning.1

Cyberspace: The Possibility of New Modes of Being

The digital turn in architecture occurred at the beginning of  the 
1990s as a result of  the democratization of  personal computers.2 It was 
contemporaneous with the development of  the Internet and virtual reality 
technologies, leading, during the course of  that decade, to the theorization 
of  cyberspace.

The cyberpunk author William Gibson, who popularized the term 
“cyberspace,” described it as “[a] consensual hallucination experienced 
daily by billions of  legitimate operators, in every nation” and “[a] graphic 
representation of  data abstracted from the banks of  every computer in 
the human system.”3 Born around the beginning of  the 1980s in science 
fiction literature, it was depicted as a new level of  reality, an entirely new 
space of  living, but an immaterial one which existed in addition to our 
physical one and was produced by the global interconnection of  computers 
from all over the world. In fact, during all the 1990s, cyberspace provided 
a basis for reflection on the topic of  the transformation of  space under 
pressure of  the ICT (Information and communications technology) and 
of  the hybridization of  virtual and physical spaces. Moreover, it nourished 
a new imagination related to a likely transformation of  mankind itself  as a 
result of  these virtualization processes.

In the fields of  architectural and urban theory, a number of  research 
papers and publications emerged in this decade. Cyberspace: First Steps by 
Michael Benedikt (1991),4 Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte (1995),5 
and City of  Bits by William Mitchell (1996)6 demonstrated the involvement 
and interest of  architects in this emerging digital society and its implications. 
The publication of  the issues of  the Architectural Design review “Architects 
in Cyberspace,” in 19957 and “Architects in Cyberspace II” in 1998,8 
bringing together the contributions of  the so-called “cyber-architects” 
(Marcos Novak, Neil Spiller, John Frazer, Karl Chu, etc.), celebrated the 
“digital turn” in architecture as well as the community of  thought that 
gathered around the topic of  architecture, ICT, and digital architecture.

These works were mostly focused on the issue of  dwelling, seeking 



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to redefine what it means to inhabit at a time when 
the virtualization of  space was seen as capable 
of  creating a transformation in man. Immersion 
in virtual spaces and, therefore, the mind-body 
problem, were examined with a view to the future 
of  man (individual, subject, or species) and his 
technological hybridization. It is not surprising, 
then, that the Architectural Design issue “Architects in 
Cyberspace” ended with a paper by Stelarc entitled 
“Towards the post-human: From Psycho-body to 
Cyber-system,” in which the artist announced the 
obsolescence of  
the biological body 
and the entry of  the 
human into a post-
evolutionary era.9

C r e a t i n g 
visions of  the world 
to come, reflecting 
on the evolution 
of  mankind and 
society, the “cyber-
architects” flirted 
with trans-humanist 
currents of  thought 
and definitions of  
the post-human. 
D i f f e r e n t i a t i n g 
itself  from 
philosophical-cultural post-humanism and from 
technological post-humanism, trans-humanism 
promotes the enhancement of  human intellectual, 
physical, and psychological capacities through 
techniques such as stem-cell therapy, genetic 
engineering, psycho-pharmacology,  anti-aging 
therapies,  neural interfaces, machines, and other 
mechanical enhancements.10 By taking control of  
the evolutionary process and thus liberating the 
human species from its biological limitations, trans-
humanists aim to attain a post-human existence 
whose visions range from the post-human as a 

figure 1: trans-vitruvian man



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cybernetic organism; a digital, disembodied entity; to even a new biological 
species.11 In the process, the definition of  the human would evolve, 
perhaps in unpredictable ways.

Most of  the digital architects believed that the emergence of  cyberspace 
would truly transcend everything we know.12 “What would architecture be 
in this sphere of  virtuality?” asked Karl Chu in 1995, before answering: 
“No one knows for sure, however one thing is certain, traditional 
conceptions of  territory, of  dwelling, of  identity, of  the phenomenology 
of  existence and being will no longer be the same.”13 Thought as a true 
phenomenological, perceptual, and phenomenal environment, cyberspace 
opened the possibility of  new modes of  being, and even of, in Michael 
Benedikt’s words, “another venue for consciousness itself.”14 

Marcos Novak, pioneer of  virtual reality and algorithmic architectural 
conception, exemplified this idea with a virtual environment called 
“Dancing with the Virtual Dervish: Worlds in Progress” (1991-1994) in 
which performers were compared to mystic Sufis in trance, immersed 
in a vision, an inner journey, exploring the meanderings of  the human 
mind. Generated from musical algorithms and L-Systems (a formal 
and generative grammar used to model and simulate growth in plants), 
this environment was made up of  an increasing number of  chambers 
interconnected on the rhizome model, without any narrative hierarchy or  
determined development, and without beginning or end, thus leading to 
ways of  being in space totally different from what we experience daily.15

For the British artist Roy Ascott, in the same spirit, cyberspace-
induced transformations in the concept of  inhabiting were considered so 
important that architecture needed to be fully rethought and urban strategy 
to be re-conceptualized.16 In fact, according to Ascott, new perceptual and 
cognitive abilities should have emerged from our relation to information 
and communication technologies, expanding our sensory apparatus and 
connecting our individual bodies. The ability to be both here and there 
at the same time, which cyberspace should have permitted, should have 
enabled new ways of  thinking and perceiving. The “post-biological faculty 
of  cyberception,” as called by Ascott, should have constituted a true 
“qualitative change in our being.” He claims, moreover, that: 

[n]ot only are we changing radically, body and mind, but we are becoming actively 
involved in our own transformation. […] Our consciousness allows us the fuzzy 
edge on identity, hovering between the inside and the outside of  every possible 
definition of  what it is to be a human being. We are all interface. We are comput-
er-mediated and computer-enhanced.17

By the late 1990s, it was conceded that what cyberspace architects 



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had dreamed of  was nothing but a fantasy. The 
inspiring word “cyberspace” became a synonym 
for the more prosaic Internet, making it clear 
that there was no distinct virtual space separated 
from our physical one. It was also conceded that 
what happened in the electronic space of  data and 
information networks in fact happened in our daily 
space, now hybridized by virtual technologies. Even 
William Gibson recognized that “[c]yberspace, not 
so long ago, was a specific elsewhere, one we visited 
periodically, peering into it from the familiar physical 
world. Now cyberspace has everted. Turned itself  
inside out. Colonized the physical.”18

The installation “Trans-ports” presented at the 
Venice Architecture Biennial 2000 by the Dutch 
artists Kas Oosterhuis and Ilona Lénárd, founders 
of  the ONL Agency, is a striking example of  this 
merging. Trans-ports was an experiment in data-
driven architecture: its structure was thought 
as reconfigurable in real-time in actual space as 
Internet users manipulated its online 3D model. 
Concomitantly, data collected in the physical space 
would also modify the structure, this modification 
being reverberated online, changing the 3D model. 
Then the connectedness and interdependence 
between physical and virtual spaces would be made 
obvious. Moreover, the “Trans-ports” inner skin 
was designed as a giant and continuous screen 
projecting information from websites or webcams, 
completely immersing visitors in data. This inner 
skin is conceptually very close to the hyper-
surface architecture theory developed by Stephen 
Perrella during the 1990s, where architecture was 
conceptualized as a media surface melting the 
virtual and the built environment into a single 
hybrid space.

Even if  the fantasy of  cyberspace had vanished, 
the insights developed by Roy Ascott remained 
deeply relevant. Beyond the traditional natural-
artificial debate thenceforth thought as obsolete, 

William 
Gibson 

recognized 
that 

Cyberspace 
has everted. 

Turned itself 
inside out. 

Colonized the 
physical

“

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what persisted was the idea of  an intentionally and technologically 
directed self-transformation of  humankind; and this some years before 
the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk wrote two essays on that very 
same proposition respectively entitled Rules for The Human Zoo19 and The 
Domestication of  Being.20 According to Sloterdijk, anthropogenesis is the result 
of  anthropotechnics: human beings produce their own identity by means 
of  technics (technological techniques). Neither technics nor technology 
would be “against” man: we would not be dealing with dehumanization by 
technology. On the contrary, such self-transformation would fully be part 
of  a greater, and genuine, effort to strive for a better humanity.

The architect Rachel Armstrong expressed a very similar idea in 1998. 
She stated that “all mechanised individuals, regardless of  their degree 
of  integration with technology, remain fundamentally human.[...] This 
transformation of  the body is not an artificial process; on the contrary, it 
is a natural extension of  our humanness. Our species has elevated itself  
on the Earth by its capacity to use machines, not by its innate genetic 
programming.”21 Yet, due to, for example, the emergence of  new species 
of  life, be they digital, mechanical, or bio-mechanical, the place of  man on 
the earth could well change faster than we expect, and in such a radical way 
that it could lead to the extinction of  humankind itself.

Toward New Species of Life: Toward the Death of Mankind?  
In 2002 Kas Oosterhuis declared that, “[d]igital life may well assimilate 

us completely in the end, so that we no longer need to pretend that we 
are the be-all and end-all of  evolution.”22 This architect, clearly, shared 
a theory of  personality like that of  Vernor Vinge or Ray Kurzweil, who 
popularized the hypothesis of  ‘singularity.’ Singularity is the idea that we 
are at the dawn of  a ‘technological leap’ determined by the exponential 
growth of  computer power that will result in the emergence of  artificial 
super-intelligences. Proponents of  singularity believe that, at some point, 
progress will be the accomplishment of  these artificial intelligences only, 
with humanity becoming obsolete. In the same way, we would no longer 
be in charge of  our own future: the super-intelligences would decide for 
us; choosing to annihilate us, absorb us, or let us live as they saw fit.

This technological post-humanist concept of  the post-human is quite 
different from that of  trans-humanism or from that of  philosophical-
cultural post-humanism. In fact, whereas trans-humanism embraced 
the project of  creating radically enhanced humanity, and whereas in 
philosophical-cultural post-humanism the concept of  the post-human 
serves as a basis for a new narrative that would not engage “the literal 



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end of  man but the end of  a particular image of  
us,”23 technological post-humanism envisions 
the very disappearance of  the human species. Its 
project, therefore, is not concerned with the human 
but with the production of  an artificial alterity that 
would not only be no longer human but would in 
fact supersede us, leading to a completely post-
anthropocentric, non-human world.

Karl Chu does not explicitly embrace that 
singularity idea, but his future world vision seems 
close to that of  technological post-humanism. Since 
the late 1990s he has been announcing the advent 
of  a post-human era which he has termed the 
‘hyperzoïc era’. This hyperzoïc era, a “Brave New 
World more fantastic and hyperbolic than anything 
we have seen in the history of  human civilization,”24 
would be not unlike the Cambrian era—an 
explosion of  diversification and complexity. It 
would be characterized by “the profusion of  a new 
type of  life; the Artificial Life of  abstract machines 
and architecture, which will be reflected in a new 
type of  bionic economy of  the mecanosphere, 
coinciding with the biosphere.”25

He reiterated the same ideas in 2004:

Finally, with the convergence of  computation and 
biogenetics, the world is now moving into the so-called 
Post-Human Era, which will bring forth a new kind 
of  bio-machinic mutation of  organic and inorganic 
substances. […] It is only a matter of  time before the 
world will witness biomachinic mutation of  species 
proliferating into every facet of  what so far has been 
the cultural landscape of  humanity. Architects take 
note: this is the beginning of  the demise, if  not the 
displacement, of  the reign of  anthropology, which has 
always subsumed architecture. […] The potential 
emancipation of  architecture from anthropology is 
already affording us to think for the first time of  a 
new kind of  xenoarchitecture with its own autonomy 
and will to being.26

The emphasis put on the possibility of  creating 

the world 
is now 

moving 
into the 

so-called 
Post-Human 

Era

“

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new species of  architectural life (that is, living buildings) from scratch, 
through the use of  genetic engineering and synthetic biology, is very 
interesting. Even more interesting is the idea that, in the same way, 
architecture, which, according to Chu, “has always been a subset 
of  anthropology,” “especially from the standpoint of  its mythical 
inception,”27 would no longer be subsumed by anthropology. This idea 
is not, however, developed further and nothing is said about what could 
become of  human beings in this new environment, except that it “may 
lead to conditions that are so precarious and treacherous as to even 
threaten the future viability of  the species, Homo sapiens, on Earth.”28

While also largely adhering to a post-anthropocentric trans-humanist 
view, Marcos Novak’s reflection on these issues is more intriguing. 
According to Novak, we would become alien. In 1998, referencing 
Nietzsche, he wrote that if  the project of  modernity might be characterized 
by the desire to build the super-man, our (post-modern) time would in 
turn be characterized by the desire to build what he calls “the alien.”29  In 
2002 he stated, again referencing Nietzsche and the end of  theo-centrism, 
that the production of  the alien, encompassing all aspects and areas of  our 
reality, would lead to the death of  mankind. “Allocentrism” would then 
replace anthropocentrism, undermining the traditional definition of  the 
human.30 “The death of  mankind” is not intended, however, to suggest 
some sort of  “literal, alarmist, and paranoid apocalyptic fear.” It implies, 
rather, that mankind is an ongoing project,31 and that this ongoing project, 
according to the architect, would tend toward the alien.

This idea can be linked, first, to what the French philosopher Michel 
Foucault claimed in The Order of  Things: that is to say that “man is an 
invention of  recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.”32 “Man is 
[…] a figure not yet two centuries old, a new wrinkle in our knowledge, 
and […] he will disappear again as soon as that knowledge has discovered 
a new form.”33 Thus, to say that mankind is an ongoing project tending 
toward the alien is to say that our understanding of  what is mankind, our 
conception of  man, is shifting. Secondly, in order to understand what it 
means to become alien, the whole conceptual landscape of  Marcos Novak 
needs to be examined, beginning with its central notion of  ‘transmodernity.’

Developed in the middle of  the 1990s, ‘transmodernity’ refers to 
the idea that our era is characterized by all that the prefix ‘trans-’ entails: 
‘beyond,’ ‘across,’ ‘through,’ ‘so as to change.’ Under the pressure of  
new technologies and hybridization of  virtual and actual spaces, all the 
traditional taxonomies (dead/alive, natural/artificial, human/non-human, 
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new events, new bodies, and new identities. Thus, 
the main effect of  transmodernity would be the 
“production of  the alien.” To sum up, our world 
would become stranger and stranger, and so would 
we: “[t]his is no surprise: transmodernity is about 
becoming: becoming alien.”34

In “Speciation, Transvergence, Allogenesis: 
Notes on the Production of  the Alien,” Novak 
stated that if  in the past our interest has been 
focused on evolution as a continuous process 
of  adaptation (relying on such concepts as 
fitness), today it is diversity and the discontinuous 
mechanisms of  speciation which might retain our 
attention. Drawing an analogy with biological 
processes (an analogy which requires, however, 
further explanation), Novak claims that: 

[t]o say that we are a transmodern culture is thus to say 
that we have placed ourselves into a period of  rapid and 
intentional cladogenesis. To say that transmodernity is 
characterised by the production of  the alien is to say 
that our cladogenesis is directed towards what I term 
allogenesis.35

Big Bang 2.0: Building a Brave New World? 

‘Cladogenesis’ refers to a mode of  evolution by 
branching, in which a parent species splits into two 
distinct species, the new species then being fed by 
the same genetic material as the one from which 
it originated. The neologism ‘allogenesis’ refers to 
the emergence of  new species from every available 
material—genetic, epigenetic, or even non-genetic. 
Allogenetic processes are more discontinuous 
than cladogenetic and can lead to the emergence 
of  “alien” species. This does not, however, mean 
that we would be dealing with a radical rupture but 
rather that the continuous movement of  becoming, 
now incorporating new technologies, would direct 
mankind towards exceptionally rapid changes.

Although intentionally and technologically 



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initiated by human design, allogenesis might result in beings which would 
be impossible to predict. It would moreover concern not only mankind 
but also the production of  other species. As Novak announced in 2008:

Established species were once mutant. There is a deep relationship between how 
the new is conceived, produced, introduced, and established in nature and how 
the new emerges in culture […] we have finally developed tools powerful enough 
not only to represent or describe the processes of  development and speciation by 
which the new enters the world, but to simulate them, and then, beyond that, 
to actually embody them. We will not stop at simulating the evolution and 
mechanisms of  life; we aim to manufacture new species of  life itself.36

Novak’s discourse is very similar to that of  Karl Chu. Novak and Chu 
in fact worked on similar projects that involved the growing of  truly 
living buildings. One example of  this ‘alloarchitecture’ (Novak’s term) 
is the project “AlloBio” (2001-2004), which is defined as an anticipation 
of  the convergence of  the virtual and the actual, the psychological and 
the cybernetical, the architectural and the biological. It may be one of  
the first examples of  what Neil Spiller calls ‘post-digital architecture’: not 
architecture without any digital component, but a synthesis between the 
virtual, the actual, the biological, the cyborgian, the augmented, and the 
mixed.37 “AlloBio” was described as the first specimen of  a hybrid singular 
species, an ‘allo-living’ creature at the intersection of  architecture and 
biotechnology. “AlloBio” might pave the way for buildings which would 
no longer be manufactured but would grow as plants or animals grow 
and would couple the virtual and the actual within reflexive and evolving 
spaces, fed both by data from computer networks and from events taking 
place in physical space. 
AlloBio might be said to have an awareness, a consciousness, and an 
intentionality of  its own. As truly intelligent architecture, 

[it] would have evolving personalit[y] that wouldn’t just behave differently in re-
sponse to our behavior, but would also change and strive to change us. We would 
not command [it]; rather we would be in dialogue with [it]. Sometimes we would 
persuade [it] to do as we wish; sometimes [it] would persuade us. 

This statement is indicative of  the desire to establish more respectful re-
lationships with our environment, beginning with our buildings. Beyond 
the ecological imperative which guides architects such as Dennis Dol-
lens, Michael Hensel, Rachel Armstrong, and Alberto T. Estévez,38 there 
appears to be a desire to create a new world, which is not only our own 
making but also a product of  an ongoing dialogue with these kinds of  

alien architectures.



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The idea that it might be possible to create a 
new world, or that a new world might be about to 
emerge thanks to biotechnology, nanotechnology, 
cognitive science, and informatics, is not unique to 
Chu and Novak. It is also shared by Roy Ascott. 
According to Ascott a new Big ‘B.A.N.G.’ would 
result from the convergence of  bits, atoms, neurons, 
and genes, hybridizing the dry silicon digital domain 
of  computers and the wet biological world of  living 
systems. The birth of  this new world might be so 
transformative that human identity itself  might be 
pushed to a much more complex level. For Ascott 
the questions “[w]hat is to be human?” and “how 
do we deal with the responsibility of  redefining 
nature and life itself ?”39 emerge as key questions 
for our era. Both are of  equal importance and 
are deserving of  being treated urgently both in 
scientific and in artistic fields.

As Ascott wrote: “The artificial is now part of  
our nature, and nature is in large part artificial.”40 
Moreover: “In as much as we are a part of  nature, 
we wish now to be consciously involved in its 
co-evolution, which is to say in our own self-
definition and reconstruction.”41 The fact that 
the questions “what is it to be human?” “what 
will man become?” and “what do we want nature 
to become?” were addressed jointly merits some 
attention. Now, more than ten years after the 
publication of  Ascott’s paper, it is possible to create 
new species of  life almost from scratch with the help 
of  what are called ‘living technologies’ (synthetic 
biology, genetic engineering, etc.).42 Through these 
technologies nature is in fact compelled to adapt to 
mankind: “technology, often depicted as the enemy 
of  nature, will bring us closer to it, but it will be a 
nature entirely re-described, and re-aligned to our 
post-biological sensibilities.”43 Even in the context 
of  ecological crisis, nature is seen as something to 
enhance so that it can continue to meet our needs.

Between 2003 and 2014 the Genetic 

The 
artificial is 

now part of 
our nature, 

and nature is 
in large part 

artificial 

“

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Architectures Research Group (which includes Alberto T. Estévez, 
Dennis Dollens, and Karl Chu) developed bioluminescent lemon trees 
which could be used for street lighting by implanting in their cells genes 
extracted from jellyfish which produce a fluorescent protein (GFP). 
Between 2007 and 2010 the same Genetic Architectures Research Group 
led experiments to develop living tissue and cell masses as a building 
material, allowing living walls to be constructed autonomously, or rather 
to grow on their own. This latter project is quite similar to that of  the New 
York architecture firm Terreform One named “In Vitro Meat Habitat” 
(2008), which is a prototype of  organic architectural skin made of  pig cells 
via 3D printing. In 2015 the American-Israeli architect and designer Neri 
Oxman presented “Mushtari”, a life-support system made for intergalactic 
travelers and consisting of  a prosthetic organ filled with synthetically 
modified micro-organisms. Pointing out that the two bacteria at work in 
this project never meet in the wild, she said: “Think of  it as evolution not 
by natural selection, but evolution by design.”44

This statement is representative of  the way living species are 
instrumentalized. No matter how important the ethical and philosophical 
questions raised by the possibility of  engineering life may be, architects 
such as Amstrong, Estévez, Oxman, and Michael Hensel do not seem 
to be eager to develop critical reflection on their practices. Similarly, 
however ‘alive’ buildings might become, they would not become free from 
subservience to human beings. Significantly, in her book Living Architecture: 
How Synthetic Biology Can Remake Our Cities and Reshape Our Lives, Rachel 
Armstrong asked: “Perhaps our homes could care for us, come to our 
rescue, or even love us?”45 In other words the end of  anthropocentrism 
which Karl Chu announced has not yet come. As, as it would seem, our 
human mindset is not changing, there would seem to be little possibility 
that we could in fact build a better world.

Conclusion

During the last thirty years avant-garde architects have been working 
on what and for whom they will build in future decades. During the 
1990s architects dreamed of  a totally artificial and immaterial world. Thus 
freed from terrestrial anchorage, enabled to become pure information, 
mankind would have become post-human, as post-biological beings in a 
computer simulation run by machines (undeniably like the fantasy world 
of  The Matrix).46 During the 2000s it was realized that this would not be 
so. The exponential growth of  technologies, new and old, was making 
everything we know—the artificial, the natural, or the hybridized—more 



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and more complex. Our gaze therefore turned to 
the biological realm as the place where we might 
create new forms of  biomachinic life, questioning 
and subverting our relationships to the world, to 
nature, and to ourselves. During the 2000s, however, 
we were not able to produce these new forms of  
life, and Marcos Novak’s “AlloBio” building, for 
example, remained but an imaginary architecture.

As, however, science and technology improve, 
it may yet be possible to re-engineer the biology of  
the whole of  nature and to build a ‘Nature 2.0.’ It 
would, then, be time to ask important questions—
those very same questions which architects have 
always pondered. What kind of  world do we want to 
live in? What kind of  relationship with nature do we 
want to have? What pathway do we want to follow 
concerning our own evolution? A new paradigm 
is needed, as Chu suggested, for our role as active 
agents in the transformation of  our environments 
and, indeed, of  our universe at large.47 Such as 
new paradigm is necessary for at least two reasons: 
firstly, because those who are currently shaping 
the new world often fail to take stock of  their 
responsibilities, and, secondly (and perhaps more 
importantly), as pointed out by Roy Ascott, because 
what we will do to our environments is part of  the 
definition of  what we will ourselves become. While 
much seems unclear, one thing at least is certain: 
the way we will transform nature will influence our 
own evolution. 

Endnotes

[1] Roy Ascott, “The Architecture of  
Cyberperception,” Architectural Design 65, no.11/12 
(1995): 38.

[2] It must be acknowledged that if  the 
democratization of  the personal computer was the 
condition for the possibility of  the digital turn—
this democratization permitting every architect and 

While much 
seems unclear, 

one thing at 
least is certain: 

the way we 
will transform 

nature will           
influence our   

own evolution 

“

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every architecture firm to have a computer—the digital turn would of  
course never have happened without the development of  3D modeling 
software that allowed architects and firms to design forms on screen 
that would be impossible to hand draw, even making it possible to add 
a temporal dimension to the design. See Antoine Picon, Digital Culture in 
Architecture: An Introduction for the Design Professions (Basel: Birkhauser, 2010); 
and Mario Carpo, ed., The Digital Turn in Architecture 1992-2012 (London: 
John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2013).

[3] William Gibson, Neuromancer (New York: Ace Books, 1986), 51. 

[4] Michael Benedikt, ed., Cyberspace: First Steps (Cambridge: The MIT 
Press, 1992).

[5] Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

[6] William Mitchell, City of  Bits (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996).

[7] Architectural Design 65, no.11/12 (1995).

[8] Architectural Design 68, no.11/12 (1998).

[9] Stelarc, “Towards the Post-Human. From Psycho-body to Cyber-
system,” Architectural Design 65, no.11/12 (1995): 90-96.

[10] Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, “Transhumanism as a Secularist Faith,” 
Zygon 47, no.4 (2012): 716-717.

[11] Robert Ranisch and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, “Introducing Post- and 
Transhumanism,” in Post- and Transhumanism: An Introduction, eds. Robert 
Ranisch and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner (New York: Peter Lang, 2014), 7-8.

[12] According to John Frazer, however, cyberspace was not the cause but 
the symptom of  this profound transformation: “The parallel world of  
cyberspace […] is just one manifestation of  deep cultural and technical 
changes which are reshaping our understanding of  our world,” he wrote 
in 1995, stressing that this paradigm shift is characterized by “the shift of  
perception from an universe of  objects to one of  relationships.” See John 
Frazer, “The Architectural Relevance of  Cyberspace,” Architectural Design 
65, no.11/12, (1995): 76.

[13] Karl Chu, “Modal space: The Virtual Anatomy of  Hyperstructures,” 
Architectural Design 65, no.11/12, (1995): 69.

[14] Michael Benedikt, “Cyberspace: Some Proposals,” in Cyberspace: First 
Steps, ed. Michael Benedikt (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1991), 124.

[15] Marcos Novak, “Dancing with the Virtual Dervish: Worlds in 
Progress,” in Immersed in technology, art and virtual environments, eds. Marie 
Anne Moser and Douglas MacLeod (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996), 
303-308.



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[16] Ascott, “The Architecture of  Cyberperception,” 40.

[17] Ibid. 38.

[18] William Gibson, “Google’s Earth,” New York Times (New York, 
NY), August 31, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/
opinion/01gibson/html?scp=1&sq=william+gibson&st=nyt. 

[19] Peter Sloterdijk, “Rules for The Human Zoo: A Response to the 
Letter on Humanism,” trans. Mary Varney Rorty, Society and Space 27 
(2009): 12-28.

[20] Peter Sloterdijk, Die Domestikation des Seins. Für eine Verdeutlichung der 
Lichtung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000).

[21] Rachel Armstrong, “Body Machine,” AD Architectural Design 68, 
no.11/12 (1998): 92.

[22] Kas Oosterhuis, “Yes, We Build Spaceships,” in Architecture Goes Wild 
(Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2002), 30-37.

[23] Ihab Hassan, “Prometheus as Performer: Towards a Posthumanist 
Culture?,” The Georgia Review 31, no.4 (1977): 845.

[24]Karl Chu, “The Turing Dimension,” Archilab, published 2000, accessed 
October 20, 2016, http://www.archilab.org/public/2000/catalog/
xkavya/xkavyaen.htm.

[25] Karl Chu, “X Phylum,” Domus 822 (2000): 42-45.

[26] Karl Chu, “Metaphysics of  Genetic Architecture and Computation,” 
Perspecta 35 (2004): 78.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid. 76.

[29] Marcos Novak, “Alien Space: The Shock of  The View,” CIRCA Art 
+ Technology Supplement 90 (1998): 12-13.

[30] See Marcos Novak, “Speciation, Transvergence, Allogenesis: Notes 
on the Production of  the Alien,” AD Architectural Design 72, no.3 (2002): 
66. Novak writes:

Renaissance humanism, the anthropocentric production of  the philosophical 
notion of  Man, followed an era preoccupied with the theocentric production of  the 
philosophical notion of  God. The birth of  Man eventually led to the collapse of  
theocentrism, which Nietzsche characterised as the ‘Death of  God’, thus, I suggest, 
beginning a series: the production of  God (PoG) is followed by the production 
of  Man (PoM); the production of  Man leads to the death of  God (DoG); the 
production of  Man is followed by the production of  the Alien (PoA), which, in 
turn leads to the death of  Man (DoM). […]



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In other words, centrifugal allocentrism is now displacing anthropocentrism, just 
as anthropocentrism displaced theocentrism, with the alien taking the place of  the 
Nietzschean overman, and extending itself  past all human limits to encompass all 
aspects of  our constructed reality.

[31] Ibid. 67.

[32] Michel Foucault, The Order of  Things: An Archaeology of  the Human 
Sciences (New York: Routledge, 2002), 422.

[33] Ibid. xxv.

[34] Marcos Novak, “Transarchitectures and Hypersurfaces, Operations 
of  Transmodernity,” Architectural Design 68, no.5/6 (1998): 85.

[35] Novak, “Speciation, Transvergence, Allogenesis,” 67.

[36] Marcos Novak, “Alien Beauty: Immanent Design. AlloAtomic 
Transarchitectures for Automutant (Allo)Selves,” in Manufacturing – Share 
Festival 2008, ed. Bruce Sterling (Turino: Share Festival, 2008), 143.

[37] Neil Spiller, “Plectic Architecture: Towards a Theory of  the Post-
Digital in Architecture,” Technoetic Arts: A Journal of  Speculative Research 7, 
no. 2 (2009): 95-104.

[38] Marcos Novak, interview by Alessandro Ludovico, Neural, published 
April 2001, accessed October 20, 2016, http://www.neural.it/english/
marcosnovak.htm.

[39] For all of  them, the artificial life of  architecture may be one of  
the answers to the ecological crisis. On that matter, see Denis Dollens, 
“Architecture as Nature: A Biodigital Hypothesis,” Leonardo 42, no.5 
(2009): 412–420; Alberto T. Estévez, “Genetic Architecture: New 
Ecologic-Environmental Architectural Design & New Cybernetic-Digital 
Architectural Design,” in Genetic architectures, ed. Alberto T. Estévez (Santa 
Fe: Lumen Books; Barcelona: SITES Books/Escola Tecnica Superior 
d’Arquitectura, 2003), 4-19; Rachel Armstrong, Living Architecture: How 
Synthetic Biology Can Remake Our Cities and Reshape Our Lives (New York: 
TED Books, 2012); Michael Hensel, “(Synthetic) Life Architectures: 
Ramifications and Potentials of  a Literal Biological Paradigm for 
Architectural Design,” Architectural Design 76 no.2 (2006): 18–25.

[40] Roy Ascott, “Moistmedia, Technoetics and the Three VRs,” 
ISEA2000, published 2000, accessed October 27, 2016, http://www.
isea2000.com/actes_doc/01_ascott.rtf.

[41] Ibid.

[42] See Mark A. Bedau, John S. McCaskill, Norman H. Packard, and 
Steen Rasmussen, “Living Technology: Exploiting Life’s Principles in 



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Technology,” Artificial Life 16, no.1 (2010): 89-97.

[43] Ascott, “Moistmedia, Technoetics and the Three VRs.”

[44] Neri Oxman, “Design at the Intersection of  Technology and Biology” 
(presentation, TED2015, Vancouver, Canada, March 2015), accessed 
March 09, 2016, https://www.ted.com/talks/neri_oxman_design_at_
the_intersection_of_technology_and_biology?language=en.

[45] Armstrong, Living Architecture.

[46] The Matrix, directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski (Burbank, CA : 
Warner Bros, 1999), DVD.

[47] Chu, “The Turing Dimension.”


	0-Front Matter
	1-Editorial
	2-Harries and Scruton
	3-Pedragosa
	4-Hvattum
	5-Dicks
	6- Roussel 
	7-Back Matter



