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Figure 7.24.
digitally controlled architectural structure. source: silver et al.
2001, 907.
than the users themselves. This principle is now employed in environmental
control systems with a learning capability” (Frazer 1995, 41). The reference to
“boredom” here was an explicit evocation of the Musicolour machine.
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At a more micro level and closer to the present, a 2001 survey of projects at
the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College, London, “Prototypi-
cal Applications of Cybernetic Systems in Architectural Contexts,” subtitled
“A Tribute to Gordon Pask,” is very much in the Musicolour-Fun Palace tradi-
tion, assembling the elements for structures that can transform themselves in
use (Silver et al. 2001). One project, for example, entailed the construction of
a digitally controlled transformable structure—the skin of a building, say—a
key element of any building that can reshape itself in use (fig. 7.24). Another
project centered on communication via sounds, lights, and gestures between
buildings and their users, reminiscent of the communications systems linking
the robots in Pask's Colloquy of Mobiles (fig. 7.25).
In another tribute to Pask, “The Cybernetics of Architecture,” John Frazer
(2001) discusses the history of a big, long-term project at the AA, in which
Pask participated until his death. The morphogenesis project, as it was called,
ran from 1989 to 1996 and was very complex and technically sophisticated; I
will simply discuss a couple of aspects of it in general terms.
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We have so far discussed cybernetic architecture in terms of relations
between buildings and users—the former should somehow constitute an
