Information, Communication, Feedback: The Festival Plaza (Japan World Exposition Osaka 1970), Center Pompidou and Sendai Mediatheque as Suggestive Examples of Artificially Intelligent Architecture

Abstract

This paper attempts to propose the characteristics of artificially intelligent architectural design through the case studies of the Festival Plaza (Japan World Exposition Osaka 1970), Center Pompidou and Sendai Mediatheque and studies the handling of information, communication and feedback processes in these suggestive cybernetic environments. The first section of this paper analyzes Center Pompidou by researching the competition brief and the initial states of the winning entries presenting their preserved notions against the bureaucratic, political and budgetary constraints. The second section surveys the contemporary history behind the projection of a cultural center as a cybernetic or more precisely as information broadcasting entity by reviewing Geddes’s Index Museum, Malraux’s Le Musée Imaginaire (Museum Without Walls), etc. Finally, the third section summarizes the contributions of the Festival Plaza to the cybernetic (or information and communication) conception of the Center Pompidou, Archigram (or vice versa) and eventually represents Sendai Mediatheque as a suggestive apotheosis of this overlapping cybernetic discourse. This paper then concludes the characteristics of artificially intelligent architectural design by suggesting that the technology of artificial intelligence, acting invisibly as in the background of these cybernetic environments, autonomously collects, analyzes, interprets, disseminates, receives and feedbacks information.

Keywords

• artificially intelligent architectural design
• cybernetic environment
• processing of information
• festival plaza
• center pompidou
• sendai mediatheque