Soft Architecture Machines

Soft Architecture Machines is the second book published by the Architecture Machine Group, appearing in 1975. Soft Architecture Machines was produced by Negroponte on an IMLAC PDS-1 at the ArcMac lab. Composition was in Helvetica on a Linotron 505 by Radnor Graphic Arts. Nevertheless, the transition to authoring on the computer wasn't an easy one. In an Author's Note (xi), Negroponte explains that writing was completed by the summer of 1972 and the book was machine-readable by fall of that year, input via paper tape. Problems with computer typesetting and, in particular, automation led to the three year delay in publication.

Soft Architecture Machines begins with a retreat from the optimism of the Architecture Machine with respect to the capabilities of [[Artificial Intelligence]]. Instead, Negroponte suggests, the Architecture Machine can make a more responsive, more meaningful environment possible for the individual. The computer would act as a tool for creativity in the built environment, to provide, in Negroponte's words, "everyone a quality of architecture most closely approximated in indigenous architecture (architecture without architects)." (ix)

Indeed, the Introduction begins with Negroponte's observation that the book "moves progressively further and further away from what you might consider to be architecture or might view as design process used by architects. As the book progresses you will notice that first the process and then the artifact are
'assisted,' 'augmented,' and eventually 'replicated' by a computer."

Quite directly, the book, Negroponte suggested, was not antiarchitectural but was antiarchitect, suggesting that the architect was merely a middleman
between an individual and the environment. Cutting architect's no slack, Negroponted suggested that the book is "about a new kind of architecture without architects (and even without surrogate architects)."(x) The Soft Architecture Machines to which the title referred to were of the second type of architecture machine outlined in the previous book. In the distant future, Negroponte concluded, "they won't help us design; instead, we will live in them." (5)

An essay "Aspects of Machine Intelligence" by [[Gordon Pask]] began the book.

In chapter 2, on "Computer Graphics," Negroponte criticized existing efforts in that field, such as Ivan Sutherland's SKETCHPAD for conceiving of the computer as a mere instrument, as Steven Coons put it in his introduction to the chapter, "an idiot-slave model of a fast draftsman who doesn't eat."(53) In this model, the computer merely visually represented previously digitized information. Instead, Negroponte suggested, the computer should be able to see or draw. As in the overview chapter, Negroponte's concern was with a machine that could understand contexts, this time visual contexts, and to make inferences.

In contrast to SKETCHPAD, ArcMac had [[HUNCH]], a sketch recognition system that would allow users to make loose sketches and then would come to an understanding of the user's intent, in two dimensions, three dimensions, and architecturally. "Each category is progressively more difficult," Negroponte wrote, "They range from recognizing a square, to recognizing a cube, to being a new brutalist." (65) HUNCH operated on the basis of a sketchpad that could interpret drawings through speed and pressure.

The third chapter, on Computer-Aided Participatory Design launched from Negroponte's thesis that "each individual can be an architect," (100).

In contrast to previous attempts at flexible design that he felt were inherently limited, Negroponte sketched out a vision of an responsive environment that would not only change but that would take on an active role in those changes.

In the Appendix, entitled "The Architecture Machine," Negroponte laid out the evolution of the Architecture Machine from 1968 to 1974. In fact, this was not one machine, but a series of machines.