The Order of Cyberspace

“Building is communicating,” said Patrik Schumacher during a talk at UVA called Cyberspace and the Autopoiesis of Architecture. “The most general description of architecture’s task is to provide order,” he argued, and “any kind of social order requires a spatial order.” Architecture, then, orders through communication—something that, in his analysis, only occurs today “in a very bastardized and degenerate way.” For Schumacher, cyberspace is another infrastructure—like architecture—which sustains societal order and communicative systems, and so its design should be the purview of the architect: “The internet became the domain of the graphic designers, I think now it’s time to shift back to buildings and cities.” In this way, “all design is UI/UX design.” There’s also the benefit, that, “in architecture, we are swamped with the projects of contractors and engineers, but in cyberspace the focus is absolute.” “I’m someone who wants to take serious responsibility for the built environment of the future,” said Schumacher—and for him, that future is squarely on-line.