The platonic forehand and backhand of cybernetic architecture

Since the 1960s, the field of digital architecture has been grounded on a computational practice of design, which has been inseparable from cybernetic constructions of architectural issues. The result of the former has been a common oscillation, in digital architectural practices, between the construction of design problems in reference to technoscientific notions and its construction as a reification of such resources. This article analyzes these aspects of digital architecture in reference to N.K. Hayles’s vision of the construction of knowledge as a “seriation” and her conception of the “platonic forehand and backhand” in the work of scientists. Finally, the author identifies possible scenarios for a cybernetic practice of architecture that is not necessarily trapped in technocratic and reified visions of design issues