Adaptivity, agency and autonomy are concepts closely associated not only with the performative aspects of architectural interventions but also with the nature of the techniques and tools that produce them. These terms might imply an enhanced relationship between architecture, its inhabitants and its environment; a complex link between architecture, its production and its tools; or a capacity of architecture to produce new conditions and grounds on which it could be engaged. Digital tools and techniques that proliferated in the past decade have suggested a new category of work where questions of autonomy, indeterminacy or precision are coming into the foreground. Our tools are learning and as they gain autonomy, awareness, and adaptivity – through sensors and machine learning processes – they can no longer be thought of as mere production machines that execute an a priori design. Their complexity generates potential for misbehavior and misalignment between our intentions and design outcomes. This opens up a new territory where the unexpected and the indeterminate are at work. Evaluating these new conditions demands an active approach to design, its production and its critique. A new kind of productivity emerges when we partner up with our tools.

This call looks beyond traditional computing and fabrication, and into the future of making where tools are co-operative agents in an enactive process and adapt their collective actions to the requirements of their situation.

• How are autonomy, awareness, emergence, embodiment, and experience shaping computational tools and techniques?
• How are complex, evolving, adaptive and self-learning systems producing the indeterminate in Architecture?
• How is precision/imprecision or control/emergence and separation manifested in new design trajectories?
• How is the shift from deterministic towards open-ended processes reshaping our production of digital and physical tools?
• What is the new direction in steering of processes of formation, fabrication, or simulation?
• How is the role of a designer changing in a priori design versus design of adaptive processes?
• How are integrated human/machine models of collaboration, production, and interaction changing design context and perspectives?

We are seeking contributions that evidence a spectrum of novel design explorations and exploitations, a spectrum of work that illustrates the divergence and convergences of human, machine and mixed agencies at the intersection with adaptivity, adjustable autonomy, and architecture. To submit a paper, please follow submission guidelines and instructions on how to submit at: https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/international-journal-of-architectural-computing/journal202464

In your cover letter, please indicate that you are submitting your manuscript for consideration in IJAC Vol. 16 Issue 4. Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Architecture: Autonomy, agency and indeterminacy

If you have any questions or would like to volunteer as a reviewer, please contact the IJAC Editorial board at [email protected]

Important Dates

• Papers Due: May 14 2018
• Decisions By: June 30 2018
• Revisions and Final Manuscript Due: July 30 2018
• Publication: October - December 2018

Guest Editors

• Mark Clayton, Texas A&M University, USA.
• Mahesh Daas, University of Kansas, USA.
• David J. Gerber, University of Southern California, USA.
• Wassim Jabi, Cardiff University, UK.
• Mara Marcu, University of Cincinnati, USA.
• Vera Parlac, University of Calgary, Canada.
• Lauren Vasey, University of Stuttgart, Germany.
• Andrew John Wit, Temple University, USA.