Architectural Cybernetics

We have never had eyes patient enough to perceive plants’ responses to the chemical or energetic changes in their environment. Nor do we have the time for it. But at some point—have we ever wondered whether our spaces could possess such structural and plastic qualities? I do not know, because habit makes us stumble blindly through life, makes us forget our origin, makes us lose the only thing we truly bring into this existence.

Seated in a place that feels like some machinic stage designed by Tim Burton, I converse with a man who smiles and rubs his face when I ask him about the fundamental objective of the research group Adaptable Structures. He answers:
“Architecture must account for the historical moment; therefore, it must respond to the new models derived from mass communication, the home as a workplace, and the global economy. Architecture cannot continue to be projected with the premises of the past century—it must adapt to the needs of the environment and of contemporary humanity.”

This calm, observant figure is Ricardo Franco, professor and director of the Adaptable Structures Research Group in the Interior Architecture program at Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano. A graduate of the National University and an anachronistic poète maudit, he completed in 2002 the first research thesis of his university, Architectural Adaptability Through Structural Mobility, which was awarded Meritorious Thesis and later became an educational book published in various outlets.

Alongside that thesis he carried out the investigation Adaptable Structures Through Mechanical and Cybernetic Processes, and he currently focuses on the research Adaptable Structures Applied to Housing. His trajectory as a researcher has been highly productive, supported by numerous objectives and awards achieved.

When asked about his team, he remarks that ninety percent of the credit belongs to the students, who have taken ownership of the knowledge and, through their expertise, contributed key elements to the research. He conceives of them as the instrumentalists of an orchestra made up of Tadeísta students from interior architecture, industrial design, graphic design, and fine arts—an orchestra directed by him and his co-researcher.

Looking ahead, the Adaptable Structures group envisions itself as one that will produce academic publications from its results, and establish a Tadeísta company capable of bringing prototypes into production and implementation—thus offering the country better living conditions through products that address needs and improve spatial performance.

The interest in adaptable structures arises from observing the changes brought about by new technology and from Ricardo’s encounter with the concept of cybernetics in the 1990s. This encounter changed his outlook on life when he realized that everything alive is cybernetic. That realization led him to seek a way to give life to architecture by applying this concept in his future work.

In that process, he discovered that an adaptable structure has a mechanical functioning that must respond to a need generated by a change in the environment—not by chance or whim. This idea has been revolving in his mind for more than ten years: to generate prototypes where transformation arises from information gathered from the environment, processed in order to react to it through mechanisms.

Finally, when I ask him about himself, he replies that he has spent thirty years truly wondering who he is. With a mischievous smile, he recalls that he keeps at home some books compiling his poetic work—volumes which, he believes, will make themselves known in their own time.