This article discusses the impact that the emergence of the concept of the cybercity, which links architectural theory to the computer-constructed information matrix, will have on postmodern architectural theory.
The profound change from the modern to the postmodern, from the machine age to the information age, will undoubtedly bring about a profound change in architectural philosophy. If modernist architecture is a tool for regulating the space of human social life and activity in the machine age, an analytical space oriented towards efficiency and discipline, then the cybercity may influence the development of postmodern architecture in a direction that is even more unstructured than that of the last century. As Michael Heim said, artistic and technological fascination are linked. The imagination of the cybercity will inevitably influence the representation of the new architecture. In the digital society, the efficient and organised city required by the machines of production is gradually being replaced by a space of flows defined by worldwide computer networks. The rules have been tampered with. The cybercity will be a vast loose structure of nodes rather than an industrialised enclosed space formed by regulated cellular partitions.
One thing worthy of pondering is that we need to care enough about the humanity of future architecture to arrive at a better future society, rather than the highly technological but marginalised, brutal and crumbling anti-utopian societies that are so prevalent in cyberpunk works.
– Qiu Xiaoyuan, 3036126795