In the architecture studio where I teach (editor's note: at HKU), we focus a lot on housing and especially the second semester is dedicated to traditional architecture in rural China. This is something that has to do a lot with crafts, with vernacular architecture, with natural materials and on the other side I work with robots and state-of-the-art technology, and so it begs the question: Is there any kind of connection between the two or are these completely separate entities that I am working with? My personal view on this is that there is no such thing as going only one way in the 21st century. Right now, everything is possible at the same time. We have rural areas where architecture is very traditional and we have robots; we have all these kinds of different environments, but I think right now the best architects are the ones who are capable of mixing all these things together. Throughout history, the best architects were the ones who were generalists. An architect needs to be a craftsman, engineer, artist and psychologist – you need to have an understanding of social situations, of people and what people need. The fact that we now have AR, AI, robots and all these kinds of tools, this is all they are: tools. Therefore, as architects, as designers, we are still the ones who control them and still the ones who kind of make them form decisions. Even if it is machine learning, we are the ones who are feeding the input, so we are still the generators. I think it's not really a limitation that we have robots, if a robot becomes a limitation, it is because it is not used in the right way; as long as we take control and we understand these are just tools that we are using – maybe to improve or to optimise our workflow – we have an even broader range of design parameters to work with rather than being limited.

It was extremely rewarding and it was a process that I learned a lot from. We were a team of three marine biologists, David M. Baker, Vriko Yu and Phil Thompson, and originally three architects, Christian J. Lange, myself, and Dominic Co, and then we were also joined by another research assistant, Lim Jason Hu. It was quite a small team, but the roles were really well defined; that made for a really good workflow, because as architects and people working with robots, we had no idea about marine biology and marine biologists did not really know about 3D printing and design. We would always have meetings where they explained to us every single thing that needed to be incorporated in the design: we knew that it had to be a tile, we knew that there were going to be people who were going to dive and deploy this tile underwater – so we had to find the simplest way of getting them underwater and putting them all together, that is why we came up with the hexagonal tile, just so we could have normal tiling that would be really easy for the divers to put underwater. Another important factor was Hong Kong's subtropical climate, which leads to underwater sedimentation. Due to this reason, we could not have a tile that was like a solid tile, it had to have a lot of perforations in it, but with 3D printing, you cannot have traditional round perforations – so how do you create the shapes? Every single piece of information that we came across, had to be incorporated in the

design and then the design needed to be made feasible for 3D printing. The tiles were supposed to be quite large, around 70cm each, but clay is a material that has a certain behaviour, it has fluidity, it dries, it shrinks, it cracks. It was always this loop between what we learned we needed to do from the marine biologists and what we could do with the machine and the material. This was a process that I, personally, learned a lot from and I think this is really important for architects in the 21st century. Right now we are witnessing the world changing, so we have to be flexible and we have to design in a new way. The question is not whether we need to work in an interdisciplinary way, because we already know that we do, the best question to ask is: who are we working with and who should we pair with to make design that is relevant, design that helps this world that we are living in? Who are the best people to work with in order to create something that is worth doing? What are the skills that we need to cover that we ourselves do not have as architects?

done with them, but I also see a lot of potential in soft robotics, minibots and different kinds of robots. This gap happens because, for example, if you are going to do a project with soft robotics, of course you need a different types of structure, a different type of design, a different type of architecture – for this reason we are going to need more time and we are going to have to go through a switch in mindset and we need to embrace a new type of architecture and design that can be done with these tools. Each tool has its own personality and its own unique qualities, so with more adaptable robots and more flexible robots you also have to have different types of structures that we are not used to seeing as architecture; we are used to seeing them as pavilions or prototypes – this is where we have to provoke the switch in order to have a renewal of architecture, and a complete renewal of the tools we use.

n order to think about the future, you have to be really aware of the present and the past. The first thing we have to do is take into consideration the current realities: we do not have the same luxuries as the architects did 100, 200 years ago, to basically experiment with structure, with form, with material just for the sake of it. Right now, everything that we do has to be very environmentally conscious. Actually, that was a luxury we should have never had, because that is what brought the world to the stage where it is right now.

'In architecture we are quite intelligent about the way in which we use robots, so I would advise architects to be part of the teams that are advocating for ethical use of technology and always using sustainable materials.'

The first and most important thing is to work with biomaterials, to work with architecture that is worth doing, that responds to problems, but on the other hand, I would hate to be part of a generation that is only associated with solving what the previous generation did, and only with optimisation. I do have this fairly bohemian view of architecture; I still think beauty matters and aesthetic matters and that architecture is an art. It is just a matter of how we are going to treat it like an art while being conscious of what we do. Although we have all these tools like AR and AI and although even in the general construction industry things have changed, we still need to be in control, there still is a certain human factor that is irreplaceable. As strong, as intelligent and as amazing the robots can be, they are only as good as the person programming them. That is why I would advise all young architects and all young designers to take into consideration that they are humans designing for humans and a good architect is a person who has a lot of knowledge and who has a certain personality and who has something to say in this world. It is not a matter of saying what the robot wants you to say, it is a matter of the robot saying what you want to say. Always take control of what you do. If I had to look towards the future, I think we have to be a lot more conscious about what we are doing, but not fall into this trap of over-rationalisation. If you read articles now, people are really afraid to talk about beauty, about aesthetics, about form-finding techniques, because we always want to over-rationalise everything. It needs to be a given that it is rationalised, it is optimised, it is for a purpose and then we should not omit the actual design part of it.

Even if you think you are not very digitally inclined or tool-inclined, it is very important that you learn this kind of code-based software and that you learn to work with contemporary tools. This is a reality that we really have to embrace. It is not at a stage anymore where it is about your personality, or your personal preferences. In the future, in 10-20 years, this is going to be a given, so it is better to stay ahead of the times and start working with these tools. What I really like about architecture right now is that humans are working together with robots – if you look at the weapon industry, it is very scary what a robot can do, but in architecture we are quite intelligent about the way in which we use robots, so I would advise architects to be part of the teams that are advocating for ethical use of technology and always using sustainable materials. The reality is that technology is here, we just have to be very smart about the way that we use it.