Fourteenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

In 1949, economist William Phillips built a physical model of the entire British economy. Composed of pipes and gears, this “liquid computer” used water to model macroeconomic processes. Phillips’ machine was a perfect physical embodiment of the Keynesian financial system, in which all of a nation’s economic processes were understood as a delicate balance of distribution and control. Although Phillips’ model was built as an economic tool, his work is part of a long history of exchange between the fields of economics and architecture. In a more recent example, increasingly complex “digital twins”—digital models of real-world systems that provide information for how to manipulate said systems—are utilized to model and control buildings, landscapes, and cities. These models are not technically representations of economic processes, but they descend from an historical lineage in which economic thought influenced the design and use of tools in architectural practice. This paper investigates this knowledge exchange between architecture and economics through critically examining the concept of the “digital twin” in architectural and environmental construction today, and examines how—in contrast to Phillips’ model—“digital twins” are a specifically neoliberal tool. Through feedback mechanisms and highly complex transfers of information, “digital twins” tout the ability to circumvent human labor, regulations, and cost in favor of an automated construction and design process. This paper examines how this hope of a fully automated future affects the design professions, the role of labor, and architecture’s role in urban and natural systems.