At Bletchley Park, I found myself looking at circuit boards that looked remarkably like city masterplans, floorplans and adjacency diagrams.
The circuit board and the Masterplan are both diagrams of relationships. That’s why these drawings feel so familiar.
They are both maps of connection.
The difference is that one connects components.
The other connects people.
It struck me that architecture and computing share something fundamental: both are attempts to organise complexity.
But they organise very different things.
A computer is designed around certainty.
Architecture exists because people are uncertain.
Perhaps that’s the fundamental distinction between computing and architecture.
One organises machines.
The other creates the conditions for human life.
Electricity follows predictable paths.
People don’t.
We experience places differently depending on our age, our abilities, our emotions and our lived experiences.
People stop to talk in corridors.
Children run the “wrong” way.
Someone with dementia may avoid a space because it feels confusing.
An autistic person might experience the same room completely differently to someone else.
A wheelchair user reads a building differently from an ambulant user.
Someone grieving experiences space differently from someone celebrating.
This project explores architecture, computing, circuit boards, masterplanning, adjacency diagrams, human-centred design, inclusive design, the built environment, urban design, architecture philosophy and the future relationship between artificial intelligence and architecture.
Highly recommend a visit to Bletchley Park –
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