Polis ex machina: Challenges of Architecture of the City of Tomorrow in the Era of the Information-Technology Revolution

Information and artificial intelligence are now in a key position in architecture. Future vision of the city as a polis ex machine refers to the concept of architecture produced in the automatic process of 3D printing of spatial structures controlled by artificial intelligence algorithms. The paper presents the concepts of the city of the present (from arché-polis to Technopolis) and the challenges facing the architecture of the city of tomorrow (from smart polis to polis immortalis) in the context of the information-technology revolution. The paper points out the most important changes in the development of the concept of city architecture on the basis of comparative and interpretative analysis of the organisation of four variables of the housing environment, such as space, time, meaning, and communication, in evolutionary perspective. The impact of information technologies on shaping the built environment, the principles of creation, the criteria of valuation of architectural structures, and optimistic and pessimistic scenarios of the future development of housing architecture, based on the exponential progress of artificial intelligence, are defined.