The expression advanced technourgia [Technourgia: configuration by technical means, fine elaborate creation] is chosen here over advanced technical methods or technology, so as to denote the divergence – almost to the point of separation – of contemporary artificial systems both from (western) technique and from its philosophical foundation. These systems seem to overlap both the earlier mechanical-technical methods and the representational methods which are based on composition.

Through advanced technourgia we examine architectural design, its various aspects, processes and especially its limitations, as manifested in our days. In our view, the past is that of mechanical-technical methods, of mechanical constructions analogous to the human, a mechanical transference of human measures to architectural works. Without gravitating towards the architectural design of a specific category of buildings or to the ways it is perceived by certain schools of thought, an attempt is made by means of an in-depth analysis over time so that the phenomena of the “immersion” of architectural design into the opened-up fields of advanced technourgia become distinct.

In moving from the mechanical paradigms to advanced technourgia, from advanced technourgia to architectural design, from architectural design to man, we come to ask: In what ways do mechanical-technical methods and their evolution into advanced technourgia delimit architectural design? This fundamental question is linked to a structural question about the human condition which is critical for our research: In what ways, in the breadth of these transformations, and their limits as such, man as a thinking observer, as a physical presence and as the most singular/uncanny of all subjects represents – and dates – his surroundings and himself, and how does he partake in this act of representation?

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