Perfect slaves: brief history of ciber-architectiure at MIT (1959-1967)

This paper addresses unexplored aspects of the relationship between military research at MIT, and the constitution, during the cold war years, of a techno-scientific discourse of architecture. Exploring primary sources from the "Computer-Aided Design Project" (1959-1967), this paper explains the emergence of a cybernetic understanding of design, and its transit into architectural culture. The article presents Nicholas Negroponte’s use of the CAD project’s technical and theoretical idioms to re-imagine architectural practice through a technocratic (and populist) lens, and discusses aspects of its influence in contemporary techno-scientific design discourse.