The Autopoiesis of Content

August 31, 2025

I’ve probably mentioned that I recently scrolled through three year’s worth of ArchDaily in three weeks. I couldn’t help but notice there’s only a limited number of types of articles. As you’d expect, the largest category of posts is content provided without fee by architects but the problem for ArchDaily is that there’s simply isn’t enough architecture that, as far as the editors are concerned, counts as clickable and thus monetizable content. On a daily basis. Other types of content have to be created. We’re all familiar with the ArchDaily Classics series which in retrospect inevitably led to the ArchDaily Guide to Good Architecture, but generating other content categories isn’t as difficult as it sounds if everything is already keyworded and data-based. And so we get content with titles such as “Ten Houses With Courtyards in Argentina” or “Six Houses Without Kitchens in Argentina.” I can understand why much content relates to China and Japan but Argentina seems to be punching above its weight. There are of course also filler articles that reformat data gleaned from users. These usually take the form of “Most Saved By Architects” or, at the end of the year, “The Ten Most-Read Articles in 20XX”. Most media sites do something similar. I did once or twice in the early years of misfits’. There are other curious repetitions. I’ve come to understand that the word “reimagine” never indicates anything worthy. Over the course of this third ArchDaily marathon I screenshotted ten articles that had the word “reimagine” or “reimagining” in their titles.

I also noticed certain names and practices coming up again and again and you don’t have to squint too hard to recognize some same projects. Certain architects’ offices are prolific content providers – or at least their media management departments are. A search for Foster+Partners will return over 10,000 results, most of them probably for airports in China. A search of OMA returns 2,652 results. Zaha Hadid Architects 1,786. MVRDV only 788. Thomas Heatherwick 382. Who am I forgetting? Oh yes. Bjarke Ingels 4,099 – which is almost as many mentions as OMA and ZHA combined. In terms of numbers of actual projects, Foster+Partners were top with 97, OMA with 81 and ZHA with 61. Everyone’s working very hard. It doesn’t matter if you’re an architect or a blogger. If you have the content, then you can rearrange it in many different ways to generate new content. Nobody regards any of this as artistic progression.

Another thing I noticed only because it was beginning to annoy me were articles with absurd rhetorical questions and inconsistent head caps as their titles. I’m sure I’ve written somewhere that, whenever you come across a rhetorical question, you can be sure that an answer is forthcoming. To save you the trouble …

Should Architecture Be Static? Yes. It’s bad enough that buildings take a huge amount of resources to build. We don’t need to waste more by giving them wheels and engines so they can move. Or the question could have been intended to mean Should Architecture Be Capable of Change? Or Kinetic? Buildings always change. Colour fades, materials deteriorate, styles fall out of fashion… You begin to understand why nobody visits ArchDaily to read the text.
What Is Kitsch Architecture? Anything that is an out-of-scale facsimile of something rather than an allusion to it.
Is Bamboo a Safe Construction Material in Natural Disasters Like Earthquakes? Probably, if you don’t try to build too high.
Can Architectural Journalism Shape the Future of the Profession? It can and does by always seeming to cheerlead the next biggest thing but this does not mean it is in a good way. More commonly, architectural journalism is used to reshape the past and give us a false history to build upon. So yes, by reshaping the past and offering up an approved version of the present, it definitely does shape the future.
What Role Should Architectural Prototypes Play in the Global South? None, if those prototypes are destined to remain prototypes.
How Do We Design and Build a Modern City To Benefit Everyone? This is a curious question. It’s like something ChatGPT would write in that the words are arranged in what looks like a meaningful arrangement yet it’s difficult to tell what the question actually is. The “To Benefit Everyone” is fine – nobody’s going to complain about that but it’s fair to ask if everybody’s going to benefit in the same way, or in as many different ways as there are people？Everyone in any city anywhere will benefit from cleaner air and more trees but we don’t really think of these as design problems. The problem I have with this question is that it assumes everyone is expecting architects will save them. We’re still waiting. It also assumes that architects and builders are part of the solution. I think this is known in psychology as a messiah complex.
Are You Demanding Massive ROI from Your Design Software? I can’t say I am – at least not in the sense this question is intended. The design software I use is a free educational version so there is no financial investment. I do however invest my time and I do that in the expectation of some kind of return.
What is Expected of Women in Architecture? This short question is difficult to unpack, let alone attempt to answer. Clickbait.
Can An App Help Mitigate Crime in Our Neighborhoods? Probably not, if it doesn’t address the causes of crime.
Materials or Labour, What [ WHICH!! ] Should Cost More? Oh dear. You can get clever robots to 3D print buildings out of mud. The attraction of robots is that you pay them nothing and don’t have to concern yourself with their health and safety. The downside is the upfront investment. An accountant can help with depreciation over the working life of the robots.
What is the future of high-rise buildings? If you’re okay with concrete, then the future looks very bright. If a shift to hardwood is forced, then the future is not-so-high-rise. If a shift to mud-brick is forced, then maybe 8-10 storeys max. It’s been done, but with spans no larger than three or four metres.
How Tall Can We Build? Construction Materials and Methods for the Skyscrapers of the Future. [see Q.11]
What can be done to make interiors more sustainable? Hm. If we define an interior as gratuitous cladding to conceal construction materials that aren’t trying to be beautiful, then changing our perception of beautiful materials to reduce demand for interiors to zero would be helpful. If an interior is meant to be synonymous with shopfitting, then much the same holds. There are slight indications that less “interior” is coming to have less shame attached to it.
How are Co-living Spaces in London Offering Solutions for Rising Density and Real Estate? By making people think themselves lucky to have about the same accommodation and amenity of a 3-star hotel but with common areas kitted out with non-demanding art and a warm color palette.
Is AI Really the Next Biggest Thing in Architecture? It already is. The year before it was the metaverse. A couple of years before that it was 3D printing. A bit further back it was laser cutting. A couple of decades earlier it was CAD. Half a century earlier it was prefabrication. Half a millennia ago tracing paper. There will always be a next biggest thing. A better question is Why is AI Architecture So Bad? Not sure about the byline.
What Will The Furniture of The Future Be Made From? Hmm. The word furniture seems pretty clear. We’re talking tables, chairs, beds and sofas that the Western world has been using for millennia in much the same way, right? Inflatables were the future once, at least for chairs.
What Happens When Public Spaces Are Without Public Restrooms? I think we all know the answer to this. They go to Starbucks and buy a coffee. It’s the same as what happens when public restrooms are not clean, the taps don’t work, or there isn’t any toilet paper, let alone hand towels. It’s illegal in Tokyo now to smoke on the street so there are some designated smoking areas set up nearby public toilets so people can congregate and smoke some distance from the footpath. For those who don’t like to look and feel so furtive, there’s a chain of coffee shops with smoking rooms for people wanting a coffee to go with their cigarette.
How is Architecture Supporting the exploration of the Moon and Mars? By jumping on the bandwagon of distraction from real-earth problems. And implicity, journalism for asking questions like this. [see Q.4]
What Are Ecological Fireplaces and How Do They Work? By fooling already smug people into thinking they need them.
Is Good Architecture Synonymous With Beauty? Woo. This is a knotty one because not only do we need to be clear on what good architecture is, but beauty as well. Half a century ago, people would think it axiomatic that good architecture had to be beautiful because they couldn’t conceive of any good architecture that wasn’t. Very occasionally, the notion of architectural beauty would shift to incorporate buildings that challenged it. This too led to the false conclusion that good architecture and beauty were the same thing, and the even more false corollary that any building that was beautiful had to be good architecture. Defining beauty as visual beauty has left us the situation we have now where sustainable buildings or buildings with a high energy performance may be ecologically virtuous but never beautiful. So no, as long as we have such a misguided definition of beauty, good architecture will never be beautiful.

I don’t see any end to this soon. Maybe there are forums where these and better questions are intelligently discussed but what would be the point of that? How would anyone ever know? There’s no mechanism by which those conclusions would be disseminated. Either you have a situation where some smug group decides to decide on behalf of everyone else [see Q.6, above] or everybody engages in pseudo-discourse thinking it will make a difference. ArchDaily treads a fine line between.