Machines have long been integral to architectural discourse. Vitruvius concluded his ten books with a meditation on war machines, and Le Corbusier published on his industrial muses just over 100 years ago. Yet something is different today.

We have always learned from machines - our societies are fundamentally shaped by their processes - but now, machines learn. We live in paradoxical times. Machinic processes, computational algorithms and artificial intelligence have never been so proximate, direct, and intimate to daily life, yet we are many steps removed from their practical operations. This issue of Volume, the third in the Learning series, seeks to take one small step in the direction towards understanding the contemporary relevance of machines for architecture, and one giant leap for mankind.

With contributions by: M. Christine Boyer, Doug Spencer, Benjamin H. Bratton, Kazys Varnelis, Orit Halpern, Nader Vossoughian, W J McKee, Shannon Mattern, Victor M. Sanz, Francesco Sebregondi, Kas Oosterhuis, Philippe Morel, Troy Conrad Therrien, Pierre Cutellic, Nicholas Korody, Sara Dean and Etienne Turpin, Ed Keller and Carla Leitao, Valle Medina and Benjamin Reynolds, Tim Maughan and Liam Young.

Machines have long been integral to architectural discourse. Vitruvius concluded his ten books with a meditation on war machines, and Le Corbusier published on his industrial muses just over 100 years ago. Yet something is different today.

We have always learned from machines - our societies are fundamentally shaped by their processes - but now, machines learn. We live in paradoxical times. Machinic processes, computational algorithms and artificial intelligence have never been so proximate, direct, and intimate to daily life, yet we are many steps removed from their practical operations. This issue of Volume, the third in the Learning series, seeks to take one small step in the direction towards understanding the contemporary relevance of machines for architecture, and one giant leap for mankind.

With contributions by: M. Christine Boyer, Doug Spencer, Benjamin H. Bratton, Kazys Varnelis, Orit Halpern, Nader Vossoughian, W J McKee, Shannon Mattern, Victor M. Sanz, Francesco Sebregondi, Kas Oosterhuis, Philippe Morel, Troy Conrad Therrien, Pierre Cutellic, Nicholas Korody, Sara Dean and Etienne Turpin, Ed Keller and Carla Leitao, Valle Medina and Benjamin Reynolds, Tim Maughan and Liam Young.

The issue also includes In Loving Support, a 32-page insert produced with Het Nieuwe Instituut on living and working with algorithms.