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Architect

Balcony.
Image from R.A.P. 2000

There are only a few few non-ai architects. Generally ai, aioids, and virtuals design conventional buildings and dwellings, as part of the overall habitat or city, working with other ai or ai subroutines that manage urban planning, construction, and landscaping. Those people who want to customize their own dwelling will do so themselves, usually with the help of expert systems and implanted knowledge-bases. Occasionally however a biont or vec architect may be hired.

Most architects have extensive implanted knowledge-bases and skills, making them experts in structural engineering with millions of different possible building materials, as well as having a library of current and historical building styles (often extending all the way back to pre-urban Old Earth), a feel for the right aioid(s) to implant in the building, and how to adapt them to local environments and requirements, including zero or microgravity, unusual atmospheres, etc.

Architects are also often expected to have a creative, innovative approach that cannot simply be acquired through a catalog of building designs.

The profession of architect is perhaps given the most honour in the Mutual Progress Association, where the practice of construction in physical materials is regarded as a spiritual calling. The greatest archailects in the MPA often refer to themselves as the architects of dreams; and at every level of society below them, the architects almost always wield the most power.
 
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Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 07 October 2001.

 
 
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