If robots can construct buildings, why shouldn’t they be able to improvise on the job, creating form as well as function? That’s the idea behind conceptual architect François Roche’s design for an automated construction worker known as a ‘viab’. “A viab would produce structures that are not set and specific, but impermanent and malleable – merely viable – made of a uniform, recyclable substance like adobe. The automaton’s output would have no innate design, boundaries, or service life. It would take whatever form was called for at the moment.”