[eduren]

Hand designing is the only feasible option available to us. A system that could architect itself would either need:

A bootstrap intelligence in order to self-plan, self-experiment, and self-modify. Escher hands drawing each other basically... or

Similar conditions to our only known spontaneous intelligence (us). That includes some sort of base code (genetics), competitive environments for rewarding good architectures, and lots of time in simulation. No guarantee this would work either.