ARC3015YF
Fall 2024 Option Studio
Instructor: Vivian Lee
Meeting Section: L0101
Tuesdays, 9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m., 2:00-6:00 p.m.

This studio explores the integration of AI image processing technologies into architectural design processes, focusing on AI’s generative and creative capabilities to pioneer new aesthetics and innovative spatial designs.  Students will engage with cutting-edge, ever-evolving AI tools to enhance their architectural design process while critically examining how these technologies reshape architectural practice and education.

While AI Technology will continue to transform at a rapid pace even during the course of this studio, the objective to better understand how to design with AI - which is to say how architects should define design in the context of this tool - will be a staying lesson. Rather than forefronting prompt engineering, workflow optimization, or the integrating AI into traditional production methods, we will use AI as a catalyst for developing novel forms, spatial experiences, and evolving architectural aesthetics. Students should be enthusiastic to engage in discussions about cultural trends, fashion, and be familiar with the Aesthetics Wiki site. Simultaneously, students will also evaluate the pedagogical lessons learned on topics of composition, materiality, ornament, and labor as related to their AI experiments.

Simultaneous to design work, students will be assigned readings to reflect on the history of architectural education and the impact of AI on architectural curriculum.  Architectural education today largely stems from the pedagogical traditions of the Beaux-Arts academy and the theoretical values of the Bauhaus school, with minimal adaptation to modern advancements in computer-aided design. Image processing AI represents a distinct departure from earlier software tools, behaving as an artist-author that can conjure new formal architectural arrangements. Students will be expected to engage in self-reflective discussions about AI’s role in design education and propose new frameworks for foundational lessons in our discipline.

The studio will have three main assignments:

• PersonA    
• A Room with a View
• Delirious Facade

Assignments will progress from the self, to a room, to the building scale; addressing various programmatic, material, stylistic, cultural, and spatial considerations at each stage. This sequence of assignments will culminate in a final large-scale model of an imaginative building façade, showcasing detailed material, structural, and sectional clarity. Students may opt to work alone or in pairs for the final assignment. The studio will cover the costs for AI software subscriptions.

There will not be a studio trip. 

Given that reading week is over Halloween weekend I look forward to roaming the streets together in our spectacular AI inspired costumes!

"The Blurst of Times" – Quote from The Simpsons fourth season, seventeenth episode, “Last Exit to Springfield.”  A gag on the Infinite Monkey Theorem which states that a monkey hitting typewriter keys at random for an infinite amount of time will surely type any given text, including the Tale of Two Cities. In this case the monkey typed “It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.” Note that blurst is not a typographical error but a deliberate blend of words.