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Argument › No. 16/2024

Models and Artefacts / Prompts and Metaphors. Towards intentionality in AI aided architectural design

https://doi.org/10.54508/Argument.16.01

  • / “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest, RO

Abstract

This work bridges between the metaphorical nature of architectural intentions, artefacts and experiences, and AI aided computational design, as well as novel possibilities of designing using Virtual Reality. A close relationship between metaphors and architecture is generally recognized in theoretical discourse, yet metaphorical statements are hard to verify, and this difficulty is amplified when trying to produce or ascertain any relationship between architectural intentions formulated as linguistic metaphors and architectural artefacts as spatial metaphors.

Generative AI presents a challenge to how architectural design is conceptualized. Faced with pairs of textual prompts and visual depictions of hypothetical artefacts assembled through statistical manipulation of pixels, we need novel perspectives that address the historicity and intertextuality of the training data as standalone artefacts, the new context of their pairing, and their encoding, decoding, and manipulation. AI systems are not constrained by reality; thus, generated images depict fundamentally invalid artefacts. We observe that significant effort is needed to translate the suggestive image into a valid architectural proposal. Furthermore, probing the capability of generative AI models to come up with novel building types made apparent that such AI models are lacking. We hypothesize that interpolation is an inadequate approach to architectural design.

In response, we propose a roadmap to a different AI system, based on Reinforcement Learning and Large Language Models, capable of transforming design intentions into architectural artefacts. It must have not only a solver, but also a system of general analysis and synthesis to aid in negotiating between potentially contradictory intentions. Finally, we discuss the merits of such a system when paired with Virtual Reality. As a representational medium, VR can produce a convincing simulation of reality, inducing the illusion of presence, leading to a meaningful phenomenological engagement with virtual artefacts, one that preserves the metaphorical relationship between architectural intentions and digital artefacts.

Keywords

Architecture, Modelling, Artefacts, Metaphors, Representation, AI, Coding

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