HOUSE X+Y is part of the LDM studio series on “Hybrid Typologies” which explores the fusion of physical and digital architecture and the hybridization of different typologies, such as world expos, offices, museums, churches, universities, parliaments, and cities. Our focus for Spring 2024 is on “Hybrid Houses”.
The recent confinement during the Covid-19 crisis has starkly revealed the limits of contemporary housing typologies, highlighting an increased misalignment between their affordances and emerging lifestyles where living and working converge under one roof, and everyday social activities, such as shopping, learning, playing, meditating have moved from the city into the intimate confines of home.
This studio challenges students to reimagine a basic vernacular housing typology (X) and explore its possible transformation into a hybrid typology (X+Y) where increasingly (almost) everything takes place.
Methodologically, the studio will explore Generative AI as (inevitable) future operative, representational, and technical design tools. Generative AIs in architecture (such as Midjourney, Dall-E and Stable Diffusion) have the potential to not only capture and reproduce the essence of images, depicting the mood and style, but also uncovering subtle details that would otherwise be overlooked by human eyes.
In this studio, Generative AI will be our „telescope“ through which we re-discover and re-process our built environment, while critically questioning the role of generative artificial intelligence in architecture.
Is creativity in architecture only exclusive to humans? Can machines automatically generate meaningful architecture? Can machines capture and generate something as fragile and elusive as genius loci?