los angeles CALIFORNIA

SCI-Arc
Critic: Casey REHM

This project uses a game set up between two conventional neural networks, that are self-learning algorithm, in this case, trained for human residential plans and other trained on machine spaces, like server farms, quorum computer spaces. As each ai units advocates for different occupancy populations in the building, first one being the human residential and other one being technology based machine system in this case being an interconnected nodes of quantum computers.

The project looks at a new aesthetic and organizational relationship, driven out of data. This data-driven space creates, reject the old top-down, massing ideas. rather it looks at specific instances, looking at flow patterns and the use of spaces to make decisions. It’s not about the whole but the fractional part. Not about optimization, the spaces, stop growing in the game when they reach a volumetric threshold set using data points of how much energy the machinal units require and how many apt units and area the human spaces need. This curated game becomes a way for is to break down relationships, working with multiple ai units, it works on different scales, using the logic of neural networks they don’t just work on one level, but understand the data points on multiple levels and reinterpret the patterns driven out of it. Like in the facade, where the Ai is used to create the window paneling system, reappropriating other residential typologies, in this case, steven halls MIT buildings and reappointing then with other typologies of resident adjacent to the site. The machine also looks at the existing building and issued to rework and recreate graffiti that was left over after years of abandonment of this existing structure.

This project is not meant to be read as AI based design where the machine replaces the human but begs us to relook at the role of the architect in this data-driven world. The role of the architect is a switch to someone who curates the work, that goes into the AI and then appoints the outputs from, it is an assistant in the design project. This looks at what an architecture of the blend between human and machine spaces looks like and the appropriate use of the vast amount of visual data that can be found right now. It questions the role of the architectural author, rejects the old values of a single author for someone who curates and interpret with the help of data, as the main driving force for decisions to be made