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【Lecture 11.06.2024】 Neural Artefacts: On the Artificiality & Materiality of GenAI Architecture
Release time：2024-06-11
Architecture is implicitly an artificial construct, and only seemingly naturalised when it is explicitly translated thereafter as a real construction. The artificiality of architecture thus precedes the materiality of buildings. In the age of GenAI architecture, there appears a doubling of architecture’s own artificiality driven by the generativity of deep neural networks themselves. Materiality itself in turn begins to reflect these underlying process of artificiality. Much of today’s hype in AI x Architecture however subjugates the ‘artificial’ to the ‘real’ and remain indifferent to this doubling. Or, in other words, denying the AI-process artefacts of architectural generation for the familiar AI-product artifices of architecture consumption. The lecture will present the theory of ‘neural artefacts’, mainly through the aesthetic and the epistemic, in articulating such an increasingly complex coupling. A series of projects conducted within the context of research and teaching will also be presented to not only further illustrate such a theoretical proposition, but also to broaden the conception of the current AI x Architecture discourse.
Immanuel Koh
Artificial-Architecture
SUTD
Immanuel Koh is an Assistant Professor in Design & Artificial Intelligence (DAI) and Architecture & Sustainable Design (ASD) at the Singapore University of Technology & Design (SUTD) where he also directs Artificial-Architecture. Trained at the Architectural Association (AA) in London and holds a PhD from the School of Computer Sciences and Institute of Architecture at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), he is a pioneer in AI x Architecture and operates in a highly original and trans-disciplinary way. He is the Principal Investigator for several funded AI research projects with support from, among others, the National Research Foundation (NRF), Ministry of Defence (MINDEF), National Arts Council (NAC), AI Singapore (AISG), DesignSingapore Council (DSG), Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), DSO National Laboratories, and National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC). Immanuel currently also conducts research for high-profile architecture practices such as Zaha Hadid Architects (London) and MVRDV (Rotterdam) in developing custom state-of-the-art deep learning models. He has published and exhibited widely, ranging from AAAI, ICCV, CVPR, NeurIPS and AD to Singapore’s Arts House, National Design Centre, Venice Architecture Biennale, and V&A Museum; and taught internationally such as at UCL, RCA, Bauhaus Dessau, Harvard GSD, and Strelka. Immanuel is the chair of CAADRIA 2024 and the author of the book ‘Artificial & Architectural Intelligence in Design’ published in 2020.
June 11 19:00-21:25(UTC-+8)
Address: D3 Lecture Hall, 5th Floor, Building D, CAUP, Tongji University
