Visions of a Computational Architecture
Artificial intelligence and computation are becoming more entrenched in how we work, design, and make decisions. What happens, then, at the climax of current trends, when computation infiltrates into all aspects of design? What is computational architecture, and what is its relationship to humans?
Currently we use computation as a tool. Its strengths lie in data aggregation and large data sets. As proposed by Mario Carpo, the "science of searching" is a new and different means of designing futures, prompting new aesthetics and different approaches to architecture and design. This project takes the critical stance that new computational design procedures which operate using different intelligences will not be understandable to humans. The aesthetics of AI will be an aesthetic unlike humans have seen before, based in "patterns" totally dissimilar to the ways in which the human mind works.
Looking to London, our analysis has made it clear that current systems of farming are insufficient. This project looks to the abandoned Highgate Station as the site of the future of farming and computational design. Instead of proposing the structures and systems with which this farming would take place, this project treats those as given, and devises architectural interventions which would elucidate and bring understanding to these un-understandable systems. It would be a didactic farm.
The environments of this didactic farm are formed through AI images made in MidJourney. The process of creating these environments of computation occurred over 5 steps: Pre-prompting, Prompting, Generation, Human Selection, and Integration.
Looking externally, the farm is organized along the ridge North of Archway Road. Following the slope from Archway Road to Priory Gardens, the farm is tiered and enclosed by a greenhouse-like, topologically-optimized structure. Plants are organized within this structure based on sunlight and symbiotic relationships, optimized through seemingly random placement, manifesting as clumps instead of rows and columns.
It is a vision of a computational architecture.
