Generative Architecture: Questions and Answers with Artists & Curators

Leyla Fakhr: How does the notion of 'a room' resonate with you in the context of the exhibition concept?

Ismahelio: In the context of the exhibition concept, 'a room' serves as a symbolic portrayal of virtual spaces. It represents how online platforms like Twitter and Discord create immersive environments that offer a sense of place, community, and interaction. Examining the architectural elements of these virtual rooms enhances our comprehension of modern human connections and the evolving dynamics of spatial encounters.

Anaglyphic: Going for the ‘room’ is quite an interesting choice of concept for us to work with because most architectural representations people are used to are precisely everything else but rooms. ‘Architecture’ evokes monumental buildings with signature features or particular arrangements of space. Rooms are more an interior design kind of object in the popular mind. And yet, when personally dealing with architecture, you're never not in a room. If you're not in a room, you're by definition outside of architecture. So I think it was a smart and playful way for the curators to provoke our minds a little bit.

Luis E. Fraguada: The point of these constraints is to focus the discourse around the work that is developed, find a common thread, but it also becomes the thing to break out of. So that is very interesting to me, that somehow you have a common thread, but everyone comes at it differently, avoids it, breaks it. The room itself is such a pitiful unit of space in most of the architecture we experience. How many truly remarkable rooms do you inhabit daily? Ideally you have a living situation where you can create something interesting out of your typical 4 walls, but most of that agency is two dimensional, where you can place furniture, or what you can do to the walls. When a space is truly remarkable, it is a space, not a room. A room is a top down condition to fit a program. But it would be too ambiguous to focus an exhibition on space, so rooms work just fine for us to reflect on all of the unremarkable rooms there are, and imagine remarkable spaces.

office ca: A room doesn't have to be necessarily defined by walls, but it is defined by space and volume. It can be as abstract as a line in dirt or a huddle of people. We took this concept and used it to explore how we represent space. A room can be delineated by structure, but also by its occupants. In architecture we often draw lines to suggest the boundaries of space and use fills to black-out non-occupiable space. The nice thing about speculative visualizations is that they don't necessarily have to conform to existing conventions. So for us, we're delineating space with objects and abstract 3D volumes.

Luka Piškorec: Interestingly, in 2014 we organized a student workshop titled Zagreb Rooms with colleagues from ETH Zürich. Architecture students were tasked to study, analyze and ultimately draw certain urban areas in the city of Zagreb, but to look at them as “urban rooms”, separated spaces with clearly defined contact points to their immediate context. In this way, if an urban neighborhood is seen as a room, then the city becomes a building, county in turn becomes a neighborhood etc. This shifting of scales gives a completely different starting point to critically observe your environment, which is reflected in how the drawings themselves were designed. For example, a graveyard became The Continent, an informal neighborhood with single family houses and gardens became The Island etc. So, when I heard about the title of the exhibition that the curators have chosen, it brought back some of those playful explorations to mind and I was very excited to approach this topic again.

Victor Doval: I feel it as an invitation to think about intimacy, about emotions. About the individual and unique memories that tights everyone of us to particular spaces. Because rooms, even having usually the least interesting spatial qualities, have the most interesting relationships with the lives of human beings.

Erik Swahn: To me, a room isn't primarily an architectural entity, but rather social or theatre-like in nature. In rooms, things take place. They may exist in and be surrounded by the physicality of architecture, but they exist in parallel to it as well as within it. In that way, it's a liberating concept as an architectural exhibition theme, as it forces us to transcend the confines of architecture. But then again, architecture always does. In my project, the 'rooms' rather become casts of rooms, since they are seen from the outside, with most interiors only visible as they form.

xnmtrc: I've always been fascinated by architects who explore non-traditional methods of defining space. Observing a space that isn't just confined by walls is always intriguing to analyze and contemplate. With that said, I've always seen those spaces as art pieces themselves. In fact, I believe that the significance of this extends even further by adding the context of generative art. Being able to witness new definitions of rooms within the realm of generative architecture is truly something special.

Anna Beller: In my abstract art I’m leaving scale. Architecture is mostly about thinking ‚in-scale‘, about ‘rooms’ that are defined by human scale. The digital ‘room’ is very wide and bright to me and I do believe that art can exist here. Thinking about ‚’rooms’ can feel challenging, it would  be easier to define the borders and shapes and materials to build ‘rooms’ - but the ‘room’ itself, what is it really?

In our project we experimented how vectors can shape rooms, the result is a game between the expression of sculptures that might define and enclose rooms vs. artworks that are more spatial and show a feeling for ‘Room‘.  A dualistic game between positive and negative space - color-application and untouched space.

Leyla Fakhr: Do you think virtual spaces like twitter spaces, discord etc can be seen as architectural entities, and if so what is the role of the architect in them?

Anaglyphic: I personally do not think there is much merit in these types of analogies to the extent that their arrangements are not structures in themselves. The materiality of something like an IRC channel is something like an unstructured flat file whose interactions are social, not spatial. Mixing or merging the two does not yield, in my humble opinion, much insight on what is at stake with generative architecture.

Luis E. Fraguada: 1. No. 2. I despise questions that include the words "role of the architect”.

office ca: The problem with discussions about "the role of the architect" is that it reinforces the long-held misconception that the architect is some kind of heroic figure. The beauty of Twitter, Discord, etc is that those are socially constructed spaces. While they are built by companies, they are also shaped by their inhabitants (for better or worse). Much of this has been discussed in previous scholarship regarding cyberspace from the 90s and 00s (see for example Cyber Cities by M. Christine Boyer).

Luka Piškorec: It is sometimes hard for architects to speak about the “space”, as it’s so central to our profession, yet so vague as well. In the 19th century, every decent European city had Caffe Central or something similar, where people from all walks of life would meet and discuss current topics of the day, including politics, art, local gossip etc. Ancient Romans had Forum Romanum, ancient Greeks their Agora, all of which served the same purpose, to meet and to exchange. Today, this societal role is filled by online platforms. Difference is that the former were designed by architects and urban planners, the later ones by UIX designers. I don’t find this tragic at all, but it does show how our role in society has shifted.

Victor Doval: If we contemplate architecture as a human construct to share  time with others protected from the dangers of a hostile environment then yes and I believe that emotionally they feel pretty similar. Software and networks as the internet have similarities with the architecture as something that needs to be explored with time and has some kind of  surrounding qualities. So what could someone that has studied the evolution of the spaces add to that experience? Probably the intersection of art and spatial design could be used in improving building better digital experiences for the users.

Erik Swahn: I see them more as social entities. To some extent, the technical designs of apps and web sites can be seen as having architectural aspects, in that they direct users in certain ways, confine them or bring them together, and surround them with particular material or immaterial qualities, but as a whole they are a field of their own.

xnmtrc: The ways in which people interact and socialize have evolved over time. With the main place for socializing being virtual in today's world, it is conceivable that virtual spaces can be considered as architectural entities theoretically. However, given the context of virtual spaces, the role of architects in shaping them is unclear. Instead, it may be more appropriate to consider the role of social media app developers in shaping the virtual space.

Anna Beller: Maybe in a very abstract way, but probably no, I don't see it as architectural entities, I can't even describe them, if I would try maybe I would describe them as energetic fields. I don’t really see ’traditional’ architects working here, well maybe more in an experimental way, but I don't know how exactly that would look like. The spaces need clarity and good structures and a positive atmosphere. Probably you don’t need 'architects' as we know them for that, maybe new professions, people who think forward-looking and responsible.

Leyla Fakhr: In the digital space, what do you think the future role of architects entails ?

Ismahelio: While architects currently primarily focus on physical spaces, their expertise in spatial design, user experience, and aesthetics can be leveraged to shape virtual realms. This may lead to the emergence of a hybrid discipline that combines architectural principles, software development, and video game design to create compelling virtual spaces.

Anaglyphic:I am unsure there is such a thing. Digital or virtual spaces have been around for quite a long time. You could make the argument, as I made before when commenting on Jacek Markusiewicz's piece Reborn, that such virtual architecture was already very present in literature. Rabelais' Abbaye de Thélème (1534) is famously a utopian project in which idealized social rules are inscribed in the agencying and design of spaces in which lived an ideal community. Video game developers have been thinking about the same subjects for maybe half a century now. To me, the question is more about how to empower a wider audience with what is at stake with the practice of making rules for space. Making publicly-accessible generative architecture is a first step in that direction.

Luis E. Fraguada: 1. See previous answers #2. 2. It would be very sad indeed if architects didn't get in on some of the metaverse building action, but let's face it, architects are not trained to build for the metaverse. They have little to no concept (generally speaking) of efficient 3d models made for real time rendering engines. In those environments, polys are gold. It is a very different kind of 3d modeling where you fake thickness and details. This is the domain of 3d asset creators for games and architects would do well to learn these techniques. Many architects already work with real time rendering engines, of course, but they've learned to model for these environments as they go, it isn't something taught in architectural school.

office ca: A big part of architecture is knowing how to work with materials and understanding how materials operate physically and culturally. We like to think of "digital space" as a material. It is made of code, electricity, and many other components. We doubt that traditional architects will become "metaverse designers" or whatever, but there are certainly "architectural" discourses to have about digital materiality, virtual spaces, perception, expression, and behavior in these spaces.

Luka Piškorec: Traditionally, architects are seen as designers of buildings or in general, of organizing spatial functions. In the future, if our profession is to survive (which is far from certain) we must shift our focus towards designing “organization” in a more general sense. This is something where we already excel, organization of complex processes, because constructing a building is a very complex process. This, coupled with computational and algorithmic thinking, is something where we could contribute in the future, and this is even more relevant in the digital realm. In a way, generative architects are handling this type of complexity in their work, where we are no longer designing a single object but an entire collection, hundreds of variations at the same time. Design itself happens in the digital realm, all these variations exist and are at the same time evaluated there, they in fact never leave it. Most traditional architects don’t understand this, but spatial problems we need to tackle in the 21st century cannot be solved with 20th century tools, methods of creation or thinking.

Victor Doval: If there is such a future then there could be a profession that brings some part of the spatial knowledge of the traditional architects and applies it to virtual and augmented realities. It will probably be something different, more abstract and obviously less restricted by the physical world bringing new interesting spatial experiences

Erik Swahn: Even if there are lessons to be learnt from the built world, digital spaces are subject to completely different laws and restrictions, so if anything they call for a new type of architect, a new type of planning, but again within a field of their own.

xnmtrc: Based on the previous answer, it is my belief that architects do not currently play a significant role in digital spaces as we understand them. However, if they were to do so, their abilities would be constrained by the limitations of the medium itself. In my opinion, we should focus on discussing the mediums and their developers rather than solely on what architects can do in a digital space.

Leyla Fakhr: In what ways do architecture and generative art overlap, and how do you leverage this cross over in your work?

Ismahelio: I'm talking about my specific case, being a specialist in computational design and parametric design. Therefore I'm used to automation to design. The connection was already done even before I started thinking about making gen art specifically.

Anaglyphic: There is a strong definitional stake here. Situating an overlap or a juxtaposition would involve drawing borders around what generative art and architecture are thought to be. Rather than entering these debates, one can simply say that if part of the point of architecture is to divide spaces into subspaces, then we can use algorithms to do that in a pseudorandom manner.

Luis E. Fraguada: While they are very different domains, I believe where the venn diagram overlaps is in the managing and thinking in the parameter space. Architects have to weigh all sorts of constraints while coming up with solutions. In recent decades, parametric design software has helped architects manage the complexity and non-linearity of constraint relationships in such a way that different parameter configurations can be evaluated and compared. Architects that are parametrically savvy might have a decent chance trying their hand at generative art. At the same time, generative artists might consider what else could be evaluated and compared between iterations of a generator. There might be semantic differences between what is generative and what is parametric, but having ways to deal with and evaluate nonlinear parameter relationships could be a way to go beyond aesthetics as the main guide for the development of an artwork.

office ca: Design iteration is generative by nature. While many of our previous projects have been designed without any scripting or code, they are rooted in a generative process by which we explore many many versions, iterations, and options. Our practice has explored manual generative techniques for a while.

Luka Piškorec: As I mentioned before, generative architects don’t design single objects, but entire collections. Well, technically we design an algorithm which can be used to generate infinite variations, from which we afterwards make a selection. In my professional life, there was always this imperative to create automatic evaluation tools, optimization procedures, which would select the best designs from the ones that are created by the generator. The difference in the art world is that the focus is not on optimization, as the goal is not to find the ‘best’ design, rather it is to create a well-rounded, diverse and varied collection. It is incredible how liberating this is, letting go of this need to produce and to justify one single design, and to focus on the entire collection where every piece is valued in its own way. In the gen art community, we are having many discussions regarding this, pros and cons of traditional (random) long-form and collector curated collections, who gets to choose which pieces should be included in the collection, the artist, the algorithm, or the collector?

Victor Doval: Both disciplines need some technical skills and some aesthetic appreciations.

Both have material restrictions, by budget, program or computational power. Both have a heavy back-end and a usually beautiful front-end

Erik Swahn: Without going into definitions of art, there is significant overlap between the technical practices of generative art and the field of computational design within architecture. If you're coding, you're working with similar tools. On a very abstract level, architecture could perhaps be seen as a generative system, defined by building codes and regulations, and of course the laws of physics, the specificities of sites and the systems of building practices. But to me, the big overlap is in the abstraction of processes, artistic or architectural, in making them computational, in moving from the intuitive to the explicit and codified.

xnmtrc: I have never believed in one perfect solution in architecture. I have always worked through iterations. This approach is how I approached my work in faculty. Even for my own studio work, I strive to present different outcomes with varying variables to users. In this sense, generative art is not a far-fetched idea for me.

Leyla Fakhr: How has generative art extended your creative network?

Luis E. Fraguada: I've crossed paths with a lot of my architecture colleagues that are looking for other creative outlets. I've also met a lot of similarly frustrated architects, as well as the rare non-architect interested in architecture.

office ca: We have always been digital. But it has also been really great to get our work in front of non-architects such as generative art enthusiasts.

Luka Piškorec: Personally, as someone who spent a lot of years in academia, hanging out on gen art platforms, twitter and discord channels has greatly expanded my professional network. I’ve (virtually) met so many smart and talented people and had a chance to collaborate with them on real projects and collections. I understand this is still just a subset of all the people that are out there, but perhaps exactly because of the recent pandemic, many people were forced to shift from in-person interactions to virtual ones. I guess there are many ways people can spend their time online, and most of them are rather unproductive, but for me, it has been very positive, this confluence of technology, art and talent. One conscious decision I’ve made is to nurture this, not let it go to waste, to focus and to channel it, and hopefully expand in the future. Even with our architecture office TEN Studio we’ve adopted this remote way of working even before the pandemic.

Victor Doval: I always felt attracted for the digital expression, when I found the creative coding scene in 2012 I felt I had found something that was waiting for me, but it was not until I got into the web3 space that I felt myself surrounded by artists, collectors and supporters with the same interests as me. Now I feel many of them as true friends and co-workers of the same culture emerging and I like it.

xnmtrc: Even though I am new to the generative art world, I have had the pleasure of meeting many talented individuals, both architects and non-architects. Being able to engage with academicians, architects, and people who appreciate architecture all in one place is an incredible opportunity. I find inspiration in listening to intellectual conversations, theories, and ideas from people with diverse backgrounds and learning about their accomplishments and future plans.

Anna Beller: This is one of the main factors why I'm here, meeting interesting artists and scientists/academics from all over the world - getting inspired -  finding similarities in work-progresses, in aesthetic ways, starting with collaborations and communicating maybe with a similar sense of humor.

Leyla Fakhr: Has the use of generative art enabled you to explore new possibilities and push the boundaries of traditional architectural design?

Ismahelio: Yes, the use of generative art has indeed enabled me to explore new design possibilities. By leveraging computational design techniques, I have been able to generate complex and innovative designs, conceptualize unique building forms, create intricate and organic facades, as well as automate large-scale and repetitive design tasks. This has opened up exciting avenues for experimentation, creativity, and efficiency in design.

Luis E. Fraguada: Not personally. But if I were still working in architecture, I could see that it would.

office ca: We have never been "traditional" architectural designers so we don't know any other way to operate. This is exciting as a mode of practice, but it also unfortunately limits the kind of work we have been able to do.

Luka Piškorec: I’ve been teaching digital fabrication, computational design and algorithmic thinking at the university level for 12 years now. Every year we do one or two design studios with the students where we try to develop architectural designs using these “novel” tools. And every year, we struggle to improve on the already existing design methods. This is a very complex topic, but my summary would be: just because you’re using a more complex tool, it doesn’t mean the problem just got easier to solve. Many problems in architecture are like that, we call them “wicked” problems, which evade easy solutions. Still, there are many areas that can be greatly improved by using, for example, a code-based approach to design. For traditional architects, using code can be seen as a superpower. Maybe that’s the reason why there are not more generative architects out there making art, they all got gobbled up by architecture offices and are kept there on high payrolls.

Victor Doval: It has enabled me to explore a lot, but unfortunately I have never been able to implement this design in real buildings. It has opened my mind to what I can design and even allow me to develop some custom tools for solving repetitive tasks of more traditional designs.

xnmtrc: Yes and no. As I mentioned earlier, I am accustomed to creating designs using parametric design tools and coding. However, I have always been an architect who is closer to the engineering or construction side. Generative art has opened new possibilities for me, not just because it is generative, but also because it is a form of art. It has introduced me to the aesthetic side of architecture through generative tools.

Anna Beller: At the moment I’m focusing on my artistic painter career, but in my Art it definitely does. I start to experiment more and more, doing larger series, playing even more with unpredictabilities- Thinking about working in ‚traditional’ architecture again - and having enough freedom to design - yes, it probably would do inspire me, too!

Leyla Fakhr: What  brought you to generative art?

Ismahelio: It was something natural, since I was already working on automation and computational design to generate architecture.

Luis E. Fraguada: In architecture school I always preferred to code something to generate my drawings rather than drafting it. So it wasn't a big leap to get into generative art. Creating generative art I was happy with took a while longer, though.

Luka Piškorec: Oh, as I mentioned already, I’ve been teaching coding to architects for over a decade now. So, for me, the transition to generative art was a logical step and a great pleasure. There was a short period where I had to learn different frameworks in order to be able to operate in this field, but the type of algorithmic thinking and of course the logic of programming is the same. Even more, my previous experience as an architect has made me more comfortable working with 3D compositions, complex geometries, animations and interactivity, which reflects in my work.

Victor Doval: As said before, the architecture project is a big complex algorithm with a wide but strict parameter space that needs to be explored in order to arrive at the best possible solutions. This is a training for generative art. And if you combine that with the vast amount of different softwares to express my ideas that I had to learn in architecture school to express my ideas you end with a nice set of internal tools that only needed Processing to explode.

Erik Swahn: I was interested in generative processes and computational creativity before coming to the architectural field, so it's a perspective I had with me from the start, but then it took a while to find a place for that interest within architecture.

xnmtrc: I began creating generative art as a means of escape from reality. It's a realm where I feel more liberated and free to design and create whatever I desire. The lack of regulations, rules, municipalities, and paperwork makes me feel like I'm in an imaginary world where I can freely reflect my ideas and theories.

Anna Beller: Somehow since my youth I have drawn and painted in a generative way, without knowing the term ’generative’. Playing with logic but flexible and changing structures in architecture with sketching and CAD methods stands as the counterpart (the ‚Ratio‘) next to my emotional paintings. I’ve designed a lot as an architect, always tried many varieties, tested new possibilities in fast series. I always preferred the design and drawing part rather than the execution part. But just in combination with my still early painter’s career it has brought me here. I’m still very new to computer-generated art, but I definitely will follow that route as it adds the artistic interesting unpredictability to those logic structures.

Ismahelio: Rooms are things we take from ecosystems. They're features of buildings, which are themselves constructed on captures of portions of territory where there used to be life. Isn't the practice of giving such power to algorithms a dangerous one? None of the rooms in this exhibition will be built. But some could. And the algorithms are "in the world" now. How do we make generative architecture a non-destructive practice?

Luis E. Fraguada: Most architecture that is designed is never built. Does that make it non-destructive? I don't think so. The mere act of manifesting the idea of a space is already a proposed destruction at worst, a proposed displacement by any means. If you take any of these works seriously as architectural ideas, then yes, perhaps they are all proposals for destruction. I personally got out of the architecture industry after going through the process (a few times) of constructing buildings. It is a terrible process and practice, and I have a hard time understanding how anyone can go through it over and over again knowing the implications. If we don't take the artworks in the exhibition seriously as architectural ideas, and merely think of them as pretty pictures, then we're also not doing them justice. I personally struggle reconciling this. These works are based on architectural concepts, we should take them seriously as such, and as such, they are destructive and displacing at their root. But they are also interesting and often very nice to look at. We can find both the beauty and the horror.

office ca: Destructive practices come out of extraction. As long as any way of working is extractive, meaning that they extract labor or resources from individuals in an inequitable way (for profit or what have you), it will be destructive. Non-destructive practices are inclusive, generous, and diverse. This is why we appreciate the openness of this show, there are so many different approaches and none are considered "better" than others. They're all architectural.

Luka Piškorec: Well, I will just say that the whole history of human civilization has been a story of conflict between our species and the environment. It’s just that when we were just a tiny part of the ecosystem it didn’t matter, but now it does. We can talk about sustainability all we want, but there we are really talking about our sustainability as a species, not of our environment. The environment is already being consumed, there is no way to avoid this, as we as a species need space and resources, both of which are finite. Generative architecture, if it really proliferates into something outside of the digital realm, will be just a small “bleep” in that historical development.

Victor Doval: Living is destructive, but how can we minimize its destruction so that the healing powers of the environment can have a chance against humans? One of the vectors could be exposing the horrors of destruction. Another could be programming buildings to self destruct... In our case we are creating a floating architecture that does not respect the first law of architecture: gravity, so I don't think we are incrementing the risk of humans to self-destruct

xnmtrc: Humans can have a destructive impact on their environment, including the architecture and buildings they construct. However, we can work towards optimizing or minimizing this impact, through a process of trial and error similar to that of nature (not something like biophilic design, overall evolution). In this sense, I do not see generative architecture as a negative development. Rather, it can provide a valuable space for experimentation before bringing designs to life.

Anna Beller: Generative art/ architecture is a field where we can experiment. Probably we can get a lot of inspiration for ‚real’ works from here. Some artists and scientists always had the compulsion to experiment a lot, without even knowing ‚Why‘, just following strong intuitions. The results can be fascinating. To me the exhibition is about Art experimenting with Architectural ideas.

Ismahelio: You defined rules for algorithms to build rooms. What are they for? What did you intend to happen in those rooms?

office ca: Thinking

Victor Doval:  Feeling

Erik Swahn: I intended them to be seen from the outside as they form, and to make something as sterile as mathematical functions into something living, into something that just is itself.

xnmtrc: In my view, the most crucial outcome that I aimed for with this piece was to create a sense of uncertainty. Through the use of binary concepts such as space and non-space, inside and outside, open and closed, I hope to encourage the viewer to observe the piece more closely and for a longer period of time.

Anna Beller: We defined an algorithm with vectors that would create A) Spatial Expressions and B) Sculptures and C) something In-Between. With my paintings - snapshots of the moment - standing next to the never-ending beautiful animations by Alejandro you might also start thinking about even further big questions like ’Time’ in relation to 'Room'.