CONTENT / We live suspended between the digital and the physical, in a liminal space. The pioneers of digital landscapes we navigate realms unfettered by physical constraints. A place where stories can construct and reconstruct themselves at will, where time is not just static but can be reversed, where truth can be rewritten and history revised. Orientation increasingly turns to an expanding mirror world, the echo of Borges fiction. A 1:1 remaking of the world, where huge ships may hide within the folds of fake signals, infrastructure is analysed through its digital twin and non-existent islands rise into being leading very real exhibitions to search for them.
This can begin to paint a picture of an increasing retreat from reality into our imaginaries, with all the dystopian and problematic environmental consequences this could bring. Yet it also holds within it the potential to enhance and deepen our embodiment within the physical realm. AI and other technologies offer the opportunity for us to sculpt this liminal realm to enhance our spatial embodiment, extending our understanding and engagement of the physical world and ourselves.
We will explore how the design of our architecture and cities might engage critically with these liminal landscapes, beginning to define our mode of engagement through the spaces we dare to imagine.
AIMS / The aim of our workshop is to begin to explore the implications of our evolving liminal condition as an opportunity for extending embodiment. We aim to begin to construct potential frameworks of engagement, formulating a zoo of proto architectures for the liminal realm. We will focus on the potential of AI to augment spatial experience.
METHOD / We will be teaching through the medium we are contemplating, the digital realm of Zoom, Teams, Miro. We will therefore begin through a questioning of the space of this connection. For our workshops each of us will simultaneously enter into multiple spaces in multiple countries through a digital presence. Yet the sound of our voices will echo around solid walls and physical spaces remote from us, influencing and impacting places we have never visited. Working in small groups spread across disparate locations we will begin with attempting to grasp the nature of this liminal space, using drawing as a tool to start to discuss its implications for our inhabitation of space. With the aid of this initial navigation we will begin to focus on how AI might inform our engagement with liminal spaces to extend embodiment, workshopping opportunities to evolve a zoo of proto architectures.
1st day: Introduction
Lecture: Liminal Landscapes: Sarah Stevens (Architecture lecturer, University of Brighton) Lecture: AI and architecture: Marcus Winter (AI lecturer, University of Brighton)
Workshopping ideas and then dividing into small groups to evolve specific areas of interest.
2nd day: Workshopping group proposals through concept images for initial proto architectures. Opening of the zoo of the liminal landscape with the final review of the group’s proto architectures.
SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students: Tuesday 15th March Introduction, lectures, workshopping proposals
Lecture: Liminal Landscapes, by Sarah Stevens
Lecture: AI and Architecture, by Marcus Winter
Tuesday 22nd March Workshopping proposals and final review.
EVALUATION / Develop these actions:
– Critically engage with the digital realm that augments out day to day lives.
– Uncover implications of differences in cultural approaches.
– Finish with concept proposals for proto architectures which begin to discuss both the physical and digital realms we inhabit, furthering our embodiment in the physical.
University of Brighton (UK) / Sarah Stevens – architecture (S.Stevens2@brighton.ac.uk ) + Marcus Winter – computing: AI (Marcus.Winter@brighton.ac.uk)