More Than Chat: Wat does AI mean for architectural design?
Artificial intelligence sparks both excitement and nervousness in the field of architecture. It feels as though we are at a tipping point, with consequences of AI that are difficult to foresee. Architects and other designers instinctively defend their practice against the rise of artificial intelligence, fearing what might be lost in this latest technological revolution. Designers producing output based on a chaotic mountain of data—hastily and randomly scraped from across the internet by a bot—make for an uncomfortable and even dystopian image. What exactly is at stake? The romantic idea of individual inspiration? Or the craft of embodied practices such as drawing, modelling, and manipulating material? On a more fundamental level, authorship over the creative process seems to be faltering.
This exhibition explores the potential of AI within a design process, and in the development of architectural images, plans, and drawings. It presents and reflects on three concrete experiments conducted during a Summer School taking place in September at VANDENHOVE: experiments by researchers, teachers, and students aiming to test meaningful uses of AI in architectural design, to document them, and to spark critical discussion. These parallel experiments—with custom-trained AI models, tailored input, and adapted model training methods—centre on pressing issues such as Authorship, Reference, and Authenticity.
Visitors discover not only the final outcomes, but also the detours, adjustments, and limitations of architectural design in dialogue with artificial intelligence. A distinctive scenography thematises a hybrid reality, between analogue and digital, human and bot, library and AI model. The exhibition also puts the Summer School experiments in conversation with an installation by French architect and digital image designer Olivier Campagne.
Curation and exhibition design: Pauline Clarot and Joris Kerremans (Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University)
Summer school: Willem Bekers, Pauline Clarot, Joris Kerremans, Mohamed Moubile, Ruben Verstraeten (Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University)
With support of: Ghent University Doctoral School, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture (Education Innovation), A.C.C. research group, Dev@Work
Project Info
Research group: Digital Design and Architecture Culture and the Contemporary (ACC)
Start Date: from 15-09-2025 to 29-11-2021
Researchers: Willem Bekers, Pauline Clarot, Joris Kerremans, Mohamed Moubile, Ruben Verstraeten