AI as Cultural Technique: A Theory Workshop

Registration Link

Workshop Registration opens September 8th, 2025! Click the link above to be notified when registration becomes available.

Location : Online

Workshop Team

Matias del Campo

Affiliation: Associate Professor, New York Institute of Technology
Bio: Architect, theorist, and researcher, Matias del Campo explores AI-driven generative design and the intersection of architecture, computation, and cognition. His work examines the role of artificial intelligence as an epistemic shift in design thinking and authorship.
Teaching Examples: Courses and lectures on AI and architecture at leading institutions.

Sandra Manninger

Affiliation: Associate Professor, New York Institute of Technology
Bio: An architect and computational designer, Sandra Manninger’s research investigates digital design methodologies, AI-driven aesthetics, and architectural semiotics. She has conducted numerous workshops and studios on the evolving role of AI in architectural discourse.

Workshop Description

Artificial Intelligence is neither neutral nor passive. It mediates architectural knowledge, reorganising design as an epistemic, aesthetic, and ontological condition. This workshop critically examines AI’s historical, theoretical, and ethical dimensions, framing it not merely as a generative tool but as a cultural technique that structures architectural thought and practice.

Drawing from precedents in computation, cybernetics, and digital aesthetics, participants will interrogate how AI reconfigures architectural classification systems, typologies, material logics, representation, and authorship. The workshop explores AI’s potential to generate resilient, regenerative, and plural design practices while scrutinising its reliance on extractive computational economies, embedded algorithmic biases, and the automation of creative labour.

It asks: What forms of knowledge does AI privilege or exclude? How does it encode historical classifications, and to what extent does it enable architectural estrangement, novelty, or speculative agency? What are the political, ecological, and ethical stakes of outsourcing design intelligence to algorithms trained on biased or incomplete datasets?

Through a combination of lectures, reading discussions, and critical case studies, participants will analyze AI’s ontological consequences, engage with its environmental and energetic costs, and examine its transformative impact on creative agency, disciplinary frameworks, and aesthetic trajectories. Rather than focusing on operational software proficiency, this workshop builds conceptual and analytical frameworks situating AI within broader cultural, historical, and theoretical contexts.

Participants will leave with a critical vocabulary and reflective toolkit for integrating AI into their own research and practice, understanding it as an infrastructural condition that both extends and challenges architecture’s intellectual foundations. The workshop is open to students, educators, and practitioners seeking to situate their AI explorations within wider disciplinary, societal, and ecological narratives, repositioning machine intelligence as a site of critical speculation, resistance, and transformative possibilities in architectural thinking.

Key Learning Outcomes

Critically understand AI as a cultural technique structuring architectural knowledge, aesthetics, and ontologies
Situate AI within historical and theoretical frameworks of computation and cybernetics
Analyze AI’s epistemic and ontological impacts on design classification and representation
Develop ethical frameworks addressing AI’s environmental costs, biases, and extractive economies
Evaluate AI’s potential to reinforce or destabilize typologies towards plural, regenerative practices
Cultivate architectural literacy to integrate AI as an epistemic infrastructure shaping design agency and practice

Workshop Schedule

Number of days: 3
Daily hours: 6 (3 Morning + 3 Afternoon)

Day 1: AI, History, and the Structuring of Architectural Knowledge

Morning (3h)

Lecture: From Cybernetics to AI: Computation and Architectural Thought
Reading Discussion: Introduction into Pedro Domingo’s “Master Algorithm”
Case Study: Taxonomies, Precedents, and Latent Space

Afternoon (3h)

Seminar: AI and the Reconfiguration of Architectural Authorship
Roundtable: Memory, Bias, and Training Data Politics

Day 2: Theories of AI, Ontology, and Representation

Morning (3h)

Lecture: Ontology and AI – Image, Model, Object
Reading Discussion: Everything can be an Author? AI and Creative Agency
Case Study: Diffusion Models and Architectural Form

Afternoon (3h)

Seminar: The Aesthetics of AI – Estrangement, Computation, Originality and Architectural Fiction
Roundtable: From Blueprint to Dataset – Ontological Shifts

Day 3: AI, Ethics, and the Resilience of Architectural Thought

Morning (3h)

Lecture: Computational Extraction and Environmental Costs
Reading Discussion: Between The Stack and Atlas of AI, Planetary Intelligence and Ecological Responsibility
Case Study: Algorithmic Bias and Inclusion Politics

Afternoon (3h)

Panel Discussion: AI and Architectural Futures: Automation, Labor, and Creative Practice
Final Reflections: Where Do We Go From Here? Rethinking Computation, Resilience, and Architectural Knowledge

Workshop Format

Online Workshop - 3 Days, 6 Hours per Day

Prerequisites

Interest in AI theory and its intersection with architecture
Openness to critical discourse and theoretical frameworks
No technical AI skills required - this is a theory-focused workshop

Workshop Outcomes

Participants will leave the workshop with:

Critical understanding of AI as a cultural technique in architecture
Historical and theoretical frameworks for situating AI in architectural discourse
Ethical frameworks for addressing AI’s environmental and social impacts
Analytical tools for evaluating AI’s role in design classification and representation
Vocabulary and concepts for integrating AI into research and practice
Perspective on AI as both a challenge and opportunity for architectural thought