Papers by Matias Del Campo
Considering the emerging field of architecture and artificial intelligence, it might be necessary... more Considering the emerging field of architecture and artificial intelligence, it might be necessary to contemplate the remodeling of the concept of authorship entirely. The invention of authorship is a complex historical process that can be traced back to the emergence of print culture in Europe in the 15th century. Prior to this period, most literary and artistic works were created anonymously or attributed to collective or anonymous sources, such as folklore or religious traditions. However, with the rise of printing, texts became more easily reproducible and marketable, and there emerged a need for individual authors to take credit for their works. The notion of authorship was closely tied to the idea of originality and ownership, as authors sought to assert their exclusive rights to their works and to distinguish themselves from other writers. This was supported by the development of copyright law, which granted legal protection to authors and their works, and helped to establish a market for literary and artistic works. The idea of the author as a singular, autonomous figure gained further prominence in the 18th and 19th centuries, with the emergence of romanticism and the cult of the individual. This period saw the rise of the idea of the artist as a genius, whose works were the product of their own unique creativity and imagination. This idea was further reinforced by the rise of literary criticism, which focused on the interpretation and analysis of individual works and their authors. However, as Michel Foucault and other scholars have argued, the notion of authorship is not a universal or timeless concept, but rather a historically contingent and culturally specific one. Different societies ad cultures have different understandings of authorship, and these have shifted over time in response to changes in technology, culture, and social values. As it stands now, authorship in its traditional form can hardly be applied in a context where automated collaborations provide more than 50% of the generated material. This is true for multiple art fields. Visual Arts (Mario Klingemann, Sofia Crespo, Memo Atken, Ooouch, etc.), Music (Dadabots, YACHT, Holly Herndon), Literature, etc. Very soon this will also be true for Architecture. The consequence is also an entire rethinking of the concept of the sole genius. This notion, developed by German Romanticists in the early 19th century, is, in the current context of AI-assisted creativity, completely obsolete, as we are drawing from the genius of hundreds of thousands of artists and artworks in order to interrogate the latent space for unseen artistic opportunities. More akin to an archeological dig leading to the discovery of a next-generation jet fighter plane.
The Routledge Companion to Smart Design Thinking in Architecture & Urbanism for a Sustainable, Living Planet, 2025
This chapter examines how artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes the morphology of the city and th... more This chapter examines how artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes the morphology of the city and the conduct of urban design. It frames contemporary machine learning as a dynamic design ecology that responds to real-time signals while mining historical iterations, linking Renaissance ideal cities and modernist planning to today’s data-driven workflows. The text distinguishes AI’s main capacities—prediction, optimization, and generative exploration—and shows how they expand the design space beyond linear procedures. It argues for integrating humanities perspectives to keep cultural narrative, social meaning, and lived experience central to decision-making. Case discussions highlight the risks of data scarcity and overfitting, the politics of labeling and machinic legibility, and the tension between computational precision and human creativity. Ethical commitments—fairness, privacy, equity, and environmental responsibility—are treated as design parameters rather than afterthoughts. The chapter concludes by positioning the architect/planner as “in-the-loop” mediator who curates data, steers models, and interprets outputs, aligning AI-enabled urban proposals with public values and tectonic rigor.
Arketipo, 2025
This paper traces a genealogy from canonical classification to latent inference in architectural ... more This paper traces a genealogy from canonical classification to latent inference in architectural production. It reads Fischer von Erlach’s Entwurff as an epistemology of control—architecture ordered through codification and historical authority—then sets that regime against machine learning, where form emerges from probabilistic relations rather than prescribed rules. The argument holds that contemporary models do not “invent” architecture; they surface it from a learned field of affinities, reframing design as navigation of encoded potentials.
This shift unsettles authorship and typology while exposing a political substrate: labeling and dataset construction reproduce disciplinary hierarchies, making machinic legibility a filter on what counts as architecture. The paper proposes design-through-training strategies that seed ambiguity and divergence—loosening categorical schemas and “polluting” datasets to induce estrangement—so that models learn transformations rather than confirm taxonomies. It positions the architect as mediator of latent tendencies, developing literacies for selecting, testing, and stabilizing outputs within tectonic bounds. The conclusion reframes design as an ongoing lifecycle of training and interpretation—architecture conceived not as final composition, rather as negotiated emergence within a computational archive of possibilities.
Keywords: architectural canon; classification; latent space; authorship; bias; estrangement; dataset design; probabilistic design workflows.
About the Guest‐Editor
Architectural design, May 1, 2024
Everything Can Be an Author: Rethinking Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Architectural design, May 1, 2024
Ontology of Diffusion Models: Tools, Language and Architecture Design
Sublime giant machines—artistic reflections between Big Data and a new Grand Tour
IOP Publishing eBooks, Nov 30, 2023
Unleashing New Creativities
Architectural Design
This City Does not Exist An attempt at a theory of Neural Urban Design
Science and the City. In the Era of Paradigm Shifts
2015 was a turning point in the application of techniques derived from AI research to the arts. T... more 2015 was a turning point in the application of techniques derived from AI research to the arts. This year saw the introduction of the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) by Ian Goodfellow and the paper A Neural Algorithm of Artistic Style by Leon Gatys et al. In recent years, these novel methods have taken hold in the arts and music. The newly emerging artform is fttingly named Neural Art. The source of this term can be found in the title of a paper by Leon Gatys, which forms the base for the work of several of the most prolifc Neural Artists, such as Mario Klingemann (who describes himself as a Neurographer) and Sofa Crespo, who’s series of works named Neural Zoo refects a keen interest in the estrangement and defamiliarization of deep-sea creatures.
AI, architecture, accessibility, and data justice—ACADIA special issue
International Journal of Architectural Computing
Can Machines Hallucinate Architecture? AI as Design Method
Architectural Design
Field Notes on Design Activism: 1
Places Journal
Architectural Intelligence
The purpose of this article is to discuss the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the ... more The purpose of this article is to discuss the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the design of the Deep House project (Fig. 1), an attempt to use estrangement as a method to emancipate a house from a canonical approach to the progressive design of a one-family house project. The main argument in this text is that the results created by Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), whether in the form of GANs, CNNs, or other networks, generate results that fall into the category of Estranged objects. In this article, I would like to offer a possible definition of what architecture in this plateau of thinking represents and how it differentiates from previous attempts to use estrangement to explain the phenomena observed when working with NNs in architecture design. A potpourri of thoughts that demonstrate the intellectual tradition of exploring estrangement, especially in theater and literature, that ultimately circles back to its implications for architecture, particularly in light...
Architecture Design in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Routledge eBooks, Jul 19, 2022
CAADRIA proceedings
The motivation to explore Attentional Generative Adversarial Networks (AttnGAN) as a design techn... more The motivation to explore Attentional Generative Adversarial Networks (AttnGAN) as a design technique in architecture can be found in the desire to interrogate an alternative design methodology that does not rely on images as starting point for architecture design, but language. Traditionally architecture design relies on visual language to initiate a design process, wither this be a napkin sketch or a quick doodle in a 3D modeling environment. AttnGAN explores the information space present in programmatic needs, expressed in written form, and transforms them into a visual output. The key results of this research are shown in this paper with a proof-of-concept project: the competition entry for the 24 Highschool in Shenzhen, China. This award-winning project demonstrated the ability of GraphCNN to serve as a successful design methodology for a complex architecture program. In the area of Neural Architecture, this technique allows to interrogate shape through language. An alternative design method that creates its own unique sensibility.
Proceedings of the 24th Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA) [Volume 2]
The Project, the Church of AI, taps into the opportunities of Artificial Intelligence as a device... more The Project, the Church of AI, taps into the opportunities of Artificial Intelligence as a device for Architecture Design in a twofold way: On the one side by employing a design technique that is based on the ability of Artificial Intelligence to generate form autonomously of human interaction, and on the other hand by speculating about the nature of devotion, the sublime and awe in a posthuman society.
When Robots Dream: In Conversation with Alexandra Carlson
Architectural Design, Apr 7, 2022
The Robot Garden - Architecture and AI
Antagonismos, 2020
The Robot Garden, Architecture & AI Architecture has rarely found points of intersection ... more The Robot Garden, Architecture & AI Architecture has rarely found points of intersection with the research conducted on Artificial Intelligence in a global scale. Even today, the discussion of AI and Architecture has barely started. Considering the enormous potentialities of this area of research regarding its application in architecture, it is more than strange that this has not been discussed in wider circles within the discipline. In recent years we have seen a rapid development in the progressive methods emerging from AI research, resulting in applications that surround us continuously. Almost undetected, AI applications have seeped successfully into our daily life: voice recognition, ride sharing apps, banking apps, face recognition, AI Airline Pilots, smart home devices and more, are already naturally ingrained into our environment. More are in the pipeline that reach from AI driven Cars to farming with intelligent machines. The possibilities of these methods will transform all areas of our daily life and will mutate the planet.
Architectural Intelligence, 2020
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the German Architect and writer Hermann Muthesius (Fig... more At the beginning of the twentieth century, the German Architect and writer Hermann Muthesius (Fig. ) proposed to get rid of the architecture discipline entirely from the term Style and to replace it rather with the notion of Type . An attempt to divorce architecture from its pompous nineteenth century Historicism, a Style that identified itself with the imitation and at times amalgamation of various historical styles. The grandeur of the Ringstraße in Vienna can be considered one of the prime specimens of this development-including a parliament in the Greek style [2], the city hall in a Flemish Neo-gothic Style [3] and Museums in Neo-Renaissance Style . The formation of the Deutsche Werkbund [5] (Fig. ) in 1907 moved the debate further in regard to discussing the difference between Style and Type. In contrast to Style that is connotated with particular, identifiable features, positioning buildings in a specific timeframe and culture, type talks about the result of basic geometries, specific production technologies, and materialities. The time was calling for an association that does not specialize in any specific architecture (rural, urban, domestic, official, religious, or otherwise) but rather created a frame for the entirety of living (Fig. ). The Motto of the Werkbund says it all "vom Sofakissen zum Städtebau" (from the sofa upholstery to urban design), and reflects on the notion of the "Gesamtkunstwerk", the all-encompassing piece of art. The ideas circulating at this time (also with other associations such as the Wiener Werkstätte or the Art and Crafts movement in the UK) most certainly drew from Gottfried Semper's desire to reinvent the M. del Campo (B) • S. Manninger (B)
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Papers by Matias Del Campo
This shift unsettles authorship and typology while exposing a political substrate: labeling and dataset construction reproduce disciplinary hierarchies, making machinic legibility a filter on what counts as architecture. The paper proposes design-through-training strategies that seed ambiguity and divergence—loosening categorical schemas and “polluting” datasets to induce estrangement—so that models learn transformations rather than confirm taxonomies. It positions the architect as mediator of latent tendencies, developing literacies for selecting, testing, and stabilizing outputs within tectonic bounds. The conclusion reframes design as an ongoing lifecycle of training and interpretation—architecture conceived not as final composition, rather as negotiated emergence within a computational archive of possibilities.
Keywords: architectural canon; classification; latent space; authorship; bias; estrangement; dataset design; probabilistic design workflows.