PLAYING MODELS aims to address the fundamental conceptual and technological shifts that AI and computational storytelling instruments (AR VR) have introduced to design and engineering disciplines and how they will transform millennia-old traditions of architecture and design thinking. The conference questions architecture’s Beaux-Arts and Bauhaus-Modernist pedagogies and practices, as well as universal concepts of “efficiency” and “optimization,” to critique a “systems” approach to design after 19th and 20th-century industrialization. With this conference, we suggest that AI and computational storytelling instruments (AR VR) offer another understanding of the world fundamentally different from automation and driven by responsive machine learning, big data, and big tech. We are, therefore, for the first time able to navigate through and communicate with the abundance of information that is otherwise inaccessible. Such a new digital “metaverse” thus becomes a fruitful source for new findings and design concepts. The synthesis of big data, AI, and game engines brings together technologies that can engage a much broader audience into participatory roles influencing the design and planning of the built environment. These new concepts would be further developed to the output of the workshop in the form of texts, images, video animations, and 3D models. The results of the conference will be compiled annually in a booklet that, after four years, will turn into a book publication that narrates different approaches from European and American-based researchers to design using AI and computational storytelling instruments (AR VR) while exploring topics such as generative design, ethics in AI, participatory design using game engines, crowdsourcing, and more.

June 10 - 11 , 2022

Conference Schedule

AI: Artificial Intelligence

GE: Game Engines

VR: Virtual Reality

AR: Augmented reality

June 10

10:00 – 10:45              Intro

Karla Saldana Ochoa / UF School of Architecture AI

Playing Models 🌎

10:45 – 12:45              Speakers

Romana Rust / ETH Zurich / AR VR

Translations between the imagined, the perceived, and the executed

Jorge Orozco / ETH Zurich / AI

From Generic Tools to Personal Instruments–Search Engines in Architecture

12:45 – 14:30              Lunch

14:30 – 16:30              Speakers

Nikola Marincic / ETH Zurich / AI

The Death of Narcissus: Perception Mirroring through Data

Oneil Howell / Bad Robot Games Studio / Facebook/Meta AR VR

Redefining Immersion in the Digital World

16:30 – 16:45              Coffee break

16:45 – 17:45              Speakers

Damjan Jovanovic / SCI-Arc / GE VR AR

Games and Worldmaking

17:45 – 18:45              Gallery exhibit students’ work and Refreshments

June 11

10:00 – 12:45              Speakers

Ludger Hovestadt / ETH Zurich / AI

Guo Zifeng / University of Florida / AI

An archdaily lexicon: context-based encoding of architectural images

Miro Roman / University of Innsbruck / AI

Growing Objects: Characters Without 🌸 Scripts

12:45 – 14:30             Lunch

14:30 – 16:15             Speakers

Lee-Su Huang / University of Florida / GE VR

Extending Spatial Realities: Linking the Real, the Virtual, the Interstitial

Daniela Mitterberger / ETH Zurich / MAEID / AR VR

Workmanship of synthesis: digital devices, synthesizers and the human body

16:15– 16:30              Coffee break

16:30 – 18:15              Speakers

Adil Bokhari / ETH Zurich / GE AI

Diorama: The Theatricality of Perspective

Riccardo Villa / Technische Universität Wien / AI

Iconostasis

18:15 – 19:15              Final Discussion Roundtable - moderated by Karla Saldana Ochoa

This conference is supported by the University of Florida School of Architecture, City-Lab Orlando, Center of European Studies, ETH Zurich, Chair of Digital Architectonics

Presentations

Day 1

Playing Models Day 1 Presentation 01 - Karla Saldana Ochoa: Playing Models

Playing Models Day 1 Presentation 02 - Jorge Orozco: From Generic Tools to Personal Instruments

Playing Models Day 1 Presentation 03 - Romana Rust: Translations between the imagined, the perceived, and the executed

Playing Models Day 1 Presentation 04 - Nikola Marincic: The Death of Narcissus

Playing Models Day 1 Presentation 05 - Oneil Howell: Redefining Immersion in the Digital World

Playing Models Day 1 Presentation 06 - Damjan Jovanovic: Games and Worldmaking

Day 2

Playing Models Day 2 Presentation 01 - Ludger Hovestadt: AI, Cogito and Architectonics

Playing Models Day 2 Presentation 02 - Guo Zifeng: An Archdaily Lexicon

Playing Models Day 2 Presentation 03 - Miro Roman: Growing Objects: Characters Without 🌸 Scripts

Playing Models Day 2 Presentation 04 - Lee-Su Huang: Extending Spatial Realities

Playing Models Day 2 Presentation 05 - Adil Bokhari: Diorama: The Theatricality of Perspective

Playing Models Day 2 Presentation 06 - Daniela Mitterberger: Workmanship of Synthesis

Playing Models Day 2 Presentation 07 - Riccardo M. Villa: Iconostasis

Images of the event