Name
Designing Culturally Responsive Futures: AI as a Design Tool for Vernacular Cultural Memory and Community.
Date & Time
Friday, October 16, 2026, 1:45 PM - 2:30 PM
Bedgid Laguerre Muskaan Alimchandani
Description

As conversations regarding AI in Architecture evolve, cultural representation remains a critical point of discussion. This course aims to provide insights into the practicalities of AI and its use as a tool for the historical reconstruction of cultural identities into new design logics, through two case studies. The studies aim to translate historical data into new architectural language and environmental frameworks. The investigations will develop datasets that inform new design typologies and materiality. Case Study One discusses a cultural center memorializing Mill Creek Valley, a former African-American community in Saint Louis, and Case Study Two reanalyzes Indian stepwells, ancient water harvesting structures in India. These case studies address cultural and architectural intelligence marginalized by urban renewal and modernist interventions through two approaches: socio-spatial conditions and architectural expression. The applied methodologies include generative AI tools such as Stable Diffusion with ControlNet and Adobe Firefly guided by AI-based spatial and modelling techniques such as Depth Map Reconstruction, Common Sense Machines, and Meshy to translate historical data into spatial, material, and environmental design logics. These case studies will demonstrate that AI can be used as a practical design tool for present-day architectural strategies and produce culturally responsive concepts and frameworks for socially informed futures.  

Course Credit
LU
Number of Credits
.25 Learning Unit (15-29 min.)
Student Track
yes
ID
4045