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  Expanded Design Creativity, Machine Learning and Urban Design

  Roberto Bottazzi

  1-19

  2024-12-01

  The introduction of automated algorithmic processes (e.g. machine learning) in creative disciplines such as architecture and urban design has expanded the design space available for creativity and speculation. Contrary to previous algorithmic processes, machine learning models must be trained before they are deployed. The two processes (training and deployment) are separate and, crucially for this paper, the outcome of the training process is not a spatial object directly implementable but rather code. This marks a novelty in the history of the spatial design techniques which has been characterised by design instruments with stable properties determining the bounds of their implementation. Machine Learning models, on the other hand, are design instruments resulting from the training they undertake. In short, training a machine learning model has become an act of design.

  Beside spatial representation traditionally comprising of drawings, physical or CAD models, Machine Learning introduces an additional representational space: the vast, abstract, stochastic, multi-dimensional space of data, and their statistical correlations. This latter domain – broadly referred to as latent space –  has received little attention by architects both in terms of conceptualising its technical organisation and speculating on its impact on design. However, the statistical operations structuring data in latent space offer glimpses of new types of spatial representations that challenge the existing creative processes in architectural and urban design. Such spatial representation can include non-human actors, give agency to a range of concerns that are normally excluded from urban design, expand the scales and temporalities amenable to design manipulation, and offer an abstract representation of spatial features based on statistical correlations rather than spatial proximity. The combined effect of these novelties that can elicit new types of organisation, both formally and programmatically. In order to foreground their potential, the paper will discuss the impact of ml models in conjunction with larger historical and theoretical questions underpinning spatial design. In so doing, the aim is not to abdicate a specificity of urban design and uncritically absorb computational technologies; rather, the creative process in design will provide a filter through which critically evaluate machine learning techniques.

  The paper tasks to conceptualise the potential of latent space design by framing it through the figure of the paradigm. Paradigms are defined by Thomas Kuhn as special members of a set which they both give rise to and make intelligible. Their ability to relate parts to parts not only resonates with the technical operations of ml models, but they also provide a conceptual space for designers to speculate different spatial organisation aided by algorithmic processes.  Paradigms are not only helpful to conceptualise the use of ml models in urban design, they also suggest an approach to design that privileges perception over structure and curation over process. The creative process that emerges is one in ml models are speculative technical elements that can foreground relations between diverse datasets and engender an urbanism of relations rather than objects.  

  The application of such algorithmic models to design will be supported by the research developed by students part of Research Cluster 14 part of the Master in Urban Design at The Bartlett School of Architecture in London.