Do Architects Dream of Artificial Scenes? An Eclectic Collection of Uncanny Spaces and Experiences

Abstract

Architects and designers often use fiction to form their worlds and create fabricated environments by manipulating reality. This may be through the use of renders or idealistic writings and descriptions of their projects. Currently there is a demand - and therefore preoccupation in our industry for expressing intrinsically comforting environments. This often leads to architectural presentations that narrate a smooth and optimistic world - as if architecture will never fail to make everybody happy. I argue that this overlooks the potential of the uncanny in representation - drawings that are rooted in a moody and dark aesthetic. The “uncanny” are often deserted and frequently empty, spaces out of the ordinary, environments that reject the core values of living space. They are versions of spaces that we feel like we’ve seen, but we can’t very explain how. It becomes unnerving to see these spaces in a context other than how we know them, where there might not be any furniture, dimly lit, or there’s a lack of people. Science fiction intrigues architects because it is a genre whose goal is to extrapolate beyond what is currently possible. Inspired by the title of Philip K Dicks’s novel, “Do Androids dream of electric sheep?”, this thesis hopes to utilize artificiality and AI to explore fiction to springboard unique architectural explorations. While providing narrative cues for the creation of architectural representation. This thesis explores the role of storytelling and narrative in the design process; it uses methods of hyperreality and artificiality to produce fictional scenes which document the progression of how these spaces came to become “uncanny.” And how these uncanny spaces can shift from one another. AI can give us predictive and preparatory tools to speculate on what these could look like. Ultimately these stories are told through a series of images and interpolations with a backdrop of the uncanny space. There are stories to be told with the “other spaces”; we are not limited to just the standard architectural depictions of narrative. These untold stories have potential and evoke interesting narrative points and allow for a quick and interesting new way to generate stories.