Artificial Intelligence and Seeing The Invisible in Arts ‐ From the Wane of axiality and Symmetry To the Wax of Invisibility and Emptiness

Abstract

Function has been always an important driver in architectural design. It is the request to generate form directly from purpose and utility. In 1896, Louis Sullivan projected that ‘form follows function’ and that the beauty of a building derives directly from its function and not from references of the built heritage. The assumption was that beauty would naturally derive from design once functional requirements are met. Thus, fitness for purpose equals beauty. In 1908, Adolf Loos even went so far as to ask for the total abandonment of decoration. In 1947, Mies van der Rohe made his paradigm shift, function is the main language for design in Europe, creating a new built environment. However, with the advent of machine learning systems, and as seen in our deep learning approach, form indeed can literally follow function. In this paper, we presented a new design approach where we can interpret the unseen in visualizing the future. This can decompose the final design to its essentials to finally generate a conceptual new futuristic design. Using multiple types of tools, we showed how to merge art, sculpture and architecture in a principled manner to yield new compositions and how to generate interesting design variations thus reaching novel conceptual designs. Architecture is a complex spatial organization field, and one must consider it in its totality. There are not only functional considerations but also aesthetical and structural ones. Artificial intelligence is an exciting field of investigation that not only has the potential to fill the gap of computational resources for the conceptual design phases of architectural projects but also the capacity to address the wider needs of the profession for futuristic designs. It answers the ideas of the volume of space, and how space be visualized and built. Finally, architecture does not only deal with functional perfection but also need to respond to immaterial and contextual conditions and inevitably responding to aesthetic questions, structural efficiency and deal with contextual, ideological, socio-cultural, and economic constraints and opportunities. This paper is a review paper, exploring the possibilities for new design approaches.