Taubman College Taubman College faculty members El Hadi Jazairy, associate professor of architecture and the director of the master of urban design, and Matias del Campo, associate professor of architecture, launched books in conjunction with Biennale Architettura 2023. The Biennale Architettura 2023, the organization’s 18th exhibition, runs from May 20 to November 26, 2023. This year’s exhibition is curated by academic, educator, and best-selling novelist Lesley Lokko, who said, “Architects have a unique opportunity to put forward ambitious and creative ideas that help us imagine a more equitable and optimistic future in common.”
DESIGN EARTH held a book launch for Climate Inheritance, authored by El Hadi Jazairy and Rania Ghosn, on May 20, 2023, at the Giardini della Marinaressa, Riva dei Sette Martiri, Venice, Italy. Ghosn is an associate professor of architecture and urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and she and Jazairy are the founding partners of DESIGN EARTH.
Climate Inheritance, published by Actar Publishers, is a speculative design research publication that reckons with the complexity of world and heritage in the Anthropocene. The impacts of climate change on heritage sites—from Venice flooding to extinction in the Galápagos Islands—have garnered empathetic media attention in a landscape that has otherwise failed to communicate the urgency of the climate crisis. In a strategic subversion of the media aura of heritage, DESIGN EARTH casts ten World Heritage sites as narrative figures to visualize pervasive climate risks—rising sea levels, extinction, droughts, air pollution, melting glaciers, material vulnerability, unchecked tourism, and the massive displacement of communities and cultural artifacts—all while situating the present emergency within the wreckages of other ends of world, replete with the salvages of extractivism, racism, and settler colonialism. The possibilities of such climate inheritances are narrated in drawing triptychs and mythologies that bequeath other worlds and values.
Photo credit to Federico Vespignani
Diffusions in Architecture: Artificial Intelligence and Image Generators, edited by Matias del Campo, launched on May 19 at Palazzo Zenobio, Fondamenta del Soccorso, Venice, Italy. Del Campo’s presentation on the book, published by Wiley, was followed by a panel discussion with selected contributors. In addition to his position at Taubman College, del Campo co-founded the architecture practice SPAN.
Diffusions in Architecture: Artificial Intelligence and Image Generators delves into the impact of Diffusion AI algorithms and generative image models on architecture design and aesthetics. The book presents an in-depth analysis of how these new technologies are revolutionizing the field of architecture. The architects presented in the book focus on the application of specific AI techniques and tools used in generative design, such as Diffusion models, Dall-E2, Stable Diffusion, and MidJourney. It discusses how these techniques can generate synthetic images that are both realistic and imaginative, creating new possibilities for architectural design and aesthetics. This comprehensive overview of the impact of Diffusion AI algorithms and generative image models on the field of architecture shows how they are changing the way architects approach their work.
