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Architecture is a complex web of semiotics – signs, signals and signifiers. The creation of these codes, and their dynamic manipulation and interaction over time, is the lifeblood of experimental architecture practice SPAN's Doghouse project. Co‐founder Sandra Manninger explains how the project's articulation, robotic inhabitants and fluctuating symbolic meanings and languages create a complex multi‐readable architectural structure and text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Matias del Campo interviews Alexandra Carlson who had a key role in founding the pioneering Architecture and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AR2IL) at the University of Michigan's Robotics Department and Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. The synthesis of the architectural and dataset sharing adds another dimension to design possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co‐founders and principals of architecture firm SPAN and architectural academics based at the University of Michigan, Matias del Campo and Sandra Manninger describe how they became aware of AI technology, setting out some key collaborations, familiarising us with the concept of 'defamiliarisation' and introducing us to some of SPAN's explorations in AI and architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on computer-science papers emerging in proving valuable, interesting and informative for potential applications of AI in architecture. Topics include inquiry into the problem of designing architecture showing creativity, intuition, and sensibility; and opening up the possibility of style transfer such as transferring the stripes of a zebra onto a horse or reading an image through a neural network .

The article discusses on the debate on computational design thinking, citing on the techniques, technologies and tools. It cites on the alternative frame for realism such as carved patterns, translucent columns and ultra-black asteroids. The article also discusses the characteristics of contemporary architectural production which evoke mood, atmospheric conditions and phenomenological traits of the sensual.

The leading figures of Modernism instilled a fear of ornament as something unclean and even criminal. Guest-Editor Matias del Campo calls for us to leave behind this phobia and engage anew with ornament for the purposes of generating mood and atmosphere. Here he describes two recent projects by SPAN, the Vienna-based architectural practice he cofounded with Sandra Manninger, which explore alternatives to the usual aesthetic canons by addressing classic architectural problems in bold new ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is the term 'ornament' set to become redundant in architecture? With the sinuous lines produced by CNC milling machines giving way to the ever more weirdly figural products of algorithmically controlled 3D printing, decoration is increasingly an integral part of form, rather than supplementary to it. Mario Carpo - Reyner Banham Professor of Architectural Theory and History at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London - investigates this voxellisation, and how it drives architecture beyond human comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]