Introduction When we imagine a corridor in a typical apartment building, we picture a purely functional passageway — a space designed for movement, not for meeting. These circulation zones are often long, narrow, and socially inert. Yet they structure much of our daily experience of housing, shaping how residents encounter one another. Cohousing projects show … Read more
For the Graph Machine Learning (ML) seminar we took a classic New York brownstone and asked how graph ML can read the way a building is organized, and what happens when that organization changes. Objective: Our goal was to model an old and a new brownstone layout as spatial graphs in TopologicPy, compare how the … Read more
The building The Narkomfin Building was completed in 1930 in Moscow, designed by Moisei Ginzburg and Ignaty Milinis. It is one of the most recognized examples of Soviet Constructivist housing — a dom-kommuna, or communal house. The design was deliberately unconventional: kitchens were minimal because residents were expected to eat in a shared canteen, and living … Read more
Programme MAEBB 02 / MRAC 02 · 2024–2026 · Supervisor Valentino Tagliaboschi · Fabrication Sheikh Rizvi Riaz · Developed at IAAC Robotics Lab and Valldaura Labs , Barcelona This article continues the framework introduced in Immutable Concrete, the earlier phase of this work, in which the gate becomes an instrument an agent can use. The problem, restated Recycled-aggregate concrete is difficult to … Read more
Adaptive Framework for Hybrid Slicing Strategies in Large-Scale Robotic Fabrication of AI-Derived Architectural Systems Throughout history, imagined worlds have existed through literature, cinema, and digital environments, continuously expanding architecture beyond the built. Today, AI allows these speculative realities to be generated with unprecedented complexity, while robotic fabrication enables their materialization. Through an adaptive framework using … Read more
Mapping out Spatial Intelligence Program: Master in AI for Architecture and the Built Environment (MaAI)Supervisor: Wassim Jabi Motion Pixels is a research project that explores how pedestrian movement can be transformed into spatial intelligence. By combining computer vision, trajectory analysis, behavioral mapping, and machine learning, the project converts video recordings of public spaces into spatial … Read more
Every great building begins as a small model and a messy desk Abstract As architects we spend hours making physical study models, cutting foam, assembling balsa, running the 3D printer. These models are essential, but the process is slow. Crafty Studio asks a simple question: “What if you could see your design as a physical … Read more
The promise of AI agents is compelling: systems that can sense their environment, plan strategically, take action, and learn from experience. But as organizations begin deploying these systems in production, a troubling reality emerges. The very capabilities that make AI agents powerful—their ability to reason, adapt, and solve novel problems—also make them frustratingly unpredictable. This … Read more
“Power is not something you possess, it is something you exercise”– Michel Foucault With this phrase by Michel Foucault, I would like to invite you, reader, to adopt a lens focused on power relations as you move through this blog post. The first power dynamic I would like to highlight is the asymmetrical relationship between … Read more
A street-level method for predicting and explaining urban heat from surface composition and configuration
Intro This digital essay explores the growing trend of designing interior spaces for image consumption rather than functional use. This project investigates the consequences for public spaces when they are reshaped by the “economy of likes”. Drawing on Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, the researchers argue that social relations are increasingly mediated through images, … Read more
atlas of vacant spaces Urban vacant land in dense, post-industrial cities remains spatially invisible: absent from open datasets despite its potential to address chronic green space deficits. This thesis “vo:id” is a pipeline detecting, classifying, and prioritizing urban voids using only globally covered open data. Combining OSM-based negative masking, vision-language model classification, and human-in-the-loop validation, … Read more
A theory review of Chapter 18 of Russell & Norvig’s Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach This chapter was assigned for the AIA Theory seminar at the beginning of the MaCAD 2025–2026 program, as part of a sequence of foundational readings on artificial intelligence. The seminar pairs canonical AI literature with discussion around its implications for … Read more
