Playing Models

PLAYING MODELS aims to address the fundamental conceptual and technological shifts that AI and computational storytelling instruments (AR/VR) have introduced to design and engineering disciplines and how they are transforming millennia-old traditions of architecture and design thinking. The conference questions Beaux-Arts and Bauhaus-Modernist design pedagogies and post-industrialization design approaches aspiring to efficiency and optimization. It entertains the idea that given an adequate theoretical framing, AI and computational storytelling instruments (AR/VR) offer a novel, less constricting interpretation of today's technological reality, fundamentally different from big tech's efficiency and automation narratives. They allow us to navigate through and communicate with the abundance of otherwise disconnected or inaccessible information in a vivid, playful manner. Such a new digital "metaverse" thus becomes a fruitful source of new hypotheses, findings, and designs as well as a ground for engaging broader audiences as participants in the design and planning processes. During the workshop, we strive to explore, discuss and develop such concepts in the form of texts, images, videos, and 3d models. Over four years, we will compile the conferences' outputs into a book publication, providing a valuable reader on how to rethink our novel technological condition.