Words, Spaces and Generative AI: Layers of language in contemporary architecture

Abstract

Language can be considered a design material in architecture, and in the context of text-to-X generative AI models becoming a common tool for architectural practice, looking more closely at language is more important now than in the past. After describing some of the important developments in linguistics starting from Wittgenstein, and including the work of Chomsky, Lakoff, conceptual and generative metaphors as proposed by Schön, this chapter connects them to contemporary architectural design and generative text-to-X tools. The chapter builds on the idea that three main forms of language intertwine in architectural design done using generative AI, namely (I) discourse (or natural language which can contain professional terminology specific to our field), (II) programming languages (which are artificial languages sitting at the basis of all computational systems), and (III) annotations (as language elements attached to pieces of data). It concludes by outlining a research agenda for connecting generative metaphors to generative AI: (a) conducting corpus linguistics studies on architectural texts (using quantitative tools such as topic modelling, and qualitative tools such as discourse analysis); (b) bringing communication theory and information studies closer to architectural research and (c) taking into account that different (natural) languages come with different affordances meaning generative and conceptual metaphors differ in relation to this.