The potential of the surface lies in image visualization or imaging that allows humans to understand and interact with the world. The surface, then, becomes a holder of information open to human perception. Technology provides “machine” vision based on metrics and trained models that can perceive and relay information in their own unique way. We are investigating AI’s capability to generate and reimagine the potentials of what digitally "readable" images of spaces and surfaces could mean for the physical world, not just to image information that humans perceive, but to store information that is readable through machine vision. A digital aesthetic catered to the machine can be merged with the human aesthetic through collaborative design between humans and generative AI, creating surfaces that can be legible to both human and machine vision. We aim to harness the synthetic imagination of generative AI to envision new possibilities of the future, where data-encoded patterns are merged with physical surfaces. While investigating the notion of data-encoded surfaces, our research also led us to speculate and imagine building surfaces as being composed of technologies that allow them to scan, interact, and respond to their environment. Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas acted as a conceptual anchor in informing the way we were thinking about exterior building surfaces. We envision a speculative future where the surface serves as a dynamic reserve of information. The surface becomes the threshold between virtual and physical landscapes, offering an immersive visualization of information that is accessible through a unified interface (the surface), revolutionizing how individuals navigate and interact within urban settings.
The potential implications of data encoded and embedded surfaces will fundamentally change the way humans and machines interact with the urban environment. Transparent access to information blurs the boundaries of what exists as a private or public space - creating a bridged in-between of space. For architects, it challenges notions of how we understand building programs, circulation, and private vs public space, and provides a new perspective on how urban environments can be designed in the future.