Matias del Campo

Matias del Campo, Professor, Taubman College, will present his book, Neural Architecture: Design and Artificial Intelligence. There will be a discussion with Mario Carpo, Reyner Banham Professor of Architectural History and Theory, Bartlett School of Architecture.

Matias del Campo is a registered architect, designer, and educator. He is an Associate Professor at the Taubman School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, Director of the AR2IL, The Architecture and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AR2IL) at UoM, and an affiliate faculty member of Michigan Robotics, Computer Science, and Data Science. Matias is also the co-founder of the architecture practice SPAN. The practice gained wide recognition for the design of the Austrian Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo and, more recently, for the Robot Garden at the Ford Robotics Building. SPAN’s work was featured in the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2012 and 2021, at ArchiLab in 2013, and at the Architecture Biennale in Vienna and Buenos Aires in 2019. Solo shows include "Formations" (MAK, Vienna) and "Sublime Bodies" (Fab Union, Shanghai). SPAN’s work is in the permanent collection of the FRAC, MAK, Benetton Collection, Albertina, Pinakothek Munich, and several private collections.

His publishing work includes two editions of AD - Evoking through Design and Machine Hallucinations (co-edited with Neil Leach) as well as the books Neural Architecture – Design and Artificial Intelligence (ORO Editions 2022) and Sublime Bodies (co-authored with Sandra Manninger, Tongji Press 2017).

 In his lecture, Neural Architecture – Design and Artificial Intelligence, del Campo will provide an opportunity to survey the emerging field of Architecture and Artificial Intelligence and to reflect on the implications of a world increasingly entangled in questions of the agency, culture, and ethics of AI. The main goal of Neural Architecture is to understand how to interrogate artificial intelligence–a technological tool–in the field of architectural design, traditionally a practice that combines humanities and visual arts. Matias del Campo, the author of Neural Architecture, is currently exploring specific applications of artificial intelligence in contemporary architecture, focusing on their relationship to material and symbolic culture. AI has experienced explosive growth in recent years in a range of fields, including architecture, but its implications for the humanistic values that distinguish architecture from technology have yet to be measured.

Mario Carpo is the Reyner Banham Professor of Architectural History and Theory at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and Professor of Architectural Theory, Die Angewandte (University of Applied Arts), Vienna.

After studying architecture and history in Italy, Dr Carpo was an Assistant Professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and in 1993 received tenure in France, where he was first assigned to the École d'Architecture de Saint-Etienne, then to the École d'Architecture de Paris-La Villette and more recently to the École d'Architecture de Paris-Malaquais.  He was the Head of the Study Centre at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal from 2002 to 2006, and Vincent Scully Visiting Professor of Architectural History at the Yale School of Architecture from 2010 to 2014 and in 2017.  

Mr. Carpo's research and publications focus on the relationship among architectural theory, cultural history, and the history of media and information technology.  His award-winning Architecture in the Age of Printing (MIT Press, 2001) has been translated into several languages.  His most recent books are The Second Digital Turn: Design Beyond Intelligence (MIT Press, 2017); The Alphabet and the Algorithm (MIT Press, 2011; also translated into other languages); and The Digital Turn in Architecture, 1992-2012 (Wiley, 2012).  His next monograph, Beyond Digital. Design and Automation at the End of Modernity is forthcoming with the MIT Press in the spring of 2023.  Mr. Carpo's recent essays and articles have been published in Log, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Grey Room, L'Architecture d'aujourd'hui, Arquitectura Viva, AD/Architectural Design, Perspecta, Harvard Design Magazine, Cornell Journal of Architecture, Abitare, Lotus International, Domus, Casabella, Artforum, and Arch+.

If you require any accessibility accommodation, such as live captioning, audio description, or a sign language interpreter, please email news@design.upenn.edu to let us know what you need. Please note, we require at least 48 hours’ notice. If you register within 48 hours of this event, we won’t be able to secure the appropriate accommodations.