Agentic Architecture: Synthesising Complexity for Regenerative Futures

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Research Background: This work sits at the intersection of architectural design, AI, and systemic urbanism, addressing the urgent need for design methodologies that respond to planetary-scale complexity. It builds on and critiques traditions in computational design, ecological urbanism, and high-resolution material systems, referencing thinkers such as Luciana Parisi (Contagious Architecture), Mario Carpo (The Second Digital Turn), who identifies this work as emblematic of the second digital turn—a paradigm defined by algorithmic authorship, mass-customisation, and non-standard material logics. Carpo positions it as a key exemplar of the shift from parametric formalism to computational design ecologies that embed information directly into material and tectonic systems and Benjamin Bratton (The Stack), and Albert-László Barabási (network science). The project extends ongoing discourse around AI-augmented design cognition beyond automation or optimisation, toward generative systems aware of material, ecological, and societal entanglements.

Research Contribution: Agentic Architecture: Synthesising Complexity for Regenerative Futures is a multi-channel video installation exhibited at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale (curated by Carlo Ratti). The work presents an original AI-driven tectonic system—AI Timber—combining ancient dry-joint logic with AI combinatorics, enabling adaptive, prefabricated, high-density urban infrastructures. It introduces a novel workflow linking n-dimensional voxelised data, multimodal generative AI, and generative algorithmic systems, including simulations of electromagnetic fields, site-adaptive Multi-Agent Systems, and field-based logics. While not explicitly robotic in this iteration, the work establishes a computational substrate that naturally connects to robotic assembly in future developments. The project consolidates two decades of research in discrete design, simulation, and systemic urban strategies into a speculative but technically grounded prototype for planetary urbanism.

Research Significance: This work was directly invited by the curator to participate in the main international exhibition at the Venice Biennale—one of the most prestigious platforms in architecture—positioning it among the top global contributions in the field. Supported by RMIT, AIARCH, and RACE HPC, the work synthesises a suite of methods and ideas developed over years of research, which have also informed prior keynote engagements at forums such as CogX, TU Munich, and the Ecocity Summit. This work has attracted interest from global design-tech actors and urban innovation networks, highlighting its potential for wider impact and translational research collaborations. Its strategic and aesthetic originality, combined with its methodological depth, exemplifies high-impact design research and reflects RMIT’s global leadership in AI-driven architecture.