PJ Dick Innovation Fund Teaching Grant: Image Deep: Contested Matter
MycoNest: Binded Growth by Norman Situ (IMAGE DEEP: MycoRepair Studio 2025)
Image Deep: Contested Matter
Dana Cupkova, Professor, Carnegie Mellon Architecture
Linxiaoyi Wan, Spring 2024 RA/TA | Beginning Spring 2024 (three-year sequence) | 10-12 students
Advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deep Learning (DL) are reshaping the future of the design discipline, challenging conventional notions of singular authorship and the use of architectural precedent. These tools rapidly generate architectural proposals, images, and sketches through natural language prompts, drawing on vast digital archives. IMAGE DEEP studio explores expanding AI’s role in the design process beyond mere visual inspiration. By connecting AI with material research, the studio uses analog material models to guide AI workflows and explore alternative pathways beyond the predefined aesthetics of text-to-image models. This process relies on preparation and tools supported by the PJ Dick Innovation Fund. Our approach rejects the notion that AI is merely a service to architectural labor; instead, it demands a deeper understanding of technology’s impact on the social systems that shape design labor and placemaking. We address AI ethics, data ownership, and biases in relation to geopolitics and the human condition.
The studio merges two lines of inquiry: extracting embedded information from images for direct translation into 3D models through depth map modeling, and conducting material research to develop custom physical prototypes that inform AI workflows. The studio collaborates with the Department of Materials Science on experiments with biomaterials. Its design approach encourages rethinking housing models within specific social, ecological, and geopolitical contexts, emphasizing material regeneration and equitable labor systems.
About the Instructor
Professor & MSRSD Track Chair
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Carnegie Mellon Architecture is committed to the mission-defining challenges of climate change, social justice and artificial intelligence. The PJ Dick Teaching Grants Program recognizes that the future of architecture and its related industries start with the education of the profession’s next generation of practitioners through innovative pedagogies. The teaching grants are focused on supporting changes to existing courses and development of new courses that focus on the three challenges.
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The Faculty Grants Program will award a total of $400,000 over four years and is open to all full time faculty at the school. The 2024 proposals were evaluated by a committee comprised of school head Omar Khan; associate heads Joshua Bard, Mary-Lou Arscott and Kai Gutschow; Erica Cochran Hameen, Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Theodossis Issaias, Special Faculty; Jenn Joy Wilson, Assistant Dean for Research Development and Sponsored Projects; and Aaron Martin, Associate Director, Institutional Partnerships, College of Fine Arts.
The Faculty Grants Program, established in 2023 by PJ Dick Trumbull Lindy Group, supports faculty research and teaching innovations that address the school’s three pedagogical challenges: climate change, social justice and artificial intelligence. The proposals were assessed on their impact in furthering a faculty member’s research and teaching, their contribution to interrogating the school’s challenges, and their viability to garner further research support, make an impact on the discipline and expand the pedagogy of the school.