26/01/2023

A book about the science of beauty

Nature has been the inspiration leading to the creation of a book by UIC Barcelona School of Architecture lecturers Dr Alberto T. Estévez and Dr Yomna K. Abdallah using artificial intelligence for their designs

AI to Matter-Reality is the title of the book of five chapters and an additional five shorter interspersed chapters about designs made with artificial intelligence resulting from their research on biomaterials.

Orchids, dragonflies, roses, pearls and bones are some of the material references, which, to some extent, come alive and become images of art, architecture and design, as the book’s subtitle reads. Chairs that allude to "extraterrestrial beings", or pearls, roses and bones, form part of the images shown in the book. Examples also include bioarchitecture buildings, T cell fashions and jewellery inspired by the fractal pattern of snowflakes. Among others, they reference the characteristics of dragonfly wings developed from bioplastics and reinforced with silk threads, or pearl dresses developed from the seashell materials.

“Our book is not only a cluster of beautiful images made with artificial intelligence, but it is a book about the science of beauty,” Estévez said in his session “Artificial Intelligence: Art, Architecture and Design,” in which he presented the book, as part of the Humanities Cross-Disciplinary Workshop: “Artificial Intelligence and Ethics,” held on 23 January at UIC Barcelona.

The lecturer concluded, “we don’t want artificial intelligence to only be a mere game of images, but we wanting to be able to finally take AI into the reality of architecture.”