What structures and infrastructures sustain the ties and relationships between the countryside and the city? How will architecture and emerging technologies maintain -or not- the coexistence of both worlds in the future? The reduction of ecological footprints, the impact of climate change, the decentralization of major cities, food security, and other contemporary issues challenge professionals in architecture and urbanism globally under the main shared goal of improving citizens’ quality of life and achieving physical, mental, and emotional well-being in both built and natural environments.
While multiple experiments involving artificial intelligence are currently underway in various fields, introducing technology into creative and design processes is intended to improve efficiency and professional practice through tools capable of integrating, rethinking, and/or reimagining the ways we build and inhabit. In conversation with Argentine architect Francisco Escapil, based in La Plata, Buenos Aires, and dedicated to research on the use of AI in architecture, we set out to explore the impact of artificial intelligences on architecture and the construction industry, understanding their role as agents of change and drivers of debate through the creation of imagined futures.
ArchDaily (Agustina Iñiguez): How did you begin researching AI in architecture? What inspired you to start working in this field?
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Can AI Make Architects Better Storytellers?Francisco Escapil: My approach to these digital tools did not come from a technical perspective or a professional need. It was more a form of play. I began experimenting with platforms like Midjourney and Leonardo, driven by a curiosity about image and representation, subjects I have always been interested in. What started as something playful ended up becoming a working method. I was struck by the possibility of generating entire series of images, almost like building a visual archive. In that process, I thought about the work of Hilla and Bernd Becher, who didn’t operate through individual images but through the relationships between many.
That logic allowed me to begin speculating. I no longer thought of projects as closed objects, but as open systems or sets of variations. At the same time, I started reading authors like Lev Manovich and Antoine Picon, who help us understand how representation tools affect the way we think. We are not just using a visual resource, we are inhabiting a new environment. As McLuhan said, the medium transforms the message, and in this case, the change is so profound that it’s no longer about drawing an image, but about prompting it. We don’t fully control the outcome, but we can edit, select, and reorder it.
AD: How could AI help improve urban and rural infrastructures? What role could it play?
FE: These technologies can contribute on various levels. On one hand, they optimize certain technical processes. On the other hand, what interests me most, they allow us to construct imaginaries. It’s not just about projecting possible solutions, but about thinking of things that don’t yet have form. That can be key in revisiting how we inhabit territories that have historically been subjected to purely extractive logics, like the countryside.
Just as cities constantly update their infrastructure through new technologies, we might ask what would happen if we applied that same exercise to the rural landscape. What happens if we stop seeing it solely as a productive space and begin to imagine it also as a cultural, vital, collective one? These tools can help construct those first visions, not so much as execution blueprints, but as devices to reopen debates and challenge established ideas about the rural.
AD: In one of your latest series, Rural Condenser, why did you decide to focus on the development of rural infrastructures, and how do you think these typologies should be reimagined through contemporary technologies or intelligences?
FE: The Rural Condenser series stems from a desire to tell a different story about the countryside. Partly influenced by OMA’s book Countryside, I began to wonder why architecture continues to view the city as the only place where things happen. What if we brought that speculative power into the rural sphere? What forms could a non-urban density take, one that is agricultural, energetic, communal?
I used these tools as instruments for formal and programmatic exploration. I’m particularly interested in the tension between the natural and the artificial, as seen in projects like Branzi’s Agronica or Kurokawa’s Agricultural City. In those references, the rural isn’t limited to the productive or the ecological, it appears as a hybrid system. In that sense, generating images in series isn’t just an aesthetic choice, but a way to think of infrastructures as open, mutable typologies, capable of accommodating other ways of life.
AD: What role does AI play in the reinterpretation of rural environments?
FE: These tools function as accelerators of spatial fictions. They enable scenarios that are not necessarily governed by the utilitarian logic of the present. In rural contexts, where design is often absent or subordinated to primary needs, there is an opportunity to imagine other possibilities.
I don’t think of architecture solely as form, but as a set of devices for sustaining life: places for communal work, alternative storage systems, different models of housing, or energy. What’s interesting is that these images allow for the combination of languages, scales, and materials that were previously difficult to reconcile. We can reimagine the airspace of a silo as a gathering space, or conceive of an agricultural structure that combines production and housing.
Existing structures are not replaced, they are amplified in order to formulate new hypotheses. These are additional tools to unfold scenarios and open up questions.
AD: How does creativity interact with AI, and what other disciplines can help expand the evolution of this technology?
FE: Working with these tools doesn't mean delegating the creative process. On the contrary, it requires learning to read the unexpected, that is where the richest exchange happens. It is not about obtaining a correct result, but about maintaining an open conversation with what emerges. Often, the visual material is disconcerting, and that forces a rethinking of the project from a different place.
In that dialogue, other disciplines become essential. Photography, for its ability to construct archives, or the philosophy of the technique, which helps us understand how each tool transforms our way of thinking. In my case, I often return to the radical movements of the 1960s. Not out of nostalgia, but because they understood that drawing, montage, or collage could function as critical forms of thought.
AD: What are the next steps in your research on the application of AI in architecture? What other structures would be interesting to investigate or rethink, considering their potential uses and current needs?
FE: I’m interested in continuing to explore infrastructures that usually fall outside the scope of architecture. Silo plants, refineries, obsolete industrial structures. I want to imagine how they can be reused and transformed into hybrid systems that integrate housing, agriculture, energy, or education.
One line of inquiry I’m pursuing is the possibility of designing infrastructures for extreme territories like Antarctica. Not as a closed project but as an open speculation. I’m interested in continuing a line of thought that other architects have already initiated, such as Amancio Williams in “The First City in Antarctica.”
These images are not an end in themselves. They function as visual laboratories, where the boundaries of what is possible can be stretched. The next challenge is to translate those ideas into disciplinary language: plans, sections, axonometrics, details, diagrams, etc. The work gains meaning in that friction between the image as a trigger and the technical drawing as a form of interpretation. It’s not about solving, but about giving shape to the problem.
AD: What do you consider to be the intelligence of the future?
FE: I believe that the intelligence of the future is neither exclusively human nor artificial. But beyond the technical aspect, I’m interested in thinking of future intelligence as a form of sensitivity: the ability to build non-obvious relationships, to remain active in the face of uncertainty.
That is why we need tools that not only calculate but also open up questions, and that is where the real contribution to architecture lies. It’s not about automating answers but multiplying scenarios. And that requires a figure of the architect closer to that of an editor, a curator of possible futures.
This article is part of the ArchDaily Topics: What Is Future Intelligence?, proudly presented by Gendo, an AI co-pilot for Architects.
Our mission at Gendo is to help architects produce concept images 100X faster by focusing on the core of the design process. We have built a cutting-edge AI tool in collaboration with architects from some of the most renowned firms, such as Zaha Hadid, KPF, and David Chipperfield.
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