P L A I A

TANGRAM curated an exhibition that traveled around NL in 2024-25. It featured also the MSc thesis work by Feras Alsaggaf on human-centred AI for dementia-friendly design. The exhibition challenged the relation of AI and Soft Values.

AI models learn by identifying patterns in large datasets, making them highly valuable for spatial design processes. Yet these models can only work with the data they are trained on, which currently focuses mainly on “hard values” such as costs, floor area, and building regulations. To support truly sustainable architecture, AI must also incorporate “soft values” including social connection, intuitive readability, community, and historical awareness.

The exhibition Immeasurably Important by the architecture firm TANGRAM investigates both the opportunities and the challenges of artificial intelligence in architecture. Rather than relying solely on hard data such as costs, floor areas, and building regulations, the exhibition advocates for AI systems that also incorporate soft values including social connection, human wellbeing, and historical awareness. Through a combination of realised projects by TANGRAM and contributions from knowledge institutions, software companies, developers, and construction professionals, the exhibition presents a broad overview of current innovations and emerging approaches in the field.

The exhibiting was led by TANGRAM Architecture and Urban Landscape, in collaboration with researchers at TU Delft, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, and the TYGRON Data Platform – sought to explore both the opportunities and challenges of integrating AI into architectural research, education, and design practice. The national series of exhibitions and professional publications titled “Immeasurably Important: Artificial Intelligence and the Soft Values of Architecture” have been also an opportunity to debate what next. Several observations pivoted around the need of joining forces and increasing the current understanding about AI design models among spatial designers and architects. These observations prompted the creation of the exhibition and accompanying articles that reflected and critically examined the tension between quantitative design processes and qualitative, human-centered values. Several conversations at these venues emphasize that architecture and urban design must account for both hard and soft values. While soft values – such as well-being, community, identity, and aesthetic experience- are equally, if not more, crucial for sustainability and design quality, they are difficult to quantify and therefore risk being neglected in AI-driven design processes.

This constitutes a key and urgent research question: How can AI methodologies engage with, rather than exclude, the qualitative dimensions of architecture?

The exhibition remained at NAI 19 July 2024 – 1 September 2024