TRAIN YOURSELF
"TRAIN YOURSELF" is an exhibition showcasing design research from the 2023-2024 Schidlowski Emerging Faculty Fellowship at the College of Architecture and Environmental Design. This project investigates how architectural practice might engage the tension between material scarcity and computational abundance through novel approaches to recycling and digital transformation.
The work demonstrates a methodology where design emerges through continuous feedback between physical manipulation of salvaged materials and AI-driven computational processing. The exhibition features artifacts constructed through three interconnected phases—structure, sub-structure, and skin—where each fabrication stage generates both physical artifacts and digital datasets for subsequent iterations, with each successive layer increasing in precision and resolution.
A custom StyleGAN2 model trained on images of the wooden assemblies generates animations converted into three-dimensional forms using medical imaging software. These digital transformations inform the geometry of subsequent physical layers. The project establishes a self-referential process that interrupts extractive cycles by treating discarded materials as active co-authors alongside AI and human intervention, demonstrating how intimate interventions can model different relationships to both physical and computational materials while pointing toward design practices where architects orchestrate conditions for mutual learning between humans, materials, and machines.
Link to Lecture Recording at Kent State University
PROJECT TYPE: EXHIBITION, research
LOCATION: ARMSTRONG GALLERY AT THE COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN AT KENT STATE UNIVERSITY
2024
Exhibition Design: Andy Bako
Research Team: Andy Bako, Evi Harakal, Murtuza Rizvi, Charles Nettle
Original Score: Samueal LaFrance
Special Thanks: Paul Mosley, Jake Wano