Mohammad Qasim Iqbal: Continuing my explorations through Midjourney, I decided to imprint the fabric features onto the villa typology. The prompt used “Palladian Villas” as a key term, as I wanted the artificial intelligence to pick up on the strong renaissance style of those Villas. The key distinction between Palladio and the Palladian style is important as the Palladian style indicates the use of particular features and makes it easier for the artificial intelligence to pick up on the stylistic features I desired. Furthermore, the Villa typology was emphasised by the subtle touches of vegetation hinting at the agricultural programme that brought about the villa typology. The villa typology also offered a way to ground the fabric materials as it was a lot more contained and approachable than the monolithic stone structures produced in previous series.
The aspect that interests me the most of this series is the fact that Midjourney began to merge the interior and exterior of the Palladian Villas. This intrigued me as it began to make me look closer, and probe what is truly inside and that which is outside. It also makes you recognise elements of architecture that are synonymous with the interior and exterior. For example, some of the images had inverted corner points on the façade and this is something which indicates an enclosed room on the inside, so it made me push that blurring of boundaries further through variations. The artificial intelligence also seemed to pick on the rhythm and columns a lot better with the villa typology, it also made the fabric structures look more like a feature or installation as it had a main body that mimicked the brick body of most renaissance buildings. It was nice to see the dialogue between the AI’s brick and stone elements.
