Metropolitan Architectural Practice (MAP), a San Francisco-based transdisciplinary architecture and design practice helmed by CalArts alum Christiane Robbins (Film/Video MFA 88) and Katherine Lambert, is among the studios included in the Venice 2023 Architecture Biennial, running now through Sunday, Nov. 26 in Venice, Italy.
Organized by the European Cultural Centre Italy (ECC Italy), the extensive architecture biennial celebrates its sixth edition with the 2023 exhibition theme “Time Space Existence.” On view this year is MAP’s The Topography of Chance …, an installation at the Palazzo Bembo. More about the work from ECC Italy:
MAP Studio’s The Topography of Chance offers a composite visualization representing the explosion of accessible AI platforms. This represents a discrete, perhaps fleeting moment, in architectural practice – a rare instance of experimental modality. It proposes a position that is neither fixed nor predetermined, rather one that emerges via chance and contingency.
Per MAP’s press release, the experimental work was created with prompts “culled from the digital fragments of whatever data happened to flash across their screens at noon each day” and feeding them into generative AI platforms Stable Diffusion and DALL-E1: “As an ode to the ‘arbitrary,’ it proposes a position to the larger architectural field – one that is neither fixed nor predictable – rather one that emerges via momentary chance and contingency.”
In 2016, MAP presented at the 15th International Architecture la Biennale di Venezia with the installation This Future Has a Past. Earlier this year, the studio received a 2023 Architizer A+ Award for its Sugar Loaf Ridge project in Napa, California, with a special mention in the Sustainability Residential category.
