Artist Ingrid Mayrhofer-Hufnagl Visits CMU, Speaks on Role of AI in Architecture

By Sage Rohrbach

On March 27, artist and founder of A[I]rchitectural Minds Ingrid Mayrhofer-Hufnagi presented two of her projects which merge technology and creativity. **Sage Rohrbach/** Junior Staffwriter

As humans, we often think of ourselves as separate from the rest of the natural world, distinguishing ourselves from other lifeforms by our complex cognitive abilities. We believe that our capacity for language, abstract thinking, problem-solving, and elaborate social structure makes us unique. Although it may be true that these qualities set us apart, our tendency to assume extreme separation from the natural world can be incredibly destructive. In 2020, anthropomass — the total mass of human-made objects — surpassed biomass — the total mass of organic matter — in the world. This statistic is striking and prompts an important question: how can we better integrate human life with the natural world?

Ingrid Mayrhofer-Hufnagl probes this question. She’s the founder and director of A[I]rchitectural Minds (AIM), an organization which leads interdisciplinary projects that merge research, technology, and artistic experimentation. As an external expert for the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, mentor of PhD students at the University of Munich, and editor of the book “Architecture, Futurability, and Untimely: On the Unpredictability of the Past,” Mayrhofer-Hufnagl is a leader in her field. On Thursday, March 27, she presented two of her major projects at Carnegie Mellon’s Frank-Ratchye Studio for Creative Inquiry.

Her first project focused on shifting the architectural lens to view buildings as entire ecosystems rather than purely human-focused dwellings. While creating new architectural structures, she considered not only humans, but also plants, animals, and bacterial microbes. What would our world look like if rather than steel, brick, and plastic, our buildings were made out of soil?

Mayrhofer-Hufnagl explained that soil, although referred to as one entity, is actually a mixture of minerals, organic matter, and water. In addition to having multiple components, soil is multi-purposeful — not only is it surprisingly strong structurally, but it also fixes carbon, enables the growth of plants, and eventually breaks down seamlessly into the earth, a possible mitigation to the growing amount of anthropomass.

After working with a microchemist and researching the most stable soil composition, Mayrhofer-Hufnagl 3D printed a structure using natural materials. Her living art installation, Xeno-tékton, located in Innsbruck, Austria, pushes the boundaries of sustainable design and displays the coexistence of a web of interconnected species, including humans. The project is an incredible demonstration of how cutting-edge AI and robotic fabrication technologies can be used in combination with earthen materials. It harnesses the vitality of nature to create an urban environment that minimizes human carbon footprint.

Although Mayrhofer-Hufnagl’s creation is currently a stand-alone demonstration, she does believe that this novel kind of structural environment could be implemented on a larger-scale in the future. She remarks that the technique would likely require the synthetic alteration of soil to ensure that the structures can bear extreme weather conditions, and that she likely will not see the wide-ranging implementation of this architectural technique in her lifetime. Nonetheless, her project sparks an important conversation around sustainable coexistence and design, providing an example of a hopeful future in which modern technology is used to negate the harmful impacts of human activity.

Mayrhofer-Hufnagl’s second project considered representing Earth spatially, rather than the typical 2-dimensional portrayal. Again merging technology and design, she integrated satellite imagery with volumetric modeling and high-resolution multi-material printing in order to transform scientific data into tangible art forms. The project urges observers to view the planet beyond its current surface and see deeper into the timescales that encompass ecological and geological processes. How we map Earth, she explained, influences how we design and protect it.

The project displays how we can trace urbanization’s significant impact on the Earth’s ecosystems and geology and encourages the use of models that encapsulate the fluidity of nature. Her series of sculptures is on display at the iMal Center for Digital Cultures and Technology in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Belgium. Here, they pave the way to a new future in which we move beyond mere preservation and maintenance of the world and into a truly augmented coexistence of the natural world and our artificial environments.

We would be wise to think critically about the potential benefits and drawbacks of technology use, particularly in the context of sustainable development. Mayrhofer-Hufnagl’s projects, although they promote productive ways to create sustainability, utilize technologies that contribute to the carbon footprint. However, having taken thoughtful steps to use the least carbon-intensive options to carry out her designs, Mayrhofer-Hufnagl argues that the benefits of her projects outweigh the drawbacks. Nonetheless, she agreed that the critique must be taken seriously and encouraged the audience to continue thinking sustainably in all their endeavors.

Mayrhofer-Hufnagl left the audience with the words of American astronomer, Carl Sagan: “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere.” Her presentation encourages us to consider humans as one and the same as other lifeforms, rather than something removed from the natural world.