Delirious
facade
DELIRIOUS FACADE
Delirious Facade is a design research project that uses image processing artificial intelligence as a generator for architectural form and ornament. The project catalogues various types of facades that exist in Toronto and uses these visual signatures or patterns as the material for the generation of hybrid facades using Google’s Deep Dream software. Our use of the software achieves hybrid facades by asking the computer to see one facade in the image of another. For example we might ask it to look for arched windows in the smooth reflective curtain wall of an office building, or to see the strong horizontal lines of 60s housing in the facade of a 2 story house. The process can be understood as the architectural equivalent of the popular “Face Swap” smart phone application, although more sophisticated in practice.
The resulting facade proposals are inherently contextual, and relate to historical precedent but do so in ways that are not tied down to dominant formal narratives. These are not modernist facades but they are equally at odds with postmodernism. If anything they are altermodern, they are made in the heterochrony of the present. They are formed “in medias res”, (in the middle of things) and embody the present moment in all its delirium.
2016
Toronto, ON
Client: Private
Type: Research, Exhibition
Team: Vivian Lee, James Macgillivray, Kara Verbeek, Ella den Elzen, Miriam Wierzchoslawska, Andrea Rodriguez Fos, Meiyun Zhang, Elmer Lyu, Eisa Hayashi, Sergej Mileski, Jessica Babe
AWARDS & FEATURES
Awards:
2019 Architect’s Newspaper, Best of Design Award Winner in Research Category
Publications:
2021 Log, “Role Play” by Erik Hermann, (Print). 50: Model Behavior, February 2021 (features Delirious Facade)
Exhibitions:
2025 DesignTO Festival at SWIPE Books, “Delirious Façade,” Installation, January–February
2020 DesignTO Festival at Stackt Market, “Delirious Facade,” Exhibition, January–February
Lectures:
2024 DesignTO and Toronto Society of Architects’ IDEAS Forum, “Delirious Façade Research”
2023 Syracuse University School of Architecture, “About Face”
2020 Knowlton School of Architecture, Ohio State University, “In Medias Res” for Baumer Talks
2020 DesignTO, Lecture at Pecha Kucha
2019 107th ACSA Annual Meeting, “Delirious Facade,” Becoming Digital Panel
2019 107th ACSA Annual Meeting, “Computer Composition,” Hosted Panel Discussion
Authored Published Work:
2019 107th ACSA Annual Meeting Proceedings, “Delirious Facade,” (Print).
2019 IQD Magazine, “Delirious Facade” by Editors, (Print). “I don’t know / Non So,” April–June, pp. 56–57
