Architecture x Architecture: A Dialectic 2026
March 25 @ 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
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Overview
“Architecture x Architecture: A Dialectic” is a book talk and signing event organized around the release of a new monograph by MAP (Metropolitan Architecture Practice). The event takes place at Rizzoli Bookstore in New York City and sits within the fields of architecture, computational design, and visual theory.Focus
The monograph documents MAP’s research between 2022 and 2024, examining how machine vision and generative AI are reshaping architectural visualization and design methodology. Central to the book is the studio’s concept of “neo-ecologies,” which describes spatial conditions where architectural systems, digital infrastructures, biological processes, and energetic flows co-produce one another. The publication frames the AI-generated image not as a tool but as a cognitive site, raising questions about perception, authorship, and what architectural form means when it is produced through algorithmic processes. These are questions increasingly central to architectural research on computation and the built environment. MAP Studio, the firm’s research arm founded in 2015, integrates analog drawing, synthetic image generation, ecological analysis, and digital fabrication. The studio treats images and sensing infrastructures as active participants in design rather than secondary outputs.Architecture x Architecture: A Dialectic is a provocation: a document of architectural thinking unmoored from certainty, entangled with machinic vision, and suspended in a newly unfolding condition of formal, aesthetic, synthetic and epistemic ambiguity. Christiane Robbins, MAP Studio
Program
Book Talk
MAP co-founders Katherine Lambert, AIA, and Christiane Robbins appear in conversation with writer and editor Annabel Keenan. The discussion covers the monograph’s themes including synthetic vision, generative AI in design practice, and the concept of neo-ecologies developed through the studio’s ongoing research. The monograph is edited by Oscar Riera Ojeda and published by ORO Publishers. It includes a foreword by Kum-Kum Bhavnani, essays by Bill Seaman, Katherine Lambert, Christiane Robbins, Kyle Steinfeld, and Amanda Wasielewski, and an afterword by Aaron Betsky.Book Signing
A signing session follows the conversation. Seating is limited and first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. RSVPs are encouraged but not required.About MAP
MAP is a San Francisco Bay Area architecture firm founded in 2005. Its work spans residential, commercial, and cultural projects. The firm’s output has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, São Paulo Biennale, and the San José Museum of Art, and is held in permanent collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art and SFMOMA. Its trajectory reflects how contemporary architecture projects increasingly operate at the intersection of practice and media research.Audience
The event is open to architecture practitioners, researchers, students, and anyone working at the intersection of design and computational culture. No reservation is required though seating is limited.Event Details
| Date | March 25, 2026 |
| Doors Open | 5:30 p.m. |
| Venue | Rizzoli Bookstore, New York City, USA |
| Event Type | Book Talk and Signing |
| Access | Open to public, seating limited |
| RSVP | Encouraged but not required |
| Fees | Not specified |
✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight
The monograph positions AI-generated imagery as epistemically significant rather than merely instrumental, which is a more considered stance than most architecture publications adopting generative tools have taken. However, framing algorithmic outputs as a “dialectic” with architecture risks overstating the agency of machine processes in design authorship. The concept of neo-ecologies is intellectually productive but remains largely visual in its application here, stopping short of engaging the material, economic, or political conditions that determine how digital tools enter and reshape practice at an institutional level.Closing Note
The event is a single evening talk tied to a publication release. Its significance lies less in the format and more in the questions the monograph raises about how architecture disciplines its relationship to AI imaging. Rizzoli Bookstore as a venue positions it within a cultural rather than strictly academic circuit, which may broaden the audience beyond the usual institutional attendees.Explore the Latest Architecture Exhibitions & Conferences
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