Light as design DNA and generative fragment.
This interdisciplinary workshop investigates light as a primary design fragment and explores how Artificial Intelligence can support designers in extrapolating coherent architectural, spatial, and urban visions from micro-scale lighting decisions. Grounded in architectural theory, lighting design practice, and design pedagogy, the workshop builds on the idea that the character of a whole is already encoded in its smallest part.
Light is treated not as an afterthought or technical layer, but as design DNA: immaterial yet precise, measurable yet emotional, local in its detail yet expansive in its spatial and urban impact. Participants will begin with a deliberately minimal lighting fragment—such as a single light source, a shadow condition, a reflection strategy, or a lighting rule—and, supported by AI tools, iteratively test how this fragment can be scaled into objects/products, spaces, buildings, and urban narratives.
The workshop addresses an emerging trend in design research and practice: the use of AI as an analytical and generative partner in concept-driven design processes rather than as an automated solution generator. By combining light-based thinking with AI-assisted extrapolation, participants gain insight into how early lighting decisions can structure form, atmosphere, hierarchy, movement, and meaning across scales.
The workshops value lies in offering a hands-on, research-oriented framework that empowers designers from different disciplines to work strategically with light, abstraction, and incompleteness—transforming small, intentional lighting decisions into coherent and visionary design outcomes.
