Temporal Frictions: Generative AI and the Afterlife of Architectural Authorship

Abstract

Since the beginnings of modernity marked by the Enlightenment period, the architectural discipline has grappled with the tensions between the autonomy of architectural form and its relationship to the city as a symptom of broader social, economic, and political processes. This 3000-word essay will trace the paradox of authorial and anti-authorial gestures in architectural production from the Enlightenment to the second digital turn, situating the contemporary crisis of Generative AI within this disciplinary history. Beginning with Manfredo Tafuri’s critique of architecture’s complicity with capitalist systems, the first section of this essay revisits key figures like Aldo Rossi and Peter Eisenman, whose work stages the struggle between formal expression and ideological context. Rossi’s concept of architecture as a vessel of collective memory and Eisenman’s evolution from conceptual autonomy to digital spectacle both reveal an unresolved disciplinary paradox: architecture’s desire to resist instrumentalization while being continuously co-opted by it. The second section of this essay deals with the second digital turn marked by the emergence of AI technologies in architecture. Drawing on philosophical narratives like object-oriented ontology and new materialism, AI-driven design presents the potential for a more inclusive creative process, yet risks obscuring the political and economic structures underlying its production. Ultimately, it argues that the contemporary crisis of authorship in architecture is not simply about who—or what—designs, but about the systems, histories, and power structures that condition design itself. In doing so, it reframes AI not as a neutral tool, but as a medium of temporal, political, and epistemological contact.