Ongoing discussions about the circular economy and the rise of maker culture, driven by the widespread use of computer-aided design and manufacturing technologies, have sparked increased interest in crafts among designers and architects. The craft ethos, which includes designing, making, transforming, and repairing using existing and locally available resources, fosters innovative and sustainable design practices. However, there is a recognized need for new methods to adapt the labor-intensive, manual, and iterative processes of traditional crafts for industrial applications. In response, efforts are underway to document and record both tangible and intangible cultural assets and to integrate craft knowledge into contemporary design processes. These efforts are transforming design by incorporating insights and techniques from traditional crafts into new design domains.
In architecture, new methods are suggested to preserve and transfer the personal and local know-how that has developed over many years. Data sets to train generative artificial intelligence poses various challenges for intuitive processes such as crafts, where tacit knowledge is produced and transferred through the master-apprentice relationship. Thus, to implement craft knowledge to architectural design, this knowledge must be codified and formalized, that is, defined with parameters and rules. Craft processes are parameterized and digitized through translations and transfers of knowledge types such as embedded, explicit, implicit and tacit related to medium and craftsman. In this new ground called digital craft, it is aimed to create a hybrid design and production process based on learning-by-doing by combining computational design methods with the human factor. Therefore, all types of data, algorithms, tools and techniques used and simulated are defined as parts of the digital craftsman’s making process as well as physical outcomes produced in physical making processes. Parametrization and digitization of craft knowledge enables open-source materials to be distributed and preserved through digital platforms called virtual guilds.
Creating new digital techniques and therefore mediums for digital craft processes is a new research area that needs to be examined by architects and designers. It has been observed that literature studies on the translations and transfer of knowledge types between digital and physical mediums in architecture are overlooked in terms of categorization of related studies. This article aims to reveal the possibilities of using these knowledge cycles in the digital craft processes within architectural design. The literature review shows that digital craft studies in architecture were carried out under three categories. These are the digitalization of craft knowledge in digital heritage studies, decodifying traditional craft processes to generate digital models and hybridizing the making process by integrating the human factor into the fabrication processes. The potentials and limitations encountered in digital craft processes will be discussed as final remarks.

Keywords: Knowledge Types, Parametrization, Tacit Knowledge, Digital Craft, Digitization

This project investigates whether the interaction between material and artificial intelligence plays a constraining or liberating role in the design process, while focusing on examining the relationship between material and form in the design and production processes of objects through experience. This experiential environment consists of several stages within the scope of a workshop, including defining the fundamental properties of the material, digitally designing the form based on this definition, producing the designed form with the specified material, and attempting to resolve any issues related to the material and/or form encountered during this production process through necessary revisions. Personal recipes, created by adding textile, chestnut shell, or sawdust to the environmentally friendly bio-polymer base of the materials, will be transformed into forms using the AI-supported Midjourney application. [Omitted for blind review] [Omitted for blind review] Faculty, a total of 43 students use the sensory, semantic, emotional, performative, and potential properties of the materials they design as AI inputs in the research, aiming to learn by doing in an informal setting. Experiencing the physical producibility of the digitally generated form through material experiments, the challenges in the production process, and how these challenges are resolved are significant stages of the research. In the workshop, where students record the process with various written and visual data, the obtained data is classified, and the changes in expressions defined as keywords in the study are analyzed. This project, based on creating form using a current digital design method with renewable bio-polymer material, not only raises awareness about sustainability and the use of artificial intelligence in design but also revisits informal learning processes through experience.

Keywords:Material experience, Bio-Polymer, Artificial Intelligence, Form creation, Learning by doing.

This simulation study explores wayfinding motivated behavioral patterns in the city through agent-based modelling. Agents were trained using Unity’s ML-Agents toolkit with reinforcement learning. The study uses the Sultan Ahmet Mosque and its surrounding boundary as a model environment for the training of an agent’s wayfinding. Agents are trained to locate the Sultan Ahmet Mosque target. The behaviors of agents trained with two different methods, “Complex” and “Simple” learning, comparing their navigation quests at various difficulty levels featuring respawn points. After the training of the agents, the alternative routes produced while attaining the target during the wayfinding process were analyzed. As an outcome of the analysis, it was observed that the agents were prone to go off-route, navigate to different locations they perceived in the urban space, and then would reach the target. This occurrence is justified as an agent’s curiosity trained through reinforcement learning. This study differs from the literature in a way that it attempts to understand the navigational behavior of agents that were trained with reinforcement learning. Moreover, this research discusses the perception of wayfinding through curiosity and aims to make a comprehension of the perception of the city, which is one of the key ideas in neurourbanism. The study contributes to the literature by showing that wayfinding behaviors acquired from agents’ curiosity-driven explorations and past experiences can be an input for neurourbanism, supporting urban design. It informs urban enhancements that are user-centric and rich in urban perception using the reinforcement learning method.

Keywords: Behavioral Patterns, Motivational Curiosity, Neurourbanism, Reinforcement learning, Urban Design.

Keywords: Interior architecture, Spatial design, Bibliometric analysis, Neuroscience.

Keywords:Design Process, Manual Sketching, CAD, Sketch-Based AI

Keywords: BIM, Gamification, Immersive Places, Physical, Virtual