Your career bridges the realms of cinema and architecture and explores new avenues of visual storytelling and conceptual art through the built environment. What can architecture learn from science fiction and vice versa?

Architecture and science fiction are intertwined; they each push the other to new heights. While architecture can learn to dream bigger, science fiction benefits from grounding its ideas in reality. It’s time for architecture to set the narrative, using innovations like AI-assisted 3D printing to build—and even deconstruct—structures in ways that were once pure fiction. Both cinema and architecture are forms of storytelling. Worldbuilding in cinema translates directly to architecture, where we bring imaginative concepts to life by creating scenes and crafting adaptable living spaces that can exist in any scenario. Today’s world craves spaces that offer escape and excitement. As the digital world grows, the need for environments that balance dynamic lifestyles with moments of slow living will increase. The challenge lies in creating spaces that are both stimulating and deeply meaningful.

In the crossover of space-making and worldbuilding, what is your experience collaborating with architects, and how do we support each other in telling stories through buildings?

Collaborating with architects is like creating music—we contribute to a harmonious blend of creativity and incite each other to explore new possibilities. Together, we are evolving the dialogue between sci-fi and architecture into a new design language that involves buildings coming alive, telling stories, and engaging the senses. Technology is our shared new medium. With our combined expertise, architecture can ascend to a form of land art that we can inhabit and be enveloped inside as a sensual experience. This is unlike any other art—we can only look at paintings, sculptures, and films. I believe the home has the greatest influence in shaping who we are and determining our quality of life. By combining science fiction and architecture, homes can be designed to serve and support their occupants and become companions that nurture them through their changing circumstances and stages of life.

What facets of new technology have led the most to architecture’s speeding ahead to meet sci-fi in its own medium? What does this mean for sentient spaces and smart architecture? Is it inevitable that humans and their homes will increasingly communicate and become extensions of each other?

AI, robotics, and 3D printing are propelling architecture into the realm of science fiction. These technologies allow us to create spaces that are alive, responsive, and capable of integrating vast amounts of data—climate, geography, human desires—into cohesive environments. Humans and their homes will communicate and become extensions of each other, but we must decide whether these homes will mirror or challenge us. Our spaces should do more than provide comfort; they should foster complexity and interaction.

AI can understand facial expressions better than people can already but the nice thing about talking to a person is that it’s personal, and it has the human touch. It’s not logical or efficient—AI would say humans interrupt the logic—but we still want the illogical element in life for emotional reasons.

If technology takes over the semantics of building, architects will be freed to reinvent themselves completely and have the potential to move towards the artistic. Handcrafted will be the valuable thing, underlined with the idea that “I love it, but it’s not perfect.” The sensual gaze, the emotional touch, and the human element will be the unique qualities architects will be known for, and this will become their statement, their signature, and the reason they are sought out.

The video hasn’t killed the radio star?

We are evolving quickly, but the radio star is very much alive. In terms of scale, we have gone from the cinema to the home cinema to the Sphere in Las Vegas. Culture is becoming a spectacle; it’s a completely new art form. Designing for such a medium requires a new approach. Steven Spielberg would not be better at designing for this space than we would.

The Sphere is a game changer. It makes the future of entertainment public, something that affects society as a shared experience on a completely different scale.

You experience it with your whole body in large crowds as a public performance. It’s so novel. I hope we continue to create new mediums. This is the kind of transformation technology brings to creation, which is how we should see acceleration. If we currently require teams to make creations, very soon, we will see architects, designers, game designers, and filmmakers—creating work on their own with the assistance of technology. This will allow us to keep our artistic integrity from the beginning to the end of every project and use far fewer resources.

If the symbiotic influence of architecture and science fiction overlap first in the imagination and then are manifested in the built environment, what challenges for the future are at the top of your mind to execute?

Overpopulation, climate change, and resource scarcity are challenges. The housing crisis might be solved with technology. What will be expensive and exclusive will be what is manmade. Twenty years ago, color printers were twice the price of a new car. Today, they are compact enough to fit in a human hand, can connect to smartphones, and are sophisticated enough to print family photos as stickers—all at a fraction of the cost. Houses will be the same. The real issue is complacency. Our task will be to design adaptable, resilient spaces that anticipate future needs, using AI to integrate climate needs with human preferences into our designs.

To what extent do social media and AI-generated imagery influence our expectations of architecture?

Social media has turned architecture into a visual performance, often prioritizing style over substance. Authentic architecture engages all our senses in creating spaces meant to be lived in, not just photographed. When we focus on creating designs that resonate long-term, beyond the fleeting trends of social media, we come closer to expressing our unique signature as creators.

Does AI play a role in your work already?

AI is a powerful tool that helps me optimize designs and integrate complex data into cohesive spaces. With AI, any input is possible. They can map every coordinate for every idea, from transforming physical and emotional spaces to inventing new materials. However, AI remains just a tool. The real artistry lies in balancing AI’s capabilities with human intuition and creativity. AI is not a threat to creativity; it multiplies our reach.

What ‘client environment’ is needed to foster confidence in spending on future architecture and design that incorporates the kind of imagination, innovation, and invention that sci-fi visions can support and inspire?

Science fiction is increasingly a co-author in architectural designs and immersive, interactive spaces that blur the boundaries between reality and fiction. With AI and 3D printing, we can construct and deconstruct state-of-the-art environments with unprecedented fluidity. Clients need to be adventurous, willing to embrace uncertainty, and trust the vision of the architects and designers they choose to work with. By fostering mutual trust and a shared belief in the impact architecture can have on quality of life, we can build the future we want to see in the world with the support of cutting-edge technology.

What pragmatic predictions can you make about the built environment of the near and far future?

The future will see hybrid spaces blending physical and digital realities. Architecture will shift from construction to curation, creating adaptable spaces that evolve with us. The future of technology will be so deeply integrated into our lives and professions that interfaces will disappear altogether. I envision giant builder robots powered by AI-enabled 3D printing, processing raw materials and extruding them through various mouths and arms to create infrastructure—much like a spider weaving its web. Builder robots will be able to deconstruct form as well by re-ingesting their infrastructure webs and creating new ones. This technology will place architects at the helm of creativity, speed up construction, make resources more affordable and factories obsolete, and offer ecologically and economically efficient solutions to many of our current issues. We already have access to this technology today; we can invent and form any material with 3D printing and AI, which makes this a prediction for the near future. We are less than twenty years away from a total reconfiguration of the architectural realm that will transform our approach to building.

Special thanks to Caia Hagel for conducting and writing this interview on behalf of LAVA.