Communications in Humanities Research ISSN: 2753-7072
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Research Article

Visualization as Dialogic Medium: Generative AI, Positional Repositioning, and the Apparatus of Architectural Representation

Xuanrun YiUniversity of California, Los Angeles*

* Corresponding author: [email protected]

Abstract

This paper is a theoretical and literature-based critical analysis examining how generative AI repositions architectural visualization within the design process. It argues that the positional repositioning of visualization, its migration from the terminal stage into the operative middle of the design process, amplifies rather than neutralizes the constitutive agency of the medium: by embedding a high-fidelity apparatus at the site of open-ended conceptual exploration, generative AI subjects the most creatively consequential phase of design to an aesthetic logic the designer did not author and cannot inspect. Drawing on Lawson and Schön’s reflection-in-action framework, the paper analyzes the prompt-generation-evaluation cycle as a new form of design conversation. Through Flusser’s apparatus theory and Irrgang’s extensions, it reveals a structural epistemic asymmetry: the architect controls input and output, but the model’s internal aesthetic logic, encoded in a latent space conditioned by historically biased training data, remains opaque. Del Campo’s analysis of the architectural latent space identifies this corpus as a site of inherited canonical bias. A design experiment testing a culturally specific vernacular façade vocabulary against generative model outputs demonstrates this asymmetry in practice. The paper concludes that AI visualization is simultaneously expansive and constraining, functioning as a medium with its own constitutive agency rather than a neutral accelerant.

Keywords: generative AI; architectural visualization; dialogic medium; latent space; apparatus theory
Published: April 13, 2026
DOI: 10.54254/2753-7064/2026.32721
Volume: CHR Vol.107
pp. 26-32
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