Expansion
2023
Expansion explores the ability of artificial intelligence to imagine what lies beyond the edge of an image. The project was developed following the introduction of AI outpainting and zoom-out capabilities, which allowed an image to be continuously expanded beyond its original boundaries. Rather than treating an image as a fixed composition, this process transformed it into an open-ended spatial territory capable of growing indefinitely.
Starting from both architectural images and invented environments, I repeatedly extended the generated scenes, allowing the AI to speculate on what might exist beyond the visible frame. What interested me was not the individual images themselves, but the emergent spatial qualities produced through this iterative process. With each expansion, the AI introduced new rooms, structures, landscapes and architectural relationships, often generating spaces that appeared coherent despite never having been intentionally designed.
The project explores a unique characteristic of generative AI: its capacity to infer and invent continuity. Beginning with a fragment, the model assumes an unseen world beyond the image and proposes how it might evolve. Through successive generations, this process creates architectures that seem to obey their own internal logic while simultaneously breaking the constraints of physical reality.
Many of the resulting spaces possess an Escher-like quality, where scale, perspective and structure become ambiguous. Stairways merge into landscapes, buildings unfold into impossible geometries, and interiors transition seamlessly into vast urban or oceanic environments. These compositions often feel familiar yet impossible, revealing spatial conditions that would be difficult to conceive through conventional design methods.
For me, Expansion was an exploration of AI not as a rendering tool, but as a speculative engine for generating architectural imagination. By continuously looking beyond the edge of the image, the project investigates how artificial intelligence can suggest new spatial possibilities and create worlds that feel discovered rather than designed.
_dome 3
_videos