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N° 26 | Digital Images in Architecture

Thematic dossier coordinated by Sophie Fétro, Gabriele Pierluisi and Andrea Urlberger
Deadline for sending papers: 20 October 2025

Call for papers

Introduction

  • 1 Antoine Picon, Culture numérique et architecture, une introduction, Birkhäuser, 2010.
  • 2 Mark Wigley, “Back to Black”, in Architectures expérimentales, 1950-2000, Collection du FRAC Centre (...)

Architecture is difficult to imagine without visualization and image production. Consider its drawings, diagrams, plans, cross-sections, isometric and axonometric projections, and so on­; all of which can be achieved through various means (pencil, tracing paper, blueprints, photography, videos, computer software, AI). Since the early 1990s, the use of digital technology has become commonplace in many architectural practices,1 leading to new forms of representation. However, despite their omnipresence and ongoing change, (digital) architectural images remain underexplored in academic research, their role often being downplayed.2

  • 3 Antoine Picon, “L’intention architecturale au prisme de l’intelligence artificielle”, Bulletin de l (...)

Today, the emergence and widespread use of generative artificial intelligence, capable of image production through descriptive textual prompts, must be viewed inside a series of digital revolutions and plateaus (“révolutions et hivers numériques”).3 This includes the advent of parametric technology, 3D, BIM, virtual and augmented reality, and so forth. The rapid spread of text-to-image applications in the design industry, such as Midjourney, DALL-E 2 and Canva, has produced images of an unprecedented nature, sparking debate surrounding its current and future use.

  • 4 While this is beyond the scope of the present discussion, it can be argued that even in analog (non (...)

Digital architectural production deals with a medium and a particular media, used mainly by the designer through a visual interface. Thus, considering images as part of architecture’s digital production is easily equated with producing the actual work,4 since most technical procedures involved in a project’s execution are prepared in such form. The latest versions of “visual programming environments,” such as Grasshopper, appear to have visual structures (interfaces) that push coding into the background, demonstrating the importance and scope of the image in digital architectural practices. The image is therefore a visual field extending into productive dimensions of a design project, while upholding its representational function.

Digital Image Materiality and Hybridization

  • 5 Katherine Nancy Hayles, “Print Is Flat, Code Is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis”, P (...)
  • 6 Photographic and electronic images, such as the television, remain linked to their physical medium.

The study of digital images requires what Katherine Hayles calls a “media-specific analysis”;5 that is, the specific materiality of digital media. Indeed, while analog images remain inherently connected to their physical form,6 this is increasingly less the case for digital images. However, make no mistake, digital images are in no way immaterial, their production not only consuming energy, but also requiring various materials of many forms. This constitutes a hybridization process extending into other digital spheres, such as the coexistence of different image regimes. It is important to remember that digital images have not replaced other visual production methods, but instead rendered them secondary. Moreover, diverse image types coexist, all of which need to be differentiated, classified and distinguished.

This thematic issue takes a critical look at digital images produced in the field of architecture and spatial representation. The aim is to reflect on the digital images produced by a wide range of actors, from architectural agencies to artists, designers, urban planners, geographers and landscapers. Whether static, in motion, generated by AI, experimental or project-oriented, digital images now play a central role in architecture, urban planning and landscape design. This issue thus wishes to investigate how practices are evolving, how these images are used, produced and perceived, what shapes them technically, socially and professionally, along with their characteristics.

  • 7 Antoine Picon, op. cit.
  • 8 Carolyne L. Kane, Chromatic Algorithms: Synthetic Color, Computer Art and Aesthetics After Code, Ch (...)

Rather than adhering to a “narrow digital determinism,”7 the focus is on the blurred and permeable boundaries between representations, images, digital imaginaries and physical space. What impact do digital images have, and how do they differ from the use of analog or optical images?8

This call for papers approaches digital images in architecture from three different angles, linked to practices and theories of spatial representation.

1. Digital Images and Design Processes: How do architects, designers and landscapers work with digital images?

  • 9 Gabriele Pierluisi, “La représentation de l’architecture comme lieu et contexte opérationnels du pr (...)
  • 10 The term “augment” refers to the “augmented reality” emerging in new technologies, which overlay di (...)
  • 11 Pierre Depaz, Nadja Gaudillière-Jami, “Algorithmes entre objets et médiums: étude des traces d’un m (...)

The first theme focuses on the productive spaces in which architecture, design and landscapes take shape. In both the digital and analog spheres, the design project is the result of a series of operations that are essentially tangible, using and producing images, whether within the confines of the studio or on the computer. In this way, one could say that the very “place” of the design project lies in this image space, characterized by complex representations of reality and invented future spatial projections.9 The virtual realm of the computer and the immaterial networks of our world seem to “augment”10 this, simulating and including fragments of analog objects in the production process by translating them into digital form. For example, drawing software can be seen as a series of digital elements (i.e., algorithms, scripts, figures) brought together to develop a project. Thus, the very place of production—the virtual computer program or “workshop”—represents an equivocal space in which the aforementioned elements have the status of both object and medium.11

Production space has a profound influence on the design process, shaping the project through analogical associations between complex elements. Materials, ideas, images and gestures give meaning and substance to the whole, just as they do in the workshop. What unfolds inside the computer’s virtual workshop, and in the transition between real and virtual space? In particular, what happens with the use of AI’s new image production systems or Instagram’s image repertoires? How does the production of different images affect the project’s inventive process?

  • 12 These images can be understood as the project’s context, but also as a provisional development or f (...)

In short, how do digital images12 shape the architectural production process? What technical procedures, algorithms or scripts are relevant in determining contemporary production means? Which images define the design process flow at a given moment? Are operational algorithm modules simply tools for efficient design production, or do they modify the project’s underlying substance? In other words, do they change the thinking behind the project, or simply make its production process more efficient?

In-depth studies on the emergence of design projects or on technical challenges shall provide concrete answers to these questions. These will be based on case studies or practical analyses, focusing on personal experience or on designers, landscapers or researchers. The aim is to examine design situations through the lens of digital image-making practices, highlighting the specific contribution that this type of image, as well as algorithmic objects, can bring to the creative design process.

2. Digital Investigations: How do digital images relate to physical space?

  • 13 Marcelo Coelho, Jean-Baptiste Labrune, “Large Language Objects: The Design of Physical AI and Gener (...)

Images produced by AI remain unable to grasp three-dimensionality, “lacking real time, contextual understanding of our physical surroundings [. . .]. They are rarely ‘situated,’ as defined by Lucy Suchman [in ‘Plans and Situated Actions’], since they don’t interact in real time with their immediate environment.”13

However, since the early 2000s, other digital images have been developing more specific connections to space, especially images produced by satellites, Google Earth, Google Streetview or location-based images generated by GPS or Galileo satellites.14 Whether aerial, satellite or geotagged, these images are captured automatically—not by human eyes—and yet they influence perceptions of our surroundings, further closing the gap between images and representations of what exists. Here, images are juxtaposed onto physical space, often in a literal sense and in real time, therefore becoming active. This results in hybridization between digital images and physical space that constantly challenge the very question of representation.

Ostensibly transparent, such images tend to be regarded as snapshots of real space, free of any interpretation. While seemingly objective, the algorithms that generate and manage these images are controlled by the prevailing economic and political powers. This raises questions concerning both their production and their impact on spatial planning.15 “It is astonishing to think that a private American digital giant holds the power to depict cities, and that this hasn’t sparked greater debate.”16

The second theme thus looks at the role of digital, geotagged and satellite images within analysis processes, using specific studies to examine their use, as well as their function in architectural, urban and landscape design. In the wake of their widespread usage, can changes in spatial planning practices be identified? How can the increasingly blurred boundaries between digital images and tangible spatial investigations be understood?

3. Today’s Architectural Imaginaries and Utopias

  • 17 Étienne Souriau, Vocabulaire d’esthétique, Paris, PUF, 1990, p. 857.
  • 18 Visual photographer and co-author, alongside Nelly Monnier of Atlas des Régions Naturelles. The Thi (...)

What impact do digital images have on architecture and the imagination of designers? This is the final theme of this call for papers. Although according to Anne Souriau, an image generally serves to shock or to stimulate the imagination,17 how does this fare in today’s digital architectural images, especially those produced by AI? Can’t dreams turn into nightmares? Though these images come with a degree of familiarity, they also sometimes evoke the “disturbing strangeness” described by Sigmud Freud. Is the very nature of AI to provoke disruption? Consider visual photographer Éric Tabuchi’s fantasy architecture,18 or Jean-Jacques Balzac’s unusual constructions, both reflecting a style of visual creation where the relationship between architecture and fiction is at the core. Certain uses of AI clearly provide a platform for introspection into dreamed, fantasized or frightening realities, as well as an opportunity to question the architectural image as a fictional, dreamlike and cathartic space.

AI is undoubtedly reviving images of utopian and dystopian architecture. However, it should be recalled that such visions did not emerge with AI, as in Étienne-Louis Boullée’s engravings, certain unbuilt projects by Le Corbusier, drawings by Antonio Sant’Elia, Yona Friedman, Jean-Louis Chanéac, Claude Parent, Constant, and many others. Images have already served as representation techniques in the past, profoundly shaping architects’ imaginations. AI is certainly part of this lineage, using new, digital means of representation that allow architects to produce images of dream cities and visionary architecture; the purpose of which is not to be realized, but to question architecture, the city, the relationship between buildings and nature, urban density, architectural experiences and so on. Thus, in the field of architecture, will these images give rise to livable spaces, embodied by concrete, material realities? Or will these digital images result in a further degree of distance from the real? Are other pathways being explored?

  • 19 Laurent Catala, “Quand l’IA transforme l’architecte en artiste numérique”, Fisheye Immersive, Janua (...)

AI is currently transforming a number of design practices, including architecture, especially through the creation of images. The architect is thus increasingly becoming a “digital artist,”19 raising questions about the constructive nature of the architectural profession. A critical look at the digital images produced by architects, as well as the expertise of image-architects and the ways in which images can be used for architectural purposes, are some of the possible topics in this thematic issue.

Procedure for the Transmission of Draft Articles

Proposals for completes articles should be sent by e-mail before 20 october 2025 to the Craup’ editorial office: craup.secretariat@gmail.com
For more information, contact Aude Clavel on 06 10 55 11 36 or by email

The journal expects completed articles, not proposals, abstracts or any other form of presentation.

The articles must not exceed 40 000 characters, including spaces.

Languages accepted: French, English.

Articles must be accompanied by:

− 1 biobibliographical record between 5 to 10 lines (name and first name of the author (s), professional status and / or titles, possible institutional link, research themes, latest publications, e-mail address).
− 2 abstracts in French and English.
− 5 key words in French and English.
− The title of the article must also be translated into French or English depending on the language of the paper.

Instructions to Authors

1 / General rules

Italics: Italicize words in foreign languages in relation to the language used. For example: op. cit., ibid., cf., a priori, a posteriori, etc.

No use of bold (with the exception of section titles) nor capitals (with the exception of proper names, institutions, book titles in English, etc.).

American conventions regarding punctuation are to be employed: double quotation marks, period before quotation marks, footnote at the very end of a sentence. For example: “This is how American people, as they say, ‘do it.’”

Authors may opt for British English or American spelling but the convention employed must be used in a consistent way. For example: formalised and formalized are both acceptable, as are color and colour.

Footnotes are to be used to cite sources instead of in-text citations.

Numbers: Up to ten, please spell out the number (for example, nine visitors), beyond ten, use numbers (for example: 100,000 inhabitants).

Dates: Centuries should be in numbers: 19th century. Form the plural of decades without an apostrophe. For example: the 1960s.

For persons who are deceased, add birth and death date in parenthesis. For example: Michel Foucault (1926-1984).

2 / Body of the text

The text must be entered in the Microsoft Word software, using Times New Roman, size 12, line spacing 1.5, without any special formatting, except titles, headings, captions and paragraph breaks.

3 / Quotations

Quotations of less than 3 lines will be inserted into the text and placed between quotation marks.

Quotes of more than 3 lines will be indented to the left and right, size 10 (not 12), and without quotation marks.

4 / Bibliographic References

Bibliographic references and references in footnotes are to be formatted according to the same model, although references in footnotes will include a page number.

Bibliographical references will also be grouped in alphabetical order (according to author names) and will appear at the end of the article in a section titled “Bibliography.”

Please use the following models:

For a book: First name Last name, Title, City of publishing, Publishing house, year of publication, p. xx.

For a collective work: First name Last name and First name Last name (dir./coord./eds./etc.), Title, City of publishing, Publishing house, year of publication, page, or First name Last name et al., Title, City of publishing, Publishing house, year of publication, p. xx.

For a chapter of a collective work: First name Last name, “Chapter Title,” in First name Last name, (dir./coord./eds./etc.), Book Title, City of publishing, Publishing house, year of publication, p. xx.

For a journal article: First Name Last Name, “Article Title,” Journal Title, Vol./N °, Date of Publication, p. xx.

For electronic reference: the following text will be inserted at the end of the reference, with the corresponding link: [online] [url], accessed on 01/01/21.

5 / Illustrations, charts and tables

Images accompanying the text should be scanned in high resolution (300 dpi minimum) in JPEG, PNG or TIFF formats. Text files should be distinct from graphic files.
Horizontal images (in landscape mode) are preferred as they are more consistent with page layout constraints. If vertical images are unavoidable, please consider pairing the image with another vertical image.

The author must verify that the images or figures of which he is not the author are free of rights.
Otherwise, the author must request permission to publish from the owner of the image or figure before submitting it to the magazine.

Tables are considered to be figures and must follow the same instructions in terms of file name, figure name, image format (jpg or tif), image size and legibility.

Illustrations, charts and tables must be captioned in the following manner:

The title of the illustrations should be preceded by the letters “Figure [no.]” or “Table [no.]” and will appear above the illustration.

The image caption and credits (source, copyright, etc.) will appear under the illustration on two separate lines.

Editorial Line

Placed in the fields of architectural, urban and landscape research, the Cahiers de la recherche architecturale initially developed from the 1970s in research labs of the French schools of architecture, before becoming the Cahiers de la recherche architecturale et urbaine in 1999. The journal initiates in 2018 a new formula online, Les Cahiers: Journal for the Study of Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape, targeted towards the research communities concerned by intentional transformations of space, whatever the scales. The journal aims at meeting current interests and issues in these fields, seeking to renew them and to open new directions of research. Three main research issues are more directly questioned. One specifically concerns theoretical aspects, in order to develop exchanges and discussions between theories of design, planning, architecture and landscape. Another issue refers to the materiality of the city, the technical know-how involved in spatial transformation, but also the material dimension of of transfer and mobilization phenomena, often analyzed in other journals from a-spatial angles. Lastly, the third issue questions the project and its design, which holds a special place in the sciences and the practice of space (performative roles of projects, theories of practice). These three poles call for interdisciplinary works, dedicated to trace in-depth explanations of the transformations of the built environment at the Anthropocene Era. The expected scientific production refers to common criteria of peer reviewing processes. It could pay a particular attention to the issues of pictures and visual production in a field where images can serve as discourse.

Les Cahiers: Journal for the Study of Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape online issue two or three time a year a thematic folder dedicated to a specific and problematized theme, and which consists of around ten articles in French and English. A call for papers is broadcasted for each thematic heading. Proposals may be in French or English. The evaluation is peer-rewiewed.

The online magazine has also 2 headings to accommodate miscellaneous articles, and outside thematic folders. Proposals may be in French or English. The texts are evaluated and peer-rewiewed.

Perspectives on Contemporary Research: Academic articles that present current and unpublished research, unpublished articles and essays on subjects related to the emergence of new themes and accounts of scholarly methodologies and practices development, book reviews.

Research Materials: The republication of texts, the translation of articles previously unpublished in French, documents such as logbooks, diaries and personal journals that shed light on the activities of researchers in their contemporary contexts, interviews with scholars and practitioners involved in ongoing research.

Editorial Board

Chief Editor:
GAUTHIER BOLLE

CELINE BARRERE
MANUEL BELLO-MARCANO
GAIA CARAMELLINO
ENRICO CHAPEL
BENJAMIN CHAVARDES
AUDREY COURBEBAISSE
MAXIME DECOMMER
ANAT FALBEL
YANKEL FIJALKOW
RALPH GHOCHE
XAVIER GUILLOT
CAROLINE MANIAQUE
ROBERTA MORELLI
JULIETTE POMMIER
FRÉDÉRIC POUSIN
PAOLA SAVOLDI
JEAN SOUVIRON
CORINNE TIRY-ONO
ANDREA URLBERGER

Editorial Assistant
AUDE C

Notes

1 Antoine Picon, Culture numérique et architecture, une introduction, Birkhäuser, 2010.

2 Mark Wigley, “Back to Black”, in Architectures expérimentales, 1950-2000, Collection du FRAC Centre, Orléans, HYX, 2003, p. 26-31

3 Antoine Picon, “L’intention architecturale au prisme de l’intelligence artificielle”, Bulletin de l’Association française pour l’intelligence artificielle, n° 125 “IA & Création artistique”, ed. Samuel Bianchini, Gaël Lejeune, Dominique Longin, Emmanuel Adam, 2024, [online] [hal-04708692].

4 While this is beyond the scope of the present discussion, it can be argued that even in analog (non-digital) architectural production, images have played a dominant role, especially since the Renaissance.

5 Katherine Nancy Hayles, “Print Is Flat, Code Is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis”, Poetics Today, vol. 25, n° 1, 2004, p. 67-90. Source: [https://dit.dampress.org/readers/materialite/une-nouvelle-materialite/hayles].

6 Photographic and electronic images, such as the television, remain linked to their physical medium.

7 Antoine Picon, op. cit.

8 Carolyne L. Kane, Chromatic Algorithms: Synthetic Color, Computer Art and Aesthetics After Code, Chicago. The University of Chicago Press, 2014

9 Gabriele Pierluisi, “La représentation de l’architecture comme lieu et contexte opérationnels du projet”, FabricA, n° 12, 2018, p. 84-103.

10 The term “augment” refers to the “augmented reality” emerging in new technologies, which overlay digital data visualization onto real vision. Here, however, it is understood more generally as the ability to work/operate in a hybrid space between the real and the virtual. Within virtual network spaces, design activity appears as capable of being multiplied in numerous places and fragments of different temporalities. As such, in virtual space, the site of project invention is transformed into numerous possible spaces, thereby amplifying the real “workshop.”

11 Pierre Depaz, Nadja Gaudillière-Jami, “Algorithmes entre objets et médiums: étude des traces d’un matériau numérique”, Sciences du Design, May 2024, p. 124-141.

12 These images can be understood as the project’s context, but also as a provisional development or fragments of the design process.

13 Marcelo Coelho, Jean-Baptiste Labrune, “Large Language Objects: The Design of Physical AI and Generative Experiences”, Interactions, vol. 31, August 2024, p. 43.

14 See Craup, issue 3 « Spatial Digitalization », , 2018, [online] [https://journals.openedition.org/craup/984].

15 Cathy Rémy, “Google Maps: La terre par le petit bout du smartphone”, Le Monde, hors-série n° 93 “Réinventons la ville,” October 3, 2024.

16 Isabelle Baraud-Serfaty, [online] [https://www.futuribles.com/la-cartographie-au-defi-de-google-maps/].

17 Étienne Souriau, Vocabulaire d’esthétique, Paris, PUF, 1990, p. 857.

18 Visual photographer and co-author, alongside Nelly Monnier of Atlas des Régions Naturelles. The Third Atlas, a book entirely produced using Midjourney.

19 Laurent Catala, “Quand l’IA transforme l’architecte en artiste numérique”, Fisheye Immersive, January 30, 2024. Source: [https://fisheyeimmersive.com/article/monde-nouveau-quand-lia-transforme-larchitecte-en-artiste-numerique/].

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