Virtual Design Spaces.
What is it?
A platform for examining the evolving relationship between architecture and generative AI, where intelligent systems become collaborators in shaping new spatial paradigms and redefining the future of design.
Projects and Prompt Exploration
Prompt Excercise:
Shielded Metal and Glass
GPT:
"Photo Realistic Image and Video Generator" By genigpt.net
PROMPT:
A highly photorealistic architectural street scene set on a dense New York City corner, centered on a 5–6 story contemporary mid-rise building with a distinctly amorphous, sculptural form. The building’s facade is composed of continuous, flowing horizontal bands that undulate smoothly across each level, creating a layered, wave-like effect. These bands are clad in matte brushed metal—dark titanium or anodized aluminum—with subtle panel seams and soft reflectivity that captures ambient city light without becoming mirror-like.
Between each sculptural band are deeply recessed, continuous ribbon windows with curved glass, wrapping the perimeter of the building. The glazing is slightly tinted and highly polished, reflecting the surrounding urban context—adjacent brick buildings, sky tones, and street movement—while still revealing glimpses of interior spaces. The ground floor is fully transparent with floor-to-ceiling glass, showing a warmly lit lobby or retail interior with people inside, soft yellow lighting contrasting with the cool exterior tones.
Prompt Exercise:
Sinusoidal Metal & Glass
GPT:
"Photo Realistic Image and Video Generator" By genigpt.net
PROMPT:
"Ultra-realistic architectural scene of a dense Manhattan street featuring a 5–6 story amorphous building with thick, sculptural massing and smooth, blob-like deformations. The building has no sharp edges, instead flowing in continuous metallic ribbons that wrap around large curved glass panels. The façade is a seamless fusion of brushed stainless steel and reflective glazing, with soft highlights and subtle distortions of the surrounding city. The form bulges and recedes organically, creating deep window recesses and overhangs.
The building sits tightly within a narrow NYC block, surrounded by older brick buildings with fire escapes. Street-level perspective with pedestrians walking, parked cars lining both sides, and long shadows cast by mid-morning sunlight. Background includes tall glass skyscrapers fading into atmospheric haze.
Lighting is cinematic and natural, with strong contrast between sunlit metal surfaces and shaded street canyon. Reflections in the glass subtly mirror urban life. The scene feels grounded, realistic, and physically plausible despite the futuristic form."
Prompt Exercise:
Shapely Metal & Glass
GPT:
"Photo Realistic Image and Video Generator" By genigpt.net
PROMPT:
"A highly realistic vertical architectural scene of a dense New York City block featuring a three-story amorphous building with thick, heavy, sculptural massing. The form is slightly asymmetrical with blob-like deformations—bulging, uneven curves that feel organic and imperfect rather than uniform. The building appears wide, grounded, and weighty, with no tower elements. Its facade is a seamless blend of reflective glass and matte metal panels flowing continuously across the warped geometry. Surrounding it are typical rectangular NYC buildings for contrast. Street-level perspective with pedestrians, parked cars, and urban details. Natural daylight, soft shadows, ultra-detailed, photorealistic, cinematic composition."
Typological Experiment:
Villa Savoy x Super Market 1
GPT:
"Photo Realistic Image and Video Generator" By genigpt.net
PROMPT:
"A modernist architectural building inspired by Villa Savoye fused with a contemporary supermarket typology, elevated on thin pilotis, floating rectangular white volume, horizontal ribbon windows wrapping entire façade, open ground-level parking and public plaza beneath, smooth white stucco and glass, minimal steel detailing, long interior aisles visible through glazing, ramp promenade spiraling through the building, rooftop garden with organic curved walls and greenery, clean modernist geometry combined with retail infrastructure, bright natural lighting, ultra-realistic, cinematic composition, 16:9, high detail, soft shadows, architectural photography, shot on wide-angle lens, minimal color palette"
Typological Experiment:
Villa Savoy x Super Market 2
GPT:
"Architecture AI Auto" from within chatgpt.com
PROMPT:
"A highly detailed architectural visualization of a hybrid building that fuses the iconic modernist principles of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye with the functional typology of a contemporary supermarket. The building is elevated on slender pilotis, lifting a large, open commercial volume above the ground plane. The classical five points of modern architecture are reinterpreted at an infrastructural scale: a free plan organizes fluid retail circulation, while a free façade wraps the structure in smooth, white surfaces punctuated by continuous horizontal ribbon windows that reveal interior shopping activity. The ground level acts as a permeable public plaza and parking field, where cars, pedestrians, and delivery flows interweave beneath the hovering volume. Ramps—both architectural promenade and logistical conveyor—spiral upward, guiding visitors seamlessly from exterior arrival to interior retail landscapes, echoing Villa Savoye’s iconic circulation path. Inside, the supermarket is conceived as a luminous, minimal landscape: long shelving systems align with the structural grid, creating a rhythmic, almost gallery-like shopping experience. Natural light filters through ribbon glazing and internal courtyards, softening the typically artificial atmosphere of retail environments. The roof is transformed into an accessible garden terrace and urban farm, blending leisure, sustainability, and food production. Organic forms contrast with the strict geometry below—curved walls, planted surfaces, and sculptural ventilation elements reinterpret Corbusian roof gardens at a commercial scale. Materiality is restrained and modernist: white stucco, exposed concrete, glass, and subtle steel detailing. The composition emphasizes horizontality, lightness, and spatial continuity, while integrating signage, refrigeration, and retail infrastructure seamlessly into the architectural language. The overall aesthetic balances utopian modernism with everyday consumer culture—where high architecture meets mass consumption—creating a paradoxical yet elegant fusion of domestic idealism and commercial efficiency."
Typological Experiment:
Villa Savoy x Super Market 3
GPT:
"Photo Realistic Image and Video Generator" By genigpt.net
PROMPT:
"A modernist architectural building inspired by Villa Savoye fused with a contemporary supermarket typology, elevated on thin pilotis, floating rectangular white volume, horizontal ribbon windows wrapping entire façade, open ground-level parking and public plaza beneath, smooth white stucco and glass, minimal steel detailing, long interior aisles visible through glazing, ramp promenade spiraling through the building, rooftop garden with organic curved walls and greenery, clean modernist geometry combined with retail infrastructure, bright natural lighting, ultra-realistic, cinematic composition, 16:9, high detail, soft shadows, architectural photography, shot on wide-angle lens, minimal color palette"
Generative Study
NYC Street - Variation 1
Sculptural Concrete Meets Modern Glass
Generative Study
NYC Street - Variation 2
Sinuous Urban Architecture on a lively street
Generative Study
NYC Street - Variation 3
Urban Farm In The City Landscape
Learn and See more @: Generative AI / Authored by: Sophia Goehner
Vintage Projects
Project Zocalo © 2006
Holo Haus © 2007
Piano Wall © 2000
Tree Tower © 2001
Stairwell Projection Sequence © 2003
Agrotopic Sketches © 2008
What are Super-Prompts?
“Super prompts” are essentially highly optimized, detailed prompts designed to get the best possible output from a language model. Think of them as prompt engineering on steroids—they don’t just ask for something; they guide the model with very clear instructions, context, structure, and constraints so the response is more accurate, relevant, and useful.
1. Characteristics of Super Prompts
Highly detailed: Include context, role, and objectives.
Structured instructions: Specify format, tone, length, style, or even step-by-step reasoning.
Explicit constraints: Define what not to include or what must be prioritized.
Examples included: Sometimes show an example output to guide the model.
Role assignment: Ask the model to adopt a persona or expert role (e.g., “Act as a senior UX designer…”).
2. Why They’re Effective
Reduce ambiguity, so the model doesn’t “guess” your intent.
Generate outputs closer to what a human expert would produce.
Save time because fewer iterations are needed to get a usable response.
3. Example of a Basic Prompt vs Super Prompt
Basic Prompt:
Write a blog post about urban gardening.
Super Prompt:
"You are a professional horticulturist and experienced content writer. Write a 700-word blog post for beginner urban gardeners in the US. The tone should be friendly but informative, include three actionable tips, and explain benefits for both mental health and sustainability. Use subheadings and a short conclusion with a call to action. Avoid technical jargon."
Notice:
Notice how the super prompt provides role, length, audience, tone, structure, content requirements, and constraints—all of which make the output much more refined.
Publications
Holographic Space
Holographic Technologies and their conceptual siblings (In Architecture) © 2006
Wood Construction of the Future
An investigation in Hybrid Wooden Framing Systems © 2006
Recent Article
From “Mimesis To Virtualization”
August 28, 2019 by Sophia Goehner
Four representational methodologies for framing Art, Architecture and Visual Representation within the context of the "Real" and the Virtual.
Reflection
In my undergraduate studies I was highly interested in the Ideas and Processes of Mimesis, Simulation, Augmentation and Virtualization as they apply to an Artistic. Architectural (or Spatial) and Technological Context.
Mimesis
By Mimesis I mean the nearly “illusionistic”, (re)presentation of the visual appearance of a thing, or things. Mimesis, to me, is linked most closely to the process of describing the perceptual experience of the observed, through a highly personal or subjective filter — one which is re-produced through the use of an artistic or technological medium that simultaneously imitates and re-creates this experience. That which is communicated by the mimetic creation, is conceptual in nature, and is understood through the representational symbology it utilizes.
Simulation
By Simulation I mean a slightly different mechanism, whereby Art, and sometimes Technology, are used to (re)create the Objective perceptual experience of the Observer, as well as that which is being Observed, to evoke a “Real” or “Universal” affect on the perceiver.
Whereas, Mimesis, is concerned with a static and highly personal and subjective representations of real or ideal realities, Simulation questions the reality of such representation — while often imitating the operation of a real-world process or system, over time.
Augmentation
Augmentation refers to an extension of perception, usually through enhancing and/or supplementing the perceptual experience of the objective world with additional information, often via a piece of Technology producing an added layer of information.
Virtualization
And Virtualization, in my conception and application of the word, is the complete transformation of an event, thing, or experience of the “Real”, into a Metaphysical or Virtual event, thing, or experience, which may or may not include Mimetic, Simulative or Augmentative qualities or properties.
Areas of Focus
Generative AI
Architecture
Design
Design Thinking
Holography & Holographic Projection
Augmented Reality
Virtual Reality
Simulation
Projection
Connect
Wish to make contact? Message Sophia Goehner on LinkedIn.
Explore
Take a look at what Sophia and Team are doing at CME.