From Control to Care

From Control to Care: A Transdisciplinary Exploration of Nonhuman and Digital Agencies in Architecture and Design Using AI Agents is an international postdoc project that investigates more-than-human creativity at the intersection of human, artificial and biological intelligences. The project is hosted by the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture (CITA) at the Royal Danish Academy (KADK) and Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in collaboration.

AI agents, configured as semi-autonomous networks of large language models, negotiate biological and fabrication data — obtained from organisms such as algae, bacteria and fungi — and digital data generated for g-code, toolpaths and voxel models. The research focuses on the intersection of biological matter, code and intention. It explores a non-hierarchical reading of the DIKW pyramid (Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom) through posthumanist and non-normative ontologies. Over three years, different datasets and methods will be engaged through AI agents to explore implications for design objects and workflows. The project investigates a shift in digital fabrication — from control-centred to care-centred approaches.

Creativity is treated as co-creativity distributed among humans, biological organisms and machinic systems, each with its own form of intelligence. This framework raises broader societal questions about human creativity and the meaning-making role of human work in a world increasingly understood as more-than-human, relational and co-created by generative artificial intelligence.

Principal investigator: Sebastian Gatz, PhD
Funded by: Vetenskapsrådet
Project period: 2026-2028