I’ve been interested by the outcome of these recent studies in midcentury modern architecture in combination with cars. As you’ll probably be aware from the emerging content of this website, my two passions are placemaking and cars, and one of these things I’ve found most pleasurable about the Midjourney sandbox experience so far is being able to envision (hence the name of the site) various different combinations of the two on the fly.

That’s actually been one of the most interesting facets of this noise-based image generation – as far as the AI is concerned, there is no difference between one part of the image and another. I have no need to exercise one set of circuitry to create a car and then a separate circuit to design the house. Both emerge out of the same fog.

Here, the striking thing about these compositions is the relationship between the building and its surroundings. In all these images, there are trees.

What does this mean?

It means we are dealing with a fundamentally suburban (and wealthy suburban, at that) typology, where cars are king and densities are low.

To function properly, these should not be conceptualised as architecture in setting, but as collections of views through and around illuminated materials, space, cars and plants.

Light and shade, depth and transparency, inside and outside, are all particularly important.

The question that intrigues me most now is how this could be increased in density. How could this function where space is not so huge and more people must be together? I’d love to do something that retains the beauty of these with greater intricacy.