Recomputed Bibiena: An Algorithmic Anti-Ocularcentrism | Bologna, Italy | Unit 21 | 2026

Recomputed Bibiena explores how visual illusion can be transformed into an architecture of embodied perception. The project begins with Bibiena’s scenographic drawings, whose angled perspectives and layered stage flats were designed to deceive the eye and produce impossible depth. Through Depth Anything 3, CLIP, point-cloud reconstruction, mesh classification and reinforcement learning, this illusion is not corrected but translated into measurable spatial data. The proposal is conceived as a Centre for Theatrical Culture, bringing together learning, making, rehearsal, performance and public exchange. It responds to ocularcentrism: the dominance of sight as the primary way architecture is understood. Instead of treating the reconstructed mesh as a visual object, it is reconfigured through hearing, touch, movement and interaction. Acoustic chambers, tactile walls, negotiation corridors and interactive mesh spaces transform illusion into bodily experience. The ambition is to challenge AI’s tendency to intensify visual mediation, and to propose architecture as a multisensory cultural field that can be heard, touched, negotiated and inhabited.

Methodology: From Drawing to Spatial Data This film explains the computational workflow from 80 Bibiena drawings to classified 3D point clouds, using Depth Anything 3, CLIP and mesh reconstruction to form the basis of architectural space.

Strategies for Anti-Ocularcentrism This film presents the four sensory strategies of the project: hearing, touch, movement and interaction. Each strategy translates the reconstructed mesh into a different mode of bodily experience.

Architectural Drawings and Spatial Synthesis Drawing sequence showing the final architectural proposal through plans, rendered sections and exploded isometric drawing, revealing how programme, mesh and structure are integrated.

Renders: Occupying the Sensory Architecture A series of renders with animated human silhouettes, showing how bodies move, touch, perform and interact within the sensory spaces of the building.

Final Animation: Recomputed Bibiena The final animation brings together the full architectural proposal, moving through the building as a sequence of reconstructed illusion, sensory occupation and spatial performance.