Public Lecture
Philip F. Yuan 袁烽
Mind and Matter: Physical AI for Engineering in Architecture
13 MAY 2026 | 6:30-8:00pm
KB419 Lecture Hall, 4/F Knowles Building, HKU
The lecture rethinks contemporary architectural engineering from a posthuman perspective, bridging performance-driven structural design with intelligent robotic fabrication. Challenging modernism’s long-standing obsession with scale and industrial standardization, Professor Yuan contends that economies of scale no longer equate to guaranteed efficiency or intrinsic value. Performance-oriented tectonics empower non-standard materials and customized assemblies, shifting industrial manufacturing toward flexible micro factories that function as automated craft workshops and unlock a diversified post-industrial future. Responding to Philip Ursprung’s critique that digital architecture falls into ahistorical technological fetishism, this talk defines Physical AI as an integrated paradigm merging computational intelligence and tangible materiality. Beyond technical innovation, Yuan revisits the entanglement between deterritorialized technology and localized cultural situatedness. Amid climate crises and geopolitical shifts, embedded artificial intelligence reconnects global technological circulation with grounded local cultures. Ultimately, this lecture advocates reclaiming architecture’s spatial temporal essence and humanistic responsiveness within universal technological logic, delivering a balanced, culturally conscious framework for sustainable and digitally augmented built environments.
