Between DNA and Design: Revisiting Archigenetics
In the grand narrative of architectural identity, the script is familiar. We are taught that identity is a byproduct of place (Critical Regionalism), a devotion to use (Functionalism), or a dialogue with materials (Phenomenology). Architecture, in this sense, is a response. It’s what we learn from our climate, our culture, and our tools.
Then comes a theory that radically reframes the origin story. Archigenetics, the provocative proposition by Ibrahim Jowahrji, posits a more unsettling thesis: “We build what we are.”
The theory suggests that architectural identity isn’t just a learned cultural response but is also influenced by an inherited aesthetic bias, a “genetic” predisposition toward certain forms and symmetries. The initial skepticism is understandable. How can one seriously link the inanimate (a building) to the animate (a human)? The assertion feels deterministic, almost a revival of antiquated physiognomic theories. Is Jowahrji suggesting that a culture with a specific facial structure will literally build facades to match?
This is where a superficial reading of the theory fails.
Upon deeper investigation, Archigenetics reveals a far more nuanced mechanism. The link is not a direct, one-to-one visual mimicry between a face and a façade. The connection is indirect, rooted in a deep, collective, and inherited aesthetic preference.
Consider, as the theory suggests, the evolution of clothing. A population in a specific climate develops a preference for certain textiles or forms perhaps layered and flowing, perhaps stark and minimal. This preference is initially functional, but it evolves over centuries into an innate aesthetic bias. This “look” becomes the culture’s default definition of beauty and comfort. This same aesthetic preference is then transferred to their artifacts. It informs the way they carve a door, weave a rug, and ultimately, how they design the screens, masses, and apertures of their buildings.
In this light, the building’s form and the population’s physical “look” are not copies of each other. Rather, they are two distinct results stemming from the same “cultural-genetic” root preference. The link isn’t stone-to-skin; it’s preference-to-pattern.
This re-framing shifts Archigenetics from a metaphorical curiosity to a testable hypothesis. In an age of computational design, can we measure this?
This is where tools like generative AI become critical. What happens if we prompt Midjourney or DALL·E systems trained on the collective visual bias of humanity with “a beautiful home for a family from Kyoto” versus “a beautiful home for a family from Marrakech”? The resulting images will invariably display distinct, regionalized aesthetic biases. AI, in this sense, may not be “inventing” these styles, but rather revealing the deeply embedded, “genetic” aesthetic preferences it learned from our data.
How, then, does Archigenetics situate itself against other grand theories of beauty?
It stands in direct opposition to concepts like the Golden Ratio, which argues for a universal, mathematical constant for beauty. Archigenetics argues that beauty is localized and inherited. It is a relative, not an absolute.
More interestingly, it acts as a partner to the field of Neurodesign. Neurodesign uses fMRI scans to map how a brain reacts to a space what patterns trigger comfort or anxiety. Archigenetics provides the missing why. It asks: why does one person’s brain, with its specific ancestral “programming,” react differently to the same space than another’s?
The initial skepticism surrounding Archigenetics is a necessary hurdle. By moving past the provocative metaphor of a “face-façade” link, we uncover a more profound proposition. The theory compels us to ask an uncomfortable question: What if the origins of beauty are not learned, but are, in fact, an echo of our biology? Jowahrji has not just offered a new style, but a new and disruptive debate on the very nature of identity itself.
