Midjourney for Developing Design Concepts Integrating Physical Models

AI image generation methods using a web-based text-to-image AI tool, Midjourney, are used in academic exercises concerning landscape architecture education. Students in the Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA I) course were prompted to explore speculative fictional futures through text-to-image tools in a three-week workflow in which students created narratives from imaginaries, translated them into images, and assembled them into stories. Procedural workflows are established in student-led production facilitated by, including highly detailed prompting, refining, and reprocessing, with students encouraged to critically evaluate each step of the process. Eventually students are asked to produce physical models of speculative landscape and are evaluated upon the quality of their exploratory work. Students are also prompted to consider the ethics of AI-generated images and originality and authorship.