Water Album: A Built Negotiation of Agency from Ink Gesture to Public Space

Water Album is a built, AI-assisted interior for a former factory in Guangxi, China: a 2,400 m² public room whose surfaces carry water motifs that began as machine-learning studies. Developed between 2019 and 2026, its contribution is not a single generated image but a traceable sequence: calligraphic structure and Ma Yuan's Song-dynasty studies of water entered style-transfer experiments; selected details continued through image-to-space studies; the design team simplified and reconstructed them as architectural geometry; drawings, fabrication, and site work altered them again; and public use now exceeds the pipeline's control. The project locates creative agency at the hand-offs between systems rather than inside one model: AI generated visual difference and spatial proposals, while people selected, redrew, detailed, fabricated, and occupied what survived. The submitted 2:59 film makes that sequence visible from historical input to built matter.