Gian Luca Beccari (Visiting Doctoral Researcher 2026/27)
Supervisor
Abstract
Architecture after the Image
The research investigates whether and how art and architecture, integrated with digital languages and in particular with artificial intelligence, can redefine the identity and perception of the environment, turning physical-digital space into a symbolic and narrative device capable of reshaping imaginaries, values and shared cultural dynamics, to the point of affecting political power. Art and architecture are taken as manifestations of thought in space-time, in the phenomenological perspective ofHusserl and Merleau-Ponty: perceptual events that take place in the encounter between form and consciousness. Perception is always mediated by narratives, discourses and media devices that frame space and orient its interpretation. In dialogue with Bourdieu on symbolic capital and Virilio on the circulation of images, it analyses how mass communication and digital platforms construct hierarchies of places, urban brands and iconic architectures as instruments of soft power.
A first line of work reconstructsgenealogically the link between wisdom and space, from the cathedra asthe first architectural device of knowledge, upon which cathedrals anduniversities are built, architectures generated by the need to house andamplify a voice of wisdom. Read through archetypal places such as Lascaux, thebirth of symbolic territory appears as a narrative and ritual order turningnatural space into cultural space.
A second line concerns the present, wherenews, works and identities are rewritten in real time with AI and what countsis the symbolic and political efficacy of representation rather than itscorrespondence to the real, while architecture extends into media space: thecity becomes an interface and the building a media celebrity in its own right.
Through practice and theory, the aim is atheory of art and architecture offering critical tools to read the builtenvironment in the age of AI as a linguistic and narrative phenomenon, as wellas aesthetic and political.
Bio
Gian Luca Beccari is a multimedia artist anddirector. He teaches Multimedia Languages at the Accademia di Belle Arti diCatania and has held the chair of Videosculpture in Carrara and of MultimediaDesign in Sassari. He is a doctoral candidate in Architecture and Environmentat DADU, University of Sassari, and a visiting researcher at the Royal Collegeof Art in London.
He trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti diBologna, with a period at the Faculty of Art, Media and Design in Bristol.Between 2004 and 2008 he worked in the creative and technical team of StudioAzzurro in Milan, with whom he created the video dramaturgy for Beckett andFeldman’s Neither at the Stuttgart Opera. He then founded and directedthe production company Argilla Produzioni. His work moves across videoinstallation, live cinema, performance and public art. He created thegenerative installation Curvatura della Luce (The Curvature of Light) atPalazzo Ducale in Genoa for the Festival della Scienza, Italy’s nationalscience festival, with the CNR National Research Council and the interactivevideo installation Grid at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome incollaboration with INFN (National Institute of Nuclear Physics). His best-knownwork is a live cinema piece titled Mutazioni (Mutations), produced bythe Teatro Manzoni in Bologna and a finalist for the Celeste Prize.
His book Tecnoteismo (Technotheism) ispublished by Mimesis in 2026. An essay on the aesthetics of efficacy in the ageof generative artificial intelligence is also forthcoming in Estetica. Studie Ricerche (Aesthetics. Studies and Research, Il Mulino). He is preparing asecond volume, Arte e architettura fra percezione, narrazione e sistemi dipotere (Art and Architecture between Perception, Narrative and Systems ofPower). His work returns often to the body, transmedia narrative and the makingof collective imaginaries.
Supervising
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Architecture PhD
Postgraduate Research
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Contact
Prof Dr Ines Weizman
Professor of History and Theory of Architecture
Head of PhD Programme
School of Architecture
Royal College of Art
Kensington Gore, London
SW7 2EU
ines.weizman@rca.ac.uk
School of Architecture, Royal College of Art
Postgraduate Research (PGR) Programme