252: Conjuring Decolonial Futures: Ancestrality and Ai In Achitectural Imagination

Generative AI offers new opportunities in architectural practice and education but risks reinforcing dominant cultural and aesthetic narratives if unexamined. This paper explores critical integration of AI with decolonial and ancestral thinking through an undergraduate studio. Students used text to image platforms alongside an adapted speculative design card game organized by four thematic constraints: Arc (time), Object (programmatic intent), Terrain (composition), and Atmosphere (ambience). The sequence moved from free image exploration to spatially grounded installations, blending narrative writing, visual syntax analysis, and Human Centered Design. A multi-source evidence base revealed progression from generic to architecturally specific prompts, culminating the translations into grounded installations. Students gained self-awareness to visual stereotypes and epistemological biases embedded in AI outputs. Reframed through ancestral and decolonial epistemologies, AI became a catalyst for conjuring alternative architectural futures, allowing students to unsettle naturalized assumptions and re-imagine space as a site of reciprocity, plurality, and ecological care.