Making Concept Art for Startup Cities with AI
Making Concept Art for Startup Cities with AI
Prompt hacking DALL-E to create cityscapes from music genres, philosophers, novelists, corporate brands, and other wild aesthetics.
Beyond Famous Painters
AI models like DALL-E produce gorgeous art in the style of famous artists.
I’m partial to cityscapes:
For the art fans, here’s a big list of cityscapes by great artists:
These are neat, but too obvious. Could DALL-E create a “cityscape” in really abstract styles?
DALL-E captures some essential “city-ness” despite the abstraction.
This got me thinking.
(Almost) Everything is an Urban Aesthetic
If DALL-E can capture city-ness in an abstract Rothko, could we create realistic cityscapes from abstract ideas?
As it turns out, yes.
Models like DALL-E allow creators to generate buildings and cities based on any aesthetic — not just the obvious visual stuff like a famous artist.
As we’ll see, DALL-E can generate a coherent version of a “Bossa Nova city,” a “Benjamin Franklin City,” a “Gucci City,” and even cities that are mashups of elements of existing cities (“a city in Kenya with the architecture of Lisbon Portugal, the public transit of Taipei Taiwan, and the density of Tokyo Japan”).
DALL-E maps something essential about authors, music genres, brands, urbanists, and other ideas onto cityscapes.
With enough prompt hacking, you can create cool concept art for your own urban aesthetic — even if your aesthetic is music, a novel, a philosophical idea, a product, whatever.
The images below have their prompt modifier as the title. Most were generated with the simple prompt: “a painting of a cityscape in the style of {insert-aesthetic-here}”.
Notice that it’s not just the art style that changes. The elements of the cityscape reflect the geography, time, and aesthetic of the prompt. This is the key.
Let’s explore.
Cityscapes in the Style of Authors, Philosophers & Movie Directors
Authors like Dr. Seuss and Richard Scarry have an illustrated aesthetic associated with their work. Others don’t. Yet DALL-E still creates a cityscape that captures the vibe of both illustrated and unillustrated writers.
“Dr. Seuss”
“Jim Henson”
“Richard Scarry” (author of the Busytown children’s books)
“Ludwig Wittgenstein”
Vienna Greco-Roman Rationalist urbanism?
“Nietzsche”
Romanticist political revolutionary urbanism
“Benjamin Franklin”
Proto-Americana Tradurbanism
“Isaac Asimov”
Walkable Futurist Urbanism
“HL Mencken”
Prohibition-Era Baltimore Urbanism
“Carl Sagan”
The-Mothership-Has-Landed Urbanism
“Quentin Tarantino”
Reservoir Dogs Urbanism
“Leo Tolstoy”
Cold Russian Winter Urbanism
“JRR Tolkien”
Hobbit Urbanism
“Victor Hugo“
Industrial Revolution Les Miserables Urbanism
“Ayn Rand”
Art Deco Heroic Capitalist Urbanism
“George Orwell”
1984 Urbanism
“Hunter S. Thompson”
Should we call this one Gonzo LSD Urbanism?
Cityscapes in the Style of Bands & Music Genres
Let’s get weirder! What about musicians and music genres?
Again, DALL-E captures the essence of these mostly non-visual concepts and maps them to buildings and urban designs that match.
“Flamenco” (Traditional Music of Spain)
“Bossa Nova”
“Punk Rock”
“Miles Davis”
“Skrillex”
“the Japanese 1980’s genre of City Pop”
“Van Halen”
“80’s Hair Metal”
“early 90’s hip hop”
“Biggie Smalls”
This one blew me away with how well it captures 90’s Brooklyn.
“Elvis Presley”
Tacky Vegas Motel Urbanism
“John Coltrane”
Saxophone Urbanism
“Led Zeppelin”
“The Beatles”
Abbey Road Urbanism
Cityscapes in the Style of Corporate Brands
How about cities designed by iconic brands and product designers?
“Dieter Rams”
Electric Toothbrush Urbanism
“Apple Computer”
“Google”
“Rolex”
Mortality urbanism
“WalMart”
“Gucci”
Italian belt buckle urbanism
“Louis Vuitton”
Bling Futurist urbanism
Cityscapes in the Style of Famous Urbanists and Architects
“Zaha Hadid”
“Bjarke Ingels”
“Christopher Alexander”
Pattern Language vernacular urbanism
“Jane Jacobs”
Eyes on the Street Urbanism
“Robert Moses”
Run a highway through the Village Urbanism
“Patrik Schumacher”
Parametric urbanism
What does DALL-E think is “Good Urbanism”?
Let’s ask.
“bad urbanism”
DALL-E thinks bad urbanism is a cold megacity with trash and lost souls (?).
“good urbanism”
DALL-E thinks good urbanism is roughly Singapore, Vienna, and Paris/Stockholm.
“NIMBY”
This one cracked me up. DALL-E models NIMBY cityscapes as sprawl and a city that looks suspiciously like San Francisco…
“walkable urbanism”
Generating Startup Cities
Many of these aesthetics are too abstract to inform any real work. But could DALL-E dream up the aesthetic of real and possible Startup Cities?
Here’s a few prompts where I tried to generate concept art for real projects in the space. See if you can name them! Answers at the end.
“the city is in Tempe Arizona, the city has walkable urbanism, buildings have many balconies alleyways and courtyards, people are walking and riding e-bikes”
“the city is in Panama, the city has traditional Panamanian architecture, no building is taller than 3 stories, people are walking and riding bicycles”
“the city is on the edge of Lagos Nigeria, the city has an afrofuturist style, the city is full of tech startups”
“the city is in Texas Hill Country and on top of a hill, the city has traditional Italian architecture and is surrounded by a meadow and fruit trees”
“the city is on the tropical island of Roatán Honduras, the city is designed by Zaha Hadid, the city has a co-working space in front of a beach”
“the city is in Honduras, the city has white cement houses and a pretty green park, the city is next to a slum with houses made of plywood and corrugated metal”
Answers:
Culdesac Tempe
Porta Norte
Talent City Lagos
Montanoso
Próspera
Ciudad Morazán
Mashup Cities
DALL-E lets you freely mix and match the essential elements of different cities. This path deserves more exploration.
“the city has the architecture of Lisbon Portugal, the city has the public transit of Taipei Taiwan, the city has the density of Tokyo Japan, the city has the green space of Singapore”
Conclusion
Many of the aesthetics we’ve seen are absurd and unrealistic. But not all of them.
I think there’s much to explore here: I suspect fine-tuning prompts (and moving away from “painting”) can generate realistic aesthetics that align with real projects.
In a future article, I’ll use StableDiffusion and DALL-E prompt hacking to explore a different workflow than concept art… stay tuned.
Go forth and make {insert your random sauce aesthetic here} urbanism!
Thanks for reading and don’t forget: Startups should build cities!
love this!! can you re-send this post weekly just so I can look at it all over again periodically? :)