In a time when AI and immersive technology are radically redefining creative practices, architect and media artist Sangji Han is carving out a distinctive space at the intersection of the physical and virtual. Her solo exhibition Probabilistic Room, developed initially through a grant from the Korean Architecture and Infrastructure Innovation Foundation (KAIA), was exhibited at Studio I Gallery in New Haven in 2021. The installation garnered attention from both the architectural and art-tech communities, later becoming a finalist in the AIA Dallas Ken Roberts Memorial Delineation Competition (KRob) 2024 under the “Emerging Technologies” category.

More than a visually arresting installation, Probabilistic Room serves as a critical proposition: What is space when it is both real and unreal? And how does our body navigate architecture that exists in probability?

Interpolated Space: AI‑Generated Rooms as Possible Architecture

Probabilistic Room is built atop a latent interpolation model trained on hundreds of panoramic room images. In machine learning terms, the VR episode functions as a continuous probability distribution in latent space—each rendered frame is one probable interior configuration. This produces a space that is never fixed, constantly shifting across variations of archetypal living rooms.

By wearing VR headsets and entering this environment, visitors traverse a field of continuously morphing interior forms. The project thus literalizes “probability” from statistical abstraction into spatial dissolution and reformation.

Guardian Boundary: Virtual Safety Made Physical

In VR, modern systems use a guardian boundary—an invisible perimeter that alerts users when they approach the limits of a defined physical area. Probabilistic Room superimposes this digital boundary onto the real world: vertical ropes installation hangs in a physical formation matching the VR boundary box. This physical guardian system mirrors the virtual boundary exactly.

As participants walk—and sometimes dance—within these limits, they gesture between two worlds: the probabilistic latent space aligned with the VR and the tactile ropes of the gallery floor. Contacting the ropes prompts a crossing gesture, gradually exiting the virtual realm into the physical. Meanwhile, drawing devices attached to each rope produce traced drawings on paper beneath, capturing each person’s bodily negotiation of AI‑generated space.

Virilio’s Virtual-Actual Duality Reframed

Playwright of virtual discourse Paul Virilio proposed that virtual and actual space coexist, yet their boundary remains unsettled. In Probabilistic Room, that boundary becomes architectural and bodily presence rather than ephemeral.

Virilio argued that the acceleration of image-based experiences collapses real space into instantaneous virtual presence. Han’s project pushes back: virtuality has a footprint that materializes through rope, drawing, and gesture. The viewer’s body becomes a mediator between the moving latent probability of AI and the gravity-bound physical frame of architecture.

The installation effectively stages an inquiry: what is the nature of space when virtual continuity demands physical clearance? And what emerges when the threshold—once invisible—is made spatial?

Yale CCAM and Blended Reality Context

Presented by Yale’s Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM), Probabilistic Room was featured on the Machine as Mind platform. It was part of Yale’s Blended Reality Group, where research crosses between art and science. There, Han reflects on how users “experimented, danced, and played” inside AI-rendered rooms, gaining insights into architectural archetypes unmoored from function or habit.

The project draws upon the Architectural Design Talent Development Project, funded by KAIA, which aims to nurture young Korean architects into globally recognized innovators.

Noteworthy Recognition: Finalist in KRob 2024

In 2024, the project advanced to become a Finalist in the AIA Dallas Ken Roberts Memorial Delineation Competition, a global benchmark in architectural representation. Now celebrating over 50 years, KRob honours both traditional and hybrid visual media that communicate architectural intent with clarity and imagination AIA Dallas.

Jury commentary highlighted Probabilistic Room for its alternative use of VR and AI imagery in architectural visualization—recognizing it as a new form of spatial delineation, not rendered plans but experiential media made architectural.

Toward a New Architectural Body-Language

Probabilistic Room reframes architecture not as a static enclosure but as probability in motion—the guardian boundary—the rope installation—anchors latent spatial forms in the body’s path.

This hybrid of visual and bodily architecture challenges the notion that VR lacks spatial consequences. Instead, the installation argues that virtual space can prescribe movement, define thresholds, and manifest space as experience.

Such an approach compels us to ask: how might future architecture navigate probabilistic design, latent space exploration, and bodily cognition? And what new tools—digital and physical—must designers adopt?