Twilight LA, a new exhibition by Los Angeles–based architect and SCI-Arc professor Herwig Baumgartner, reimagines domestic space through a series of AI-generated environments. Moving between architecture and moving image, the work presents residential interiors that feel familiar at first glance, then subtly off.
Across seven projects shown as generative video installations, Baumgartner uses custom-trained AI models to reinterpret his own residential designs. Rather than generating architecture directly, the models are trained on environmental systems, with each scene shaped through selection, editing, and recomposition. “What you see is not accidental,” he says, “but neither is it fully predetermined, it’s the result of navigating between control and discovery.”
Set against the backdrop of Los Angeles, a city shaped as much by image and atmosphere as by its physical fabric, the work leans into the overlap between reality and simulation. The interiors are notably unoccupied. In place of people, animals move through the spaces, introducing a quiet dissonance and shifting the focus away from human-centered domestic life.
The exhibition unfolds through seven projects presented across fourteen large LED displays, accompanied by large-scale aluminum prints, ceramic and metal façade mock-ups, furniture, and architectural models. A central sculptural installation brings fragments of these digital worlds into physical form, assembling furniture, architecture, and plant life into a hybrid environment where the virtual and material begin to merge.
Spanning approximately 3,000 square feet, Twilight LA is currently on display at the LAX Terminal 7 Gallery and will remain on view through early 2027.
Images courtesy of Los Angeles World Airports. Video courtesy of Baumgartner Architects.