Spatial AI Course Materials
Spatial AI Course → Syllabus / Materials
Session 01 → 2026 Sep 10
What is Spatial AI?
- Lecture → Introduction to the Course
- Intro Survey
- Workshop → Urban Observation with Teachable Machine
Session 02 → 2026 Sep 17
What is space?
- Discussion + Slides → What is space?
- Demo → Claude Code + Netlify/GitHub
- Lecture → Semantic Models (aka How to think like a computational designer.)
- Workshop → All the World’s a Game
- Readings Due
- Space: A History. Ancient Greek notions of space. (PDF, pgs 11-36)
- “The Japanese words for “space” could change your view of the world.” Quartz Magazine, Jerrold McGrath, 2018 January 18. (PDF, Link)
- Thrift, Nigel. (2003). 5 Space: The Fundamental Stuff of Human Geography. Key Concepts in Geography. 2. (PDF, pgs 96-105)
- Assignment Due
- Teachable Machine Images
- Submission Form (day of class)
Session 03 → 2026 Sep 24
What is artificial intelligence?
- Lecture → What is AI?
- Workshop → Neural Network Playground
- Readings Due
- https://academy.claude.com/courses/claude-code-101
- Russell, Stuart J., and Peter Norvig. (2022). Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Chapter 01, Introduction. (PDF, pgs 19-53).
- Tech Prep Due
- Sign up for a Claude Pro account. This will be $20/month for just the semester If you time it right, you can pay for just 3 months. If you’re working in a pair, you’ll only need one account.
- Sign up for a Netlify account (recommended) OR a GitHub account (if you don’t already have one). These are both free and will allow us to deploy simple websites.
- Assignment Due
Session 04 → 2026 Oct 01
Location + Occupancy
- Lecture → Location + Occupancy
- Lecture → What is Generative AI?
- Workshop → Location + Occupancy
- Readings Due
- “Generative AI exists because of the transformer.” Financial Times, 2023 Sept 12. By Visual Storytelling Team and Madhumita Murgia.
- AI is a lot of work (TheVerge)
- How AI reduces the world to stereotypes (restofworld.org)
- An Introduction to Machine Learning by Lisa Tagliaferri at Digital Ocean. (Link)
- But what is a neural network? | Chapter 1, Deep learning 18m39s.
Session 05 → 2026 Oct 08
Agents + Traversal
- Workshop → Agents + Traversal
- Readings Due
Session 06 → 2026 Oct 15
Distance + Proximity
- Lecture → Definitions of Distance (Metric Space)
- Workshop → Distance + Proximity
Session 07 → 2026 Oct 22
Position + Positioning
- Lecture → Static Spatial Reasoning
- Workshop → Position + Positioning
- Readings Due
- Watchings Due
Session 08 → 2026 Oct 29
Topographies (Hindrances + Affordances)
- Workshop → Hindrances + Affordances
- Readings Due
- Taxonomy of Computable Space for Spatial AI by William Martin.
- Newton from Archetype AI
- Watchings Due
Session 09 → 2026 Nov 05
Spatial Perception
- Workshop → Computer vision, spatial VLMs
- Assignment Due
Session 10 → 2026 Nov 12
Connectivity
- Lecture → Spatial connections, conditional connectivity, multi-modal connectivity
- Workshop → Spatial Connections and Connectivity
Session 11 → 2026 Nov 19
Way-finding and way-signalling
- Lecture → way-finding, way-signalling, routing, path-finding
- Workshop → way-finding and way-signalling
- Watchings Due
Thanksgiving! → 2026 Nov 19
Session 12 → 2026 Dec 03
Demo day!
- Last In-Person Session
- Assignment Due
Recommended Readings
- Shaun Carter and Michael Nielson. (2017). “Using Artificial Intelligence to Augment Human Intelligence.” Distill. (Link)
- Turing, Alan M. (1950). “Computing machinery and intelligence.” Mind, 59, 433-460. (PDF 1 original scan, PDF 2 w/ minor OCR errors).
Note about this reading: This was written in 1950 and has verbiage that today is considered controversial and biased; treat this more as an historical artifact rather than a modern-day text. It’s important to understand the origin of the “Imitation Game” (aka “The Turing Test”) with respect to the current thought around AI, particularly the prominent chatbot user experience.