Prompt [Pond]ering is a key installation at the Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture 2025 that empowers the public to actively engage in shaping their community’s spatial imagination. In an era where AI tools increasingly inform urban design, the selection of prompts plays a critical role in directing both the quality and trajectory of generated outcomes. While designers often rely on specialised, idiosyncratic vocabularies, this can inadvertently constrain creative potential. Through street interviews, the design team found that public aspirations for ideal communities during public consultation are often abstract and difficult to articulate within conventional design language.

The installation addresses this gap through an interactive, game-like system in which participants draw and contribute evolving keyword combinations. This process transforms vocabulary into a shared, dynamic resource. Reflecting architecture’s iterative nature, the project explores how ideas are translated into spatial propositions through human–machine collaboration, revealing the balance between creative intuition and technical mediation.

By pairing experimental prompts with AI-generated imagery, Prompt [Pond]ering enables participants to intuitively grasp how language shapes spatial outcomes. The work provokes reflection on the essence of design, repositions the role of the individual within participatory processes, and fosters a more inclusive, collective vision for future community-making.

Photography: Jimmy Ho, Heyman Chan, Charon Lung, Jesse Hao, UABB