Emerging Sustainability Aesthetics Archetypes for Hybrid Environments: An AI-Assisted Qualitative Analysis of Student Design Experiments

Hybrid rural–urban environments present growing challenges for architecture and design because they require ecological, cultural, and spatial values to be integrated within coherent design solutions. This study proposes a qualitative framework for identifying sustainability aesthetics archetypes that can support the interpretation and design of such hybrid environments through the integration of accessible artificial intelligence (AI) tools and author-based qualitative analysis. The research is based on a design experiment conducted with first-year Industrial Design Engineering students at Kaunas University of Technology during 2024–2025, resulting in a dataset of 43 modular spatial systems. Photographs of the design outcomes were analysed using user-friendly AI tools to generate image descriptions, semantic tags, colour palettes, and AI-assisted visual interpretations, which were combined with researcher observations in a triangulated qualitative framework. Comparative cross-case analysis identified six recurring sustainability aesthetics archetypes: living organism, habitat, geological harmony, modular ecosystem, cultivated landscape, and biomorphic artefact. Together, these archetypes provide a conceptual vocabulary for exploring how sustainability-related aesthetic principles might inform buildings, public spaces, and hybrid rural–urban environments. Beyond the identified archetypes, the study illustrates how accessible AI-assisted visual analysis can support the interpretation of implicit sustainability-related aesthetic patterns and complement researchers’ qualitative interpretation in architectural and design research.