AI in Architecture: Faster Projects or Better Design?

Tim (0:00)

This is the Morning Drive. AI is entering the architecture and construction industries, changing how buildings are designed, how they're planned, how they're built. From automating routine work to helping architects explore new ideas and create more sustainable spaces, the tech is also raising a bigger question. And that is, where does human creativity fit in, and does it still actually fit?

Joining us is Massimo Imparato, who is the Dean of the School of Architecture and Interior Design at Canadian University Dubai. He's Founder and Curator of UAE Modern, which is a platform connecting academia and industry and the wider public through design, research and exhibitions. It's good to meet you.

Massimo Imparato (0:48)

Thank you very much. Good to meet you too, Tim.

Tim (0:50)

It's good to have you here with us. So let's start with this. How is AI entering the industry, the architecture and design industry? What are the biggest changes that we're seeing at the moment?

Massimo Imparato (1:05)

Well, we used to say that design is redefined for each generation, and this is the new definition of what design is, under the transformation brought about by AI. AI, at the very beginning, in our architecture and interior design field, has been considered just another tool for facilitating processing, for having hands-on multiple options to consider in any design question that we are asked to address from clients, from firms, from the industry. But in reality, that is only the surface of the way in which AI is like impacting the industry, in the sense that, at the beginning, you expect only to see the more evident aspects of it, for instance, speed, right? Because instantly you see, I can access to multiple solutions, I can provide multiple visuals, I can be very much competitive in providing solution that my clients may ask me. I'm talking very much about the professional practice side of it.

And this is, yes, it is true, okay, but I believe it is not yet been fully understood the level of new challenges that the AI brings with it, in the sense that it's an incredible, powerful tool for analyzing data, like a big amount of data, and also in a systemic manner, being able to use those data for providing information that before it was not only timely, but in terms of complexity. So it's a complexity that the AI can help designers to manage.

Tim (3:14)

I mean, we're still learning. We don't know where we're going. We don't have the safeguards, the guardrails at the moment. So it's headed in a... It's unknown at the moment.

Is it a creative tool or is it just a way to automate tasks?

Massimo Imparato (3:36)

Well, I believe that we have...

That AI, in a way, it's a very consistent part of an evolution. If you think to parametric design that somehow anticipated the use of AI, designers always operate within parameters, right? So you start a project and you have to set the parameters under which that project, that idea will be developed.

Creativity has always been in the hands of the designer. Before the use of this advanced tool, it was very much self-developed. Then digital tools start offering options for having a better setting in which to develop these ideas within parameters, as I'm saying. Parametric design was a very important tool for expand the possibilities, but it had a limitation that you needed to code to pass information to the system. And therefore, there was a level of knowledge that designers needed. They still do that. I'm not saying that it is the past. Now, the revolution is the interface, because you can provide those parameters just by prompting. So the real difference is that you are moving from having a competence that require you to code in order to set the parameters of the design process. Now, you just prompt it. So it is text to image, it is text to solution, it is text to video. And this shortens the distance between what this technology gives you and your creativity. I understand that your question was more on the creativity side of it.

There is some creativity developed in partnership with AI, I believe, in the sense that today, the moment in which you explore design solutions, you have already probably in your mind some ideas, but definitely AI offers you a vast, you know, unprecedented number of solutions that still belong to the existing set of data. It's not new knowledge in a way, right? It's a very fundamental question, which I believe is important for us to ask ourself. Does AI generate new knowledge or not? Because under the, you know, that are we scared about, you know, being replaced?