Artificial Intelligence Can Only Help Architecture if We Ask the Right Questions

AI in the architecture industry has provoked much debate in recent years - yet it seems like very few of us know exactly what it is or why it has created this storm of emotions. There are professionals researching AI who know more about the field than I do, but I have hands-on experience using AI and algorithms in my design over the past 10 years through various projects. This is one of the challenges that our field faces. How can we make practical use of these new tools?

Many people have reached out to me claiming that AI could not do their job and that being an architect is so much more than just composing a plan drawing or calculating the volume of a building envelope. They are right. But having said that, there is no reason not to be open to the possibility that AI can help us design even better buildings. There are a lot of tasks that are much better solved with computation than manually, and vice versa. In general, if we are able to reduce a problem to numbers or clearly define what we are trying to solve, AI will probably be able to solve it. If we are looking for subjective opinions or emotions, it might be trickier for an AI to help. Or to be more precise, it might be trickier for us to provide the AI with the right tools to subjectively analyze our designs.

When we talk about AI within the field of architecture it often boils down to optimization. Where can we find more sellable square meters or how can we get more daylight into dark apartments? A bigger building and more windows might be the answer, but what other parameters might be affected by this? 

Where there are a lot of parameters at stake that need to be weighed against each other, AI can help us a lot. Millions of scenarios can be evaluated, and the best selected in the same amount of time that it takes for us to ride the subway to work. The AI would ultimately present us with the same solution that we would have found after much more time based on the parameters provided.