I am an architect and I do a lot of ai work. My specialty is actually in generative parametric design and I’m just taking a break from writing some code for an AI project I am working on.
I’m seeing a lot of bad takes here, I’m assuming from a mixture of not reading the article and not knowing what actually goes on in the field. No, we don’t just make pretty pictures. No, a trend you don’t like of boring or shitty buildings you’ve seen doesn’t mean the profession is dying (and for a lot of those you can look at developers to share the brunt of your and my irritation).
People working as “architects” do a huge variety of work and no two you talk to are going to have the same workflow or process so I cant speak for everyone. For me, ai tools aren’t ever going to take my job, just remove more time consuming tasks and, in the long run, increase complexity and expectations. Same as when we moved from hand drafting to CAD, and again when we moved to 3D BIM design.
Each step drastically reduced busy work but over time increased the base level complexity in the design work. When architecture was all analogue, we weren’t doing statics modeling and parametric studies. And now with BIM, I have to consider and model equipment and MEC feasibility. Even compared to a couple years ago, now I’m doing solar and environmental modeling to track energy performance and inform the designs and suggest changes early on.
There was a doctorate researcher I spoke with recently that mentioned that the direction the profession is going is that we will no longer make individual choices for every design element. Instead, we will manipulate the data and direction that end up at the final choice. And I think he’s right. I think in the last year I’ve hand modeled maybe one project? Everything else has been purely data driven generative design.
I use AI image generators to do early design inspiration alongside sketching. I have a local Stable Diffusion AI instance trained on my wireframe modeling that I use to create scenes for presentations faster. I build small tools that help me recursively optimize structural elements. The last few months I’ve been working on my own big AI project that could really help a lot of my peers as it develops, too. I can’t talk about it just yet but I will after the funding period ends. The future is looking bright.
Tldr: the whole field of architecture isn’t responsible for those shitty city apartments you don’t like, AI tools are helping us because architecture is much more data driven and complex than you think it is, architecture isn’t a struggling or dying field like the article quotes- what’s killing the joy is greedy cheap developers.
Happy to chat or answer questions
I did a lot of that work when I was starting out. Trust me, not a fan anymore than you are. But the developers that buy up all the land and do the construction are, which I hate but understand. What I didn’t understand is that, your average SFDH buyer loves that shit. There were times I was cranking out tweaked designs for 15-20 builds a week across 3-5 neighborhoods. People would come to our company specifically because of that “cookie cutter” design. They loved it and loved paying for it with just a couple tweaks. They knew that there were just tweaked versions of maybe 3 house styles in the entire neighborhood and they loved the suburb feel. Me personally? I’ve always hated the suburb vibe since I was a kid but that’s what paid the bills until I could go back to school and get something I cared about off the ground