AI vs Architects

By architect Ben Wollen

“Be afraid, be very afraid” was the advice I recently had from someone in the tech industry working with artificial intelligence. You see, I was telling said person, that I didn’t think that my job or any creative job was under threat from Artificial Intelligence (AI), because computer’s are inherently non-creative. My tech friend argued that creativity can be taught to AI and, for that matter, almost anything can be taught to AI.

Back and forth we went until we both decided it was best to agree to disagree. There’s been a lot of talk about AI replacing people’s jobs and it definitely has the potential. I just never thought it would ever get close to replacing an architect and whilst there isn’t an immediate threat – there are definitely warning signs.

Given my interaction with my tech friend made me question the safety of my career, I thought I should do a little research of my own. I first started with ChatGPT, which is an AI that can write an essay for you in about two minutes based on a simple one-liner question. It’s use has been banned by high schools in Australia and I can see why.

The prompt that I put in was: “Write a 500 word article on how AI will likely replace architects in the future” and golly gosh, I had this week’s article done in 30 seconds flat. Well, time to put my feet up – this month’s article is courtesy of ChatGPT! No, it isn’t. Really, it isn’t. Well, maybe one or two paragraphs are. Can you spot the difference?

After my little excursion into lightening my article-writing load, I decided to check out what else was on offer out there. Could I employ AI to be my virtual architectural assistant, carrying out early sketch designs, working these up into 3D models and then punching out some sweet rendered views to sell the design to clients? The answer is yes and no.

There is some very sophisticated software out there, but at this stage its focus is on imagery, not floorplans. The output you get from the AI has big blocks in the layout that are seemingly lost space. However, there is some software that can change a floorplan and rearrange it as you increase the floor area.

The example I saw was an apartment layout, that as the square metre input increased so did it change the floorplan to suit adding areas to the living spaces, ensuites to bedrooms to suit the new total floor area. You can easily envisage a crossing of these two technologies to come up with an AI x drafting program to allow a very quick apartment block layout, which may require a minimal of final touches from trained architects.

Where it really is impressive is in the rendering of an existing 3D model. Plug your model in and suggest some output styles and voila, multiple stylised illustrations of your design in minutes. Choose a preferred style and tweak your text input and out comes another batch of images ready to wow your client. To put this in perspective, a professional architectural visualising company preparing an image for a competition entry would likely spend up to $10,000 and it would take weeks to prepare. The process was laborious, requiring expensive software and a human at the keyboard jumping between the 3D model, the rendering software and Photoshop.

There is definitely change coming with AI in the architecture field. Some pundits will say that outside of legislative requirements, a good portion of architects will need to look for alternative careers. Others argue that AI will merely be another tool to add to the Architect’s quiver allowing smaller studios to compete with the bigger firms on bigger competitions and commissions. For now, the Architect’s Act and the Design Practitioner’s Act in New South Wales will keep AI at bay, but for how long and for how many employed architects only time will tell.

I, for one, will be checking in on AI’s progress, if only to save me a couple of paragraphs in my monthly article. Seriously, can you spot the difference?

Disclaimer: No Artificial Intelligence was used to create this article, but it was tempting –very tempting!