Architecture As Algorithm: The Demise of Design?

As AI storms the gates of the architectural profession, building designers like many other creatives are rightfully asking: “are we already halfway to being replaced?” If intelligence is artificial and algorithms are filtering and fucking with our view of reality, then what is the truth about the future of architects and architecture?

With computers now used to quickly generate fantastical buildings with multiple options and easily made mashups of any ‘style’, there are the obvious questions of authenticity, authorship and surface imagery over core ideology. In a more prosaic manner, AI soon may well be able to ‘create’ buildings based on a whole range of criteria, be that the constraints imposed by planning policies, building regulations, lowering build costs, meeting performance accreditation and ensuring the basic practicalities of use. However, is there really much difference between the novelty of neural networks and the long-standing systemisation of the design process through Building Information Modelling (BIM) software used by the profession? And is this rules-based order where a problem lies?

Architects find themselves cornered not only by the machines that threaten to replace them, but by their fellow human beings, who upon looking around at the anonymous sameness within the contemporary built environment, could be forgiven for asking whether the profession has opened the door to its own obsolescence? 

When investment driven metrics deem that the ideal building form is that of extruding the site footprint skyward into as many stories as possible, then does a culture of repetitious templating and unitised, risk-adverse design feed a crisis of confidence/courage in Architects and The Public alike? Does anyone believe that the profession will be able to deliver truly humane and inspiring places for a future world? 

In providing a service do architects end up in servitude? Many will see their main utility as an enabler, but in looking to ‘be as useful as possible’ have they in turn become a tool and a means to an end - and if so, to what end? They maybe all tooled up, but are they able to use their full imagination and skill-set?

At a time when, more than ever, we desperately need alternatives and lateral thinking to bring about change, is the revitalisation of the more romantic role of architect as a principled visionary and revolutionary increasingly necessary to advance and progress building design in a meaningful way? And will AI be put to work on this task?

At the heart of these questions is something seen throughout the history of technological progress since ‘the inventions’ of fire and the wheel.  Humankind has continually created new tools and techniques to open-up the field of possibility. Technology is about achieving practical goals. If AI can do things quicker, more calculatingly and uncompromised by the human element, then does this suggest that we humans should be concentrating more on what the goals should be, if we are to ensure we better address the issues and concerns manifest in our built environment? 

Featuring:

Rob Fiehn & Huw Williams, Fourthspace (chair)
Jay Morton, Bell Phillips
William Mann, Witherford Watson Mann
Adrienne Lau, Heatherwick Studio
Eva Magnisali, DataForm Lab                                                                                                                                                                       
Fernando Ruiz, Arup (replacement of Giulio Antonutto)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            and all others who want to contribute…..