Last week the final presentation of students at the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam was quite a fundamental experience. In my role as commissioner and lecturer I was impressed: One group delivered a systematic methodology aka a ‘tool box’ for how to write an appropriate prompt for an Artifical Intelligence application instead of a spatial design for the given riverbank location. The AI eventually delivered the design proposal, snuggly fit into a photograph of the exisiting location. No sketches, drawings or models needed.
This made me wonder: What is an architectural or urban design? Does it need measured elements and defined materials, must it be based upon social and spatial analysis? Or can it also be a clever prompt for the AI as the latest instrument of creative creators?
In this case the AI render was re- and reworekd by the students (by adjusting the prompt) like in a design process and its result was not bad at all. And to a large degree the relevant ingredients and thoughts that an architect would have considered during the process had been formulated beforehand. The goals, ingredients and elements were weighed in a matrix and discussed before put and adjusted in the prompt.
This is definitely a first. Students have been using AI in the past two years to create reference images, generate ideas, give suggestions and get themselves started. But the final product had always involved handwork of a person, using a computer or not: sketching, measuring, drawing and modelmaking.
This design project was not a complex high-rise building, or a complicated program for a cultural centre or a hospital. It was ‘only’ a design for a public space along a river. But as soon as there is an AI that can properly make plans, sections and elevations from that rendering, or a proper 3d model with the tables and lists of the building materials needed for the project we are ready to build it right away. Some students thought, they could fix that for me, too.