Putting the AI into Architecture

AI generated Superyacht House

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been receiving a lot of attention in recent years with the rapid advances being made in the field and our growing awareness of the benefits this technology offers to assist us at work, rest & play. 

Most of us are familiar with digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google that can perform a wide range of tasks based on our verbal commands.

Whilst currently considered novel gadgets, as AI learning becomes more advanced there are valid concerns that many human jobs will ultimately become redundant with autonomous machines taking over activities that previously required direct human interaction. 

We are already witnessing this to varying degrees in the workplace, but who would have imagined that a highly creative and artistic pursuit like architecture could be challenged by an algorithmic code.  

Well, it seems that day is fast approaching with the development of machine learning systems and AI image generators.

Text to image software like Midjourney, DALL-E , Stable Diffusion, and many others utilise AI systems called neural networks to create detailed artwork including architectural concept images.

Driftwood beach houses generated by DALL-E

These algorithms normally function by drawing on data sets of billions of publicly available online images for a particular subject to train their AI models.

Based on your text prompt, various images will be randomly sourced and combined to create completely original and realistic looking renders.

This allows unlimited design possibilities, however much like an online search, requires a user with knowledge and finesse to choose suitable text prompts to produce a useful result. 

Some wonderful examples of the more bizarre applications of this technology can be found here

Actual Lea Design Studio project in a mid century modernist style.

We experimented using DALL-E by providing the following detailed text description of a recent house that we’ve designed (see above) to discover what results we’d achieve. 

A mid-century modernist single storey U shaped home with low pitched roof and 1m wide eaves wrapping around a central courtyard with large rectangular swimming pool in the centre

AI generated concept images

As you’d expect the resulting designs varied significantly, and in some cases totally disregarded the brief as evidenced by the two-storey option above.

For that reason, it is unlikely that Bots will replace Architects anytime soon, however it does offer an exciting new tool that we should learn to harness and employ to our advantage.

It’s also bound to make architecture a lot more fun!

Shark House                                                              Ferrari House

Interested in finding out more about how Lea Design Studio uses technology in architecture, read our previous blogs: –

https://leadesign.com.au/architect/architechnology/

https://leadesign.com.au/architect/virtual-reality-a-game-changer-for-architects-and-their-clients/