INTRODUCTION

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in architecture is becoming a

pervasive, powerful tool—it’s also a technology that finds itself
at an awkward, intermediate stage of development. AI can
solve simple, practical problems, like how to arrange a floor
plan, with unmatched speed and variation. And it can paint
broad, creative visions culled from the entire Internet’s worth
of imagery with just a brief text prompt. But connecting these
two parts of the design process, the fundamental science and
art of architecture, has proven elusive.
Feeding a string of architectural description (“Eco-topia
Flintstones California Bungalow at the La Brea Tar Pits”) into
image generators like MidJourney doesn’t result in anything
buildable. And endless algorithmically generated floor plans
can’t be scaled up to express anything more than an efficient
use of space—yet. But joining these two capabilities together
will be, perhaps, the most profound design-technology advance
of AI’s age.

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How AI Is Used in Architecture Today?

AI in architecture design is based on computer programs that

mimic human cognition to solve complex problems and
respond dynamically to stimulus. A closely related subfield
is machine learning, which refers to an AI system’s ability to
recognize patterns and learn from them, independently
improving its cognition ability without human intervention.
AI has found relevance in architecture throughout the design
process. Analyzing imagery on the Internet, image generators
like Midjourney can develop richly detailed, near-photo-quality
pictures from short text prompts. This can be a powerful boon
to early concept brainstorming, the digital equivalent of a
detailed napkin sketch. These images are also useful for
reaching the broader public and can be used on marketing and
promotional materials to illustrate basic design concepts and
contexts.
Narrowly focused AI tools can optimize designs for building-
performance metrics, generate floor plans from simple
programmatic and spatial inputs, and reorganize floor plans
dynamically as walls and partitions are moved—essentially
automating mundane, omnipresent design tasks. AI engineers
are working on integrating natural language text-based
interfaces, like ChatGPT, in AI architecture tools like these. AI-
assisted floor-plate generation is a species of parametric

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design, which is long-established in architecture to generate
endless formal variations.
But with greater AI computing power, architects and designers
are incorporating generative AI into their workflows, which,
instead of just outputting a pile of variations based on
constraints, now ranks the quality of each variation based on a
user-defined set of metrics.
Many architects are accustomed to having their designs
mediated through digital processes such as building
information modeling (BIM), and AI is changing what these
models can do. In many ways, digital twins that contain all
formal description and performance data of a building are the
next evolution of BIM. AI could allow these models to be tested
and prodded, able to examine how changing one variable might
affect the building’s energy performance, solar heat gain, or
shade cast across the street, then continually and
independently learn how to improve operations and design.
This emerging technology is fed by networked Internet of
Things sensors and devices that feed data directly to digital
twins.

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Benefits of Using AI in Architectural Design

AI in architectural design is most useful for rapidly completing

mundane, repetitive tasks and for optimizing designs by small
increments, often referred to as artificial narrow intelligence. AI
is most effective where these types of tasks overlap, as they
often do. AI can instantly fill a residential tower with
apartments shaped to fit the developers’ specifications and can
tune them to varying degrees of material and cost efficiency.
Additionally, image generators can work as an unapparelled
“mood board” for design inspiration, offering a quick visual
synthesis drawn from vast image libraries. These detailed
images can give architects an aesthetic target to aim for as they
define structural and engineering systems.
In both of these scenarios, architects take on a more broad-
based curatorial role instead of maintaining granular control of
every design decision; they are defining parameters, selecting
and discarding options, and offering advice and guidance to
algorithms. That’s a radical change in how architecture has
been practiced. The dividing line is still being defined: Is this
new tool a labor-saving device, just as CAD or BIM have
become, or does it represent a fundamental shift in the creative
process?

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7 Examples of AI in Architecture Projects
Before designers begin creating iterations, using automated
tools to organize site and contextual data can sweep away
ambiguity and, hopefully, risk. These tools make technical,
programming-heavy tasks more accessible to non-coders such
as designers or developers. From research projects to
commercial products, the following examples show how AI in
architecture can create opportunities to improve the design
process so human creativity can take center stage.

1. AI for Schematic Planning

(Figure.1)

Finch is a parametric planning tool with a wide range of design

functions. It can generate floor plans with just a few input
constraints, and these floor-plan designs can be automatically
adjusted on the fly. You can select a wall, move it, then watch
the surrounding rooms change their proportion, location,
organization on their own. The platform incorporates local

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planning regulations and allows users to optimize for structural
efficiency, number of units, or other variables. It can also slot
floor plans into quickly defined site boundaries; divide irregular,
organic shapes into subunits; dynamically connect stairs
to varying floor heights; and trace the optimal route of a road
through complex terrain.

2. AI for Urban Development

New AI tools can apply generative and iterative power to
urban-scale sites, looking beyond individual building
requirements. This concept is exemplified by Autodesk Forma,
which offers cloud-based, AI-powered insights and automations
that simplify exploration of design concepts, offload repetitive
tasks, and help evaluate environmental qualities surrounding a
building site.
Applied in the early stages of planning and design, Forma
performs real-time analyses across key density and
environmental qualities such as sunlight hours, daylight
potential, wind, operational energy, and microclimate, without
users requiring deep technical expertise. These machine
learning and AI-powered environmental analyses can be used
from day one of the design process to help meet business and
sustainability targets. For instance, Forma’s wind modeling
reveals how buildings channel wind, using computational fluid
dynamics to refine designs for human comfort.

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3. AI for Better Bidding
ConXtech, a Bay Area–based modular-construction company, is
using AI to gain control of one of the most unpredictable steps
in construction: the bidding process.
ConXtech, like many construction companies, is solicited by
owners and developers during the project-development phase.
At that time, the viability of the project is not yet secured, and
multiple options are still on the table. This forces companies
like ConXtech to go through multiple iterations for projects that
may never be built. In the end, millions of dollars can be spent
on unsuccessful projects or unsuccessful bids. At the same
time, owners and developers expect quick answers to arrive at
viable and cost-effective solutions.
To shorten the bidding cycle and reduce the bidding costs,
ConXtech worked with Autodesk Research to develop a
prototype bidding platform that uses AI to find the most cost-
efficient structural-steel design based on the costs of material
procurement, fabrication, and construction. These costs are
influenced by the vendors and subcontractors selected for the
project and vary depending on the project’s location.

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4. AI for Volumetric Design and Planning

Obayashi and Autodesk developed an AI platform that lets architects enter building parameters to
create volumetric estimates and interior programming layouts (Figure.2)

Japanese construction, engineering, and real-estate

development company Obayashi also worked with Autodesk
Research to envision an AI solution—one that lets architects
plug in basic parameters for buildings and, with minimal
guidance, get volumetric estimates and interior programming
layouts. Used mostly for office spaces, the AI for this
application was trained with a subset of Obayashi’s portfolio of
more than 2,800 Autodesk Revit files.
The AI tool understands abstract relationships between
programs and the desired connectivity, size, and proportion
expressed in a building’s volume. To generate interior
programming layouts, the designer and client work through a
series of lexical parameters: simple sentences that specify
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building elements and their location and show how they relate
to each other. This might be, “meeting rooms should be placed
close to windows,” or “lunchroom should be placed away from
the lab for security.”

5. AI for Regulatory Guidance and Aesthetic Photo Treatment

Similar to Obayashi, Maket excels at assisting architects with
early-stage schematic design—generating floor plans by
plugging in room dimensions, types, and adjacency
constraints—and is integrating this feature with a natural
language text interface. But Maket also offers a regulatory
assistant that can read uploaded zoning regulation documents
and answer detailed questions about them. Designers can also
upload architectural photographs and use basic text prompts to
apply different aesthetic treatments, adding interior and
furniture elements to the photo.

6. AI for Real Estate Developers

Parafin uses parametric-iteration AI to balance program, cost,
and commercial viability. Developed by architect Brian Ahmes
and developer Adam Hengels, a Chicago-and-Miami–based duo
who are residents in the Autodesk Technology Centers’
Outsight Network, the program generates near-infinite
derivations for objective profitability and performance.

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Parafin is a cloud-based generative-design platform that’s
currently used for hotel developments. Aimed primarily at real-
estate developers, it helps quickly evaluate the financial
viability of potential building sites in early-stage planning. It
asks for just a few parameters (number of rooms, parking, site,
height, and brand guidelines for hoteliers) and can generate
millions of iterations fulfilling these guidelines—all searchable
by financial performance, cost, and more. It works through a
map- and menu-based interface in a web browser; highly
detailed floor plans, 3D views, and Revit files are generated for
each design.

7. AI for Performance Optimization

Cove.tool is an automated building performance design app
cofounded by building scientist and architect Sandeep Ahuja. It
uses machine learning to analyze how building designs can
improve their energy and carbon consumption, daylighting
levels, cost structures, and more, altering variables like building
orientation and materiality and gauging the results. It can
perform cost optimizations for a variety of criteria and rank
results according to different quality standards, from code
minimum to voluntary rating system accolades. In its level of
granular detail, Cove.tool is essentially a preconstruction digital
twin, integrating with machine learning algorithms that can
incrementally refine a building’s performance.

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Will AI Replace Architects?

Given how new AI is in the architecture field, it’s difficult to say

how it will affect architecture jobs—though it’s hard to imagine
that the tasks AI excels at, like assembling technical details and
plans, won’t reduce the need for the entry-level designers who
typically focus on these things. And while AI’s potential to free
architects from detail drudgery is real, the temptation for
employers to use this labor-saving tool to increase the pace of
production is also well-established.
Today, there are many areas of architectural design that AI
hasn’t penetrated. AI can’t yet define the constraints that come
with a building project, such as the program, size, audience,
material, or geographic context. These parameters come from
interactions with clients, which also can’t be outsourced to AI.
The technology also has little understanding of how people
move through space and interact with objects, and it can’t yet
generate 3D imagery via text prompt with the richness and
detail with which it creates 2D imagery.
Additionally, the fantastical visions dreamed up by MidJourney
and DALL-E don’t come with supporting construction
documents. Across the architecture, engineering, and
construction (AEC) industry, AI has been least used in robotics
applications that interact with building sites or buildings
directly—though this is changing, with reality capture robots

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that have some level of independence but still require a human
for guidance.
AI in architecture is also limited by fundamental economic and
selection-bias dynamics that affect the quality of data these
applications draw on. AI algorithms are limited by how much
data they have to learn from—in architecture, this data can be
proprietary, which creates a disincentive to share it with
potential rivals working on their own AI applications. Also,
image-creation AI can only resynthesize what it has already
seen, so if the Internet’s bank of imagery is culturally or
regionally biased (with, say, an overrepresentation of
architectural imagery from rich, Western nations), the results
will be similarly biased.
AI is an evolution of automation, and automated processes
are already integral to design; they’ve just been labeled
differently. “If I’m designing something in Revit, and it’s
automatically producing coordinated documents to construct
that thing, I’m not worried about that,” says Jim Stoddart of
architecture studio The Living. “It is automation; it’s actually
doing all of these things I used to do manually.”
Improved computing capabilities are providing more
opportunity to balance human and machine intelligence, letting
each do what it’s best at. “Computers are not good at open-
ended creative solutions; that’s still reserved for humans,” says
Mike Mendelson, certified instructor and curriculum designer
at the Nvidia Deep Learning Institute. “But through automation,
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we’re able to save time doing repetitive tasks, and we can
reinvest that time in design.”

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CONCLUSION

The effects of artificial intelligence on the architecture

profession are yet to be defined since the topic is highly current
and is still under development. The advantages of AI are
attracting people and companies to adopt them, though the
consequences of their rise on people’s lives, industries, and
jobs remain unknown. In the case of architecture, AI will
increase efficiency in the design and construction of buildings
as well as create multiple solutions that will push
boundaries of architectural developments and it is an
opportunity to discover what ways the world could be
improved through AI. However, the debate and investigations
come from the possibility of AI potentially taking over an
architect’s job in the practical and creative field and since it
lacks human sensibility and needs constant updates and as
concluded from the provided articles it will not be replacing
architects.

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REFERENCES

_Artical by Zack Mortice and study in Harvard University .

_"Artificial Intelligence in Architecture: The Intersection of

Design and Technology " by Ramtin Attar.

_"Machine Learning for Designers: A Primer " by Patrick Hebron

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