What About Humans? Artificial Intelligence in Architecture

Abstract

Artificial intelligence is about to reshape the architectural discipline. After discussing the relations between artificial intelligence and the broader question of automation in architecture, this article focuses on the future of the interaction between humans and intelligent machines. The way machines will understand architecture may be very different from the reading of humans. Since the Renaissance, the architectural discipline has defined itself as a conversation between different stakeholders, the designer, but also the clients and the artisans in charge of the realization of projects. How can this conversation be adapted to the rise of intelligent machines? Such a question is not only a matter of design effectiveness. It is inseparable from expressive and artistic issues. Just like the fascination of modernist architecture for industrialization was intimately linked to the quest for a new poetics of the discipline, our contemporary interest for artificial intelligence has to do with questions regarding the creative core of the architectural discipline.