Date: September 8th, 2023
Location: Gensler
Led by: Bradley Kaufman, RA and Madeline Sambor, AIA WELL AP
Session Sponsor: SPEK Creative, Impresa Modular
Session Downloads: Session Program

Overview

Session 07 Understanding Economic and Industry Trends highlighted prescient trends and market drivers in the industry that impact the future of architecture. It began with studying the current market surge in adaptive reuse in the office to residential conversion in cities. The session pivoted from there towards technology and the impact of artificial intelligence on the future of the industry.  

Presentation #1

Adaptive Reuse Projects
Speakers: Guilherme Almeida

Guilherme Almeida shared his extensive and recent experience with adaptive reuse specifically in the office to residential conversion market. He focused primarily on highlighting the challenges of adapting an existing office commercial building to residential as they related to structure, depth of floor plates, zoning, façade design, accessibility, and ratio of amenity to unit space. Overall, the challenges of each of these aspects in office to residential conversions have yet to see success from a financial and profitability perspective so it is yet to be seen if this push for office to residential will be sustained or successful.

Presentation #2

Innovations in Modular Construction 
Speakers: Joseph Wheeler, AIA 

Joseph Wheeler of Virginia Tech shared his experiences, innovations, and successes in designing and building smart home technology with the University as well as with outside private market initiatives. Wheeler emphasized how leveraging technology and applying a manufacturing production approach towards architecture can help improve cost, time, and quality of construction significantly all while reducing waste at the same time. He believes the future and the success of the industry lies in moving towards the master design builder concept where all trades live under one company. 

Presentation #3

AI in Architecture
Speakers: Ricardo J. Rodriguez De Santiago

Ricardo J. Rodriguez De Santiago presented a compelling and urgent perspective on the future of architecture and technology. He emphasized the necessity of architects as a whole to adapt more rapidly, “relearn, unlearn”, and innovate with technology because the cost of doing nothing is a losing cost that he has seen play out across his various roles across the industry. When it comes to artificial intelligence, Ricardo was adamant that architects who do not adapt quickly enough to using artificial intelligence tools would become obsolete. He insisted we learn those tools to ensure our longevity because the future of artificial intelligence is happening now.

Presentation #4

Underlying Technology and How AI Works
Speakers: Olivia Morgan and Kenneth Cheston, RA, AIA

Ken provided a high level overview of what artificial intelligence is, breaking down the difference between types of artificial intelligence like diffusion and language learning models (LLM), and how it works at its most basic level. Ken demonstrated a workflow of using diffusion as an artificial intelligence tool to quickly develop renderings and imagery from a series of prompts. Olivia demonstrated a few other basic productivity workflows that can be applied to the every day architectural practice using LLM artificial intelligence like summarization, compare & contrast, or reviewing code information. 

Presentation #5

Panel Discussion – How Design and Construction Practices Are Being Disrupted in Emerging Technologies
Speakers: Joseph Wheeler, AIA; Ricardo J. Rodriguez De Santiago, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C; Kenneth Cheston, RA, AIA; Olivia Morgan

The panel discussion grappled primarily with artificial intelligence and its impact specifically to the role of the architect. A primary sentiment from panelists was that artificial intelligence is going to drastically change our roles as architects to be far less valuable, unless architects quickly adapt to utilize AI as a tool to innovate the industry. Across the panel and within the room there were heated challenges to understanding the integrity of our practice in comparison to the efficiency of what artificial intelligence can be trained to provide. The closing takeaways from the group and the panel as a whole were that the value of architects lies within our own skillset to be the psychologically informed, human-sensing, empathetic, curator of the solutions generated through AI.