What to Look For in '24: The Near Future of Architecture & A.I.

A Look Back at 2023, and a lookahead to A.I., Climate and Architecture in 2024

It’s been a year of big changes, and my Substack “Life as a Disaster” took on a whole new course, basically becoming a chronicle of my research and insights into A.I. I decided to rollup this past year’s research and writing in the form of a ‘year in review’ and it kinda took the shape of a ‘year ahead.’ It ended up quite lengthy, so I put it on my website, rather than here. I also posted an article on LinkedIn.  What follows here is a quick summary of the major themes. If you’d prefer to read the full text & analysis, you can find it here. Otherwise, read on!

1. How A.I. Will Change Design Programs

2. How A.I. will change design mediums

3. How A.I. Will Change How We Build

4. How A.I. Will Change Clients

5. How A.I. Will Change the Way We Feel About ‘Design’

6. How A.I. Will Change the Way We Feel about AI

7. How A.I. Will Change the Conversation

8. How A.I. Will Change the Larger World

1) How A.I. Will Change the Design Brief

For all the talk about how A.I. is going to change how we design, there’s comparatively little talk about how it’s going to change what we design.  In the 60’s, architects designed social housing.  In the 80’s, it was corporate towers and shopping malls.  Changes in the zeitgeist provoke changes in program.  Here are a few of the things I’d expect:

Client Preferences for Adaptive Reuse Expand

• Rising resource costs and environmental concerns will start to drive a shift from new construction to refurbishing existing structures, influenced by client priorities and potential new regulations.

• The more our true environmental costs are baked into the prices of projects (either by markets or by governmental fiat, or both), the more sense it’s going to make to reuse things (incl. buildings) that already exist.

Design For Dynamic Use Changes Becomes a Thing

• The pandemic-induced commercial real estate crash has led to an exploration of transforming office spaces into residential units in many cities.

• If successful, developers will start to take notice, and want to consider the adaptability of buildings for unforeseen changes in market or environmental conditions.  A design that can withstand such shocks and change its program or environmental systems will start to look really juicy.

Smart Buildings Get Really, Really Smart

• Integration of Natural Language Processing (NLP) with the Internet of Things (IoT) will start to transform ‘smart’ buildings from basic algorithmic functions to more dynamic, user-responsive systems.

• As this technology evolves, architects should anticipate widespread A.I. integration in buildings within the next decade, significantly impacting design and functionality.  Do we just shove brains into the buildings we already design?  Or do we start to design them differently, knowing that they’ll have brains in the future?

2) How A.I. Will Change Design Mediums

Our design mediums haven’t changed much since the digital revolution – we arrange bits in a computer to simulate lines on a page, which then directs the arrangement of steel, wood, glass and wood on the jobsite.  That’s going to start to change when we start arranging bits to arrange other bits.  The last 12 months have seen a quantum leap in the quality of virtual technology, and the pandemic already predisposed us to working remotely.  Those trends will accelerate, and start to bring virtual designing into the wheelhouse of architectural design.  Look for:

Metaverse: from Novel Toy to Serious Design Tool

• Architects once lived and died by slick, printed portfolios.  When the internet happened, most transitioned to websites as a means to showcase their work.  The same will happen with metaversal spaces.  Why show a client a static website with glossy prints when you can treat them to a fully immersive virtual experience of all your past projects?  Expect to see design firms jumping on this trend in 2024

Clients add V/R and A/R Spaces to the Design Brief

• Architects will increasingly be asked by clients to design companion V/R and A/R experiences to compliment the built environment.  Designing a store?  The client will want a metaversal store so that all consumers can shop remotely.  They’ll also want an A/R design to enhance the shopping experience of their instore customers.  Architects need to tackle this head on and figure out how to align physical/virtual experiences.

3) How A.I. Will Change How We Build

As immortal as the Architect/Contractor/Owner dynamic might seem, it too tends to evolve in response to changing sociological, historical and economic factors.  The twin crises of A.I. and Climate Change are going to force some much-needed adaptations into our current models.  They will be dynamic changes, depending on which professions adopt A.I. first, and how fast. 

Architect Begin A.I. Arms Race Over Drawings, Submittals

• Escalation of Detailing and Inspection: The adoption of A.I. in architecture will intensify the dysfunctional 'arms race' between architects over-detailing designs to avoid RFIs, errors & omissions, and contractors ‘over-RFIing’ to pad their fees.  Architects will use A.I. to make drawings more error free, and contractors will use it to find smaller and more nitpicky errors.

• Expect the dysfunctionality to escalate in the near term.  In the midterm, A.I. will likely facilitate unprecedented levels of coordination between designer & builder, after the clients get sick of paying for all this.

Contractors Win, At First

• Expect GC’s to adopt A.I. quicker than architects.  Financial benefits for contractors are more immediate and investments in A.I. can pay for themselves overnight.  Architects will have to play catch up.

Offsite & Modular Gets a Second Look

• The housing crisis is putting increased pressure on govt officials, which should facilitate adoption of the technology and the building codes to support deployment.

• Widespread rethinking of supply chains as a result of the pandemic should give offsite manufacturers opportunities to innovate and overcome their most enduring problem (long supply chains).

• Climate crisis will renew interest in offsite and modular.  Assuming supply chains improve, manufactured buildings intrinsically offer more granular control over environmental inputs and outputs – should be attractive to investors and anyone watching their ESG score.

4) How A.I. Will Change Clients

Climate change, rather than A.I., is going to be the big driver here – changing both how our clients behave, and who are clients actually are.  A.I. will have its own effects, too.  With the combination of both, we should start to see some significant changes across the client landscape.  My top three would be:

Clients Start Expecting AI

• This one is a no-brainer.  They did the same thing with CAD, then with BIM.  They’ll want their designers and contractors to utilize A.I. to cut down on time, expenses, and errors.  As soon as the landscape around A.I. design software settles, expect clients to insist on it.

Architects/ Clients Get Serious About the Surveillance State

• A.I. works off data – the more it has, the more it can do.  To get high performing A.I., buildings will start to have to collect that data – and that means a surveillance state.  Early experiments like the Quayside Project failed for this very reason.

• Architects are going to have to start educating their clients through the ups, downs, and risks of designing such technologies into their projects.  Expect this conversation to pick up steam in 2024.

Insurance Markets Will Retreat Or Disappear, Changing Everything

• Insurers have already pulled out of California and Florida because they can’t (or won’t) manage increasing climate risks.  Expect this trend to spread to other states and accelerate.

• No insurance means no mortgage.  ‘No Buy’ zones will start to emerge where modest housing has become completely unaffordable because no bank will lend to buy there, absent insurance.  Existing residents won’t be able to sell, because no one is able to buy.

• Prices will rise in any place perceived as a ‘climate haven.’  People will start moving there anyway.

5) How A.I. Will Change the Way We Feel About ‘Design’

Frankenstein (and every good horror/sci-fi novel) works because it starts you off thinking that technology is the bad guy, and by the end, you start wondering whether it’s actually humans that are causing all the trouble.  Similarly, in 2024, we’re going to ask less ‘how is A.I. going to affect what designers do?’ and start thinking more about ‘how can designers affect what A.I. does?’  Certain key events, which seem likely in 2024, but are inevitable regardless, are going to challenge our collective understanding about what design is, and how it should be practiced, and taught.

AI wins a Major Design Competition

• A.I. already outperforms humans in many other contexts, and in other fields.  Early, informal experiments tease the possibility of A.I. outperforming human architects on design (see We tried to compete with AI... [AI vs. ARCHITECT]).  Will we still consider A.I. a ‘partner’ at that point?  Or consider it competition?  Will we keep having competitions, knowing that A.I. is an entrant and can win?

AI In the Academy Comes To A Head.

• On the one hand, students should be expected to comport with the requirements of the studio that they’re in, obviously.  

• On the other hand, why should students be held to arbitrary rules, if it could be said that those rules have no pedagogical purpose?  If a math professor said I had to do all of my math homework using an abacus, I would most definitely be using a calculator behind that professor’s back.

• For the most part, it seems like schools still leave policy-setting at the studio level.  That’ll start to change as controversies mount.  A student fails a studio for using A.I., or wins a design competition over a student using traditional methods . . . multiple scenarios could/will bring the issue to a head.  Expect Design Schools to start to take formal positions on student use of A.I., and elevate it above the studio/department level.

A.I. AEC Startups Start ‘The Great Consolidation’

• OpenAI’s wide release of the ChatGPT API kicked off a global startup boom that included scores of new design software startups all trying to automate what architects do.  Expect the automation to continue, but the number of startups to dwindle.  Designers won’t brook having 30 applications that they have to keep track off.  The market will force consolidation into a few, more robust, multifunctional design packages (and no, not necessarily Autodesk).

Lowballers and Undercutters Start to Make Serious Trouble

• AI and automation in architecture will fundamentally reduce the need for human labor, decreasing the number of required architects & hours on any given job. This gives firms two choices: shrink the staff, or grow the pipeline.  Many firms trying the latter will lead to intensified competition and could lead to lower fees as some architects try to lowball prices & win projects quickly.

• If a small proportion of architects use the efficiency gains brought by A.I. to dramatically reduce the fees they demand, it could lead to a market-wide devaluation of architectural services. AI might amplify the longstanding issue of architects underselling their services, necessitating a collective response from the profession.

6) How A.I. Will Change the Way We Feel about AI

Any new transformative technology is going to elicit the whole range of human emotions.  Typically, those emotions settle down as the technology becomes more and more integrated into daily life.  No one shakes their fist at the Power Loom anymore for having replaced weavers.  The process will continue with A.I., but will be complicated by the fact that A.I. is evolving faster than our ability to emotionally adapt to it.  A few things that will change our feelings towards A.I.:

AI Is Suddenly More Visible And Less Visible.

• We’re already surrounded by A.I. – in your Netflix algorithm, your Google searches, etc.  Once something works, we don’t think of it as A.I.  Expect that to continue as LLM’s become woven into everyday life.  Simultaneously, A.I. will become more visible as big breakthroughs are revealed (incl., especially, AGI, maybe).

Agents, Personal Agents, MultiAgents, Autonomous Agents

• Agents will be fully normalized by the end of 2024.  Many will be personalized.  Some will be autonomous.

• Personal agents will get to know you well, and help you in your work or everyday life based on what they continually learn about you.

• Autonomous agents will do work that was once considered ‘human’ in the background (think: automatically drafting replies for every email in your inbox).

• Multiagent swarms will collaborate on tasks the way humans would, only much, much faster.

Multimodal A.I. Just Becomes ‘A.I.’

• We got to know Generative A.I. through two principal channels: ChatGPT (which was language only), and DALL-E/Midjourney (which was image only).  By the end of 2024, multimodal A.I. will be the expected norm.  The A.I.’s that we interact with and use on a daily basis will be expected to be facile with text, images, sounds, video, and code.

7) How A.I. Will Change The Conversation

The conversation we’ll have about A.I. in 2024 will be way, way different than the conversation we had about A.I. in 2023.  The conversation in 2023 was fueled by discovery, protest, resistance, enthusiasm, hype, and sometimes overhype.  The conversation in 2024 will begin with acceptance that A.I. is not a new fad.  It is not the latest software release.  It is a fundamental change in the operating system of human civilization.  With that beginning, our conversation will evolve and start to tackle a few big topics:

The Environmental Cost of Generative AI

• Generative A.I. uses a lot of water and a lot of energy.  Who is going to foot the climate bill for the A.I. revolution?

Alignment & SuperAlignment

• The speed at which A.I. capabilities have been growing has some experts predicting AGI in the next 1 to 2 years.  If true, Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) wouldn’t be far behind.  It is a global, existential imperative that we make sure that any such intelligence is aligned with our human goals and values.  Once ASI is achieved, there will be no humans alive capable of outsmarting it, and it could do whatever it wants.  Expect to hear ‘alignment’ and ‘superalignment’ a lot in 2024.

Synthetic Data, How to Make It, And How to Make It Good.

• A.I. learns from data.  But data can be hard & expensive to collect and collate.  Moreover, there’s a finite amount of it (e.g. all the data humanity has ever produced).  In order to continue to improve, A.I. needs access to reliable, high quality ‘synthetic’ data.  

• Synthetic data can be generated by A.I.’s themselves.  But the process and ethics of doing so aren’t clear.

Universal Basic Income, Again.

• Now that we know that A.I. threatens white-collar jobs, and not just blue-collar jobs, there’ll be renewed vigor behind the ideas of Universal Basic Income, and Universal Basic Services.

• Govts will entertain this discussion seriously, fearing the destabilization that would result from millions of lawyers, doctors, engineers and scientists being out of work.

8) How A.I. Will Change the Larger World

Figuring out every which way that A.I. is going to change the whole world isn’t really my beat.  I leave that to the experts and trying and focus on the world of design.  That said, I think there are a few inevitables that could have big implications for the world, and for designers:

More Big Discoveries

• A.I. is going to turbocharge every field of research and discovery exactly as it did with materials research.  As algorithms get more powerful, and compute becomes less expensive, expect that such tools will be direct toward enterprises that previously couldn’t afford them: nonprofit work, social causes, architecture.

• The ‘news’ of A.I. making some big discovery in some field that would’ve taken humans 100 years to accomplish will start to sound commonplace by the end of 2024.

A Flurry Around A.I. Regulation; Copyright Claims Go Nowhere.

• The speed of A.I. development makes it intrinsically tough to regulate.  Governments move slow by design, and we wouldn’t necessarily want them moving faster.  Ideally, we’d want all legislative activity focused on the highest priority A.I. concerns: controlling superAI, identifying bad actors, election interference, protecting vulnerable groups from exploitation, etc.  It looks like that’s where they’re currently focused, and I expect that trend to continue.

• It’s unlikely that current copyright claims will prevail.  By the time they work their way through the courts, the internet will be so glutted with A.I.-generated songs, images, designs, novels and art that any verdict would be considered meaningless.

The 2024 Election is an Absolute Dumpster Fire

• Reasons we can foresee: deep fakes, claims of fake news, and the general dysfunctionality of U.S. politics.  

• Reasons we can’t foresee: the next 11 months of A.I. development may yet reveal tools that could amplify the efforts of any malicious actors, foreign or domestic.

• Given the polarized state of U.S. politics, it’s likely that A.I. becomes the ultimate, bipartisan culprit:  whenever I see a news clip of my candidate saying something I don’t agree with or think is wrong, I’ll content myself with the ‘knowledge’ that he didn’t really say that – someone probably just made the clip with A.I.  This could coax all of us into a sheltered, personal reality,