Everyone Agrees AI Is Transformative. Whether That's A Plus Is A Debate For Architecture And Design Pros

When Joe Cliggott was asked how artificial intelligence is influencing design, planning and sustainability, he called on the audience to raise their hands if they had used artificial intelligence for work in the past week.

Many arms shot in the air.

“I think that answers the question,” the principal and office director at HKS said. “It has been transformative.”

AI is increasingly taking on a bigger role in the design process, speeding up early-stage work while also unlocking more time for designers to get creative. But transformation can swing both ways.

Cliggott and other panelists at Bisnow's Chicago Architecture & Design event were bullish on the technology's power to enhance designers' abilities. Yet some worry about an overreliance on tech and potential job losses. 

Emily Stampanato, principal at CannonDesign, said she is using AI as a tool to develop prototypes more rapidly. That hasn't altered the human-driven creative process, but it does allow the company to study more designs than they were previously able to. 

“We've embraced AI from a design firm perspective pretty holistically, and I think it's creating a value for our clients, where we're able to give them more in less time,” Stampanato said at the event, held at Continua Interiors in Fulton Market.  

AI is a next-level tool that designers are still trying to figure out how to use to support their processes, she said. But panelists said the idea is making more time for the creativity that is inherent to the human component of design. 

Cliggot has used AI to decipher responses to an office survey that he had estimated would take three hours to review manually. AI spit out a summary in seconds. 

Over the past week, Cliggot has also used AI for rendering images, reviewing contracts, writing a proposal and reviewing a request for proposal. 

Using AI to save time is great, but it also brings up more questions yet to be answered, like whether clients will pay less if designers and architects are spending less time on their work, Cliggot said.

“The real question is, what do you do with the extra time that we just saved?” Cliggot asked. “Are we going to be in a position where the client says, ‘Well, you saved three hours and I paid you for it, so can I have my three hours back?’”

Part of how design professionals can use the time they save with AI is to free the mind for tasks that matter most, said Kimberly Dowdell, director of strategic relationships at HOK. She expects AI to enable people to find new ways to channel their imaginations. 

“We all need creativity, and so my hope is that we'll find ways to expose ourselves to to creative outlets and inputs and ways to really enrich our experience,” Dowdell said.

But AI is also not easy to utilize at a big firm, Stampanato said. There is a lot of red tape, regulation and parameters around how she can use it in her work and additional complexity around who owns different design assets. 

And not every panelist was fully onboard with the potential of AI in the workplace.

Bryan Schabel, principal at Perkins&Will, said a potential issue is the human tendency to put too much information into chats with AI. 

Cybersecurity experts warn that oversharing proprietary information could lead to intellectual property issues, as generative AI has developed into a skilled mimic of the creative process.

AI usage can also get to the point that users depend on it too much and lack the discipline to pull back, Schabel said. 

“I'm less optimistic,” he said, to a chorus of laughs from the audience. “Maybe I'm a dinosaur, which has certainly been the case before.” 

In some ways, AI usage in the workplace is so dynamic that it's hard for the industry to predict how it will evolve, said Chris Hall, urban strategy leader at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

AI has potentially “huge implications” for the industry in terms of the structure and shape of staffing plans and what people will be most needed in the future, he said. 

It may be that people with certain skill sets will face reductions as a proportion of the architecture and design workforce over time. Philosophical debates are ongoing at the firm over whether AI is simply a very sophisticated “repeat machine” or a tool that will drive innovation.

Just one thing is certain, Hall said.

“In terms of work process, it's going to have a huge impact on everybody in this room over the next five or six years,” he said.