Architects: Handwork Is the Future of Some?
May 16, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
I think there is a new category of blog posts. I call it “we will be relevant” essays. A good example is from Architizer and its essay “5 Reasons Why Architects Must Not Give Up On Hand Drawings and Physical Models: Despite the Rise of CAD, BIM and Now AI, Low-Tech Creative Mediums Remain of Vital Importance to Architects and Designers.” [Note: a BIM is an acronym for “business information modeling.”]
The write up asserts:
“As AI-generated content rapidly becomes the norm, I predict a counter-culture of manually-crafted creations, with the art of human imperfection and idiosyncrasy becoming marketable in its own right,” argued Architizer’s own Paul Keskeys in a recent Linkedin post.
The person doing the predicting is the editor of Architizer.
Now look at this architectural rendering of a tiny house. I generated it in a minute using MidJourney, a Jim Dandy image outputter.
I think it looks okay. Furthermore, I think it is a short step from the rendering to smart software outputting the floor plans, bill of materials, a checklist of legal procedures to follow, the content of those legal procedures, and a ready-to-distribute tender. The notion of threading together pools of information into a workflow is becoming a reality if I believe the hot sauce doused on smart software when TWIST, Jason Calacanis’ AI-themed podcasts air. I am not sure the vision of some of the confections explored on this program are right around the corner, but the functionality is now in a rental cloud computer and ready to depart.
Why would a person wanting to buy a tiny house pay a human to develop designs, go through the grunt work of figuring out window sizes, and getting the specification ready for me to review. I just want a tiny house as reasonably priced as possible. I don’t want a person handcrafting a baby model with plastic trees. I don’t want a human junior intern plugging in the bits and pieces. I want software to do the job.
I am not sure how many people like me are thinking about tiny houses, ranch houses, or non-tilting apartment towers. I do think that architects who do not get with the smart software program will find themselves in a fight for survival.
The CAD, BIM, and AI are capabilities that evoke images of buggy whip manufacturers who do not shift to Tesla interior repairs.
Stephen E Arnold, May 16, 2023
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