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Tuesday, March 24, 2026
From Faster Tools to Fewer Steps: How AI Is Reframing Productivity in Architectural Practice
Architect Magazine: Architectural workflows are filled with translation layers: sketches rebuilt into models, models exported for visualization, and visuals revised to reflect design changes. Each step introduces friction and creates opportunities for errors or loss of design intent.
2 comments:
Julian Grossman
said...
This article’s relevance to theatre is not totally obvious from its title but it definitely has a lot of relevance to scenic design and therefore to the visual design process as a whole. If, for instance, Vectorworks’ Architect workspace were to start to incorporate some of these tools, one would expect some scenic designers to want in on them. Even I (with my proclaimed hatred of all things AI) can definitely see why one would be interested in this use case, particularly in regards to taking a 2D sketch to a 3D rendering. 3D models/renders are incredibly useful for communicating visual ideas as well as for other design disciplines such as lighting, but they take forever to create and are often a challenge to make. There can be a lot of stupid little things to take care of in creating a 3D rendering that would be nice to be able to smooth over with automation. However, I wonder if relying more on AI for this process would just generate different stupid little mistakes to fix. I’m also glad to see discussion of design firms using proprietary models/AI as software one can actually own to avoid IP issues rather than SAAS (the dreaded acronym, Software As A Serivce).
With architecture having such large similarities to the scenic design and realization processes, it is hard not to read something like this and draw parallels. While I do sit firmly in the "cautiously pessimistic" spot on the scale of feelings for AI, it would be stupid to ignore the possible directions that our industry may go with this technology. I am particularly interested by the "Chaos AI Material Generator". With part of our work being deciding on which materials to use and where, a product like this may aid the scenic department in deciding what to use based on looks or structure. Perhaps it could also help designers make decisions with the technical team. If the technical team was able to say "it will look something like this if we do it this way, or like this if we do it another way" and had two different AI generated images to show the designer, they may be able to make a more informed decision. It will also be interesting to see in the future (as this article talks about more in depth) how AI will modify our workflow. While reading the article I got to thinking about how AI might start drafting for us in the future, and what that would look like. Would companies have someone on staff who was no longer a drafter, but instead a draft reviewer to make sure nothing was overlooked? Or would some people ask it to draft a whole show and hope for the best? I don't know that I would ever go that far, but a tool where I could draw an outline of a platform and the AI would frame it, lid it, and then tell me the optimal amount of materials to do it in is something I would absolutely make use of. It is both interesting and terrifying to think about where the line is.
2 comments:
This article’s relevance to theatre is not totally obvious from its title but it definitely has a lot of relevance to scenic design and therefore to the visual design process as a whole. If, for instance, Vectorworks’ Architect workspace were to start to incorporate some of these tools, one would expect some scenic designers to want in on them. Even I (with my proclaimed hatred of all things AI) can definitely see why one would be interested in this use case, particularly in regards to taking a 2D sketch to a 3D rendering. 3D models/renders are incredibly useful for communicating visual ideas as well as for other design disciplines such as lighting, but they take forever to create and are often a challenge to make. There can be a lot of stupid little things to take care of in creating a 3D rendering that would be nice to be able to smooth over with automation. However, I wonder if relying more on AI for this process would just generate different stupid little mistakes to fix. I’m also glad to see discussion of design firms using proprietary models/AI as software one can actually own to avoid IP issues rather than SAAS (the dreaded acronym, Software As A Serivce).
With architecture having such large similarities to the scenic design and realization processes, it is hard not to read something like this and draw parallels. While I do sit firmly in the "cautiously pessimistic" spot on the scale of feelings for AI, it would be stupid to ignore the possible directions that our industry may go with this technology. I am particularly interested by the "Chaos AI Material Generator". With part of our work being deciding on which materials to use and where, a product like this may aid the scenic department in deciding what to use based on looks or structure. Perhaps it could also help designers make decisions with the technical team. If the technical team was able to say "it will look something like this if we do it this way, or like this if we do it another way" and had two different AI generated images to show the designer, they may be able to make a more informed decision. It will also be interesting to see in the future (as this article talks about more in depth) how AI will modify our workflow. While reading the article I got to thinking about how AI might start drafting for us in the future, and what that would look like. Would companies have someone on staff who was no longer a drafter, but instead a draft reviewer to make sure nothing was overlooked? Or would some people ask it to draft a whole show and hope for the best? I don't know that I would ever go that far, but a tool where I could draw an outline of a platform and the AI would frame it, lid it, and then tell me the optimal amount of materials to do it in is something I would absolutely make use of. It is both interesting and terrifying to think about where the line is.
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