AI would force architects to change their job profiles, Prof Neil Leach

Prof Neil Leach, a former professor at Harvard and Cornell, has authored over 40 books on architecture and design, and is an awardee of two NASA research fellowships

Artificially intelligent (AI) software would reduce or remove the need for human architects soon, according to Prof. Neil Leach, a world renowned professor of architecture and thinker.

AI software would also fundamentally transform architectural practice and education, said Prof Leach, author of over 40 books on architecture and design, awardee of two NASA research fellowships, and former professor at Harvard and Cornell, among other institutions of learning, delivering a talk at the Balwant Sheth School of Architecture in Mumbai on Tuesday.

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He quoted, without endorsing, Wanyu He, CEO of a company making AI architecture software, who estimated that one architect using AI would get as much done as five architects not using AI.

Architects might not even need to be licensed in future, said Prof. Leach, adding that some algorithms already factor in relevant data (a few websites this reporter checked mention zoning data and building codes, as well as environmental considerations), as well as other considerations going into the design of architectural projects. AI will continue to get better at doing this, and such improvements, he said, would force human architects to change their job profiles.

Single platforms to conceive designs and execution plans may be arriving in a few years, said Prof Leach, given the rapid rate of improvement in AI. It would get better at inflecting its designs with specific architectural styles or touches, even evoking the works of master architects like Zaha Hadid, for instance, he said.

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AI would also transform architecture education, Prof Leach said. "We have to reinvent the notion of a professor," he said. They would have to change their role from being "content providers" to companions who awaken curiosity in the classroom and point students to excellent sources of knowledge. Mostly these sources might be online, he added.

IN 2011, Leach himself co-founded DigitalFUTURES, “an independent, online platform for architectural education, staffed and run by volunteers”, which wants to “make important educational ideas available for free to architects and students across the planet”.

Prof Leach pointed out that the number of online sources of good information has increased and that the world has taken to online learning since the pandemic. The arrival of AI would further impact education, he said. AI would affect architecture education so drastically that “weaker schools of architecture”, he said, might find it challenging to stay operational. Moreover, architecture curriculums would have to be justified, as also the duration of courses: Would five years still be necessary for architecture courses in future, Leach wondered, with AI being around.

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Detecting use of AI in architecture academics, he said, would pit algorithms used in class assignments by students against algorithms used to detect use of AI in class work. Overall, though, in Prof Leach’s opinion, the use of AI for assignments might be “impossible to police”.

He suggested allowing it might be an option: he provided the analogy of using calculators in exams. Stating that at present “AI (artificial intelligence) was a prosthesis”, he said, architects faced not the choice of people versus AI, but of people who use AI versus those who don’t. "Architects must use imagination to design the future of their profession," he said, adding it's time architects embraced AI.