Designing my way into obsolescence?
‘I thought of you’, my friend said, with a link to a dezeen article written by Marcus Fairs just over a year ago. A lifetime away, considering the pace at which technology develops, and perhaps especially so during these crazy times.
The first line made me sit up,
‘Ninety percent of architects will lose their jobs as artificial intelligence takes over the design process, according to designer Sebastian Errazuriz.’
As an architect or designer, this is not an article that you just read and forget about. At least I didn’t. It triggered many thoughts and reactions that I shall try to make sense of in a succinct way.
I found myself agreeing mostly with the article, and breathed an almost righteous sigh of relief when I read his advice to architects ‘to instead become software developers’. Fortunately I ventured out with Vellum, I thought, or I’d be sitting here reading my profession into obsolescence!
But then, even if I had ‘saved’ myself, surely this cannot be the future that we have to accept? While automation has displaced many jobs, these were jobs that were boring and repetitive. Architects love their jobs (don’t be fooled by those martyr-like complaints by your masochistic architecture-loving friends who seem to have a certain fetish for feeling the textures of any new place they go, especially if it has a particularly fancy finish) and to be told to become a software developer in order to stay employable almost hurts more than being…an unemployed architect.
Before I continue, I do acknowledge that (almost) anything that we can conceive, the computer will (eventually) be able to deliver. But to say that architects’ jobs are at risk and to point them towards a career change marks only the start of the conversation — there are many nuances still to consider. It is not so much about disregarding the future, but determining our future and how we want to get there.
Technology will replace design-by-compliance architects.
I believe Errazuriz refers mainly to ‘design architects’. Depending on a firm’s set up, there can indeed be ‘design architects’ who focus solely on the concept stage of all projects they work on. Their tasks cover the visualisation of data (which can be anything from urban planning regulations, to building safety regulations, to site information) into 3D concepts. This is the group whose jobs are in danger. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt since diving in the world of software development, it is that algorithms love rules. Having also worked in a very carefully-planned country like Singapore, I have also seen how it is often easier to design by compliance and make a career out of it. It may sound ironic, but architects need to start getting creative again.
It will replace certain tasks carried out by architects.
An architect’s job scope often spans much more than just design. There are also project architects, who take over from design architects once the project is awarded and it transitions into the construction stage. I remember how we were warned in school that design would only take up less than 20% of our actual working lives.
It was not too far from the truth — in the entire span of many of my projects, I spent the majority of my time answering emails, writing reports, administering the contract, and just, solving problems. Many of these tasks can indeed be automated as well, and with it, freeing the architect to focus on other aspects with the aid of tools that support on-site problem solving. Think of how different it can be from physically documenting construction errors or potential clashes during site walks and waiting to get behind a computer to figure out a solution. Check out what UK Architect James Lee Burgess from XLWerks is doing with his mixed reality design initiative using Hololens 2 and Trimble Connect. Architecture can be even more exciting than before!
Perhaps it is also worth looking at it the other way round: what are humans good at, that is difficult for computers to replicate. And let’s not stop there, instead of replicating the current process, can we instead create new structures through a symbiosis of both (which is a whole other topic for another article)?
The human element and all its nuances.
In my previous company, we were (in)famous for our higher than usual percentage of authority waiver requests. These were not baseless whims of ‘I just want it to look nice’ — well, we did want it to ‘look nice’, but more importantly it was based on our understanding of the reasoning behind certain regulations. Just because we did not comply with a certain rule did not mean that we were contradicting the results that it was trying to achieve. While we may have made leaps and bounds with regards to artificial intelligence, human reasoning remains one of the last frontiers. Not to mention the trust and credibility they build with clients and builders, because in the end, it is such a relationship-driven industry as well.
So if we could use apps to augment data-based processing, we would still need to make decisions based on our reasoning capabilities and arrive at better decisions, faster. On a lighter note, remember that crazy kitchen scene in X-Men (Days of Future Past), which was filmed entirely in slow motion just so we could comprehend exactly what Quicksilver was doing (not to mention get to savour what I think is one of the most fitting song-scene pairings to date)? I envision that’s what AI and algorithms can do for architects — supercharge us.
Creativity too, is hard to replicate, let alone replace.
Having had to dissect what I have come to take for granted as an architect, I have been constantly humbled at how the human brain works. Machine learning may be able to replace years of accumulated knowledge. But what about that creative, iterative process that involves trying out 5 different, perfectly valid options based on experience (and not having to sieve through 100 possible, generated options), assessing the pros and cons and then making follow-on adjustments based on that?
I have taken a somewhat hopeful stance, and am curious to hear how different people approach it. The exciting part for me is that I have been coming across more and more articles like these in recent months, not even years. It is definitely a hot (and hotly contested) topic and the truth is, while opinions have been so divided, no one has the answers yet. Now, more than ever, is the race to find that silver bullet. And this bullet may not perhaps be in the form of one particular app, but more an approach to how we can best harness the unique capabilities of humans and computers, and take advantage of what both do best.
Perhaps we can envision a kind of tech-enhanced future that we want for the industry, instead of letting code be rampantly harnessed to take over anything we put our minds to just because it can? What I am trying to say is, can we be a little more deliberate about how we want to use technology in a profession that straddles such a fine line between art and science, the measurable and the intangible, logic and creativity?
I embarked on Vellum with Erik Pols and Lennart Zanders not so I would not lose my job, but so I can say that I at least tried my hand at steering this train. To end, I will borrow a line from a long past movie, that describes my sentiments more eloquently than I perhaps have been able to:
“O me! O life!….of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless…of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?” “Answer. That you are here — that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?” (John Keating, quoting Walt Whitman in Dead Poet’s Society.)
Joanne Goh is a Co-Founder & CEO at Vellum.ink, our portfolio company from Amsterdam.
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