July 2024

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 22 jul 2024

Generative AI (artifical intelligence) has potential to transform education practices and will bring new challenges to the traditional pedagogy in many fields of learning. Architecture and design education is no exception. The already fast changing world of architecture with climate change, environmental issues, natural disasters, shifting human needs and requirements etc and speedy technological innovations and advancements like AI, makes adapting to the present and predicting the future a humongous task for all those in the field - academics, researchers, educators, professionals, students, policy makes etc. Teaching an architect is a responsible task. Eric J. Cesal, Design Educator and Author, explains how the AI will impact architecture and design education and profession, and what practices in the design teaching and learning process would no longer be needed in the future. He says, 'The conversation about what and how to teach is already contentious, and it must necessarily evolve with technology...However, there's another, easier conversation to have: what not to teach...in my own teaching and conversations with colleagues, there seems to be a consensus among design faculty that certain things should no longer be taught in architecture school. These anachronisms remain fixtures in most schools due to institutional and cultural inertia...AI will change that calculus. It gives us new arguments for purging some of the more ossified practices of design culture.' He further specifies following three things that are inherent to the educational process that AI will assist in getting rid of - (1) Masochism: All-nighters, self-neglect, exhaustion etc are problems that are part of architecture and design schools. Educators want to curb them and it seems difficult to bring a culture change. Ideas need to be executed, they are tested, proven and demonstrated through drawings and models. This requires efforst and hard work with strict deadlines. Mr. Cesal says, 'This may seem reasonable—at least to anyone who's been to architecture school - as long as you ignore the downstream effects. As you stay up for several nights in a row to test and prove that one brilliant idea, your creative faculties steadily decline, compromising what might have been that second or third brilliant idea...Research consistently shows that a well-rested brain is better able to generate novel ideas, solve complex problems, and think critically...As AI rapidly takes over the rote, mechanical aspects of design, humans must focus their efforts on only those things that a human can do...So tell your students to leave the studio at a reasonable hour and go home. Insist on it. Insist that they do their designs, do their best, and then go home, or go out.' (2) Fetishization of the Image: Mass media brought an image-based culture in the architecture profession. Mr. Cesal says, 'This shift can be attributed to the way mass media fragmented different types of professional success: commercial success (making money), professional success (being esteemed by one’s peers), and cultural success (being esteemed by the wider culture)...these three types of success typically follow a sequential path. However, architecture has an alternative route, which I’ll call Path B. This route subverts the conventional sequence...Through Path B, an architect can achieve cultural success by earning the esteem of their peers, even if they have limited commercial success or built projects. With sufficient professional and cultural success, one can then achieve commercial succes...some architects can win the Pritzker Prize...with a very shallow portfolio of built works, principally on the strength of their publications and theoretical work...The existence of Path B in architecture enables and encourages a fetishization of image-making...The rise of AI in architecture fundamentally challenges the viability of pursuing Path B. With AI-powered tools capable of generating stunning, novel renderings based on text prompts, the mere production of impressive architectural images no longer signifies the same level of creativity and innovation that it once did. As a result, achieving early acclaim primarily through image-making will become increasingly difficult...As image-production becomes easier, the true test of an architect’s creativity and skill will likely shift toward her or his ability to navigate the complex realities of bringing designs to life, and to navigate the changing realities of practice...AI has made making images of our ideas simpler. Let's adapt to this change by ending our collective fetishization of image-making and focusing instead on the higher-order problems of the future.' (3) Design School as Rite of Passage: The old English model of education in American universities focused on broad range of subjects and students were not particularly trained in particular field. Medicine and law became first specializations in mid-18th century. Archiecture became an educational specialization about a century later. Mr. Cesal says, 'It wasn't really until the late 19th century that American institutions, influenced by German models, began to adopt the graduate and research models we know today, along with the concept of electives and majors. In contrast to the old English model, it was designed to train individuals for a lifetime of continuous work in a specific field, beginning at the age of 18...Going through a major program does more than just teach you the technical skills necessary to execute a specific type of work: it inducts you into a tribe. You undergo shared experiences that then bond you with others in your eventual profession. However, with the rapid advancements in AI, this model may no longer be suitable for the future. As AI accelerates the pace of technological change, it becomes increasingly challenging to predict the skills and capacities that will be necessary for professional work in the coming decades. The idea of fully training someone for a profession by their early 20s, with the expectation that this education will suffice for a lifetime, seems anachronistic in a world where entire professions may become obsolete within a matter of years. To adapt to this new reality, we must restructure learning to be a continuous, lifelong process rather than a one-time experience...This new paradigm could take many forms, such as having professionals return to school for a semester every few years...The key is to recognize that the current specialization model, which was developed in an era when America still ran on steam power, may no longer be adequate for a future characterized by rapid technological change. In the field of architecture, this means re-evaluating the notion of design school as a singular rite of passage. In the future, design school won't be something you went through. It will be a process that lasts a lifetime.' Read on...

ArchDaily: How AI Can Help Us End Design Education Anachronisms
Author: Eric J. Cesal