Eric J Cesal

In the Future, Everyone’s an Architect (And Why That’s a Good Thing)

Design Intelligence Quarterly, April 2023

This wasn’t a gimmick - I just programmed GPT to imagine itself as an architect, and gave it some basic biographical data (age, location, values, etc.). I did the same with Carla, the client. I then prompted them to interview each other, asking questions and responding to each other’s questions. After they interviewed each other for a while, I asked GPT to take their conversation and generate a design brief from it. Then I asked GPT to take the design brief and generate a whole bunch of other stuff, like a budget, a door schedule, and images (via Midjourney). Turns out, GPT 4 is a pretty good architect.

In the last six months, we’ve seen an explosion of images, generated by designers newly empowered by tools like Midjourney and DALL-E. What’s different about this is that the entire concept for the house was spontaneously generated by AI. I didn’t tell Bob how to be an architect, or Carla how to be a client. I just let them talk, and develop an understanding of the house, together. The design of the house, therefore, matches what Carla ‘wants’ and is in the ‘style’ of Bob. Of course, those were all generated by GPT as well. Check it out on Design Intelligence.