Competing engineering and artistic approaches

Text: Bálint Botzheim

The latest advances in artificial intelligence, generative-based image and text chatbots, have suddenly exploded into our everyday lives. On a daily basis we can read news reports that put the new features of chatbots sometimes in a positive or a negative context. New tools have also emerged meant specifically for architects, to which positive and/or negative interpretations can be assigned. The two basic types of human thinking are rational and intuitive. In architectural design, these two types of thinking are simultaneously present, since the architectural work is expected to be be both artistic and rational. In current artificial intelligence tools targeted for architects, these two characteristics keep on being separate and do not form a whole. Accordingly, these AI tools currently represent two main directions. Architectural design and planning is basically about ensuring that the building fulfils its function, meets the technical requirements and is aesthetically pleasant at the same time. An aspect of development for would-be AI systems could be to combine both an artistic and a rational approach in the software.