STUDYING
ARCHI TECTURE
DA NIEL
Why should one study architecture if anyone
AFTER AI
can design anything anywhere instantly at any
time? Today—much faster than predicted—
anyone with access to a cellphone can draw
anything of their desire at a resolution indiffer-
ent to reality. The implications for architecture
are obviously ground-shaking. This essay tries
to grasp some of it—its implications for teach-
ing and learning in a studio environment, and
for preparing students for the significant chal-
lenges that face architectural practice today.
For hundreds of years, and in Western cultures
since the publication of Alberti’s treatise De
re aedificatoria in the mid-fifteenth century,1
architectural knowledge was defined as a
notational science. Architects invented ways
to notate, draw, compose, or codify—not to
build (that was the role of the craftsperson)
nor to house (that was the realm of the client).
The role of the architect was only to mediate
between both.2 Plans, sections, and other
architectural representations quickly notated
comprehensible forms on one hand, and eco-
nomic—and, later, cultural—investments on
the other: the matter and methods to build.3
Made by humans for humans, buildings had
to be easy to understand. If a client’s inten-
tions were easy to understand, more complex
shapes could be built with less. A symmetrical
drawing was considered beautiful because
the mirrored half of an original was only half
FIG. 1 An Urban block in
Vienna designed by Vienna
and its data. Co-authored
with Midjourney AI, Daniel
Koehler, and an uncountable
number of situations tagged as
Viennese in photos.
70 PL ATFORM 2022-2023 TE ACHING FOR NE X T
KOEHL ER
as difficult to understand, which, above all,
halved the cost of planning and making.
Deeply linked to the economics of a building,
the composition of a building, therefore,
served as a kind of benchmark to value the
design. Aesthetics equated with the utility of a
building. Alberti identified three aspects that
shaped research in architecture for generations
to come: first, a beautiful design uses first a
limited number of parts which keeps the need-
ed equipment and workers on a construction
site manageable; second, those parts should
have a clear form that is easy to produce and
transport; and finally, those parts should be
composed into a correlated arrangement using
symmetries and other connotations to make it
easier to comprehend the building. Since then,
research in architecture invented notation after
notation to design more with ever less. The
Baroque celebrated architects who could draw
complex forms by calculating the transfor-
mation of simple shapes. In very similar ways,
five hundred years later, the Digital celebrated
architects who could shape any free form from
even less than parts: particles.
Alberti’s treatise did not contain any draw-
ings, images, or other notations. For Alberti,
ultimately, an architect, like a god, would form
matter with words. And here we are today:
Networks like OpenAI’s DALL·E 2 draw
realistic images from text descriptions only.4 A
digital image is built from pixels, two-dimen-
sionally arrayed square-y points. Technically,
it takes very little additional information to
turn a pixel into a voxel and an image into
architecture. In limitlessly replicable ways,
the network can be applied to anything at any
place instantly, turning anyone with the desire
into Alberti’s ultimate architect and Harari’s
Homo Deus. By that, architecture and a re-
search project that spanned over five hundred
years comes to an end. When natural language
can process three-dimensionally, there won’t
be any need for an extra architectural lan-
guage; for any plans, sections, or similar medi-
ations that translate intention into form.
Natural language models translate not only the
desires of clients but anything that is easier to
communicate through words—like communal
decisions, legislative codes, and, in general,
any kind of knowledge. The superiority of AI
models is already beginning to shatter. For
example, the text-based model GPT4, which
is readily available through a number of free
online writing tools, utilizes over one hundred
trillion different parameters. By comparison,
the average adult uses only up to thirty thou-
sand different words.5 That means a neural
network uses three billion unique assets per
one word you use. By looking at vast amounts
of data, digital machines learn to repeat cor-
relations between different features, which
then can be interpolated and automated. Thus,
AI can automate any task that is particular
enough to be identified as such and that is
frequently executed.
Despite Richard Sennet’s famous expression
that “for great craftship, it needs first a passion
and then 10,000 hours more of it,”6 any profes-
sion that relies on classic crafts will most prob-
ably be automated. Subsequently, architects
will have to find new ways to contribute as a
profession by valuing a different set of skills—
skills that one will have to learn together with
AI. The implications fall into three categories:
predictions of the professional contributions
71
that an AI-infused culture will value, the skills
necessary for those contributions, and the
ways AI will transform learning itself and its
environments.
Until recently, most learning environments
within schools of architecture still followed
principles invented in Victorian times as a
response to the beginning of industrializa-
tion. Not by coincidence, the typical amount
of time involved in architectural education
equates to Sennet’s ten thousand hours of
apprenticeship by learning eight hours per day,
five days per week, for five years. In many cases,
a typical classroom still contains as many stu-
dents as one teacher can instruct, and we still
teach as though students are training for only
one role that they will perform for their entire
lifetime, for which they must memorize a body
of knowledge that is a scarce resource.7
Before digitalization, schools were places of
exclusive access to knowledge. Schools were
designed as a kind of Wunderkammer of a
profession, with the goal of preparing students
for any situation they might encounter in their
professional lives. Therefore, schools had to
provide a condensed simulation of reality on
which students could be trained, tested, and
certified. The standard curriculum in architec-
ture still resonates with such motivations. In
design studios, students repeatedly arrange, in
increasing complexity, a set of spatial queries
onto a virtual site reviewed by the studio’s
professors. The standard studio outcome con-
tributes only to a virtual, simulated context
that is valued only as proof of mastering a set
of skills of a prospective profession. Such a
simulation of designing a building never re-
flected the reality of architectural practice. In
reality, a team of architects designs a building
in a far more extended period than a studio
provides. However, the studio had to compress
for students the wonders of their prospective
buildings to come.
Digital technologies have enriched learning
enviornments enormously, and AI systems
might be the last melt below the tip of an
iceberg. Classes based on a lecture format are a
great example. Digital lectures, once recorded,
can be replayed infinite times to infinite par-
ticipants and provide their content asynchro-
nously at any location. It is not necessary and
no longer efficient to watch lectures gathered at
one place at a dedicated time. Today’s Massive
Open Online Courses (MOOCs) make
knowledge accessible to remote locations or
individual circumstances that might otherwise
72 PL ATFORM 2022-2023
have precluded education plans, and are also
available for marginal fees as a vastly greater
number of participants share costs.
Available anywhere with an internet connec-
tion, a student can choose the best available
content from the best teacher from a global
collection. In response, Donald Clark, an
expert on teaching methodologies, proposed
the concept of “flipped lessons,” or courses
where students watch lectures for homework
and use classroom time to apply their content
to practice.8 In this model, a teacher’s role
flips from instructor to mentor or tutor in an
interactive practice, serving as a curator to turn
abundance into comprehensible lessons. In this
scenario, teachers curate content that provides
a platform for studying, and courses become
stages for a particular discussion. As a result,
students become constructive participants who
shape innovation through projects analogous to
the format of inquiry-based learning.
This is precisely where AI systems now step in.
Already, in daily life, Google responds to que-
ries with AI-generated summaries. The same
AI linked to the interface of a chatbot turns
into a personalized teaching assistant with an
encyclopedic knowledge of the curriculum one
needs to master. Trained with the data of one
student’s life, the bot will understand—possi-
bly better than the student themself—the most
suitable approaches to their learning, such as
the times of day when they are most receptive
and when they are best left to relax for their
emotional well-being. Mentors can use AI to
translate a course’s content into personalized
programs based on their own unique experi-
ences and preferences. The bots can adapt to
each student’s level of knowledge and speed
of learning, sharpen their skills, and improve
weak spots.9 Freed from a one-size-fits-all pace
Digital technologies have
enriched learning environments
enormously, and AI systems
might be the last melt below
the tip of an iceberg.
TE ACHING FOR NE X T
of knowledge transfer, and with AI that can
augment missing skills, a class can be diverse,
assembled from students with different skill
levels based on their intent to contribute.
In similar ways, grading can be much fairer,
at once tailored to the individual student’s
learned skills while also subtly leveraged
against a globe-spanning database of compara-
ble assignments.10
Design environments require less of a chat bot
than a drawing bot. With the encyclopedic
knowledge of a building—including legislative
codes, material features, structural behavior,
building protocols, and so on—such a drawing
bot would augment any professional knowl-
edge onto the lines, shapes, or blocks we draw.
Freed from the need to notate in conventional
media and equipped with an XR interface, you
can immediately draw or better choreograph
architecture in space. Freed from the need to
instruct by simulating a given knowledge, de-
sign studios can finally become places to design
knowledge. Students can join a school not to
learn but to study—in line with the classical
notion of a university in which students do not
learn today’s facts but study future challenges
to build their careers ahead. When knowledge
is freely accessible anywhere at any time, the
value of knowledge will increasingly lie in its
authenticity and original contribution.
So, why should you still gather in a studio to
design together? Because in the same way that
one network can run with multiple instances,
we can design now with many hands. Never
before could designers jointly draw multiple
responsive shapes simultaneously. Unlike
the modernist who needed to craft a single
thing ten thousand times, and then again and
again, designers in an AI-infused culture will
design a single thing in ten thousand different
FIG. 2 Thirty-six sectional
studies on urban blocks made
of mass timber, infused with
vertical foresting. Labor time
and expenses: 0.35 GPU hours
to $1.75. Image by Daniel
Koehler.
FIG. 3 The city as a forest.
What would it take to live with
a forest? With the pace of cur-
rent AI models shouldn’t we
expect an exponential increase
in research on new materials,
construction methods and
alternative living? Image by
Daniel Koehler.
73

FIG. 4 View into a residential
area of a community-owned
building with a water harvest-
ing system that mitigates tem-
peratures while offsetting rent
for farmers. “Tower 2031,” by
Erin O’Brien (MArch, Year),
Paperclips Studio, spring 2021
(instructor: Daniel Koehler).
NON-LINEAR
FIG. 5 “Machine Inclusive
Learning Environment,” by
Victor Trautmann (MArch,
Year), Paperclips Studio,
spring 2022 (instructors:
Casey Rehm and Daniel
Koehler).
74
NON-REPEATABLE
ways. AI technologies offer us a new world
of knowledge that is plural, non-linear, and
non-repeatable by nature. The skills necessary
to craft unique, authentic knowledge through
the fusion of human and artificial intelligence
coined a guideline for K-12 education six
years ago as the “four Cs”: Communication,
Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and
Creativity.11 To immerse ourselves into the
new design media, architects should similarly
emphasize emotional intelligence, soft skills,
and cognitive flexibility.
Wilson and Daugherty, scholars on the future
of learning,12 elaborated on the fusion between
humans and AIs: within augmented working
environments, communication translates into
the skill of an intelligent inquiry—knowing
how best to ask questions to an AI agent.
Collaboration becomes the capability of
reciprocal learning, like teaching AI agents
new skills and in turn learning AI-enhanced
processes. Creativity depends first on the skill
to design processes to increase available time
for distinctively human tasks and learning. In
augmented environments, critical thinking is
exercised by integrating judgment, choosing
a cause of action amid machine uncertainty,
and endless rethinking—such as developing
mental models of AI agents that improve col-
laboration outcomes or correct bias.
When asked what resources he needed for the
1990 founding of the Berlage Institute, one
of the leading architecture schools of its time,
Herman Hertzberger replied, surprised: “For
a school, you don’t need anything. A school is
a movement. It is a place of study, communica-
tion, interaction, support, and presence.”13 For
most of history, schools have not been places
to instruct or simulate an environment for
problem-solving. They always have been places
of confidence in the questions of the future.
When the work that the architect was known
for has been automated, they will be freed
from their craft and can focus on what they
should be concerned about: the housing crisis,
PL ATFORM 2022-2023 TE ACHING FOR NE X T
the climate crisis. Architecture schools will
be freed from teaching drawing and other
forms of notation, and studios can become
places to envision and design proposals for
the future. And we cannot have enough of
such proposals; the challenges to the built
environment are daunting. According to
calculations by UN-Habitat,14 to address the
housing crisis we need to build the equivalent
of the existing US housing stock each year,
across the globe. At the same time, according
to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) report,15 we need to find ways
to reduce the carbon emissions of what should
be a doubled building stock to 10 percent of
today’s emissions. Combined with the twen-
ty-fold increase of building production and the
cap to 10 percent of the current emissions, we
need to teach future architects how to design
and operate buildings some two hundred times
more efficiently than we do today.
Soon, networks like DALL·E 2 will fully auto-
mate any aspects of notating a building, from
a sketch to plans to the codes for robots to fab-
ricate and build. Finally! When AIs can draw
anything, architects will have the resources to
design what we need more than anything. And
more than anything, we need to design new
architectures.
1. Leon Battista Alberti, De re aedificatoria (Mainz: Jacobus
Cammer, 1451).
2. Mario Carpo, The Alphabet and the Algorithm
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011)
3. Antoine Picon, The Materiality of Architecture trans.
Abigail Grater (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2020).
4. “DALL·E 2,” OpenAI, April 6, 2022, openai.com/dall-e-2.
5. Alberto Romero, “GPT-4 Will Have 100 Trillion
Parameters—500x the Size of GPT-3,” Towards Data
Science, September 11, 2021, towardsdatascience.com/
gpt-4-will-have-100-trillion-parameters-500x-the-size-of-
gpt-3-582b98d82253.
6. Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2008).
7. Calum Chace, “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence
on Education,” Forbes, October 29, 2020, forbes.com/
sites/calumchace/2020/10/29/the-impact-of-artificial-
intelligence-on-education.
8. Donald Clark, Artificial Intelligence for Learning: How to
Use AI to Support Employee Development (London: Kogan
Page Limited, 2020).
9. David Karandish, “7 Benefits of AI in Education,”
THE Journal, June 23, 2021, thejournal.com/
articles/2021/06/23/7-benefits-of-ai-in-education.aspx.
10. Kyoungwon Seo, Joice Tang, Ido Roll, Sidney Fels, and
Dongwook Yoon, “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence
on Learner–Instructor Interaction in Online Learning,”
International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher
Education 18 (2021), doi.org/10.1186/s41239-021-00292-9.
11. “The 4 C’s to 21st Century Skills,” You for Youth, US
Department of Education, 2016.
12. H. James Wilson and Paul R. Daugherty, Human +
Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI. (Boston:
Harvard Business Review Press, 2018).
13. Hermann Hertzberger,. “Friendly Architecture – In the
Footsteps of Structuralism: An Interview with Herman
Hertzberger,” interview by Daniel Koehler, Prospectives
1(2020).
14. “UN-Habitat: Annual Report 2020,” UN-Habitat, United
Nations, 2021, unhabitat.org/annualreport.
15. “IPCC Sixth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2022:
Mitigation of Climate Change,” Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, United Nations, 2022, ipcc.ch/
report/ar6/wg3.
75