Name: The Architect's New Toolkit
Uploaded: 2025-05-07
Duration: 11 min 4 s
Description: Architectural designer Tim Fu shows how AI can help turn low-fi ideas–like a crumpled piece of paper–into bold, imaginative designs. In this fast-paced session, he shares how combining traditional design methods with AI tools is changing how we think about form, structure, and creativity–and what that means for the future of design, innovation, and human-AI collaboration.

Architectural designer Tim Fu shows how AI can help turn low-fi ideas–like a crumpled piece of paper–into bold, imaginative designs. In this fast-paced session, he shares how combining traditional design methods with AI tools is changing how we think about form, structure, and creativity–and what that means for the future of design, innovation, and human-AI  collaboration. 

The Architect's New Toolkit

Conferences

Architecture starts as an idea. Could be a few sketches, a few scribbles on paper. A few gestures And we work through these ideas. To materialize them with depth, with understanding, with context. But today, Something like that. Actually, this image itself is done in a few seconds from the sketch. So we're really facing a bit of a disruption in the design realm. I could think about what to be inspired by, for example, a pinecone I find on the streets. And I can prompt my way into creating, for example, residential proposal somewhere in the world. It's quite easy to rethink about how we can Formulate ideas, how we can restructure the whole ideation process in creating spaces and forms. Crumbling pieces of paper for me is something that is quite uh of an exploration and famous architects like Frank Gehry has done so as well. So I prompted Frank Gehry. On top, and you can see the sort of morphological um features that is quite um predominant in his sort of, um, you know, language and design. And just for comparison, I did the same with Za Hadid, those of you that know, as well as Daniel Libeskind. Each form-driven architect that has their own distinctive style. is visually apparent in the results. And of course, we can realize that very quickly into an urban context and see where it goes. So it's about how we play. And uh those of you who know, uh, Zahadi Architects is a big, um, very well known company, and I worked there for a few years, and that is where I started to experiment with AI as well. During the time working there, a lot of people were prompting how an architect like Zahain would design with her beautiful fluid forms and features that exist. So for me, When I started, just by prompting something like a villa designed by Zaha Hadi, these were actually the results. It's not exactly what I was looking for. So instead of just accepting what the AI um or diffusion AI results give you, I began constructing a methodology to curate the process, to select results to prompt craft or prompt engineer, as some of you would call it, and that became a visual design process for me as well. You start with a huge plethora of ideas. And from there you distill. It's an act, a very human act. Of curating. That is where human artistry, I believe, is reinstilled in this process. As you refine your idea, you continue to sort of drive AI towards the direction that you already preconceived in your mind. And so it become a very intentional endeavor of using AI in the creative process. From there on, I've explored tons of different ideas. A lot of the organic geometry is what we specialize in in the office. So, obviously that's one of my first directions. OK. So, at some point I wanted to Materialize it. I designed some columns. And uh use more of a contemporary language to design them with AI and then rationalize them into a 3D modeling process. And I sent the model to a collaborator Stonemason by the name of Till. Who took these beautiful stones in Dresden and carved them in real life, following the drawings that I've made. And so this is really an example of how we flip the scripts. Instead of human ideation followed by machine fabrication, which is the typical industrial revolution paradigm. Now we can think about how AI is in the ideation process followed by human in the production process, perhaps. So since then, I've uh from my companyuinu here in London, actually about 20 minute walk from here. And uh what we've done is Assemble a team to tackle real life challenges. One of our first projects that we announced is uh On a beautiful site called Lake Bled in Slovenia, the most protected heritage sites. And from there, there's plots of land where it was the last left to develop, and our client came to us, wanted to mix contemporary architecture with uh heritage elements to respect the vernacular aspects of the sites. So without going into detail, a process where both AI and human were involved, we took Um, we create a database of existing, uh, architecture from around the site. Many of which are heritage protected and representative of the local culture. We go through a process of using diffusion, using diffusion in order to explore ideas alongside the heritage database and contemporary prompting as well. And of course, just with a simple sketch of an idea that we have, we can convert that quickly to AI to get materiality and that eventually leads to Us constructing the 3D model and the final rendering. And as a result, it's a completely intentional process where we really create final results and here you can see everything is completely done through AI rendering. And of course, we use uh Chat CPT as part of a process to guide us throughout the entire creative process and the uh design to construction process. And AI is starting to really seep into everything we do. It's become an integral process both from client conversations to architects, to local consultants, engineers. And so here's a video that we've created. At the end of concept phase. Everything here is completely generated through artificial intelligence, but through our creative design process. And of course, we also work with. Optimization algorithms driven by AI in order to enhance results. And of course, we explore rapidly different ideas very quickly through AI. And so we're really able to explore the depth of what's possible very quickly. And as a result, we get something that is Contextual to the sites, subtle, without being too pronounced, but at the same time when you're inside the space, you feel the sort of awe inspiring moments and heights. And AI allowed us to do all of that. I would say that particular video, this whole design process would take usually months and months, but we can cut it down to even a month or within a month if we're able to, you know, get every uh technical parameters accurate. And so it changes a lot for us. The whole process going from ideation to optimization and bin modeling process, uh, to documentation and perhaps automated construction processes. I think AI can contribute in so many ways. For example, we also develop tools on the side like working with Nvidia. We've developed this prototype where you can use on your phone or any um app and it will create sort of retexturing filter with anything that you model, anything that you sketch in real time, and you just have to prompt the words, what you like to see instead. And of course, we explore also different uh devices. So VR devices such as Oppo Vision Pro, we incorporated um artificial intelligence, diffusion modeling as a process as part of the design. So now what we can get is perhaps at the touch of your fingertips, you are able to more rapidly explore ideas. And the ideas also evolve through text and prompting. So you are actually, you know, designing through descriptions. And that's where it also gets more fun. Architecture becomes playful. One of our staff, our senior designer, he's Actually modeling in the VR space in real time, getting a render. And then we get a results very rapidly. So you feel the space, you feel the three dimensionality, and that's what changes for us in architecture. And finally, large language models like ChatGBT, we developed tools, subset of tools where we, for example, use urban design, describing how you want the urban design layout to look and where's density, what's the percentages. We're trying to bring large language model into the technical side of design. We want to take over all the data. And of course, we also wanted to Have a way to code for us, for example, which is another side of architecture, and all of these things are new possibilities for us very recently. How we optimize everything. So, really, at the end of the day, I just want you guys to think about what are the possibilities for us. We have new design tools, we have faster delivery, perhaps going to be lower costs. We're going to be doing more projects in a smaller team. And uh you can just think about how the entire industry will change from here on. So lastly I would just like to say that um we're really just at the beginning of how AI is seeping into the design world. Our entire AEC profession is going through this rapid shift, and we just want to be part of it, and everyone should look out where all of us are going to evolve in the next decade or so. Thank you. Yeah.