Architect asks Artificial Intelligence to design the buildings of the future

Manas Bhatia has a bold vision of the future, where residential buildings covered in trees, plants and algae act as “air purification towers”.

In a series of detailed images, the Delhi-based computer architect and designer brought the idea to life.

The imagined buildings are depicted soaring above a futuristic metropolis, their curved shapes inspired by shapes found in nature.

But the photos weren’t entirely her own imagination.

For the conceptual project, “Artificial Intelligence x Cities of the Future”, Bhatia turned to an artificial intelligence imaging tool, Midjourney, which generates elaborate images based on written instructions.

Using a series of text descriptions, with phrases like “futuristic towers”, “utopian technology”, “symbiotic” and “bioluminescent material”, Midjourney produced a series of digital images that Bhatia tweaked further by tweaking the instructions.

Bhatia said it can take up to 20 minutes to make each of the surreal artworks. He refined the descriptions nearly 100 times per project, editing and adding to the text until he achieved the desired results before cleaning up the images using Photoshop.

“The trial and error part is the most fun,” the architect said over the phone. “We use AI to create images, and in the process, the AI ​​trains itself and improves over time.”

In another project, titled “Symbiotic Architecture”, Bhatia envisioned a future where buildings are made of living materials. Using cues like “giant” and “hollow,” he produced images of what he called a “utopian future,” in which apartments are formed inside trees the size of redwoods.

He says he was inspired by Hyperion, a 380-foot-tall sequoia in California, considered the tallest living tree in the world. But he also drew on his own day-to-day work at Indian architecture firm Ant Studio, whose projects include renovating buildings with new facades to encourage natural ventilation and reduce energy consumption.

“The inspiration (was the idea) of the ‘skin’ of a building being organic and inspired by nature, and how evaporative cooling and transpiration takes place so that (the towers can) regulate their own temperature throughout the day,” said Bhatia , adding, “If we could create building materials to be organic, and to live and grow, the building could ventilate itself through these natural processes.”

The recent popularity of AI imaging tools like OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 and Google Research’s Imagen has raised new questions about creativity and artistic integrity.

Last month, Colorado game designer Jason M. Allen won $300 in an art competition featuring a futuristic Renaissance-style image created using Midjourney. While some social media users and artists expressed disapproval of Allen’s methods, the designer said his entry – which took more than 80 hours to generate – qualified as a digital work of art.

For Bhatia, Artificial Intelligence is just another tool. “Art is completely open to interpretation,” he said. “And an artist can use any kind of tool to create art. Anyone can use AI, but they won’t be able to achieve as good a result as a creative person.”

By producing something beyond users’ imagination, it can generate new ideas and enrich the design process, added the architect. He even envisions a future where AI can generate 3D designs and be integrated into the software architects use to model their creations.

“It has tremendous potential,” he said. “In our studio, we tried to use AI to generate mood board images for a client presentation, and that went very well… In the near future, architects and designers combined with AI would be something to look forward to.”