“I’ve been using AI for almost a year but envisioning what Dubai would look like in 2070 has taught me so much about how to work with artificial intelligence,” says Thomas Trad, the Dubai-based Lebanese architect and product designer whose experiments in AI-assisted design have yielded diverse and thought-provoking results.
The prospect of AI taking over manual tasks in society is now familiar, but what about complex, creative industries? Could technology one day replace architects? “The answer, at least for now, is no,” says the designer, “but it will mean big changes for the way we work."
Innovators in the field are discovering AI’s exciting possibilities. Hunt around online and you’ll find intriguing concept buildings that have been created using the technology. They tend to be dreamlike, even utopian – a mash-up of stylistic influences from the past, futuristic forms, and playful interactions between buildings and nature. You might see a skyscraper draped with a fabric-like skin, or a house with clouds floating inside it.
The point is not whether such visions, that seem outlandish today, might one day exist – they probably won’t – but that they can spark radical new ideas, encouraging designers to consider forms, materials and solutions they might not have entertained before. Trad is one of the Middle East’s pioneers experimenting with AI and has used it to imagine a series of conceptual homes and experiences. Christened Lost in a Dream, they’re fantasies of a world where nature and buildings are in perfect harmony, the boundaries between indoors and out fading away.
AD Middle East commissioned Trad to imagine what Dubai, a city known for its obsession with the future, might look like 50 years from now once AI has become commonplace. He’s used his preferred software, Midjourney, to envision icons of the Emirate’s urban fabric – exceptional homes, luxury hotels, shopping malls and cultural cornerstones such as the Emirati living room, the majlis, and the wadi, meaning valley in Arabic. The results are both familiar and surprising; the skyscrapers we already recognise mingling with otherworldly, umbrella-like towers and vegetation.
This combination of the archetypal and the alien is intrinsic to AI creations. “The technology relies on algorithms which are trained on large datasets of architectural designs and historical information,” says Trad. “From these, it learns patterns, relationships and rules to generate new designs, make predictions, and offer suggestions.”
Trad sees AI’s usefulness in automating tasks that are currently time-consuming and repetitive, such as the creation of digital renders. But beyond that, its status as a practical tool is almost incidental.
“As AI continues to evolve, it has the potential to fundamentally change the nature of creativity, pushing the boundaries of architectural imagination, inspiring novel design solutions, and helping architects to solve problems in innovative ways,” he explains. “Moreover, as AI becomes more integrated into the industry, it could reshape the roles and responsibilities of architects.”
Trad expects the prevalence of AI to accelerate in coming years. Here’s an example of how fast things are moving. “Midjourney was one of the earliest AI models - I started using it in 2022,” he says. “Since then, there have been several updates. At first, the images generated resembled collages of low-resolution images, lacking coherence and realism. However, the model has made tremendous progress. Today, we can create detailed, visually compelling images that can easily deceive viewers into questioning their authenticity.”
For now, AI is reliant on the data it’s provided with, such as the text prompts Midjourney was given to produce the concepts shown here. But it’s impossible to predict what it will come up with in future. “That is where our responsibility comes in,” says Trad. “We are already seeing AI being misused to create scandalous images to famous people that the general public thinks are real. It really is about what you feed AI.”
A good example is this AD commission. The same software that predicts Dubai 2070 as a candyfloss confection fit for Barbie from the future, also presents visions of the city as if it was in a Tolkien book.
“The full extent of its impact is yet to be realised,” says Trad, “but we can anticipate significant changes in how architects conceive, create and collaborate. The industry will need to adapt to embrace the opportunities brought forth by AI, while also ensuring that human creativity and expertise remain at the forefront of future creative processes.” And if AI's answer to what Dubai would look like in 2070 is anything to go by, the role of human designers will be even more vital in the future; superstar designer Kelly Wearstler, who recently implemented AI in her studio, agrees.
