In architecture, AI creates forms, but “it cannot provide answers to the human part”

▲ Artificial intelligence-generated image of an architectural project. Photo: Never Enough Architecture

Alondra Flores Soto

La Jornada Newspaper, Wednesday, July 23, 2025, p. 6

Futuristic visualizations, shapes that mimic intricate nature, and dozens of possibilities are created in architecture in just a few seconds with the use of artificial intelligence, which is increasingly common in building design. Architect María Bustamante explains that you can see very surprising things or results that you wouldn't have achieved with your own hands .

When creating a project, this technology, which is embedded in every aspect of modern life, can adapt the design to different locations—maybe a desert, maybe a cliff, or something so utopian you could hardly imagine it—because the computer imagines it .

However, the president of the Fundarqmx foundation emphasizes that when it comes to things that involve emotions, feelings, and the human side, artificial intelligence itself tells them it's not ready for it. It can't provide answers in that area .

Possibilities of expression

When teaching architectural projects at the Universidad Iberoamericana, María Bustamante has noticed that it is used as a tool by students at all levels, giving them possibilities of expression that they would have difficulty achieving .

In the first semesters, students don't yet know how to make a rendering (or 3D image) of such high quality; they are just learning to use their hands or eyes in a traditional way to create a perspective of a house or building.

In an interview, the architect specializing in housing and urban planning from the Architectural Association of London comments that the goal is for students to have the ability to draw freehand, without the need for a computer, to create, since the goal is for computer programs "to be a tool and not something that almost projects or thinks for you, but rather to help you better present, deepen an idea or see alternatives.

All the classics will tell you that drawing is essential, which is why most universities, in the first semesters, omit the use of computer programs, not even the famous AutoCAD, so that students first learn to create, think, and translate it into drawings. Then they begin to look at other alternatives that might make life easier, but not replace it.

An important thing is that the result displayed on the screen is consistent with the idea that emerged from the human process. Sometimes artificial intelligence doesn't fully understand the idea in mind, and nothing compares to the architectural plan, the model, or the spatiality. So, we do ask them to achieve that consistency with the idea of their creation .

Similarly, there has been much questioning in college about how to set boundaries and ask students to be honest and truthful about how an app was used and what instructions were given to achieve that result.

Materialize the project

Architect María Bustamante recalls an exercise required a year ago to design a school in Yucatán with the goal of having biomimicry, that is, being inspired by nature to solve problems such as having a better climate, cross-ventilation, or considering humidity, so that it would function without so much air conditioning and without so many resources.

The result was impressive designs with highly organic and complex shapes in a third-semester student's class, just starting out. In addition to beautiful spaces, AI also helps bring the project to life, for example, by designing the building materials. A student could say everything was going to be made of bamboo, and then that same school, specifically, would do everything like that in seconds .

So, you can explore more ideas, what you think or what you want with little effort .

Bustamante recalls some competitions in which the vast majority of projects were created using new computing technologies. The results were impressive .

He explains that they expected most of the participants to be architects or similar, but there were all kinds of people, like systems engineers or engineers in other areas who also achieved very impressive things, but that remained just that, "a very powerful image, but from there to making it viable to build, economically feasible and many other things, is a different step.

I think anyone without being an architect can use these tools, start playing and experimenting with them, and achieve positive results. But it's all just an image, because then, once we've figured out how to actually build, the materials, and the entire process, it still doesn't replace us as human beings.