40 years ago, we designed architecture on paper. We sat behind the drafting table, and we visited building sites with a pencil behind our ear. Then came CAD, changing the way we worked forever.
At first, CAD was met with skepticism. Many feared that drafting skills would become obsolete and that architecture would lose its artistic essence. But instead, new possibilities and aesthetics arose, and we adopted CAD into our profession and evolved. It didn’t take away our creativity. It amplified it, allowing us to work faster, with more precision, and to explore ideas that would have taken weeks to develop by hand.
Now, we are in a similar transition. Just from CAD to AI. Tools like PromeAI, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion are entering our field, raising the same concerns about change.
Will AI take over architecture? Forever change how we work? Influence how our profession will evolve?
The answer to the last part is yes. It will. Probably forever, just like CAD did.
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Some see AI as a threat, but in reality, it is another opportunity to evolve. Just as CAD allowed us to focus more on design rather than manual drafting, AI has the potential to remove some of the technical bottlenecks that slow us down. But AI does not replace architects—it needs architects. AI is like a highly intelligent but untrained assistant. It can generate, predict, and process information at incredible speed, but without human guidance, it lacks purpose, intent, and true architectural thinking.
Because one of the most important skills we have as architects is evaluation. AI doesn’t evaluate—it iterates. It produces endless variations, but it doesn’t conclude. It doesn’t decide. It doesn’t weigh context, intent, and meaning to find the best path forward. That’s our role.
And seen from the perspective of architectural visualization, the bar has only gone up over time as new tools have emerged. It has become harder to impress and harder to be impressed. Yes, AI can generate images, and they are impressive, but they lack thought. They lack realism in the context of real-world architecture.
Architecture is an art form, but it is bound. It is not just random generation. Architecture is precise, actual, and tied to a specific place, a culture, and a nation’s history. It is built by the people who inhabit the land where it stands. Architectural visualization is no different. It is always contextual, always precise rather than random, always bound by a room program, by a 3D model reference that guides the complex process of constructing a unique building.
A good architectural visualization represents reality. It captures the correct context, the light at the exact location, the reflections of the real-world materials, and the precise 3D model designed from a well-defined program. It is about evaluation, honesty, and the visual qualities that give meaning to a design. AI cannot replace architects or ArchViz artists here either, because AI does not evaluate.
But just like every tool that has come before, AI is evolving what we can do. It is pushing the quality of our output, not diminishing it.
Which means this transition is not about AI taking over. It is about us taking control of AI.
It is about architects using AI to refine ideas faster, to develop more possibilities, to test more options, without replacing the human decisions that make architecture what it is.
We started this article in the past, at the drafting table. Let’s end it by looking forward.
Just as we grew with CAD, we will grow with AI.
This is just another chapter in how we create.
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