Immeasurably Important

The exhibition "Immeasurably Important" by architecture firm TANGRAM explores the possibilities and limitations of AI in architecture. The agency advocates training AI not only with hard data such as costs, square footage and building regulations, but also with soft values ​​such as social connection and historical awareness. The exhibition features completed work by TANGRAM and work by knowledge institutes, software giants, developers and builders that demonstrate the state of the art in various fields. This exhibition was previously shown in Alkmaar at the De Vest Theater and at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is ubiquitous and has also raised great expectations in architecture. Architects already use AI tools to generate images and develop floor plans. Some train machine learning models on images of their buildings, while others use AI to improve their concepts. This technology differs from traditional tools such as Revit or Photoshop in its ability to ‘think’ creatively. TANGRAM uses AI tools such as ChatGPT, Xkool and Midjourney for idea and image generation, but does not yet really consider the design process as AI-driven. Much development work is still needed to create structural and integral qualitative designs.

AI models are trained on large data sets to recognize complex patterns, making them particularly useful for spatial design processes. However, this technology can only learn from the dataset it was trained on. Currently, this data mainly describes what we consider “hard values” such as cost, square footage, building codes, etc. In order for such models to work with issues relevant to truly sustainable architecture, soft values ​​such as social connectedness, intuitive readability, community spirit and historical awareness must also be included.

TANGRAM's mission is to create awareness of the current state of technology, the risk of overlooking such soft values ​​when training design-oriented machine learning models, and what needs to be done to bring AI to the level where it can really add value to architectural design. As guardians of the human, soft side of architecture, architects need to be involved in the development of AI to ensure that these systems learn the right values ​​to design human-centered and sustainable architecture. One example of this is the collaboration with TU Delft and architecture master's student Feras Alsagaff, who sought to quantify human spatial perception for AI-driven design. The results are shown in the exhibition.

The Immeasurably important exhibition will travel the Netherlands until early 2025 and will feature contributions from knowledge institutes such as TU Eindhoven, TU Delft and the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam, software giants such as Xkool and the TYGRON accelerated simulation platform, and developers and builders such as Smits and de Nijs. For each topic, an AI-configured "avatar" makes suggestions on how we can better train the models and bring the two worlds together.