AI and Residential Design.

Want to know what's really scary?

Accepting what AI spits out simply because it looks convincing.

I've had several conversations recently about AI's impact on residential design. I've also been working with various AI platforms quite a bit myself - testing them, prompting them, questioning them, and seeing what they can do.

It's impressive.

AI is exceptional at generating convincing renderings, although it often misses the details only "design people" would catch. It's exceptional at producing dozens of options, changes, and updates at the click of a mouse, and it's improving.

But...

4 Bedrooms.

3 Bathrooms.

Semi-open concept.

Office.

2-Car garage.

Midcentury Modern.

2800 square feet.

Low roofs.

That's a list of requirements. It's hardly a project brief. And it's definetly not a home.

I challenge AI much the same way I challenge shopping for plans online. Tens of thousands of house plans are available online with a market for them, yet I still get phone calls from people who have probably spent more time than they'd like to admit searching for "the one" and still come up short.

Both offer an endless array of choices. But more isolated choices take more time and don't necessarily lead to better decisions.

Both are missing something.

"There are only so many ways a house can go together. No need to reinvent the wheel."

Partially true.

Structure, materials, and construction have practical limitations. If all design elements have already been thought of and used repeatedly, then what is custom?

Ultimately, that is the benefit of working with a designer: someone who understands and can articulate design language, who arranges spaces around the way you live, while coordinating those spaces with the exterior, who considers how far an overhang should extend so you're not baking in evening sun, who balances structure, materials, proportions, and countless other decisions, all while creating something that evokes feeling and is uniquely yours.

A couple of questions to leave you with:

• What determine whether a house on a hill should sit on top of it, step with it, or become partially embedded within it?

• How do you resolve:

  • I love the plan, but I don't like the exterior elevation. OR

• I love the exterior elevation, but I don't like the plan.