AI is Shaping Architecture’s New Reality Faster Than We Expected.

These 19 groundbreaking AI tools are rapidly advancing the AEC industry, revolutionizing design and constructuion.

“That is the present; now, let’s look to the future,” declared Akhil Hemanth, a designer and AI guru at HKS. This statement elicited a collective laugh of surprise from the audience. Had we not been witnessing technology’s future, as we thought, but rather its current capabilities?

This scene occurred recently during the talk “Advancements in AI Applications for AEC Industry: Pushing the Needle Forward,” which Hemanth delivered at this year's AIA Aspire conference in Asheville, North Carolina. The Southeast region event foregrounded artificial intelligence, among other timely topics, with full-capacity sessions led by tech entrepreneurs like Hemanth and Beth Zienesis, who presented the keynote “AI’s Biggest Questions, Myths and Mysteries.”

A key takeaway from the conference, as confirmed by participant responses, is that industry-tailored AI capabilities are accelerating far faster than most design practitioners presumed. Of the roughly 70 percent of event attendees who claimed to use AI, virtually all described an experience limited to tools like ChatGPT and Copilot. Architecture’s early adopters have used such apps for generic tasks like rephrasing emails or summarizing meeting minutes. Meanwhile, with less notice, a rapidly growing number of discipline- and task-specific AI tools have emerged that offer clear applicability in various stages of the architectural design process.

In a rapid-paced survey of new AI tools offering remarkable possibilities for the AEC industry, Hemanth revealed a future that has arrived more quickly than most expected—with significant consequences for design and construction. It is common for first-time users to respond to these apps’ capabilities with disbelief, exhilaration, and trepidation. Questions about the architects’ rapidly shifting roles and the nature of design services soon follow, and these are questions our industry must address. In the meantime, the prevailing advice is to dive in and experiment. The more we understand these apps' capacities, the more we can prepare for a future that is suddenly upon us. Below are a few notable platforms, some of which Hemanth has authored himself, organized loosely by design process tasks.

Site

Site analysis and feasibility studies are routine exercises in the early phase of a design project. Amassing all of the existing data about the characteristics, constraints, and opportunities for a given site is a time-consuming process requiring the consultation of multiple sources—including surveys, zoning regulations, and climate data. Aino is an AI-powered platform that enables rapid site analysis of any global location. Aino gathers GIS, zoning, and other relevant data, and users can query the tool via natural language prompts. Giraffe streamlines site-based feasibility studies based on local constraints. In addition to robust mapping functionality, the software adds design and financial capabilities for design scenario-testing as well as property portfolio management purposes. A similar site-focused tool is Archistar, a program that offers property and market insights and risk mitigation features. Archistar’s financial projection capabilities are of particular interest to developers and property owners.

Design

As its name suggests, Digital Blue Foam offers a virtual version of site-based massing model studies. DBF harnesses multiple location-based analytical tools to facilitate design explorations. AI-assisted modeling includes building typology and generative design capabilities—as well as a notable feature called “novelty algorithms”—to test the uniqueness as well as the feasibility of different building schemes. Hektar is a similar early-stage design tool developed by the Stockholm-based firm Parametric. The software allows the automated generation of building massing schemes based on various building typologies, and the resulting options may be filtered based on custom parameters. Spacio likewise employs generative AI to produce and test multiple design approaches. This tool, which generates more intricate details such as facade components, constructs BIM-based virtual models that may be seamlessly exported to other programs without the need for remodeling.

Drawings

Much of a design team’s time is spent generating 3D and 2D drawings of a project. Producing competent plan drawings requires a sophisticated knowledge of building typologies, programs, and code requirements. PlanFinder makes plan generation breathtakingly effortless. The plugin for Revit and Rhino automatically produces plans for a given project type based on an outer boundary and the desired number of rooms. Designers can also automatically add furnishings to the plans and save custom plans to a drawing library. Finch3D is a powerful drawing tool that runs complex simulations based on user-based criteria like net internal area and CO₂ efficiency. The software integrates with Revit, Rhino, and Grasshopper and actively graphs the performance of different iterations for streamlined decision-making.

Construction Documents

It will surprise many that AI-based tools are now available to tackle the most intricate design tasks: generating construction drawings. Blueprints AI aims to streamline the entire design workflow, automating everyday drafting functions as part of a holistic process that results in a complete set of construction documents. These drawings are customizable and update automatically with subsequent changes in the design. Swapp AI offers similar functionality, evaluating a firm’s project portfolio to match its drawings to the office’s signature documentation style. Higharc is tailored for residential builders and integrates estimating, purchasing, sales, and marketing capabilities into its multifaceted workflow.

Visualization

Designers whose AI image-generation awareness is limited to DALL-E and Midjourney will be amazed to learn about new rendering and animation apps for architecture. Veras is an AI-powered tool by Evolve Lab that converts hand sketches and study model photos into photorealistic renderings. The resulting images may be revised to manipulate the original geometry, and renderings can be restricted via selection render—allowing contextual information to remain unchanged. Nullrender, a web-based app developed by Hemanth, uses Stable Diffusion’s ControlNet technology to offer three rendering modes common to architectural visualization: interior, facade, and sketch-to-image conversion. For moving images, Runway is a video-generation app that provides the extraordinary capability to convert sketch designs into fully rendered, photorealistic building walkthroughs. As seen in this demonstration, the app takes mere seconds to generate a video that would typically require a design and production team several days to produce.

Specialized Tasks

AI also offers welcome support for more narrowly focused and often tedious building design and construction tasks. An example is UpCodes, a comprehensive library of building codes, products, and assemblies. The AI-powered UpCodes Copilot app is a text-based code query tool, and UpCodes Search offers robust code and assembly navigation. According to the developer, the software saves the average user 15 or more hours in code information searches per month. Hemanth’s LEEDGuru assists in LEED certification process compliance, while his MateriScan chatbot facilitates prompt-based product searches. Last but not least, OpenSpace is transforming the construction administration phase with an AI-powered photo log of site conditions. With a single roaming camera, the company’s proprietary Vision Engine maps photos onto project drawings—in a mere 15 minutes. Design teams can now monitor a near-live, immersive view of construction site conditions, enabling them to respond promptly to job-site issues.

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