Architects and real estate firms are now experimenting with how AI can inform office design. With the return-to-office movement underway the race is on to ensure that office spaces are designed in a way that reflect modern work needs. The theory goes that if offices are compelling enough spaces to encourage collaboration and therefore performance, employees will be more willing to return.
But designing different test models can be a lengthy process. That’s why those in the real estate and architecture fields are turning to AI to expedite plans and inform design. For the majority that involves using AI to create dozens of design concepts for clients to pick from, within minutes – saving days of work. For others, AI is being used as a test bed to trial new concepts, like employee-led design.
Jaymie Gelino, COO of project and development services at commercial real estate company JLL, and Arjun Kaicker and Uli Blum, co-founders of architecture firm Zaha Hadid’s Analytics + Insights unit, believe AI potentially could tell you what employees want.
“We can use algorithms to really understand people’s needs in buildings much better than we ever could’ve before,” said Kaicker. “If you do a survey of 2,000 people in a building, and they all have different opinions, different ideas and preferences, it takes a long time to do that analysis. The computer can do it quickly and accurately.”
JLL has been using AI to create typologies of different kinds of workers according to what type of work they’re doing, how they’ll use the space for their work, the overall company culture, and so on. “The visualization tools are moving so quickly that it’s really neat to see how easy and agile they are, that it’s creating a lot of efficiencies in the design project process,” said Gelino. “It’s going to be really fun to see where the industry goes in the next 10 years.”