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Alessandro Melis, guest columnist
Over the next 30 years, sea levels will rise as they have over the past century, threatening urban areas around the world.
Unfortunately, most of our existing cities are not designed to withstand the erosion of seawater or other impacts of climate change, such as flooding and extreme storms. While we need new infrastructure to adapt, the construction industry is a major source of pollution. Today’s built environment is responsible for nearly 40% of energy-related carbon emissions.
Architects can help us escape this double dilemma—but only if they embrace generative artificial intelligence, which many have so far resisted. To combat climate change, architects need to reimagine their role and abandon their long-held obsession with individual authorship.
While some consider artificial intelligence an existential threat, it may be the best tool we have yet to mitigate and adapt to climate change. While “traditional” AI often relies on narrow metrics to accomplish specific tasks, newer generative AI tools can create original content by combining information from billions of sources.
For example, generative AI can help architects determine the best building locations and develop the most sustainable materials. It can use satellite imagery to build detailed land-use maps that allow testing of future climate scenarios for specific locations, such as extreme heat or flooding. Architects have used artificial intelligence to develop a ceramic surface that can resist viruses and pollution. They could soon use it to drastically reduce the time and effort required to design and build buildings.
The collective creativity of generative AI may well spell the end of single authors and celebrity architects. It is time for architects to put aside their personal opinions and work together to overcome the real threats posed by climate change.
The end of celebrity architects is actually a return to old understandings of authorship. The sole credit of a single designer is never as central to great architecture as some imagine. Long before Frank Lloyd Wright designed Fallingwater, unknown designers were building what is now the world’s oldest temple, the 11,000-year-old Göbekli Tepe, in modern-day Turkey Array (Göbekli Tepe).
When designing sustainable places for the future, the layout of medieval cities can serve as key source material for generating artificial intelligence tools tasked with creating climate-conscious cities. Cities then were often mixed-use, dense, and connected to their surroundings – the same principles of sustainable urban development today.
Architects, and those of us who teach future architects, have an important role to play in saving our environment. With the help of artificial intelligence, we can design, build and maintain structures that emit little or no carbon and protect us from future impacts. Sacrificing authorship is a small price to pay to fulfill our responsibility to the planet.
Alessandro Melis is the first president of the IDC Foundation and a professor at the New York Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture and Design.This piece originally appeared on Reuters.
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