Design Abilities
Design Abilities artificial intelligence is moving onto the next piece of real estate – architecture. ICON, the company behind one of the first fully 3D-printed housing developments in the U.S., has taken automation one step further with what it has dubbed “Vitruvius”, an AI program that allows consumers to Design Abilities custom homes online and receive the plans, making the process cheaper and faster.
“The big vision of Vitruvius is to go all the way from human desire – I saw something on Pinterest — all the way through deliveries, like construction documents, budgets, schedules, even robotic instructions,” the company’s CEO Jason Ballard said.
Ballard said that Vitruvius can remember every Design Abilities and possibility it has ever seen. It has been trained on building codes, building methods and structural engineering, so it understands what is possible. “It far exceeds human capability,” Ballard said.
The user inputs a text describing an idea of the kind of house they would like to build. Vitruvius then asks a series of questions: Where is the house, and how big is it? What kind of architecture does it have? What are the predominant amenities? In what style? It then uses those answers, draws upon its own knowledge of every housing type it has ever seen, and comes up with a Design Abilities for three possible houses.
In addition, this program can show what this home would look like printed in 3D, or in the style of a dead or alive famous architect. Other AI models got in trouble with potential copyright infringement, though Ballard said he is not worried about this one. “It’s not actually stealing anyone’s actual work. It’s just sort of taking inspiration in the way that human artists take inspiration,” he said. “I have no doubt that tools like this are going to change the way that we do things.” . This app Vitruvius was launched at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas for testing both real estate agents and architects.
Regarding the technology, Leonardo Guzman, an architect and builder, claims, “I think [AI is] going to be more of a tool. There are jobs that are going to change. Obviously architecture is never going to be the same anymore .” Besides, a simple test of Magicplan was also taken by a real estate agent, Gina McAndrews, who admits, “I was really impressed by the technology but I could see it being used with architects, rather than replacing them .”
“It definitely will save a whole lot of money, but at the same time you still need people to interact with to change things, but, yes, definitely to just spark ideas because I’m limited in what I’ve seen, and this is like mind-blowing,” McAndrews said . According to Ballard , however, the implications of the new solution go beyond individual consumers seeking to save on architecture fees; it can be a breakthrough for development agencies that provide cheap housing that is often uglified to reduce costs. Ballard states that “what happens in affordable housing projects is we dispense with architecture altogether. Even affordable housing projects deserve beauty and dignity, and we think this tool makes term, the cost of using this tool should approach the cost of the energy to power the system,” Ballard said.