Artificial Intelligence x Pandemic
(1/4)
The Pandemic
COVID-19 virus has spread to all continents except Antarctica, infecting people in many countries around the world.
It made many of us are work from home. Though working from home can make life easier at first, it actually can be quite harmful to our psyche. There is no transition between work life and home life, it makes the line becomes blurred. It also has negative effects on our creative thinking abilities.
When we surrounded by people with different thought processes, it’s easier to be innovative and come up with brilliant ideas. Through teamwork, we will undoubtedly be more successful in coming up with creative solutions. Potential distractions are everywhere when we work from home. It really takes a lot of discipline to focus on our job and actually get things done.
Most companies in Jakarta have a regulation of 50% work from the office, and another is work from home. A company that didn’t want a remote/part-time remote worker because they felt the amount of working from home would create jealousy in full-time employees.
Only a few people allowed to work from home. There are plenty of negative sides to working from home. It has a big impact on our wellbeing and happiness.
The AI
By 2025, Artificial intelligence (AI) will have rapidly developed more than today. Artificial intelligence makes it possible for machines to learn from experience, adjust to new inputs, and perform human-like tasks.
AI has evolved to provide many specific benefits in every industry. In the Architecture industry, AI’s ability to use data to make decisions and recommendations will be crucial to the design process.
Artificial Intelligence represents a new technological wave rather than a disruption. It complements our architectural practice by assisting architectural expertise and enhancing its expression. Today, the results of academic and private research show the first proof of this evolution. So-called “generative” AI techniques — that is, able to create shapes, not just analyze them — are recent. Generative adversarial networks (GAN) represent one of these potentially promising fields.
As an example, the training sequence displayed here shows how one of their GAN models gradually learns to layout rooms and allocate necessary openings. Although the initial attempts are imprecise, after 250 iterations, the machine builds up a certain form of architectural intuition.
Artificial Intelligence is finally undertaking image creation, a fundamental medium in the practice of architectural design. Indeed, the image has emerged in architecture as the central mean of drawing and designing cities.
It is, therefore, an obvious bridge between artificial intelligence and architecture: if AI is capable of creating images, and gauge their complexity, applying it to architectural production is a natural extension.
Showcased here are recent research results, on four distinct building scales: plans, facades, structures, and perspectives. The results of an AI can make a hundred possibilities. It enhances our hopes in a flexible Architecture.
Flexibility in Architecture
“Flexibility” in architecture, refers to the ability of a building to continuously adapt its spacious layout and even its structure to evolving needs.
Space flexibility might be an answer to reconcile society’s need for increased space plasticity, and technology’s ability to offer such spaces. Our working environment is being vastly redefined today.
This case study, realized by WeWork, offers a deep-dive into space remodeling based on users’ behavior analysis. WeWork, to better adapt their open spaces to the demand and needs of their users, collects data about their office space usage, and predict the future pattern of use, to then remodel the space monthly. By the end, their approach (using Machine Learning) helps their offer better match their clients’ needs, by supplying the right mix of private offices and meeting room types.
An Office with a help of AI can be powerful to make an adaptable architecture. The AI will transfer the human current situation and transfer it into the algorithm then generate the Architecture based on human needs. In this Pandemic situation, the company could not place their employee to work in an office due to safety issues. The lack of flexibility of the old typology office makes it harder to adapt to this situation.
What If we made a “flexible” office with Artificial Intelligence?
What If we made a building that understands us?
In this case, the AI will get four data, adjacency, buzz, view to outside, and daylight preferences. And then generate it to the window opening and the interior partition.
The office wants to have a meeting or several people want to have a discussion with each other. The people sit next to each other then the partition will automatically surround them. It also applies to the pandemic situation, the partition will separate from others when needed.
For the comforts, when the employees do not in their seats. The window in front of them will detect it, and close it until they come back. The design solution will be still improving and added through these design phases.
SITE
KMO Building
This 8-storey office building located at Jakarta Selatan. It has a fascinating plan, that can be divided into three separate rooms or only one huge room. A perfect building for this study case because it is a typical medium-size office in Jakarta. It is covered with glass. The facade will be reconstructed with the new design. The structure will remain the same.
References:
Chaillou, Stanisla. 2019. Space Layouts & GANs. Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Chaillou, Stanisla. 2019. Metabolism. Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Howe, Marc. 2017. The Promise of Generative Design. Australia.
