Florida Atlantic: Building the Future

Florida Atlantic University’s School of Architecture is uniquely designed — from its curriculum to its facilities. Unlike most other schools of this nature, it is one step ahead; successfully integrating artificial intelligence (AI) throughout its professional architecture program.

Because of this latest innovative endeavor, the school recently was honored with the Tambellini Future Campus Award for Innovation in Artificial Intelligence and Technology Integration.

"As a School of Architecture, we believe there is an ethical responsibility to prepare students to help shape the future of professional practice," said Joseph Choma, Ph.D., director of the School of Architecture. "It is quite obvious that AI will become a ubiquitous tool within the foreseeable future. Therefore, it is in our opinion, that AI should be learned as a requirement to complete a professional degree in architecture."

The vision of the School of Architecture at Florida Atlantic is to combine innovative research with professional practice constraints. As part of that vision, the school has transformed traditional design studio spaces into new research labs, which are also teaching labs. These include the Creative AI Lab, Environmental Design and Natural Materials Lab, and the Foldable Structures and Materials Lab.

The Creative AI Lab includes an immersive 180-degree floorto- ceiling screen, eight 3D scanners mounted to the ceiling, AR/VR equipment, and a powerful server to compute large datasets instantaneously. The lab is a spatial instrument designed to change the way students think about humanmachine collaboration. For example, students can manipulate physical architectural models, such as tensile fabric structures, by changing boundary conditions. Then those physical models can be scanned in real time, inputted into a self-organizing map and projected on the large immersive screen. The AI can provide a new range of design possibilities, which can then be sent to the AR/VR goggles to help advise the students on how to transform their physical models.

The School of Architecture is one of the first of its kind to require all undergraduate students within their professional program to learn AI at an advanced level, Choma said. Students learn how to create 3D datasets by using self-organizing maps to interpolate that data, and then designing workflows to objectively evaluate the range of possibilities.

"We perceive a fundamental shift in the profession from designing buildings to designing workflows to help tackle wicked problems associated with the built environment," Choma said. "This could include reducing the carbon footprint of how we build or design for climate adaptation and hydrogenerated urbanism. As a school, students and faculty embrace pragmatic constraints as poetic design opportunities, while tackling the most challenging problems of our time."