I don\u2019t make a habit of checking LinkedIn, any more than I remove my contact lenses with my rOtring pen, but now and again I convince myself it won\u2019t be that bad.<\/p>\n
I am immediately pummelled with self-promoting bile: a slimy ex-boss re-framing selling out as \u2018re-envisioning practice\u2019; the most useless person on my master\u2019s course \u2018celebrating\u2019 nine years at a construction behemoth and an ex-colleague \u2018pleased to announce\u2019 they are seeking new opportunities (finally made redundant). SIGH. The only light at the end of this Crossrail tunnel of despair is the deeply engaging content of the dear AJ\u00a0 <\/span>team. [Subs: use this bit for a pullquote \u2013 ed<\/i>]\n Today is a Hadoken attack of smug and bilge, a bonus opportunity to hate-watch. An ingratiating colleague who refuses to learn Vectorworks \u2013 \u2018because you guys are so good at it!\u2019 \u2013 has written a think-piece on AI. OMG, my favourite things: work-shy scammer + sinister tech. I am so delighted I stop, make a fancy coffee and recline to enjoy this gem.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a beauty. It\u2019s not just the irony that he\u2019s failed to spell-check and included the wrong type of \u2018your\u2019, twice. He\u2019s \u2018had a go\u2019 at AI architecture. But not the kind you\u2019d think; asking the machine to fill a tower block footprint with Building Safety Act-compliant, dual-aspect apartments.<\/p>\n Not to tesselate fa\u00e7ades to maximise environmental mitigation. Not even to sanity-check for Building Regs compliance, halving the workload of the lesser-spotted Building Control Officer. Nope. He\u2019s put the name of the client and the word \u2018architecture\u2019 into an AI image generator and clicked \u2018go\u2019. I stare, open-mouthed, at the brilliance of the stupidity.<\/p>\n Now, I know we\u2019re a profession that\u2019s so far behind the curve we still reference le-Corb-le-fascist in planning meetings, but I expected more ambition. On the one hand, he is clearly under-tasked and grasping for relevance in the way that Design Managers grasp at deliverables lists.<\/p>\n On the other, this could be a terrifying insight into the imminent relegation of architecture to branding, a mere window dressing to mask overdeveloped plots and cynical land grabs. Is it a cack-handed attempt to commandeer airtime, like Nadine Dorries telling us not to \u2018downstream\u2019 films? Does he just not understand how to design buildings? Is he a droid sent from the Metaverse, seeking to annihilate all sense of creative energy in the dying embers of the UK\u2019s construction industry?<\/p>\n Or maybe \u2013 and I don\u2019t say this lightly \u2013 maybe he\u2019s just a symptom. Maybe this \u2018bit of fun\u2019 reveals the inner workings of architectural middle-management; desperate to brown-nose EOT shareholders in a bid to secure a mortgage, and hell-bent on avoiding any actual labour that would relegate them to quarterly performance reviews and progression plans. Instead, he\u2019s throwing confetti and blasting vuvuzelas into our faces, like a clown honking and cartwheeling as the carcasses of a failed trapeze act are dragged out back. Don\u2019t worry about it; it\u2019s fine! Look how fun this is! What fire? What flooding? WHAT INSOLVENCY?<\/p>\n I\u2019m over-caffeinated and need to calm down. I droop in my chair, watching as our peers \u2018like\u2019 this moronic misanthropy. It\u2019s annoying me because he was already a symptom of disenfranchised practice \u2013 part of the mid-level bloat, populating deserts with servers full of schedules, emails, \u2018catch-up\u2019 invites and PDF mark-ups. He isn\u2019t sentient enough to see that he was already wasting space, a tool by which practices spoof relevance while deepening the cynicism of their work, hiding vacuous cash-cow projects and s106 negation behind branding gymnastics and \u2018fun\u2019 posts. And now this.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not against AI, actually. It could shoulder much of the mundanity of practice, relieving pre-qual professionals of overtime while making space for them to apply their creativity to environmental and social problems. It could destroy the idea that bathroom elevations and door schedules are a rite of passage, instead enabling more egalitarian and creatively driven modes of practice. Think what you could do with all that extra energy, optimism and creative fulfilment. But he<\/i> doesn\u2019t have any of that, does he? And if he allowed that to happen, we\u2019d see that his purpose is to keep the system exactly as it is, only with the fun part outsourced to AI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don\u2019t make a habit of checking LinkedIn, any more than I remove my contact lenses with my rOtring pen, but now and again I convince myself it won\u2019t be that bad. I am immediately pummelled with self-promoting bile: a slimy ex-boss re-framing selling out as \u2018re-envisioning practice\u2019; the most useless person on my master\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9844,"featured_media":734585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"ep_exclude_from_search":false},"categories":[745],"tags":[93810,72352],"yoast_head":"\n