The Transformative Power of Generative AI in Design & Construction

Welcome to another edition of our Humans of AI newsletter! This week was nothing short of exhilarating, marked by our efforts to infuse customer-centricity with artificial intelligence. Fuel for creativity can be discovered in the unlikeliest of places, and this week was no exception. It was my privilege to engage in insightful dialogues with two diverse groups: a distinguished delegation of Belgian executives visiting Cornell Tech and an influential assembly of New York City's Healthcare Design and Construction leaders. 

Guided by these interactions, I envisioned an intriguing design challenge. Picture this: Stellar Design Associates, our team, receives an invitation to respond to a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a state-of-the-art ambulatory care facility for the prestigious Weill Cornell Medical College, based in Brussels, Belgium. The question we posed to ourselves was: How might we leverage readily available AI tools to enhance our response to this RFP and optimize our design process? Here are ten innovative ideas:

1. Draft RFP Response with ChatGPT

Starting with a blank page is always daunting, so ask ChatGPT to read the RFP and help you formulate a mock-up draft. From here you can start to add your own company's info, or even ask it to query your own website for responses (a good test to see how you are communicating in the new AI SEO landscape!)

2. Design Inspiration with Midjourney

Rather than flipping through old architecture books, magazines, instagram, or your Pinterest board, start the design process by using words to conjure up inspiration images using Midjourney. You can even play between eras, styles, and your own imagination, then "blending" your inspirations to produce a synthesized version.

3. Develop a Fee Proposal with ChatGPT + Wolfram

Large Language Models are notorious for not being able to do math, but with the Wolfram Plug-in, you can do word problems and trust that the numbers add up. Here we develop a simple fee structure based upon the typical phased breakdowns. The beauty here is that you can stay in one place to develop both the language and the calculations to respond to your RFP.

4. Concept Design with Midjourney

After getting some initial inspiration, you can take your design to the next level by introducing new elements into the mix. What if we introduced colorful sorted balls into our Victor Horta inspired modern glass monolith? Some of the ideas might be absurd, but you just need one to be awesome. Rerun until it finds you!

5. Code Research with ChatGPT Plus + Bing

You'll be out of luck trying to search the codes of Belgium on ChatGPT Plus + Bing, even with live internet searching because, they are not digital! But, if you are using the International Building Code, you can do queries and calculations on a range of topics. Try doing your plumbing fixture counts this way - huge time saver. Just make sure to break up your prompts asking for it to proceed step by step so you can verify the response (and add in that Wolfram plug in to check the math!).

6. Interior Design with Midjourney + DALL-E2

You don't need a fine-tuned model to riff off your original design in Midjourney to develop ideas for the interior. Just seed your image and add in the new perspective that you want to create. Look for a glimmer of a visual idea and then import it into DALL-E or Adobe Firefly and go to town in-painting and out-painting your way to a concept rendering. (Or try out the new zoom out feature in Midjourney. Check out my tutorial.)

7. Training Videos with Synthesia

Not in the mood to put the effort in to be camera ready, write a script, make sure you have a quiet studio with the right lighting, edit out all your ahs and ums, and produce a talking-head video? Look no further than Synthesia. Their professional actors are so well done you can barely tell that they are not humans, with bodies that use gestures and are engaged in speaking to you. The new AI script writer is powered by GPT4 and a great place to start.

8. Textile Design with Midjourney

One of the things I love doing most is generating tile patterns with Midjourney. The tile function allows you to create a single square that can be replicated like carpet tiles to create seamless fabric and textile designs. To mock it up on a mood board, just pick a neutral image of your furniture and do a blend to apply the fabric to the object. A great way to bring it all together for your clients.

9. Project Scheduling with Google Sheets + GPT

If you love spreadsheets and think there's no place for LLMs in your work, think again. The GPT extension in Google Sheets (Available with the acquisition of a GPT API from Open AI) is the tool for formula lovers! Simply write out your prompts and call the function on your own data. In this example, we did a query on a project schedule producing all the information needed for the weekly project meeting agenda in less than five minutes. And once you set it up, you can run it weekly. This is a PM's dream!

10. Rendering with DALL-E2

DALL-E2 is lacking when it comes to image generation, but it's amazing at expanding upon an image to put a building into a context and you can also mix in a real world scene and seamlessly blend the edges. Here we put our building in a fictional site in Belgium. Certainly convincing enough for the interview!

All for Under $50

Subscriptions to these applications will run you under $50/month and infuse your workflow with powerful creative and productive energy to complement all your other human and digital tools. One of the questions I often get is where to start and my recommendation is always: pick one tool and learn to play it like a musical instrument. Three months of practice and you will be making your own music with simple general purpose Generative AI tools.

And if you learn better in a group, or want to up-skill your team together, that's what I do. Come join one of my summer bootcamps or corporate workshops for a fun hands-on learning experience in a community of forever learners.

I'm Lori Mazor and I teach AI with a human touch: empowering intelligent business. If you're interested in learning more about AI personas and how to use them effectively, consider joining one of my workshops. You can check out my website for course offerings or DM me on LinkedIn for more information.