Archinect - News

Archinect's Lexicon: "Spatial Computing"

2023-06-23T11:31:00-04:00

Archinect's Lexicon focuses on newly invented (or adopted) vocabulary within the architectural community. For this installment, we're featuring a term that recently found prominence with the unveiling of the new Apple Vision Pro device.

"Spatial computing" represents a fusion of diverse digital technologies that engage with physical spaces and their human inhabitants. This complex discipline involves merging real and virtual worlds, where digital systems and software function within three dimensions. It combines various technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI).

A significant example of spatial computing in action is Apple's newly-released Vision Pro spatial computer. This cutting-edge device allows users to interact with digital objects and information in their surrounding physical environment, thereby blurring the line between the physical and digital worlds. The term is also interlinked ...

Archinect's Lexicon: "Ubiquitous Computing"

2023-06-02T08:03:00-04:00

Archinect's Lexicon focuses on newly invented (or adopted) vocabulary within the architectural community. For this installment, we're featuring a term central to how technology and artificial intelligence may be seamlessly incorporated into future buildings and cities.

"Ubiquitous computing," also known as pervasive computing, is a concept in computer science and engineering where computing is made to appear anytime and everywhere. In this type of computing, technology becomes virtually invisible in our lives. Instead of a dedicated device such as a desktop computer, ubiquitous computing can occur using any device, in any location, and in any format. A user interacts with the computer, which can exist in many different forms including laptop computers, tablets, and terminals in everyday objects such as a refrigerator or a pair of glasses.

The goal of ubiquitous computing is to create ambient intelligence where network devices embedded in the environment provide unobtrusive connectiv...

Artificial Intelligence could help monitor jobsite social distancing

2020-04-16T13:34:00-04:00

Computer vision paired with artificial intelligence is already in use on construction sites, analyzing photos and video of a site to spot safety hazards and identify possible construction errors. But an idea pitched from a construction contractor has spurred A.I. vendor Smartvid.io to add social distancing monitoring to its feature set.

According to ENR, Smartvid.io, a company whose AI is already able to spot workers and PPE use from video and still images, received a client request to also monitor social distancing on construction jobsites in light of the COVID-19 crisis. Since the technology could already track people on the site, the new feature was swiftly developed in a matter of weeks. "Now the user can get a daily, automatic report from every one of their projects in the country on whether social distancing is happening or not," said Josh Kanner, CEO and founder of Smartvid.io, reports ENR.

Would artificial intelligence like to say something about architecture?

2019-04-26T10:07:00-04:00

Artificial Intelligence, as a discipline, has already been permeating countless fields, bringing means and methods to previously unresolved challenges, across industries. The advent of AI in Architecture is still in its early days but offers promising results. More than a mere opportunity, such potential represents for us a major step ahead, about to reshape the architectural discipline.

Stanislas Chaillou, a Master's candidate in Architecture and Fulbright fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, believes that artificial intelligence can offer in-depth analysis and alternative strategies to the design of floor plans.

Orientation Diagrams, by Stanislas Chaillou

Chaillou argues that higher degrees of optimization, contextualization and classification are just a few of the benefits of applying artificial intelligence to the design of floor plans. "Generative Adversarial Neural Networks — or GANs- are here our weapon of choice," Chaillou writes. "Within the field of AI, Neural Networks stands as a key field of investigation. The creative ability of such models has been recently evidenced, through the advent of Generative Adversarial Neural Networks. As any machine-learning model, GANs learn statistically significant phenomena among data presented to them."

GAN-enabled Space Layout under Morphing Footprint, b y Stanislas Chaillou

We have already seen design softw...

Questioning urban truisms with artificial intelligence

2016-08-10T14:11:00-04:00

computer vision and artificial intelligence are the keys to a debate behind a door that’s been locked for a long time: the social impact of design in cities. [...] "Now that we have new tools to measure aesthetics, we can estimate its consequences" [...] [MIT Media Lab associate professor Cesar Hidalgo] wants to develop more empirical ways to study cities and the way they’re perceived—and, in turn, provide better science to the policy-makers who shape legislation.

More on neural networks and aesthetic quantification: