How AI and Robotics Will Evolve Architecture and Design with Dr. Mahesh Daas

With an academic career spanning 23 years at four universities, Dr. Mahesh Daas, DPACSA, ACSA Distinguished Professor, is President of the Boston Architectural College (BAC), a published author and editor, and notable leader in the design community.

Dr. Daas recently spent time with us discussing his role at the BAC along with predictions for the impact of robotics and artificial intelligence on architecture and design.

Your career has taken you in some unconventional directions. As the BAC celebrates its 130th anniversary, you're describing fundamental shifts in the way we design. Can you say more about your vision for the future of architecture?

My life and educational experiences as a first-generation student and first-generation immigrant resonate with the experiences of many of the BAC's students. Being an immigrant is at once humbling and liberating-and fundamentally entrepreneurial. It is like running a start-up: you start with a vision and a few resources. In my case, I arrived with a suitcase and a few hundred bucks in my pocket. It is definitely an entrepreneurial journey.

Having worked in practices and different institutions in Illinois, Kansas, Indiana and Texas as well as having gone through a mid-career doctoral program at University of Pennsylvania while holding a full-time job in Indiana, I benefited from a sense of liberation by experiencing multiple organizational and disciplinary perspectives. Architecture and design can be inclusive of many things. In addition to being important professions, they are about different ways of seeing the world, engaging the world, making the world, and facilitating life as it unfolds in extraordinary ways.

A broader approach to design connects with the BAC in an interesting way because it is also entrepreneurial. We recognize design not just as professionals, vertically, but as a way of thinking, horizontally connecting all aspects of life and work. Design is becoming the new liberal arts. At the BAC we can facilitate that shift, by recognizing design literacy is as important to the society as preparing design professionals.

And now there are fundamental shifts in the way we design. Design is about understanding human needs at the individual, institutional and societal levels. Understanding technology enabling us to live in a particular way is essential to the future of humankind. Design is synthetic in the way it connects and brings together diverse bodies of knowledge such as humanities, arts and sciences.

In addition to creating great products and buildings, design creates value by driving innovation. Some of the greatest companies in the world today, such as Apple, Tesla, Amazon, and Airbnb place design at the center of their value proposition.

Can you describe how you see robotics and artificial intelligence influencing the built environment?

Robots and artificial intelligence (AI) are rolling into all walks of life and all corners of the world. They represent the next technology to transform the fields of architecture and design.

The past decade's surge towards more computationally defined building systems and highly adaptable open-source design software has left the field ripe for the integration of robotics-whether through large-scale building fabrication or through more intelligent and adaptive building systems. Through this surge, architecture has not only been greatly influenced by these emerging technologies, but has begun influencing other disciplines in unexpected ways. I envision the BAC will play a role in educating the future generations in these technologies-making them accessible and credible.

Part of the fear is a world where people are excluded; where biases would be built in unchecked, and there could be problems of social justice. That is a perspective not often addressed adequately in discussions about robotics and AI. We can shape these technologies by being at the table, being entrepreneurial and sketching visions of the future for a critical, livable society with liberties.

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