At Futurice, we see AI as an empowerment. An extension of what we can do. It makes the invisible visible. Over the past 25 years, Futurice has grown to almost 850 employees. And this growth created silos, small companies within the organisation. So we started to feed a platform with all the knowledge of our organisation. AI allows me to know more at once. It allows me to go to levels that I could never go to because I didn’t even know they existed. At the end of the day, we designers are increasingly knowledge workers. AI allows us to deal with complexity to create relevant products and access knowledge.
We are even using AI to make code lighter, saving energy and eliminating waste. From a broader perspective, digital transformation always goes hand in hand with sustainability management. We can’t do it if we don’t digitise, automate processes or use technology. With AI, we are currently in the exploration phase, but when it comes to applications, we are looking at where we can eliminate redundant tasks by making processes more efficient and faster, thus reducing costs.
Yesterday I heard a report on the use of AI-powered avatars in special education, allowing non-verbal children to communicate verbally with the world. AI can promote inclusion – and that’s already pretty sustainable.

– Sven-Anwar Bibi, Designer and Design-Manager

Artificial intelligence opens up a whole range of possibilities for making architecture more sustainable, particularly in the construction industry: optimisation algorithms can help us design buildings more sustainably, improve the amount of light entering them and divide up floor plans more efficiently. In operation, energy consumption can be minimised by integrating AI into the control of building services. When a building is demolished, AI can help categorise and catalogue components, making them easier to reuse.

These possibilities, which currently seem limitless, are offset by the high energy consumption of computationally intensive AI models. Is this too high a price to pay for AI as a tool ? Now that we have a glimpse of the possibilities, the doors can no longer be closed.

We need regulations and guidelines as soon as possible to limit the misuse of this expensive technology and to guide us towards a socially and environmentally sustainable future.

– Laura Kiesewetter, Architect and Researcher

AI has great potential to transform construction, improve efficiency and promote sustainability. But it is important that AI methods are carefully evaluated.

AI methods that require training data, such as machine learning, are often not reliable for critical construction tasks such as decision-making. These methods typically rely on pattern recognition and statistics rather than logic, leading to errors that are difficult to reproduce. In addition, training requires large amounts of data and significant computing resources, often resulting in high energy and water consumption to cool the computers. Given the reliability requirements and high environmental costs, one might question whether these methods are worth using in construction, where error-free performance is essential.

In contrast, AI techniques such as case-based reasoning (CBR) and optimisation, which rely on logic and algorithms, offer more reliable solutions with significantly lower resource requirements. For example, CBR can be used to plan efficient construction schedules, resulting in less overtime and waste, and optimisation techniques can directly reduce a building’s energy consumption.

– Shermin Sherkat, Architect and Researcher