Advancing generative AI in architectural research

Juniors Aidan Oh, a computer science major, and Andrei Vince, a computer engineering major, earned a stipend and insight into the field of architecture working with Assistant Professor of Architecture Sabri Gökmen.

Their challenge — use AI to quickly produce a 3D architectural visualization from a verbal description. 

“Generative tools frequently lack the precision needed for architectural applications,” said Vince in the students’ symposium poster presentation.

In a kind of reverse engineering, working from an image backwards, the students “taught” generative AI to recognize text prompts to produce photorealistic renderings of geometric structures.

“We created a Python (programming language) that can understand architectural descriptions in natural language and also automatically produce complex models and detailed images,” Oh said in the presentation.

Whereas a designer working without AI might take hours to produce a 3-D visualization, the automation that the students developed can produce the image in 17 seconds.

Gökmen is a computational designer, researcher and educator with over a decade of expertise in parametric modeling, generative art, digital fabrication and software development. He said that this research both explored the capacities of technology and how to more precisely use words to generate architectural imagery. It is a skill he will be helping students develop this academic year as the School of Architecture’s second year studio coordinator.

“As architects, I don’t think we know how to describe things yet,” he said. “We’re 3-D thinkers.”

Learn more about the research at https://symposium.foragerone.com/summer-2025/presentations/74542.