KI.BAU Artificial Intelligence in Architecture

KI.BAU is a project being developed and conducted at the Detmold School of Design, part of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Ostwestfalen-Lippe. It focuses on researching the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in architectural design, modelling, production and management processes, particularly on the communication between users, processes and the building itself in various development and life-time phases. Hence the research aims to develop new tools and AI-supported process chains for the design, production and communication of architecture. This includes the training and implementing prototypical machine learning algorithms to autonomously evolve and optimize field-specific processes and workflows. As mentioned above, a critical question KI.BAU explores is how we, as planners, builders and users, will communicate with architecture in the future, in its phases of creation and use but also beyond. This also involves, besides virtual interfaces, examining the physical interaction with a building, its behaviour, responsiveness and adaptation to certain conditions. The primary goal of the research at KI.BAU is to transform architecture into an intelligent, to some degree self-sustaining, self-reflective and maybe even evolving ‘ecological system’. This system should be comprehensively linked with its creators, users, devices, computers, its (biological) environment and networks. Consequently, a building must be viewed as an organism that communicates, interacts and adapts to other connected or related organisms and entities.