AI in Architectural Education

On what it actually means to teach design in the age of generative AI — not as a threat to manage, but as a condition to understand.

april 2026  ·  3 min read

The conversation about AI in architecture tends to happen at two registers. Either it’s catastrophism — the tools will replace designers, make expertise redundant, collapse the discipline — or it’s boosterism, where every image generated by Midjourney is proof that the future has arrived and architecture schools need to catch up. Neither framing is particularly useful for the people who have to actually teach design.

I’ve spent the last few years trying to work out what a more grounded position looks like, through research, through curriculum development, and through a series of panels and talks where I’ve had to defend and refine these ideas in public. This is an attempt to write some of that thinking down properly.

The debate circuit

In 2024 and 2025 I participated in a number of public discussions about AI and architectural practice:

  • MOD. Ethos — AI: When Chatbots Play Doctor (2024). A panel at MOD. with Dr Aaron Davis and Dr Rebecca Marrone, facilitated by Clare Peddie from The Conversation. The framing was deliberately provocative — designed to surface the anxieties around AI in professional and creative fields rather than offer reassurance.

  • ACA SA Board of Studies in Practice — AI in Architecture (2025). An invited talk and content development session for the Architectural Continuing Australia SA chapter, focused specifically on digital pedagogy and emerging technology in architectural education.

  • Australasian-Pacific DesignInn Symposium — AI Debate (2025). A structured debate with practitioners from Woods Bagot, DKO, Meli Studio, UNStudio, and Neuron, moderated by Onyx ASW. The debate format forced positions that were harder to qualify than a typical panel — useful for testing where the genuine disagreements lie.

  • UniSA Academic Roadshow — India (2025). Four cities across India (Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, Bengaluru), representing UniSA Creative and speaking on AI’s impacts on architectural practice and education. The international context was genuinely different — the questions students and practitioners asked in Bengaluru were not the same questions being asked in Adelaide.

What I actually think

The paper with Chris Brisbin — Is AI Revolutionising Architecture and Design? (UniSA SOTL, 2024) — is probably the most direct articulation of my research position on this. The short version: yes, something is changing, but the change is more about the nature of skill and expertise than about replacement. The question isn’t whether students should use these tools. They already do. The question is what understanding they need to use them critically.

Curriculum implications

The question I keep coming back to

What does it mean to be ready for practice in 2026? The answer has always changed — from hand drafting to CAD to BIM. AI is another shift, but it’s happening faster and with less professional consensus about what the new baseline should look like. Architecture schools are trying to set standards for a moving target.

That’s not a comfortable position. But I think it’s more honest than pretending the answer is obvious.