 The best way to learn about AI is just to play with these tools. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. Welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing. I am Zach Williams alongside Beth Popney-Glove. And we have a great show lined up for you today. We're talking about AI, architecture, what it means for manufacturers. Beth, do you want to introduce our guest? I'm really excited to welcome our guest because he's currently one of my favorite follows on LinkedIn. We're so excited to have Paul Kesskes in the studio with us today. He is the editor-in-chief at Architizer and is blowing up LinkedIn with how architects are leveraging AI. So we are really excited to dive in with him. Paul, thanks so much for your time and welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here and I'm glad you're enjoying the content. It's kind of a crazy wild ride for me on LinkedIn right now too. Before we get started, why don't you take a couple of minutes and just introduce yourself, Architizer. You can even introduce AI to our listeners. So I am an architect as you can probably tell from my accent originally. I'm from England and I graduated from Edinburgh University and then University College London and I became a registered architect back in 2011. My story to get here to New York as an editor is kind of long, the canned version. I worked as an architect for a couple of years, but during that time, I became a little discontented with practice because I was just doing big residential developments and very similar kind of suburban developments over and over and over again and it wasn't super creative and I felt like I needed a creative outlet. So I started a blog. It was called The Angry Architect. I don't know if anyone's familiar with that, but I used to just write on Facebook rants about architecture and about projects which I liked or didn't like in a sort of dry-witted way. It was good fun. It wasn't too angry actually, but from there I got a contact from an architect to reach out and they said, you know, would you like to write for us? We're interested in having an architect give their opinions from the inside of the industry and I didn't think that it could be real because it seemed too good of an opportunity, but a long story short, I became kind of a columnist for an architect for a number of years and then during that time, I realized I like to write and tell stories about architecture more than I liked actually practicing architecture in a way. So I asked them if it was possible to come and work in New York with them after many attempts at getting visas and many, many years of difficult trials and tribulations around that. I finally settled in New York and I've been here actually eight years now, so 2015 to now and it's great because I love to tell stories. I love to write, but I still love architecture. So I get to have the best of both worlds in that sense. Architizer, for anybody that isn't familiar with it, we have the world's largest online community of architects by number of projects. We have well over a hundred thousand projects on the site. Essentially a huge database, a huge library of incredible modern architecture, but we also have a blog element to it where we tell stories about trends within the industry and also culture within the architecture profession and that kind of overlaps with technological innovations. So we write a lot about the latest rendering software and the best laptops for architects and things like this and this kind of content is proven to be really popular. So when AI blew up in this past year in this ridiculously fast pace that has done, we of course had to try and position ourselves as the conduit, I guess, to help architects learn more about that. What I think is interesting about AI is that no one really knows that much about it because it's so new in our industry. So even though I claim to be a mentor in this area on LinkedIn, I'm really just learning at the same time, right? I don't claim to know a lot, but I'm curious and I'm an explorer in the space and I think that's what's chimed with people on there. Other architects are doing the same thing. So we're kind of learning together. And in terms of building products, I think that that is obviously a huge overlap with the physical materials that go into a building. You can't get to the physical building without starting with this technology and starting with the process, turning a concept into a construction, turning a rendering into reality is really what architecture is all about in terms of our content. All right, I'm going to pull up your LinkedIn account here, Paul. And for our listeners, if you want to see this, check out the show notes and or check out this video on YouTube as well. If you want to see what we're actually looking at, because I know you're probably listening, I'll try to do my best to describe what we're looking at here. But if you want to see the actual visuals, check out the show notes on our website at mbo.com. So Paul, let's look at this real quickly. You're explaining different examples of AI here on your site. And then you've got this one, the second post I'm looking at here is this AI cheat sheet for architects and designers, which has gotten gosh, 1300 likes, 92 comments, almost 200 reposts. My goodness. And then you're like highlighting all of these different people and what they're doing on architecture and AI. Talk me through like what you're trying to do here. Like what was the purpose of this and what is some of the feedback you're getting from architects in this space? I think the biggest challenge that everybody's had with AI is the speed with which it voices upon us and also the number of different tools and the number of different directions in which we can potentially go with this new tool. All right. It's kind of hard to know where to start. And as I say, I'm learning with everyone else. It's hard for me to know where to start to. So one thing I like to do is curate. I'm a curator of usually of architecture projects through architizer, but in this case, I'm basically collecting all the information that I can in terms of the tools and the leaders in the space. So in the top left corner, you can see there's a number of different people that I called out as being great people to follow in terms of knowledge sharing. And this is just my personal perspective. I'm sure I've missed hundreds of names that could potentially go into this list. But I think this is the best place to start because we're all in a learning phase. We can't possibly know where to start. So actually, these people help start Steven is a practicing architect who is experimenting with mid journey, which most people have probably heard of by now, creating images from text prompts and each one of these in the list. I've kind of given just a taster of what they do in a slightly more focused way so you can kind of zone in on the people that may be most relevant to you. And then a lot of the rest of the sheet is calling out the different tools. Most people probably heard of chat GPT by now, but it turns out there's dozens more like this. And then in terms of architecture, obviously image generation, rendering, visualizing concepts and planning all of these kind of topics, they have their own AI tool sets emerging in the space. And so I've just listed out some of those that look promising to me. I can't guarantee that they are the perfect real deal. They were obviously all in the experimental stage themselves, but they're a starting point for people to start playing around and exploring because I think that's the best way to learn about AI is just to really like play with these tools or what's nice about them is that and I think why AI has become so popular so fast is because it's not very technical. You can really describe what you want, right? Through a text or through a sketch. And then the AI can use that information and create something that a lot of people could never create before in terms of a very photorealistic image and this kind of thing. So it's sort of allowing a lot more people to play and to explore design concepts. Along the bottom there's a chat GPT formula, which is something from a previous sheet that I made. And again, it's a starting point because with chat GPT, you can essentially ask it anything and it can give you somewhat useful information on anything. So because it can do anything, it's hard to know like what to ask it first. So this gives a kind of a template of where you might start, you know, you might say act as a residential architect, create a client brief template and consider these specific site constraints that you've got from your client. We actually have an article where we actually plug those in and we publish the result on ArcSizer. And it's pretty good. It's quite detailed. One thing that's important to note about all of this is that AI is not actually smart. The people that put the information in are the key. AI is not thinking. It's all about taking the information that you provide and using its existing data that it's been trained on and then coming up with the most likely result that you might want. So it's not that dissimilar from a search engine in a way, but it is able to produce images and words that kind of mimic or mirror a human interaction, which I think is why it makes it very, very accessible for us. I want to ask you a question about that, that maybe contradicts what you just said, because I do think what you just said is really important, which is it's not smart. It's not creating. And that's a big talking point for us when we've talked about AI is at this moment, it's not net new creation. It's just being able to put things together in a really similar or smart way, but it's not inventing. So for years, I've been following architects on LinkedIn and watching them use BIM to create VR and AR models of the building that they're building. And for a long time, that's been what's been talked about is like, hey, the next wave in technology and architecture is really how BIM is going to directly impact VR and the like, both really kind of cool, nerdy parts of that. And also like the really important building science infrastructure, making sure that your HVAC is a great way to model that out, right? Like making sure that your HVAC is able to flow freely through and you're not getting hot spots, cold spots, leaks, stuff like that. What's interesting about what you're talking about a lot on your LinkedIn and you and I both follow this architect, his name is Omar Nure, and he's from Budapest. So I'm very sure that's not how you pronounce his name. So I'm sorry, Omar, if you ever hear this, but he's using mid journey to model out a lot of just different variations of how a building could be visually represented. And it's really cool. We can post on the show notes also because he goes through like six to 15 different quick images of just small variations, but all that have a really significant visual impact. My point is what AI is doing is bringing technology to the beginning of the design cycle instead of kind of bolting it on to the end. So where I would want to go with this or what I would love to hear you talk about is how do you see that impacting how design evolves or how design trends evolve since we now have the ability to iterate 15 different building designs can be visually represented in a matter of minutes. That would take potentially months previously. What are your thoughts about that? It's a great question. I love those animations that Omar and others have started to create. These image generators used to be so random. So every image was completely different. I think what designers struggled with a little bit was the consistency and the control around the tools. Now there's a little bit more control where you can select one area of an image and you can prompt new parts for that one image, which I think is what Omar is doing. But I think it becomes quite a profound change in the way that we need to think about design. I mentioned curating earlier and I think that the ability to curate and review different design options suddenly becomes a much more important aspect of this. And it's going to be a combination of things, right? Because there are emotional and difficult to measure values in architecture. A building can make us feel inspired and can make us feel oppressed or it can make us feel comfort. And these are things that where I think that humans, at least for now, still have one over on AI because these are such difficult things to measure and it's also unique to each individual person. So there has to be an element of thinking about which of these 10 options I've just created make me feel good and are going to make the user feel good, whatever way that might be. It obviously will depend on if it's a home, a hospital, or a school. But then there's going to be a much more intelligent layer. You were talking about BIM, sort of combining those emotional aspects and those hard to measure aspects with the more technical side of architecture where you might run a design through software that's going to tell you if it's going to be environmentally sound. Is this particular window pattern going to make the interior way too warm or is it going to be really bad in terms of body carbon if we use this material or that material? And so there's this really objective, measurable data side of things and then there's this hard to measure poetic side of architecture. There's always been a tension with those two things. It's not a new problem or a new challenge, but I think it's exciting because I think a lot of these AI tools, as they develop, they're going to be able to be combined in more ways to get the best of both of those sides of things and much earlier in the process, like you say. But all of it is quite speculative because we don't know where this is taking us right in six months. This conversation could be hilariously out of date. I'm not sure, but it will be exciting to see. Speaking of which, Paul, I'd be curious to get your take on where you think this is going to go, which, as you said, three months ago or talk about today is different. If you see the trend of what's happening with architects and how they're using AI, where do you see this going, you know, zoom out a year or two? How do you think it's changing the architecture industry as a whole? Are we just giving, say, chat GPT a prompt to spit us out a plan or is it continuing to help the ideation and creative process in a different way? Obviously, I'm biased because I'm an architect. I lean towards a positive on this. Oh, also as an editor, by the way, it's kind of scary when people can create an essay in a second on on chat GPT. You wonder as a writer what that what I mean. So it's sort of like affecting everyone right now, right across all the disciplines. In terms of architects, I think this is something that's always been difficult for architects to articulate is what is their true value. And I don't think their true value has ever been the ability to draw a plan accurately or the ability to create a rendering that looks really realistic, right? It's something more to do with how are they able to turn their clients needs and desires or the needs of a wider community of its public space into a tangible space and then also be able to communicate that same idea to contractors, to product manufacturers and turn this into a real space. Because ultimately, pretty much everything in the AI realm right now is digital. And at the end of the day, architecture and buildings are physical and they will continue to be created by people. There are robots and there's 3D printing and all of this. So maybe AI is going to move into the physical more and more in the future. But I think it's the communication element that is important and the coordination between different stakeholders and different people. You need to be able to make your client happy. But you also need to be able to give a brief or give guidance to contractors, product manufacturers, you need to be able to give them something that they can feasibly create. And sometimes what the client wants and what's possible in the budget and in the timeframe and all of this kind of thing, they don't necessarily always align. So an architect is a creative mediator, I would say that really understates how exciting and inspiring architects can be. But really, I think it is a lot about coordination. And I think even with all of these new tools, it's again, it's going to be about using the right tool in the right moment. And it's going to be, can we combine this software with this software to get the desired outcome? There's always going to be a place for somebody to be the pilot of all of those complex moving parts. Automation is good for very, very narrow tasks. But architecture is so complicated. And I don't really see it being the whole process from sketch to building in the real world, being fully automated in our lifetime, like even with the pace of AI. So there's always going to need to be someone coordinating and driving that process. I think this is a great use case for how do we embrace AI even when AI feels like a potential threat? That's a conversation that everybody's having right now. And it's like, I mean, I have to imagine that at the dawn of true adoption of the internet, everybody had a very similar feeling of is the internet just going to take our jobs. I was originally a literature major and I wanted to go into publishing. And all of my circle was like, do you know about this thing that's called the internet? And no one's going to read newspapers anymore and nobody's going to read books. And that feels very much like the moment that we're in with AI and where we've sat and I love where you guys are sitting is the no, let's use it for what we can use it for because there's things that I do in my day that are, frankly, a waste of my time and not my highest and best use of my brain because like you said, Paul, I think you articulated it really well, which is the thing that a machine can't do is assess a situation on a human need level and then translate that into something really beautiful and creative and functional and then put that into practice. But it can take what you do with that and then show you a rendering a lot quicker than you could sketch it up. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Like that's exactly where something like this should sit. Let me ask you one question, thinking about that instance, taking an architects idea and putting it into something like mid journey, or we think about like what Omar is doing and all of his quick turn gifts with the many, many iterations from mid journey. If I'm a manufacturer, I'm obviously not in mid journey, right? That's not a Benjamin Moore paint color that we're seeing visualized. It's not a very specific facade manufacturer that we're seeing visualized there. How is a manufacturer should I be thinking about this? Because I'm not in mid journey. Is this something I need to be trying to figure out how to get my products more into mid journey? Where would you say manufacturers need to come into this? Great question. I think that we're all at right. We're like, where do I fit in with this? As editors and writers, we're feeling the same way. As I said earlier, I think I would 100% encourage everybody to play around and explore with these tools, even if you don't think that it's going to be relevant to you specifically or your industry specifically. It's just good to be able to know what others are using, right? If architects are using this tool, then it's pretty useful, I would say for you to understand how that tool works. And I think following all of those people on that LinkedIn post is also a great idea to just absorb knowledge and become familiar with this world, right? It's huge and daunting and it changes all the time. It's a lot. So I think learning from others and being a sponge is always good. But more specifically to product manufacturers, maybe there is a space for product designers, certainly on the design side of building products to iterate in the same way. And you know, you can create so many different swatches and so many different effects using these kind of tools. It's tricky because again, it's that you're in the curatorial role where you're like, okay, I created a hundred different metal finish effects or something like this. If you're a cladding manufacturer, what do I do with all of this? And then I think it comes back down to doing what you've always done if you're a product manufacturer, which is to listen to your clients and listen to what are the needs of your community. It's great that you can potentially create a hundred images of different prototypes or different variations of your existing product, for example. But it doesn't really mean much if you don't know which of those hundred is the one that your architects so your clients might want. So I think it's kind of interesting in terms of marketing content, I would recommend writing about these things and speaking about and writing about how you're learning through these tools and ask others what they think. So if you're on LinkedIn or even if you just have some kind of blog on your own website, ask your community what they're doing with this, what it's surfacing in the way of compelling ideas, design ideas and really create a two-way conversation because being able to create a million images in a second is not really that much more helpful than creating one image over a very long period of time. It doesn't really do much for you unless you are able to translate that into some kind of knowledge. You could do a survey, you could even create 10 images, put it out there to your community and say which of these images are most compelling to you and why. And so you could use it as a surveying device, a visual survey. I think it's kind of interesting because you can do it fast. That's more possible now. So in terms of digital prototyping, I think it's very compelling, these image generators, but it's really thinking about how you can make it work for you and your particular niche. And ultimately, it doesn't really make a difference unless you know what your client wants or what your client thinks about what you create. Right. So I think that's the most important thing. Paul, this has been great, man. Thank you so much for just sharing with us and talking through this. And I do want to call out real quick before you go that Beth probably likes every single one of your posts and is vangirling every single one. You guys have some awards coming up that I think are important that you should talk about real quick. Yes, yes, we have the Arcadizer Product Awards. It's part of our larger A plus award program. And it's launching in October. And it basically provides a platform for makers of any product across all the different typologies, whether it be windows and doors, whether it be cladding, whether it be furniture, lighting, everything you can think of it's in a building that'll be a category for you. It's a way to tell your story and a totally different way. We highlight winners in all sorts of different ways. There are opportunities to do webinars to have articles on Arcadizer and be shared with our community. The jury is made up of over 200 architects. So just by entering, you're going to get seen by some of the people you probably want to be seen by regardless of the outcome. So that's really exciting. There's also a public vote as well. And we have four million followers across our social media platforms globally. So it's a pretty good way to get your product seen. You can tell your story in your own words, a combination of amazing images and compelling text. You can craft your entry any way that you want to. And you can also submit a video as part of the entry. So there's so many different ways that you can get involved. It starts in October and runs through the beginning of next year. It's all about innovation. So even if it's experimental, whatever your newest product is, we would love to see it be a part of the program and highlight the innovations within that. Paul, man, thank you again for coming to the show. This has been great. And for our listeners, if you enjoyed this, make sure you check us out at vendio.com slash podcast to subscribe and get more till next time. I'm Zach Williams alongside Beth Plomby Glove. Thanks everybody.