I interviewed a Project Manager working at Northeastern University's In-House Design Team. He has a few years of experience on this team as well as multiple years of experience in other architectural concentrations. As well as having at least 6-years of experience teaching at a college level.

SUMMARY

The individual is passionate about discovering meaning in both personal and collective experiences, influencing their hobbies and routines. In the design process, he emphasizes the pursuit of elevated solutions beyond mere problem-solving, particularly in architecture, where people explore the transcendent aspects of design. The interviewee views everyone as a designer in some capacity and underscores the importance of action over titles.

Regarding AI in design, he expresses cautious optimism, highlighting the need to understand tool limitations before widespread adoption. The discussion extends to questions of authorship and intellectual property when AI is involved in the creative process. The interviewee recognizes the potential of AI in technical aspects, particularly in generating accurate and error-free technical drawings.

Regarding a hypothetical shift away from the architectural/design field, the interviewee envisions his pursuits evolving organically, rooted in a perpetual quest for meaning. The interviewee's diverse interests include music, photography, art, and philosophy, reflecting a broader commitment to finding significance across various mediums. 

What are you passionate about?

I guess the very common thing that I am really into is just finding out what's meaningful to people. What's meaningful to me. And always like learning to find out things that I like and things that I value and always trying to explore and like trying to figure that out. 

So that ties into like certain hobbies that I do, certain routines and things like that. It's all an effort to try and find meaning. And I feel like that's something that I realize is something I'm really interested in general and it influences the things that I do. So

If you can save time in the design process, how would you fill that extra time?

I guess it would depend on the situation – the project that I save time on. So if I feel like I need to compensate and reinvest that time, maybe on the execution side and more of the technical aspects of executing the design or, if I feel like there are parts of the design that AI or whatever tools I'm using and I've pushed sort of the limitations of what they can do and I can take on the rest of the responsibilities, that I'd reinvest into design. So it would really depend on the situation that I'm in. 

And if you did not have to allocate the time back to the project, what would you do instead?

I think again, it would depend on the project because I think some projects feel like they're never done. I feel like there's always something to be refined, something else to explore. So I don't think it would feel like the job's complete. But to answer your question, if it was all taken care of I would spend time just on my passions because I think sometimes they don't always align with what you do for work. 

So, whenever those kinds of projects don't come along, then you need to sort of spend some time on the things you're really passionate about. So I would reinvest time on those things.

How do you define design?

Well, I think there are lots of ways to look at it. I think the easy answer would be that design is proposing a solution to a problem that requires a creative solution. But again, if that's really all that there is to design, why are we sometimes unsatisfied with just proposing a solution and not creating a solution that feels more elevated? And I feel like sometimes it can feel that way where we are always so unsatisfied and feel like there's always something to be done to further refine the project. 

And I don't think that it's because we haven't fully solved the problem I think we have but, that doesn't mean that there isn't anything else to really elevate the project, to make it fulfill other criteria than just the design problem at hand. 

For example, like any great architecture building might have the immediate problem of, you know, we have this programmatic need, we have this particular client that's trying to, trying to meet this timeline. But why is it that some buildings are valued much more than others? Like, Notre Dame is not just a cathedral or a church or a place of gathering. It's elevated to this other level. And I think that's sort of where I'm interested. What I'm interested in is, how come design also has this sort of elusive aspect where it can really transcend just like the problem-solving aspect of things that I think sometimes we can be a little bit too bogged down about and too pressured to worry about when there's also this other plane where we can actually do really great work that's not necessarily about solving the problem better, but it's actually just a better overall product, a better experience or more meaningful thing that we're creating. But it happens to also solve the problem really well. 

And I think that's where architecture kind of struggles is, we don't always have time to get to that next level. So that's why I'm interested in that question you were just talking about of if we were to if we had all that time saved, how do we, how, how do we reinvest it? And I guess my thought would be we reinvest it into design and that would mean also expanding, what our understanding of design is. That it's not just problem-solving. It's also this, these other things that could really elevate the work that we do. 

How do you define a designer?

I think anyone can design. It's really whether or not someone does it as a profession. I think it's just an operative word. Everybody designs, just like everybody creates, everybody writes in some capacity. I think it just depends on whether or not they're doing it as a profession. And then the degree and the scale of the project that they're taking on. 

People design things all the time, whether they're designing their daily routine or they're designing like, um, or they're planning something. There's always some kind of organization and problem-solving that needs design, that needs some kind of solution that helps you approach the problem in a structured way so that you can tackle it head-on and you can mitigate the problem or solve it altogether. 

So I think it's anybody who has those skills, and I think we all have the skills. It's just we have a specific ability to apply it to buildings. And we just happen to deal with a medium that's a very large scale that has a lot of different aspects to it and different dimensions. And it's a very difficult medium and discipline to work in because of that. I think that to me is what really defines the designer. 

And I think that helps to also take the pressure off of what you're doing. I've always attributed it to also like, calling yourself an artist feels weird. So I was like, ‘Oh, I'm an artist. Like I, I make art.’ But at the same time, just saying that at least maybe it's a personal thing like you trying to self-proclaim yourself as an artist. I think puts a lot of pressure on what you're doing. But if you just reduce what you're doing to the very bare activity, which is just use the verb, just say that you make stuff or you're a creator or you're a designer, or, you design – these are the actual things that you do. These are the actions that you take. It takes a lot of pressure off because ‘Oh yeah, everybody does that. Well, I'm a writer. Yeah. Everyone writes.’ And that's okay. 

You just have a special relationship with it. Maybe it's your profession. Maybe you write very specific things and more complex things that other people can't. But at least you don't have that pressure of, ‘This is my title and my identity.’ 

I guess to answer your question, I wouldn't focus so much on like, personally I don't focus so much on the title and designer as like a role, but more of where is the action to design, what's the act of designing? And that's to me is something that everybody does. It's just, we do it in different capacities and we apply it in different ways. 

What are your thoughts on image-generative A.I. being able to produce beautiful images in a short amount of time?

I think it's great.

Would you use this version of A.I. as a tool in your design process? 

I think I would. I think we have to understand the limitations of the tools that we use. I think the reason why I guess I'm still on an air of caution with AI is that we still do not understand the limitations of the tools we currently have. Even the ones from the past, we haven't exhausted all the possibilities. It's not like we ever would, but I think we have to get to a certain level of proficiency with the tools we already have before things get too carried away in a sense. 

I guess that's sort of my own worry with technology moving so quickly is that on the optimistic end, people will say, ‘it's really about like whoever commands the tool, who's deciding, and who has the knowledge. It's not like things will ever get outta control, but you can look at technology like anything else. We tend to weaponize technology for example. So you could argue that, ‘Well are we really being responsible with the technology that we're creating?’ So is this a user problem or is this a tool problem? And I feel even though the technology we're talking about is in regards to design and you can't really weaponize what we do quite as much, but AI, in general, can easily be weaponized. 

That's where my thought is sort of going is, if we are not quite that capable as users of tools that we currently have, AI is sort of like the next level thing that I think can be not dangerous unto itself, but it's can be dangerous. Us learning how to use it, and not understanding its limitations first of all, but also just not being responsible with it. The worry comes from the way that we use tools today, which has exhibited the way that we can misuse tools and also misunderstand their limitations.

Does the work belong to the person if AI was used? So if I was able to produce drawings using AI, does that belong to me or is that strictly AI's work? 

I think it gets into this larger question of authorship and intellectual property. Artists have done this for like a long time, especially at the tail end of the 20th century there's this artist called Sol Lewit who would have, other people do his art. He would just give them instructions. And so he was sort of questioning that idea of authorship, ‘Well, all I did was give them instructions and everybody's iteration was different from one another. But it all started from the same starting point. It was me, it was my thoughts down on paper instructions but then, there was this layer of interpretation. So then am I the author or are they the author? And is there even a point in questioning authorship at that point?’

That's sort of the same thing here where even if AI wasn't involved – say, I have an idea that I heard from a friend or something, and then I apply it to something else. Am I discrediting that person, or am I stealing authorship? You hear it all the time with the music lawsuits and things like that. There's always this question of authorship and trying to defend intellectual property that becomes a real slippery slope because it makes us assume that we work in a vacuum and that we have original ideas when in reality that's not true. 

And so if the tools are providing us with ideas – which I think is kind of a new thing – before it was merely just like a tool where we were commanding it to execute our ideas. But if AI can actually reciprocate ideas back to us, that's sort of a new interface that we haven't dealt with before. I think the bigger question is, are again, going back to the user, are we as a society sort of, psychologically prepared for our intellectual property to be threatened?

What are your thoughts if A.I. was advanced enough to create technical drawings?

I think that's where technology comes in its most handy. It is because it never gets tired. It never runs outta stamina. You just have a battery charge it or whatever. It can compute information faster than any human possibly could. And that's what the technical side is for. All we're doing when we're making plans and stuff, we're just trying to make things work. 

It's problem-solving where we are just trying to align different parameters to fit whatever we're doing. So if we know the building needs to be this big and this wide and this, it needs to fit this many rooms or this many occupants and stuff like that. That's all data, that's all stuff that AI can just do for us. And it can keep all those things in mind. 

And for us, there'd be human error where like we have so many parameters to deal with that. We get into the field and we all just forget that this one part of the room has a lower ceiling. There are so many other things that we're worrying about that we forgot about that one parameter. So, those are things that AI just wouldn't forget. It will always account for whatever you put into it. So at the very beginning, you put everything in. So to me, there's more of a potential positive contribution for AI in the architecture, like workflow in the technical side because of that. 

Not only does that have more consequences because if you miss something technically in the field, it could potentially be dangerous or it could cost a lot of money, also set the schedule back. There are real material consequences, to missing stuff like that. Whereas the design, not that it's not consequential, but it doesn't quite have the same material consequences. It's not quite high-stakes decision-making. I think there is a place for AI in the design in terms of maybe producing deliverables, but I see a lot of potential, in producing technical drawings, assuming we have all the information at hand.

What would you do if you were not in the architectural/design field? 

I guess I don't have an answer just because I think I would let things just sort of evolve organically. I tend to go into different phases of things that I really enjoy. And going back to the first question, I think it's always been like in this endless quest of trying to find something new, something meaningful. So that to me sort of transcends like the titles and the roles and the different disciplines even. I really enjoy like, like music is a big passion of mine. Photography and art and, philosophy, all kinds of different things just to pursue that idea of building meaning and trying to find it in places. That sort of transcends the mediums. And so, I can't say for sure what it would be if I wasn’t in architecture, but it would always be rooted in that. 

So whatever, whatever form that takes, whatever activity and of doing, it's always in like for that reason.