RIBA Journal
September 2025: Future Business of Architecture
‘You need to understand what it’s for’: how should architects be preparing for an AI-charged future?
When it comes to harnessing technology’s fast-moving tide, what should architecture practices be doing? Pamela Buxton asks five human experts about artificial intelligence and their approach to digital strategy, training and using different tools.
Above: Digital director, ADP, and member of RIBA Council’s RIBA AI, Generative Design and Data Expert Advisory Group, leading on ethics and practice in data.
Does your practice have a digital strategy? Does it have an AI policy and provide AI CPDs? These are all steps introduced by Chris Fulton at the 100-strong practice ADP, to ensure it is not “blindsided” by the technological upheavals underway in the architectural marketplace, both now and in the future.
“My worry for the next few years is that we’re in a state of such transition and chaos and churn that we lose that critical thinking – and then we start making rash decisions that actually could have waited,” he says of the profession’s response to the array of software in the market.
ADP has established a digital group to road-test new software tools ahead of investment decisions to ensure they meet expectations for greater efficiency, not just in isolation, but when used within the practice’s systems as a whole.
“We’ve built a little incubator within the company, which can make informed judgements about the value of technology in particular areas,” he says.
Regarding AI, the practice is using CPDs to learn how tools such as ChatGPT work and what they are and aren’t good for to help navigate the current “gold rush” of tools out there. Setting out an AI policy has been important, not just for obvious reasons such as avoiding unwise sharing of intellectual property, or information protected by a non-disclosure agreement, but to clarify scope of use. AI-generated images can be shared with clients in a mood board for example, but not presented as a render.
Fulton sees AI as a useful “broadening tool” to help with areas beyond the architect’s core expertise. Specific applications, for instance generating massing studies or solar studies, by tools that use machine learning algorithms, are also really useful.
He is also optimistic for the future: “Ultimately, we’ll get to a point where we know the tools that are good for us, and we use them well, and we’re in charge of our tools. It’s about being really focused on what it is you’re actually trying to do.”