BACTalks24: Future of Digital Technologies in Architecture: AI, Immersive, BIM 2.0

I had the pleasure of producing and co-moderating this panel talk on Future Digital Technologies: AI, Immersive, and BIM 2.0. My co-moderator was good friend and AEC technologies colleague Evan Troxel of TRXL, the podcast (and ArchiSpeak, the podcast).

Panelists

Taking place as the primary opening session of the day at BAC Talks 24, the one-hour-long session featured distinguished academics and practitioners focused on leading tech-forward architecture firms.

From Boston’s fourth largest architecture firm, Nirva Fereshetian, principal and chief information officer at CBT Architects, shared amazing insights about how CBT is addressing rapidly changing dynamics in architecture practice and how her digital practice group—one of the larger such groups in the Boston area—is leading in the industry with both digital and physical office innovations such as CBT’s Media Room with sophisticated “green screen” technologies, hybrid physical model and digital interactive workspaces, and advanced hybrid and virtual meeting capabilities. (to learn even more about these things, see, Architosh: “A Model 21st Century Architecture Practice: Discussions with CBT Architects’ Nirva Fereshetian,” 12 Mar 2024).

Also on the panel was distinguished architect, professor, and author Randy Deutsch, FAIA. Like Nirva, his contributions to the discussion were highly illuminating—as to be expected from his deep insights in working with both practitioners and architecture students on the most pressing digital challenges in practice. Randy has written several highly regarded books, including the award-winning Superusers and Convergence: The Redesign of Design. Architosh published an in-depth interview with Randy Deutsch on these two excellent must-read books back in 2019. (see, Architosh: “Professor Randy Deutsch—Discussing the Future of Architects: Convergence and Superusers (Part 1),” 16 Sep 24)

Also on our panel was Dr. Mahesh Daas, President and ACSA Distinguished Professor, BAC (Boston Architectural College), who is also the co-author of Towards a Robotics Architecture, a superb compendium of the state-of-the-art on robotics in the field of architecture (which differs on some levels from robotics in construction). Dr. Daas provides a 64-thousand-foot overview of AI in the AEC industry at the closing of this talk, which offers an intriguing set of facts and warnings.

Finally, our fourth panelist is BAC adjunct professor and architect Jason Arndt, RA, LEED AP, founder and principal of Zephyr Architects. Jason has been teaching a course on AI at the BAC, which challenges students to think about how artificial intelligence will alter the role of the architect in society and how our skills as architects will need to adapt.

Discussing both AI, Immersive, and BIM 2.0, the hour-long talk with a Q&A session at the end sheds uncommonly understood light on aspects of all three topics. To watch, go here.