Spacemaker AI - Santa’s Gift or Santa Claus?
Spacemaker AI is a cloud-based platform that uses artificial intelligence and generative design to optimize urban developments. Founded in 2016, the company grew through funding, awards, and employee expansion before being acquired by Autodesk in 2020 for $240 million.
For designers, urban planners, and real estate developers, the platform assists in optimizing and exploring design options for urban developments.
As someone pursuing an Urban Designer Degree, I understand how difficult it can be to approach a site and deliver a proposal according to a client’s wishes. It is not like we are Santa Claus, right? Or maybe we can be.
What is Spacemaker AI?
Like other AI platforms, Spacemaker AI works within the field of design. The platform uses artificial intelligence and generative design to assist architects, urban planners, and real estate developers in optimizing and exploring design options for urban developments.
According to Standard boring definitions - Spacemaker AI is a cloud-based platform that utilizes artificial intelligence and generative design to assist architects, urban planners, and real estate developers in optimizing and exploring design options for urban developments.
In simpler words, it's like having a whole team of genius architects inside a computer!
Traditional design methods include tracing, coloring open spaces, figuring out built versus open areas, understanding sun-path diagrams, and carrying out other forms of analysis. Spacemaker AI does not mean saying goodbye to those methods. So the question that arises is why do we need it?
In February 2019, a student named Stanislas Chaillou from Harvard University wrote an article titled “The Advent of Architectural AI.” The article focused on inventions and innovations in architecture and included a timeline of developments in the field.
The timeline shows development within the segments of modularity up to parametricism. Modern structures require modern techniques just like modern problems require modern solutions.
Designers may approach a site by studying the area, analyzing the climate, fitting in the requirements, and then working through the detailed aspects of spatial design. They may also follow a different sequence. In either case, a project can involve one checklist for responding to the context and another for responding to the client’s requirements.
How did Spacemaker AI begin?
Håvard Haukeland, an architect, found himself struggling with an urban development project. He wanted to explore different design options that fit the project's rules and goals. According to the article, traditional design processes were slow and mundane.
Haukeland later teamed up with Carl Christensen, an expert in machine learning, and Anders Kvale, an architect and urban planner.
The three founded Spacemaker AI in 2016, with the intent to use artificial intelligence to help designers speculate about and propose urban developments.
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The journey of Spacemaker AI covered the period from 2017 to 2020.
Spacemaker AI funding and growth
In 2017, Spacemaker AI received 15 million Norwegian kroner in funding and began a research project with SINTEF. The company also attracted 100 clients to its prototype design experimentation. Its CEO, Håvard Haukeland, was nominated as the top leadership talent in Norway.
The company was recognized as one of the most innovative start-ups by Hello Tomorrow. In 2018, it hired its first full-time employee and explored recruitment and learning opportunities at Harvard and MIT.
In 2019, Spacemaker AI won the Start-up of the Year award in Norway and secured Series A funding of $25 million.
Spacemaker AI acquired by Autodesk
In 2020, Spacemaker AI was acquired by Autodesk for $240 million.
The 115-person Spacemaker team enabled users to work with the platform through the mantra: “generate, optimize, and iterate on.”
The platform combines the information provided by the software with the preferences provided by users:
The software provides — zoning, laws, and the physical environment.
The users provide — quality preferences and market preferences.
The AI engine processes these inputs, and the outputs consist of proposals with all the criteria taken care of.
Spacemaker AI provides a medium that instigates ideas and gives users a lead towards their approach to the design.
Can AI replace architects?
An automated set of proposals from the software cannot snatch away the integrity of the industry. Architecture and urban design involve the emotions and coexistence of the structure’s language, the client’s language, and the designer’s language.
The founder of the company rightly stated in an interview with DN, in September 2019, “…we do not believe artificial intelligence will replace the architect. But it might be that architects who use artificial intelligence could replace architects who do not.”
The use of AI does not remove the need to understand the site, the client’s requirements, or the design process. It adds another tool to the set of methods available to designers.
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