NIRSA Conference Attendees Discover AI’s Impact on Facility Design

Artificial Intelligence is dominating the headlines, and NIRSA is no exception. On Thursday morning, attendees got a crash course on design assistant AI and its ability to revolutionize campus recreation at “Transforming Recreational Design: Optimizing Wellbeing Through AI.”

The session was hosted by the team at Little Diversified, including president Gavin Myers, project architect and leader of the Emerging Tech CoLab, Grant Saso, and principal Lynn Reda.

The team gave an introduction to AI, including how to apply an AI design assistant to projects. They also presented a specific recreation facility case study, Georgia Gwinnett College’s Convocation and Recreation Center.

Saso explained the ins and outs of Little’s Emerging Tech CoLab, which looks at new technology and cutting-edge tools, including tools that haven’t been widely adopted. So far, that has included AI, automation and digital fabrication all in the name of efficiency.

Reda explained that AI is “a quick way to consistently render different ideas and allow us to get to a decision much more quickly.”

Using AI, the Little Diversified team showed attendees how to brainstorm what a space could look like, conceptualize and visualize a new space and transform line drawings into renderings.

For the Georgia Gwinnett College project specifically, Reda showed how she could use AI to process photos of other buildings on the Gwinnett campus and ask it to create an image based on the characteristics of other campus buildings. She said the common characteristics were “some brick, lots of glass, and an interesting roof line.” From there, the team could use the AI-generated images as a jumping-off point with the clients. 

When customizing an open-AI model, the team showed how AI-generated design ideas could encompass a college’s mission statement, behavioral psychology and student demographics to suggest design ideas, including the number of steps a student is likely to walk to reach an amenity or ideal stair placement. It could even give suggestions for areas to cut costs.

Despite the incredible capabilities of AI, Myers’ final message to attendees was clear. “AI does not design,” he said. The team encourages adoption of AI as a way to ideate on a new project, but the job of truly designing a space will always come back to the human architect