AI will cause job losses for architects. Or maybe the opposite, if Fosters are the model.
Oliver Lowrie
Everyone says AI means job losses for architects. The top of this year's AJ100 points the other way. Foster + Partners are betting harder on AI than anyone, and they are hiring.
AI will cause job losses for architects. You have heard it, I have heard it, half the profession believes it. This year's AJ100 suggests the opposite might be true, if Fosters are the model.
I love reading the AJ100 every year, but I basically just read the front and back pages to see whether the top and the bottom are going up or down.
This year the top dog, again, is Foster + Partners. They are up in both size and revenue, with UK architect headcount rising to 711 and global fee income jumping 13 percent to £615 million, according to the AJ100.
They are also probably the practice embracing AI harder than anyone. Their talk at NXT BLD blew me away. If they sold their internal systems on the open market, they would put a load of CAD software out of business.
But they do not sell them. They keep them as internal tools to make themselves more efficient.
And therefore more profitable. And therefore more valuable. And, here is the bit the doom-mongers should sit with, they employ more architects than they did last year. While making cool buildings.
The lesson is simple. AI used well makes the business run better. When the business runs better, it hires, it invests and it takes on more ambitious work. Because AI makes the business run better, we all get better cities.
Job losses are a choice about how you use the technology. Fosters have made a different choice. Seems like a good model to me.