Introduction - Tiny Home and ADUs?

As housing costs rise and cities search for new ways to increase the supply of housing, many are turning to housing concepts such as tiny homes and ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units) to meet this demand. Indeed, tiny homes and ADUs are no longer fringe experiments—they’re one of the most practical, creative, and financially savvy responses to rising housing costs, zoning constraints, and the desire to build something deeply personal. Whether you’re adding an ADU as a passive income device, downsizing into a tiny home tucked into a redwood forest, or exploring ideas that would never survive the complexity of a full-scale house, these smaller dwellings offer outsized benefits. Lower construction costs, faster build timelines, and fewer regulatory hurdles make tiny homes and ADUs uniquely accessible while still delivering flexibility, sustainability, and long-term value for homeowners and designers alike. 

Just as importantly, the rapid development AI-powered design is starting to offer tiny home and ADU designers opens up a rare opportunity for architectural expression at a human scale and offers a better way for owners and architects to communicate design goals. Indeed, these stakeholders can use AI to rapidly explore bold ideas early in the design process within real-world size and complexity limits—recreating long-forgotten styles like Art Nouveau in a redwood forest backdrop, or designing a small but grand feeling backyard rental inspired by the Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House. By leveraging AI-generated architectural concepts, tiny home builders can unlock creativity faster, iterate visually, and pursue exciting one-of-a-kind projects that feel intentional, expressive, and unmistakably personal—all without the friction of traditional early-stage design workflows.

ADU and Tinyhome Concept Gallery

With that context, let’s look at a concept gallery showing how large architectural ideas can be scaled down into thoughtfully designed ADUs and tiny homes.

Backyard Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs)

Many single family home neighborhoods severely limit the size of a house relative to its lot size, frequently leaving far more yard space than some people need. However, recent zoning law changes in many places, such as California, are allowing the construction of small backyard cottages (ADU’s) that homeowners can use to add density to their backyard, be that as a rental or frequently a way for elders to downsize and age in place close to family.

Understanding how this can fit into a lot is a case by case question, but let’s take a look at a few examples of what that could look like for the more ambitious ADU designers among us.

Remixing ADU Designs with AI

ADU design doesn’t have to default to something bland, boxy, or forgettable in order to be affordable. With thoughtful use of color, ornament, material changes, and a few strategic articulations, even a simple structure can be transformed into something expressive and memorable. The underlying box may stay the same, but the architectural character does not have to. This is where AI becomes especially useful as a creative amplification tool rather than a replacement for good design judgment.

One of the most effective ways to leverage AI in ADU design is through remixing, retexturing, and style transfer workflows. By feeding image references or existing ADU massing studies into AI image generators, designers and homeowners can rapidly explore variations in façade treatment, material palettes, window proportions, and architectural styles without committing to costly redraws. This makes AI a powerful early-stage tool for testing ideas, communicating design intent, and pushing beyond the default “developer-grade” ADU aesthetic. 

The slide deck below shows and example of what that AI-assisted design process might look like (also see our posts on the Best AI Image Generators of 2026, AI rendering, and of AI 2D to 3D tools for additional examples).

AI Remixing for ADU Design by AcanthusAlchemist

Tiny Home and ADU Interior Design

Despite all the focus on the facade in this article, the purpose of the facade is to create and protect an interior space. Thus we need to give equal consideration to the interiors as well. Though image generators aren’t the best at coherent space planning (keep an eye out for nonsensical furnishing decisions), they can provide a great jumping off point to envision and iterate on an interior design aesthetic that fits with your ADU design.

ADUs - Reimagining Architecture on a Smaller Scale

Ever seen a large magnificent house or famous, grandiose feat of monumental architecture and wished you could have just a slice of it at home? Well with image references, you can easily work the design elements of much larger projects into a much smaller form factor. This could be a great tool for architects looking to experiment with details on a smaller scale before applying them on larger projects, or just for architecture enthusiasts who want a quaint little dream home that takes inspiration from the greats.

Wilderness Tiny Homes

And lastly, while what we have looked at so far focuses mainly on ADU design for infill to make suburban neighborhoods denser, sometimes you just want to get away and build an off-grid tiny home out in the forest where you can realized your wildest architectural dreams. While these wilderness tiny homes aren’t traditional ADUs, the same design principles—efficiency, expression, and AI-driven iteration—apply directly to backyard ADU design.

The question then becomes: If you had your ideal tiny house in the woods, what would you build?

About the Author

AcanthusAlchemist

Designer and engineer exploring the intersection of AI, architecture, and urbanism.

email: acanthus@pixelstoplans.com

 

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In the evolving field of architecture, effectively merging AI-generated 2D images with your 3D modeling workflows is essential. While the holy grail of AI tools for architects would be one that generates BIM models directly from text or images, current AI 3D tools primarily cater to character and game asset creation, lacking the specificity required for architectural design. Therefore, architects must develop innovative workflows that combine various AI tools to bridge this gap.

In this AI Tool Tip, we’ll look at a quick way to convert a 2D architectural concept image (be that a sketch, photo, or AI generated image) into a 3D model and create consistent, high-quality renders of it from any conceivable angle with only minimal 3D modeling effort.

AI Tool Tip: Bridging the 2D to 3D Gap

This guide demonstrates how to produce comprehensive concept renders from multiple angles using minimal 3D modeling, leveraging the AI rendering engines best suited for architecture.

Step 1: Generate a Base Image

Begin with an initial concept image or sketch. For this one, let’s select the gnarled and knotted sunrise prairie lake house from a previous post.

There are countless image generators that can help with this phase. For a comparison of the best AI image generators to help you decide which might be best for you, click here.

Step 2: Create a Rough 3D Massing Model

Use a free vanishing point calculating software like FSpy to determine the image’s perspective and export it to your 3D modeling tool of choice. For this example we will be using Blender, a free opens source 3D modeling software. You can learn how to use and download FSpy here and you can download Blender here.

With these tools, we can construct a basic massing model to establish the structure’s form.

Step 3 (Optional): Apply UV Mapping

In your 3D model, apply UV mapping to project the original image onto the massing. This step, while optional, helps maintain consistency in textures and features, preventing the final AI rendered image from deviating too far from your initial concept.

Step 4: Capture Model Snapshots

Capture snapshots of your model from various angles, including close-ups, plans, elevations, and perspectives. These snapshots will serve as foundations for your AI-rendered final images, aiding in detailed modeling and presentation.

Step 5: Generate your AI Renderings

Employ AI rendering engines to enhance your snapshots. Input the base image to generate a descriptive prompt, then use this prompt alongside your snapshots and your initial image as a style reference to create refined renders. Several AI tools are available for this purpose:

• • Midjourney and Vizcom: These platforms preserve the original massing effectively but may produce textures that appear slightly artificial.
  • Recraft: Generates creative results with a stylized, video game-like aesthetic, though it may alter the original massing.
  • Krea: Offers adjustable editing strength and a distinctive, crisp style, allowing for quick iterations.

The Canva infographic below shows the full results of each platform used in this study. You can zoom in to see the differences between each image at the Canva link below.

2D - 3D AI Workflow Comparison by AcanthusAlchemist

Each tool has unique strengths and limitations. Selecting the appropriate platform depends on the desired style and project requirements.

Alternative AI Methods for 2D-to-3D Conversion

While the above method involves manual modeling, other AI-driven approaches can provide insights into transforming 2D concepts into 3D forms:

AI Video Tools (e.g., Luma Labs):

These tools can be used to generate 3D turnarounds or flybys of a building from a 2D image, offering a dynamic perspective on your concept. These are not the most easily controlled or faithful method and often require keyframe images or a video of a rough 3D model as guidance, but it does give you a better idea of how your AI generated concept might look in a 3D space. Some examples from a few different projects are shown below:

Image-to-Mesh Tools (e.g., Krea 2D-3D):

Krea can create a rough 3D mesh from a 2D image, allowing for interactive viewing and re-rendering from different angles. However, exporting these models is not currently supported, and the meshes may lack architectural detail needed to really use this developing the design. It is a new technology suited for early concept exploration, but it may soon develop into something much more powerful.

While these Image-to-Mesh and Image-to-Video methods offer alternative perspectives, one should note that currently you may find they often won’t provide the precision required for detailed architectural modeling.

About the Author

AcanthusAlchemist

Designer and engineer exploring the intersection of AI, architecture, and urbanism.

email: acanthus@pixelstoplans.com

 

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Problems in the AEC Industry

 We’ve all seen it. Rows and rows of drab uninspiring buildings, interior designers turning everything a mix of gray and beige (a.k.a. greige), and hulking modernist cubes that pretend a few square pop ins and pop outs make them “fun”. Even their designers curse these buildings when told they need to work overtime on the client’s umpteenth redesign request. So what might save us from this architectural inhumanity? Surprisingly…. generative AI tools.

From the cost, to the impermanence, to the inefficiency, to the overall drabness, the architecture and the AEC industry over the last 50 years or so has its problems. However longtime readers of this blog may be aware we may be on the verge of a new era in architectural design… an explosion in efficiency and architectural creativity fueled by generative AI tools in the AEC industry.

So how is AI going to tackle the problems so many people have with architecture and the AEC industry today? What is the case for why there should be no more boring buildings? Let’s find out.  

Key AI Tools and Trends in Architecture

After researching and writing about AI in architecture for over a year now, here are a few of the key trends I’ve found that will impact the AEC industry: 

Conceptual Design:

It should be no surprise that AI is making conceptual design much more accessible, as we explore in other posts. With AI tools like Midjourney and  ControlNet on Stable Diffusion, you can imagine countless concepts on a given site with a few brushstrokes and the click of a button, as demonstrated by architect and AI educator, Design.Input. Thus, in the future when creative design choices are just a click away, there will be almost no excuse for boring architecture.

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It will also allow for much more abstract concepts. While text to image is the way most people prompt, the truly creative among us rely on image-to-image prompting. This lets them integrate disparate concepts like a breathtaking landscape, the foam on a latte, or a crumpled-up piece of paper to create truly novel design concepts.

There are countless image generators available now that can help with this phase, but for comparison of how some of the more established AI image generators perform, click here.

Making Program and Performance Decisions:

Outside the realm of concept renders, AI-powered tools like Maket and PlanFinder can generate an endless array of floorplan options to make design decisions [1] [2]. Another platform, Finch3D, provides not only layout options, but also performance optimization, enabling designers to generate and refine plans optimize their efficiency in terms of useable space, daylighting, etc. [3].

Developing Design Options:

AI can retexture and render designs in varied styles, materials, and color palettes, empowering designers to explore thousands of options quickly. With tools like Krea realtime generation, Midjourney Editor, and Stable Diffusion with ControlNet, designers can swiftly visualize variations, making it easier to handle redesigns without the time-consuming process of designing and rendering several more design options via traditional methods. 

Until recently this was reserved for 2D images in the conceptual design phase. However, with parametric modeling alongside real time AI rendering like Krea, AI Revit plugins like Veras, and AI video-to-video platforms, some innovative designers are starting to bring AI into the 3rd dimension in later design stages. One example from Studio Tim Fu (a firm that focuses on using AI in architecture design) studio shows the full evolution of a tower concept from boring cylinder to pinecone-inspired, balcony-studded statement piece building while in another study his studio experiments with using text-3D AI to generate massing concepts, renderings, and physical models. 

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Furthermore, AI can even identify potential design flaws by attempting to fill in the blanks of a concept sketch lacking in detail. This helps designers catch issues like missing windows or illogical roof transitions early in the design process. 

Understanding Client Preferences:

Struggling to capture a client’s vision, despite hours spent on meetings, mood boards, and options? Tools like Midjourney’s personalization feature can simplify this process by adapting to a client’s aesthetic preferences in a user-friendly, algorithmic way.

In Midjourney, clients can indicate preferences by liking images or choosing between options, much like how YouTube or TikTok algorithms learn user tastes. This creates a personalization code that can automatically adjusts the lighting, colors, and styles of your renderings to match the client’s unique preferences, capturing subtle tastes often hard to communicate in a design brief. This tailored approach can help clients get excited and approve designs faster with fewer revisions.

Dark and Brooding Usonian Inspired Home Concepts by AcanthusAlchemist

Code Compliance:

Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT excel at scanning and explaining dense text, which could one day help architects review code requirements with much less effort—if they can overcome their biggest flaw: hallucinations.

A “hallucination” is when an AI confidently presents incorrect information, such as counting errors or fabricated sources. While AI can answer simple questions, you must always verify its answers to avoid errors. One way AI users are reducing these issues is by training custom models on more curated training data. Custom GPTs or LLMs based on vetted sources offer more reliable responses than general models, which may includes unverified data and might just respond to your serious code compliance question with a joke answer it found on Reddit.

One company, Perplexity AI is addressing this problem by training their model trained to consistently prioritize citation backed responses. It is more targeted at researchers and assisting technical professionals. This makes it more reliable, though as always backchecking is critical.

For comparison, we asked three free LLMs to answer a question about roof insulation requirements in California and looked up true answer separately in the 2022 California Energy Code. Here’s what they came back with.

This question was intentionally vague, but as you can see Perplexity did fairly well with the only citation-backed response and gave a technically correct answer for nonresidential roofs, though it missed many key details and said this applied specifically to wood framed buildings. It did calculate the correct effective R-value from the code’s mandatory U-factors though.

ChatGPT was also sort of right from a practical standpoint by suggesting two common nominal R-values for insulation products used to meet code requirements, but its response was full of unhelpful generalizations, it was missing citations, and it did not correctly report the exact language in the code. Lastly Gemini grabbed a number from the residential requirements, but didn’t report climate zones correctly and did not cite the source directly. 

However, the most important finding among all three is that LLMs are trained to give you an answer, not ask the right questions, and there are many questions the AI should have asked to determine what type of building it is, what climate it’s in, etc. to determine which code sections apply.

3D Scanning and Field Measurements:

Measuring and drafting plans for existing buildings can be a tedious process, with designers often missing key details. Fortunately, several AI-powered 3D scan-to-floorplan platforms, such as Polycam, Scanniverse, Matterport, and LumaLabs AI Interactive Scenes, are making this easier [2][4][5]. These tools use advanced technologies like LIDAR, SLAM, point clouds, NeRFs, and Gaussian splatting to create digital twins of your project.

Though integrating these systems into your practice may seem costly, some are as simple as installing an app and taking photos. We’ll review the pros and cons of each in a future post.

Cost Estimating AI:

How often have you come up with a design you love, only to find out after pricing that it’s way over budget and will be hacked to pieces by value engineering? Well, that may become a thing of the past now that AI cost estimating is starting to hit the market as well.

While this technology is still new and not yet accurate enough to replace estimators, it can assist them by speeding up their workflow [6]. Tools like Togal.AI [7] automate tedious takeoffs, and the industry is already exploring how AI can support 4D BIM (accounting for time and sequencing) and 5D BIM (accounting for costs).

With faster, more reliable cost estimates, project teams could soon run cost-benefit analyses on numerous design iterations in record time (under the guidance of an experienced estimator of course), allowing architects to discover cost saving design strategies they might have never discovered based on intuition alone. Many assume that stark modern boxes with a few pop-outs to represent “motion” and “intersecting masses” are the most budget-friendly option, but AI tools may help project teams discover innovative ways of making more expressive and affordable facades. Thus, discovering savings this way may play a key role in solving the world’s housing affordability crisis. 

About the Author

AcanthusAlchemist

Designer and engineer exploring the intersection of AI, architecture, and urbanism.

email: acanthus@pixelstoplans.com

 

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The post AI in Architecture: Top AI Tools Transforming the AEC Industry appeared first on Pixels to Plans.

Introduction

In a previous post, “Seasonal Color Analysis for Architecture and Interior Design” we explored the power of color palettes when prompting in an AI image generator. At the end of that post, we invited readers to comment with their favorite color palette they would like to see more of. As of this writing there was only one comment so I guess we have a winner: Dark Autumn. 

Without further ado, in this entry into our Style Bytes series, let’s delve deeper into the rich and evocative dark autumn color scheme as we explore its potential for architecture and interior design.

Concept: Dark Autumn Design

The dark autumn concept is more of a palette than a style, but it does draw from a real style that is gaining in popularity recently too: Dark Academia [1][2][3]. The aesthetic used in the images above relies on a rich and cozy aesthetic and was inspired by fall colors, Tudor revival, and dark academia decor. It has half-wooded facades, dark and intricate interior millwork, plaster and stonework, cozy traditional furniture, dramatic windows opening up to lush landscaping, and vivid autumn colors such as purple and orange. 

This design aesthetic is characterized by its contrast of rich and rusticated materials and colors, often inspired by the natural hues of the falling leaves and the darkening sky.  The dark autumn palette typically includes shades of brown, burgundy, deep orange, and black. These colors are often paired with neutral tones like cream, beige, and gray to create a balanced and inviting atmosphere. Alongside these colors comes gothic detailing and dark academia flourishes. Some warm lighting choices such as candles and café lights, alongside fall-inspired decor, such as pumpkins, leaves, or gnarled branches complete this witchy, Halloween-ready look.

Halloween-Ready Dark Autumn Home Design Ideas [Watch on YouTube]

AI Design Methods

To bring these design concepts to life, we at Pixels to Plans utilized a combination of AI tools, primarily Midjourney, and experimented with prompts that focused on reimagining Tudor architecture with a futuristic twist while maintaining the core elements of the dark autumn palette. Prompts varied but if you’re interested in designing in this style yourself, it can be easily replicated using your preferred platform’s style reference feature without any complicated prompt structures of workflows.

However, if you’re interested in AI visualization techniques for home design or in learning the specifics of the workflow for any particular image, leave a comment below. 

AI Explorations: Dark Autumn Design

Residential Applications

Let’s set our initial focus on home decor with a classic yet spooky vibe and ask the question: Why can’t Halloween be every day? We begin by exploring the potential of the dark autumn palette in creating inviting and intimate living spaces.

• Cozy Bedroom Retreat: A dark autumn bedroom offers a sanctuary of relaxation and comfort surrounded rich wood finishes and breathtaking views. 

• Traditional Kitchen with a Modern Twist: These design ideas blend historical, more traditional Tudor style elements with contemporary aesthetics for a functional yet stylish kitchen.

• Art Nouveau and Tudor Fusion: This concept throws in the curves and organic forms of Art Nouveau alongside the classic half-wooded elegance of Tudor architecture for a throwback architecture style worthy of The Shire.

Larger-Scale Development

Expanding beyond the realm of interior design and into facades and architectural design, let’s look at how the dark autumn aesthetic could be applied to larger-scale residential developments.

• Hillside Estates: These Tudor-inspired estates offer breathtaking views while maintaining the core elements of the dark autumn palette. 

• Intimate Cottage Living: Alternately we could imagine a row of denser, more compact homes that embrace this dark autumn aesthetic, creating cozy and charming living spaces with cottage rowhouses.

• Urban Courtyard Living: These images showcase how the dark autumn palette can be adapted to multi-family housing on a larger scale with intricate facades surrounding a dramatic courtyard, creating a sense of community and intimacy.

Modern and Futuristic Interpretations

To demonstrate the versatility of the dark autumn palette, we can experiment with some more modern and futuristic interpretations of the style.

• Dark Autumn Historical Futurism: This concept pushes the boundaries of the dark autumn aesthetic by incorporating more modern and future-forward elements like all-glass walls and blending in more vivid colors and surreal lighting.

• Detailed Patio Design: Finally, zooming out a bit to focus on exterior spaces, the following images highlight the potential for intricate and inviting patio designs within the dark autumn framework.

About the Author

AcanthusAlchemist

Designer and engineer exploring the intersection of AI, architecture, and urbanism.

email: acanthus@pixelstoplans.com

 

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Interested in exploring other AI generated architecture concepts and design workflows? Sign up for our free mailing list to be notified whenever we post new content here on Pixels to Plans.

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The Firehose of AI Content

As the role of AI in architecture evolves, generating novel styles and keeping them consistent with style reference tools will soon be a critical part of the design process of all architects. 

Now you may ask, why? In a recent opinion piece for Building Design Online, when discussing the future role of AI in blending tradition with innovation, architect Andy Shaw writes “Artificial intelligence is enabling the design of more expressive buildings, which fuse a myriad of cultural references to create a new vernacular that transcends traditional architecture’s approach to decoration.” I entirely agree with this sentiment, but when most people see the firehose of random crazy-looking AI architecture photos flooding the internet, that begs the question: How can we expect AI to start a real design movement? If everyone is always doing their own thing or moving on to the next idea that takes 10 seconds to generate, how can any one design concept get the momentum and public acceptance it needs to be built on a large scale?

Well, with the development of style reference and creative fusion features across all major AI image generators, it has never been easier for architects using AI to take an image of one of their buildings, or of a style they want to study, and expand upon it. In minutes you could take your unique concept for a house and get ideas for how to apply your original style to an apartment, a community center, a skyscraper, a streetcar, a city plan, or a sofa. 

The ability of AI to help designers envision their ideas in a novel context is unmatched and will allow architects to effortlessly produce entire portfolios, even masterplans, in an original style they truly want to design. All it takes is a concept and the curiosity to ask how far that concept can go.

An Introduction to Style Bytes

This post will be the first in a series of posts called “Style Bytes”, each exploring a style I have been working with lately, from the familiar, to the novel. Each post will explain the core design concept, list key features, and provide some examples of the style applied to different contexts. 

I predict that exercises like Style Bytes, where architects use AI style references to evolve one idea into an entire family of design concepts, will become a key part architectural practice as AI tools become more widely adopted. 

Furthermore, platforms for sharing, discussing, and remixing these ideas will provide the constructive criticism and consensus-building needed to turn the firehose of random AI generated content into actual focused and feasible design movements as communities coalesce around entirely new design ideas for the 21st century. 

So, let’s take a look at our first Style Byte, Sunrise Prairie.

I stumbled across this concept in the brief but exciting existence of BlueWillow (sadly no longer publicly available) to create the image above using the following prompt:

futuristic art nouveau solarpunk prairie style architecture, organic shaped, intricate ornate filigree detailing, highly detailed, Frank Lloyd Wright prairie style, 3D printed architectural villa, with long glass windows, accent lighting, chaparral landscaping, illuminated pond, during a bright foggy sunrise, archdaily photo, photo of intricate ornate architectural detail, close-up, window filigree detailing, architectural close-up detail photo –ar 3:2

It didn’t quite get the close-up or chaparral right. Instead it did more of a marshy prairie landscape typical of Frank Lloyd Wright’s midwestern projects, but what it did produce were questions and ideas. These included:

• The harp-like vertical wood stiles wood on the east wing. Are they a brise solei? A trellis?
• The horizontal striations along the façade. Could this be a 3D printed concrete, striated sandstone, or rammed earth construction, or maybe it looks better as just weathered wood shiplap?
• What could be causing the warm orange glow around the windows? Is it an interior design choice, a warm brassy finish on the windows, a lighting choice, or just sunrise reflections
• What’s going on with the roof line? Maybe a roof terrace or undulating standing seam metal roofing.
• The back slope on the east and west wings, giving the building a ship-like appearance sailing through the marsh. This is effectively an elevation, so how is the rest of this building shaped and what might the other side look like?

Even though we’re just looking at a statistically probably jumble of pixels spit out by a machine, it’s questions like these that challenge architects to refine what they see and identify a concept for their design process.

One could argue that a picture is worth a thousand words so the overall “vibe” of this image is the concept, but if I had to summarize it in words, this opulent home’s concept is that it’s a place of warmth, horizontality, and craftsmanship, existing somewhere between a rustic old shipwreck on the lakeshore, and a sandstone riverbank, reminding you of the dynamism it took to carve:

The Importance of Style References

Before we can dive into this Style Byte in earnest, we need to first look into why a reference image is important. For example, with the exact same prompt but no reference image, Midjourney goes in an entirely different direction, with wild organic curves. It loses a lot of the prairie style influence and specific details noted above. Here are some examples from Midjourney versions 4, 5, and 6 showing a consistent bias towards unrealistic forms. 

Compared to text prompting alone, Midjourney’s three forms of image reference tend to work a bit better (Image reference, style reference, and character reference) but it is up to the Midjourney user to determine which methods are most effective for their particular project.

Style reference can even be used to enhance an existing image. By feeding the same low resolution image into Alpaca AI Rendering as both the subject and style reference, you can create a higher quality image and refine some of the sketchier details earlier AI models struggled with.

This goes to show that style reference images are absolutely critical for consistency in this type of design process. Once again, a picture is worth 1000 words. Now let’s use this feature to explore different applications of this “Sunrise Prairie” style.

AI Explorations: Sunrise Prairie

Like many designers, I felt the need to expand upon this concept by improving the image quality, creating ideas for the interior and other exterior views, and imagining other buildings in this style. Using our existing image of a long, narrow “Sunrise Prairie” Style estate as the concept, let’s explore some more ideas using this style:

Bit 1: 

Some nearby estates in a Sunrise Prairie style.

Bit 2: 

Some interior shots of intricate millwork, bespoke furnishings, plus an affinity for wood and water.

Bit 3: 

This community needs a downtown so maybe we need a stylish office building in this neighborhood or an elegant community center.

Bit 4: 

How about some concepts for a commercial area?

Bit 5: 

Now obviously you may have realized no one can afford these first several options. But we can help fix that with style references. The concepts you develop one day for a custom home could soon be optimized and reimagined for more affordable large scale production. So lets start thinking more in terms of density. How about instead of our long narrow mansions and institutional buildings, we have string of apartments along a courtyard walking path?

Bit 6: 

Of course we don’t want this to be a car-centric exurb, so we definitely need to locate this around some transit.

Bit 7: 

What if you just want a little slice of this style to call your own? In that case we can use style reference tools to imagine this seemingly grand and opulent style scaled down to the manageable size of a small, cozy cottage of the future.

Bit 8: 

And finally, what more can we do to convey what it might be like to experience this Sunrise Prairie style? One word: Motion. So, with a little help from the animation tools of Immersity AI to turn 2D images into 3D depth maps and videos, along with inspiration from AI architecture luminaries like Iosif Gkinis and Sebastien Ollier, we can bring these concepts to life.

Song Credit: Savfk – The Travelling Symphony
https://youtube.com/savfkmusic

Subscribe on YouTube or follow AcanthusAlchemist on Instagram for more videos like this.

This is just one Style Byte of what I think is a particularly exciting aesthetic. If you want to learn more about the tools used to create these images, check out the posts below:

The Best AI Image Generators for Architecture in 2026

Confused about which AI platforms you should learn and integrate AI into your workflow? This article...

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The Best Free AI Rendering Tool for Architecture

In this unsponsored review, learn about Alpaca AI Rendering, a new AI image editor tool that offers groundbreaking...

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About the Author

AcanthusAlchemist

Designer and engineer exploring the intersection of AI, architecture, and urbanism.

email: acanthus@pixelstoplans.com

 

Click here

Interested in exploring other AI generated architecture concepts and design workflows? Sign up for our free mailing list to be notified whenever we post new content here on Pixels to Plans.

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The post Style Bytes – Sunrise Prairie appeared first on Pixels to Plans.

AI News Update

On October 25th, 2024, the platform covered in this post (Alpaca AI Rendering) will be permanently shutting down. However, don’t worry, there are many similar free AI rendering platforms out there for creatives to fill the gap left by Alpaca and I will be writing a new post soon to review what I think the best alternatives are. To be notified of my next AI platform review and other future posts, and to stay stay up to date in this fast moving, ever-changing landscape of AI image generators, subscribe to the free Pixels to Plans newsletter using the subscription box at the top or bottom of the page. However, if you want to learn about AI rendering more broadly, the following post still provides useful insights you can use on other platforms. Enjoy!

Introduction

If you’re an architect or designer interested in working AI rendering tools into your design process, it can be frustrating finding the right platform to start on. There are countless options but many either have hidden paywalls, lackluster features, confusing UI’s, or just don’t offer the blend of quality and control architects are looking for. However, the goal of this blog is to share the best and most accessible AI tools and ideas for architects to explore this new field of design, which is why Pixels to Plans is excited to share this unsponsored review of Alpaca AI rendering, and show how it offers exactly what architects need in an AI platform.

Alpaca: AI Rendering Platform Review

Alpaca (a.k.a. Chroma by AlpacaML) is a free AI image generator and AI rendering tool currently in open access with some impressive capabilities for architects, especially for rendering and refining your building concepts. At the time of writing, it offers 100 free generations a day, with reasonably priced options for standard and pro plans, but for most architects looking to experiment and learn AI render tools, the free tier is plenty. You can get started experimenting with Alpaca for free at AlpacaML.com.

One of the issues with many competing AI models is a lack of authorship (i.e. how much control you have over the results compared to the algorithm). A platform with poor authorship means the algorithm makes most of the decisions for you and while its results might look good, it doesn’t take direction all that well and you often can’t reliably edit the generations you get.

Alpaca fixes this issue. Its sketch-to-render and editing tools let you turn everything from well-developed Rhino models to even the worst Microsoft Paint doodles into stunning images. It also does this with a fast generation time, giving you constant feedback so you can refine the result by refining your drawing. This gives a tremendous amount of authorship to the user and makes fine tuning images a breeze compared to the uncontrollable slot machine that platforms like Midjourney provide (still love you though Midjourney).

However, in the realm of architecture, it provides something even more powerful: constant massing. If you input a picture of a building or even just a massing model, Alpaca lets you generate high quality variations in finishes and style while maintaining the same general shape of the building. Imagine being able to produce a hundred high quality renders of finish options for your building in a single day, or even completely redesign the facade with the push of a button. That is the power that Alpaca gives you.

While it may not have all the advanced features of other platforms, for architecture it is a godsend because it allows you to generating high quality building images that explore different style or material alternatives for a given massing. Other models such as Stable Diffusion can yield similar or better results, but these come with a steep learning curve and don’t always maintain the massing as well on the first try. Based on my tests so far, Alpaca is the simplest and most reliable model I have found for AI rendering tasks.

As you will see in the next section, compared to how other free and paid models perform on this task, this is groundbreaking.

Example Projects

Of course, as with any AI image generators, why describe their capabilities when you can show them? So, let’s take a look at some benchmark prompts and example use cases of how Alpaca performs to show how architects might be able to apply this tool. We will be looking at the following examples: 

• Façade Variations
• Physical Model to Render
• Updating Your Portfolio
• Sketch to Render for Adaptive Reuse
• Interior Remodeling

Constant Composition

In Post 3 (The Best AI Image Generators for Architecture) we explored the concept of style benchmarks for assessing how a platform interprets prompts. Let’s look at our five Pixels to Plans benchmark prompts to get an initial idea of how this model performs.

To compare these against the same benchmarks on other models, check out
Post 3 using the link below.

The Best AI Image Generators for Architecture in 2026

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Fortunately, Alpaca interprets prompts very similarly to other platforms so if you are used to another image generator, you can often import your favorite prompts over to start integrating Alpaca into your workflow and get similar results, without having to reinvent your prompts that much. To test this out, I used ChatGPT to generate prompts in a consistent format for X styles using the prompt template below:

Prompt Template: Architecture photo of a house in a [style] style, [adjective] facade of [materials]. [Details] prominent throughout the design, with [focal points or other key features].

Then I took the following art nouveau-inspired home concept I generated previously as my base image for the experiment.

I ran this base image with each of my ChatGPT generated prompts in Alpaca to assess how well it maintains the composition while capturing a variety of styles. For comparison, I ran the same prompts using Stable Diffusion XL (SDXL) on Playground AI and achieved the results shown in the second column using a 20-30% image weight (which took several iterations to optimize).

You may notice that SDXL adds a bit more detail and texture quality to the images, it isn’t as good at maintaining consistent massing and struggles to change out all the finishes to match the prompt as well as Alpaca Alpaca. With enough prompt engineering (See Post 4), negative prompts, and varying the weight of the base image, you can achieve higher quality images with Stable Diffusion, but for the average architect just looking to quickly create some cladding variations for their existing design, Alpaca Alpaca is the superior and more user-friendly product.

However, let’s say you like the look of SDXL but the control of Alpaca? Well, why not just combine the two in a single workflow with Alpaca’s creative fusion feature? The third column shows the results of painting the style of the SDXL results onto the final image using Alpaca’s creative fusion.

You can zoom in on Canva to better understand the nuances of each output. 

AI Architecture Rendering Tool Comparison by AcanthusAlchemist

Hopefully shows that for simple variations, Alpaca really shines, but for designers to really embrace AI in their workflow, they may need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of all the platforms they use, and learn how to combine them to fit their design goals.

Physical Model-to-Render

When I was in high school, I wanted to be an architect so when I got the chance to model a building in our “prototyping” class, I jumped on the chance to make a physical model of an original building inspired by my favorite architect at the time, Frank Lloyd Wright. This building was in FLW’s Usonian style (learn more about Usonian architecture at the link below) but the model was rough at best. However, with an AI like Alpaca, I was able to reimagine this model with a much more realistic visualization.

Reimagining Usonian: Frank Lloyd Wright's Organic Architecture for Today’s Housing Needs

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Tools like this will be transformational for both architects and students to express their creativity in ways never before seen, with little more than some paper, glue, a camera, and a prompt.

Updating your Portfolio with AI Rendering

Let’s say you have a portfolio of well-developed designs but you’re not too happy about some of the finish choices you made. Or, maybe some of your past concepts aren’t in style anymore and you’re trying to update your existing portfolio of ideas to fit a potential client’s requests. Well, why not use an AI architecture rendering engine like Alpaca to reimagine your portfolio in a different style? 

For example, let’s say you want to take your brighter, more fantastical ideas in a darker, warmer direction with some Usonian influences. Well with a few keystrokes you can do this:

Prompt Template: Architecture photo of a house in a Usonian style, rain and fog, dark rich wood, glass, copper, overcast, Cherokee red concrete, fir trees, open breezeway, flagstone, flat roofs with overhanging eves, warm orange light in the windows, at dusk, front entrance

Sketch-to-Render for Adaptive Reuse

As noted above, a key feature of Alpaca is its MS Paint style tool that lets you prompt with drawings rather than words. To me, Alpaca seems to be the best free AI tool for turning illegible sketches into something beautiful compared to its competitors.

I believe this will be particularly useful for adaptive reuse, helping to visualize how obsolete or unwanted structures could be repurposed. In particular, the paint sketching feature could help architects add decorative flourishes and critical changes to the massing of existing buildings with unparalleled precision and quality. 

As an example, let’s consider a less car-centric future where parking structures might be reused as office space or housing. Sure, there would need to be some major structural and envelope changes like adding lobbies and balconies, or removing some floorplates for higher ceilings, but this tool can help architects make the fine-tuning changes needed explore what those changes might look like, helping Owners envision how they could repurpose these structures.

AI Rendering for Interior Remodels

Finally, as usual, let’s not forget about the importance of interiors. Using a workflow that blends Midjourney and Alpaca, I was able to consult on a small bathroom remodel, helping the homeowners rapidly visualize how their bathroom might look with the specific tile, vanity, and mirror they were considering, taking real-time feedback and giving real-time image updates in a fraction of the time it would take to model and render such a detailed finish concept from scratch. 

The Canva slideshow below shares a few snapshots from the visualization workflow. This includes a photo of the initial bathroom, initial Alpaca renders before finishes were narrowed down and priced, a Midjourney exploratory phase for visualizing randomized finish arrangements with the initial Alpaca output as an image prompt, and finally a Alpaca phase for dialing in the image by adding the toilet, mirror, structured ceramic bronze tile niche, and backsplash that Midjourney struggled to put in the right places. While Midjourney and Alpaca are not perfect, together they are great for getting a feel for how specific materials will work together in a space.

Alpaca AI Bathroom Remodel - AI Design Flipbook by AcanthusAlchemist

Interested in exploring other AI generated architecture concepts and design workflows? Sign up for our free mailing list to be notified whenever we post new content here on Pixels to Plans.

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About the Author

AcanthusAlchemist

Designer and engineer exploring the intersection of AI, architecture, and urbanism.

email: acanthus@pixelstoplans.com

 

Click here

The post The Best Free AI Rendering Tool for Architecture appeared first on Pixels to Plans.

History

Origins: Organic Architecture and The Prairie Style

Frank Lloyd Wright is a giant in the history of American architecture with a fascinating personality and an immense variety in his architectural style. This is a man who reportedly designed his most famous project, Fallingwater, in less than 3 hours when faced with a surprise visit from his client after procrastinating for months on end [1] [2]. On the flip side, he was also someone who meticulously designed every detail of his works from the façade, to the furniture, to even the forks [3]. 

From open plans and textile block to solar-centric design and site-conscious organic architecture [4], his ideas are ubiquitous in modern architecture discussions and many other late 20th century styles all borrow an idea or two from Wright. Though his ideas remain popular, today designing buildings in the Usonian style he championed is not.

Frank Lloyd Wright (FLW) is best known for his large projects and prairie style, which was a design movement focused on large low-slung estates sporting low pitched hip roofs, stained glass, ribbon windows, and strong horizontality that harmonized with the flat prairie environment of Wisconsin and Illinois.

In all of FLW’s works he designed spaces like a series of overlapping Venn diagrams often radiating out in an L or pinwheel shape. Rather than separating rooms with walls and doors as was common in the late 1800s when wright began practicing architecture, his rooms would overlap at their diagonals to create multi-use, simultaneous spaces and offer occupants many perspectives of their use. Kitchens would flow seamlessly into dinettes and then into living rooms, and so on. Rather than trying to cram all these uses in a predefined massing like a postmodern design might do, Wright let the plan define the massing of the building, which he called “Organic Architecture”. Some other guiding principles in Wright’s designs include:

• Separate common spaces not with walls, but with bulky objects like built-in furniture or chimneys. These components act like screens since they don’t connect with all floors, walls, and ceilings, maintaining some privacy but making things seem connected.
• Make liberal use of corner windows to improve interior/exterior connection.
• Design buildings inspired by the surroundings landscape that appear at home in their environment.
• Avoid designing boring boxes and stop treating buildings like “machines for living” [5]. After all, Wright once said “The box is a fascist symbol and the architecture of freedom and democracy needed something besides the box.” (video below) [6] Thoughtfully breaking up massing with corner windows, dramatic wings, and equilateral triangular plans enlivens the structure.
• Use architecture to convey philosophical ideals such as freedom of movement or lack of confinement, and political notions of democracy and choice.

Site: Steep plot of land with Eucalyptus in Oakland, CA

Prompt Template: highly detailed and interesting professional architecture photo of a row of densely spaced frank lloyd wright usonian style {home, tinyhome village}that blend seamlessly with the surroundings, highly detailed and interesting, in Oakland, CA, affordable housing, compelling composition and massing, inspired by a hillside and trees, verticality, color grading moody lighting –no one-story, low-profile, far away, uninteresting –iw 2 –s 300 –v 6.0 –c 10

Site: Steep plot of land with golden grass in Oakland, CA

Prompt Template: design render of a building that blends seamlessly with its surroundings, highly detailed and interesting professional architecture photo of a usonian style home in Oakland, CA, compelling composition and massing, moody dramatic skies and lighting –iw 1.5 –s 500 –v 6.0 –c 10

Site: Wooded thicket and meadow in Blue Earth County, MN

Prompt Template: highly detailed and interesting professional architecture photo of a usonian style home in Minnesota, surrounded by trees, dark wood, interesting compelling composition and massing, blending seamlessly into its surroundings, inspired by trees and meadows, inspired by its surrounding landscape in Blue Earth County, MN, frank lloyd wright usonian style, dark wood, tree bark, affordable home, 1 story, harmonious –s 300 –v 6.0 –c 10 –no far away, uninteresting –iw 1.5

Designing for Density: A Usonian Style for the 21st Century

We’ve discovered how to reproduce a Usonian style and how to meld it with your site using AI, but how do we expand on it for the modern era? For that I propose the following design goals:

• Prioritize Scalable Designs – Develop concepts that are scalable, accommodate density, and have a broad appeal (we have a whole housing crisis to solve after all).

   

• Use Human-centric Plans – Wright’s method of organic architecture was to set the room layout first based on how people experience the flow of spaces, then design the building around that. This would frequently result in a simple, but appealing L or T-shaped plan. While image generators usually struggle with technical drawings like plans (more on that in a future post) this principle can help us pick massing ideas from the AI that can accommodate these organic plans, while discarding both uninviting minimalist boxes and unconstructible overcomplicated McMansions.

   

• Harmonize with Nature – The concept needs to visibly have site responsive design like solar exposure and minimizing impact on its surroundings – concepts FLW frequently explored nearly 100 years ago long before the concept of sustainable design existed. In urban spaces where there isn’t as much nature left to disturb, we should still aim to reintroduce nature back to dreary urban spaces.

   

• Reflect the Landscape – The style needs to adapt based on its location. There is no one size fits all. To expand beyond the Prairie, we need a version that blends with the Rockies, a version that camouflages with the redwoods, a version that embraces the Mississippi, etc.

   

• Use Warm Inviting Materials – Draw from FLW’s material palette to evoke a warm, inviting, and earthy, yet elegant sense of harmony. Any architectural statement pieces or higher-priced materials  should be limited and surrounded by otherwise repeatable and humble materials in keeping with the goals of FLW’s initial bet with Herbert Jacobs. (e.g. red tinted concrete, stucco, brick veneer, or horizontal plank siding, which are all common materials in Usonian designs) 

While it’s a challenge to hit all of these at once, these will be our guiding principles.

Let’s consider bullet #1. All of Wright’s Usonians were single family detached homes in rural areas – hardly a sustainable option for the 21st century. In fact, when Wright proposed his Broadacre Plan [11] he clearly didn’t see the drawbacks of such low-density development, which we see in today’s suburban sprawl. How can we improve on this? We could consider something antithetical to his 19th century sensibilities…. Multi-family; shocking for a man who once said everyone would have an acre of land and get around by helicopter in the future [12]. So, let’s imagine what some Usonian apartments and townhomes might look like: 

Reflecting America’s Landscapes

For all of his Usonian projects, Wright took inspiration from American landscapes in an effort to create something Uniquely American and divorced from existing popular styles of the early 1900s like those imported from Europe. Usonian is meant to mirror the many varied landscapes of the U.S. These range from falling water blending with the riparian PA landscape (though Fallingwater straddles the line between Prairie style and Usonian due to its size), to the house FLW’s son hovering like a mirage above the Arizona desert. While Wright designed in many different states, he never got to design a building for every landscape North America has to offer. So, in an effort to expand his vision of Usonian as a nationwide design style, let’s develop some landscape inspired concepts for a new age of Usonian design using AI.

As usual, a combination of carefully engineered text prompts and image prompts are the way to go for the most control over your results. For the photos let’s start with some representative Usonians like the Samara House, John Lloyd Wright House, Masaro House, and Pope Leighey House among others and apply them to different environments.

 

How about we start with a mountain inspired Usonian style since Wright never built any Usonians in the Rocky Mountain states. It could reflect the alpine environment as a reimagined chalet where the usual Usonian flat roof is tilted up much steeper to both resemble the mountains and shed snow. Alternately we could imagine it in the high desert with its cozy earth tones, or on a wooded mountainside sitting lightly on the land with piers that mimic the surrounding tree trunks.

 Now let’s imagine a coastal Usonian-inspired home. Consider a house on the banks of the Mississippi that elevates its living spaces above potential flooding but steps down at its periphery to embrace life on the river and blend with the muddy waters, much like Fallingwater. Alternately, maybe we create a sharp and angular home that yearns to be a lighthouse and reflects the craggy rock faces of New England. Switching coasts, we could consider a stone and copper clad home with colors that meld with the ice plant of the Monterey Bay. Or how about a seaside Florida bungalow with a brise soleil inspired by the perforated windows of the Pope Lehigh house and many other Usonians. However, in this context that brise soleil doesn’t just keep out the hot Florida sun, it is also designed to protect the windows from debris during tropical storms. 

In California, there are actually several real FLW projects in the state to use as a guide but even more biomes to work with. From the Fawcett Farm home that translated the Midwest Usonian aesthetic to the fields of the Central Valley [13], to the Clinton Walker House in Carmel by the Sea seemingly sculpted from the yellow bluffs below with patinaed copper roofing to reflect the bluish green of the surrounding ice plant and eucalyptus. There are even protégé’s of Wright who put their own spin on his style for California, such as Arthur Dyson and his more sculptural, curved take on organic architecture. 

To that end, let’s imagine a Usonian for California’s rolling hills, with maybe a few  organic curves to mirror the hills and the “organic” and “crunchy-granola” vibe fitting for the golden state. 

In all of these cases the overall form of the building varies greatly, but deep down that subtle Usonian DNA in the design remains.

The Case for Usonian Design Today

Wright’s signature Usonian style can be found in the roughly 60 homes he designed for middle-class families starting in 1936. However, 60 is nowhere near the millions of homes that could have been built had the US to wholeheartedly embraced this style. A few of Wright’s ideas did make it into the much more ubiquitous and less elegant ranch style that sprawled across the country [14]. However, stylistically and philosophically, Usonians, Ranch homes, and the many other styles influenced by Wright are very different.

Ultimately, the US needs to build a lot of affordable homes in the coming years. The way I see it, when taking on this challenge architects have two options. 1) they can design run-of-the-mill boxes in a sanitized style unloved by the public, meeting the bare minimum of what constitutes a home…. Or 2) architects can use this opportunity to add to their community’s architectural character with simple, affordable, yet thoughtful buildings. 

Usonian design, with its origins in a bet to design that $5,000 house, can teach us some important lessons on building beautiful homes affordably. Thus, architects would be wise to take much more inspiration from Usonian design, which has already proven its cost-effectiveness, livability, and cultural relevance.

Conclusion

About the Author

AcanthusAlchemist

Designer and engineer exploring the intersection of AI, architecture, and urbanism.

email: acanthus@pixelstoplans.com

 

Click here

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The post Reimagining Usonian: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Organic Architecture for Today’s Housing Needs appeared first on Pixels to Plans.

For those who want to learn about Googie style, Curbed provides a great explainer, focusing on iconic examples in LA:

About the Author

AcanthusAlchemist

Designer and engineer exploring the intersection of AI, architecture, and urbanism.

email: acanthus@pixelstoplans.com

 

Click here

Interested in exploring other AI generated architecture concepts and design workflows? Sign up for our free mailing list below to be notified whenever we post new content here on Pixels to Plans.

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The post Googie Land – An Architecture Tour Through Area 51 appeared first on Pixels to Plans.

Introduction

Speed. Verticality. Opulence. Glamor. No this isn’t the roaring 1920s, it’s the roaring 2020s and the ongoing Art Deco revival the architecture world is experiencing. In this article, we’ll be investigating how to use AI workflows for design and architecture, how you as a designer can better understand this ongoing Art Deco revival trend, and how you can augment your architectural design process.

Outline

1. History
   1. Origins
   2. Influences
   3. Decline and Successors
   4. Modern Revival
2. How to Identify Art Deco
3. AI Workflows
   1. Prompt Crafting
      • Prompting 101
      • Prompt Adjustment
      • Image Prompting
      • Image Prompting and Realism
      • Design Evolution Techniques
      • Blending and Developing Styles
   2. Product-Inspired Design
   3. Pan-PromeAI Pipeline
   4. Preview: Interior Design
4. An Art Deco Revival: Should We Though?
5. Coming Up…

1. History

Origins

When trying to achieve a specific style with AI image generators, it is important to understand that style’s history and learn to describe examples before developing an AI workflow to explore your ideas.

Art Deco burst onto the world stage in the 1920s as a way to celebrate the widespread optimism that rapidly changing technology could bring about a better future, while offering some escapism after the horrors of WWI [1][2]. It quickly spread around the world as maximalist answer to the question “what does modernity look like?” and an alternative design philosophy to the minimalist, Bauhaus-influenced International Style seeking to answer that same question [3].   

Art Deco and Art Nouveau share the goal of adding beauty to everyday objects and architecture. However, in stark contrast to Art Nouveau’s organic shapes and sinuous curves, Art Deco revels in geometric patterns and sleek machined decoration. It relies on color, flat design, and simple geometry to allow the materials to tell their story. While art nouveau emphasizes the uniqueness in handmade objects, Art Deco takes a more egalitarian approach by celebrating striking designs that can be mass produced as a way of making a luxurious-feeling style available to everyone [3].

Influences

Initially Art Deco was developed as a design style for manufactured products and thus its motifs were often a direct result of 1920s manufacturing methods, not just a stylistic choice. Examples include parallel radiator fin lines (used to stabilize early Bakelite plastics in their molds), the ubiquity metallic finishes (due to newly commercialized chrome dipping and aluminum manufacturing), and the “in-motion” forms made economical by automotive manufacturing [4].     

Art Deco architecture incorporated this manufactured aesthetic among other influences. New thoughts about urbanism had a significant impact as well. For example, setbacks became a zoning requirement in Manhattan to ensure sunlight reached the streets in the skyscraper canyon below [5]. This incentivized a ziggurat form that become an iconic part of any Art Deco skyline. Another influence was a growing middle-class fascination with travel, so there were many works inspired by trains, airships, and ocean liners, as well as the destinations they could take you. Finally socioeconomic trends like the explosion of consumerism in the 1920s or a desire to market oneself as wealthy or sophisticated (as personified in The Great Gatsby), all fed into Art Deco’s lavish aesthetic.

Image References [i – vi]

Decline and Successors

Art Deco’s popularity persisted into the 30s despite the great depression. However, it began transforming into a new style, Streamline Moderne, which eschewed extravagance and ornamentation. It traded in jagged machined edges for simple teardrop-shaped forms based on the developing field of aerodynamics. It replaced the imposing verticality of Art Deco skyscrapers with more practical low-slung buildings emphasizing effortless motion and horizontality [6]. Further styles would evolve from Streamline Moderne such as Googie style, Mid-Century Modern, and a particularly colorful, postmodern, and tongue-in-cheek Art Deco revival movement in the 1980s thanks to designers like the Memphis Group [3][7].

Modern Revival

Another Art Deco revival has been quickly gaining traction since at least the mid-2010s and once again Art Deco is having its moment. Neutral is out and bold maximalism is in [8]. The Art Deco movement today borrows from the Gatsby-like opulence of the 1920s and takes a few cues from the neon art deco of the 1980s, but tends to execute them in a quieter, more reserved way to align with 21^st century tastes. Incorporating this style into your exteriors or interiors is now a way for designers to communicate one key concept: unique elegance.

So far most examples in façade design have been in high-end luxury residential developments like Rose Hill, Brooklyn Tower, and The Fitzroy in NYC or Pine Avenue in Melbourne [9]. Some other slightly less upscale developments exist (e.g. The Green House, Long Island City) but its most widespread adoption is in interior design, where a subtle more accessible art deco style noted above is gaining popularity.

[vii – xiv]

2. How to Identify Art Deco

Knowing how to describe specific Art Deco characteristics when crafting prompts is key to controlling in the AI generation process and is obviously important for traditional design methods as well. To that end, key features of Art Deco to keep in mind include:

[xv][xvi]
[1] [6] [10] [11]

3. AI Workflows

Pixels to Plans is about exploring AI workflows for design. So now that we have established a design vocabulary to prompt for (Art Deco), we will cover the most effective basic prompting methods for developing architectural concepts (in any style), as well as three more advanced methods uniquely suited for Art Deco design.

Prompt Crafting

Prompting 101

Whether they’re images, text, or parameters, prompts are at the core of all AI design processes. “Prompt engineering” has been a major buzzword this year, which I like to define as the systemic research and analysis of what makes a good prompt for a given task. However, “prompt crafting” in my opinion is the use of one’s creative intuition to take a prompt and evolve it in a more organic, artistic process.

The following AI workflows use Midjourney to generate images, but some of the concepts will apply to other AI image platforms. This article assumes a basic understanding of prompting. If this is your first time with AI image generators, click here [12] (Midjourney 101). If you want more of a deep dive on some of the newer features we’ll be exploring not specific to architecture, click here [13] (for image chain prompting), here [14] (for remixing), here [15] (for zoom, vary, shorten, and more), and here [16] (for the MidLibrary catalog of Genres and Art Movement prompts)

To start developing your own AI-generated concepts, it’s best to start with something simple. Let’s go with “art deco architecture” which gives us the first result shown below. As you can see, Midjourney training data must include a lot of examples of movie theater marquee towers and the ubiquitous plaster-clad Art Deco buildings Miami Beach. This results in a bias for Miami-inspired pastel plaster results like these. To be honest these are a bit bland with limited variety between images. The results simply struggle to capture the breadth of aesthetics Art Deco offers unless prompted in very specific ways.

Prompt Adjustment

How can we fix Midjourney’s Miami movie theater problem and produce something more original and striking? For this situation, we could consider the following options:

• Adding Keywords: Try additional keywords like unique, original, or the specific finishes you want your result to include
• Negative prompts: Use a —no  parameter to prompt against keywords like bland, boring, unoriginal, stucco, Miami, theater, or pastel if you want to get away from this aforementioned bias.
• Stylize: Increase the  —s parameter above 100 to incentivize more visually appealing and exciting images, though this may come at the cost of accuracy to the prompt
• Chaos: increase the —c parameter above 0 to incentivize visual differences between the four images each prompt produces. This too may reduce accuracy to the prompt for some of the images. 

In Midjourney, I’ve found the most reliable way to get more interesting results is increasing both chaos to between 10 and 50 (to disincentivize getting four similar compositions) and stylization to between 200 and 500 (to promote more creative prompt interpretation and more aesthetic results) as shown below. Does this method produce more Streamline-Moderne-inspired results? Sort of, but Streamline Moderne is just evolved Art Deco so I’ll give it a pass.

Image Prompting

Let’s take some of these results and try to develop their concept further. Since a picture is worth 1000 words, image prompting (i.e., uploading one or more photos as a reference for the AI) is by far the most powerful way to control the output of this process. In fact each result can recursively be fed back into the model (image chain prompting) to gradually dial in the results to be more consistent with much more control than words can offer.

The images in the next slide show were each made using combinations of the reference images below. In some cases, the previously generated images in the collection were used as part of the prompt as well. If you look closely, you can see the visual DNA of the reference images forming not just a prompt chain, but a web or family tree of interconnected ideas. Can you guess which images were used to to make each result?

REFERENCE IMAGES

Image Prompting and Realism

Say your model isn’t producing the photorealism or materiality you were hoping for. In that case, image prompting with close-up photos of the materials you want can help guide the model towards more grounded and photoreal results than simply describing them– a worthwhile trick for AI models that lean towards a more illustrated or rendered appearance.

As an example, here is an attempt to image prompt for the deep blue tile and metallic plaster/terra cotta cladding expressed on two-story Floral Depot building in Oakland, CA, but reimagined as a taller modern Art Deco-inspired development.

Design Evolution Techniques

These are all very good but say we want to emphasize practicality, with subtle yet distinct Art Deco flourishes paired with the everyday forms and materials an architect might consider for a multifamily development. Midjourney offers many methods of recursively evolving a design concept without starting from scratch on a new generation. To develop a concept further, two of the most reliable paths I have found are:

1. Image chain prompt using the best example of the previous generation as the new image prompt but with other images or phrases to tone down (or tone up) the craziness.
2. Use Midjourney’s “Vary Strong” feature to to produce similar images to a previous result that copy that result’s style rather than its composition. This lets you easily evolve a concept through multiple generations while strongly adhering to the original style.

Both of these methods, or a combination of the two, can work better depending on the context and it is up to the prompt crafter to determine which is best for their application.

Here are some results of these methods when used to evolve a group of practical art deco façade ideas that might be suitable for a multi-family apartment building:

Blending and Developing Styles

What if we identify an aesthetic you like and want to push it to its limits, reimagining it in new contexts with bolder interpretations, or blended with other styles to create a truly never-before-seen design? As an example, the following images show experiments in blending popular Japanese/Scandinavian design concepts (a.k.a. Japandi) with Art Deco, plus a burst of vibrant color. Using variations and image prompts you can expand one image into an entire collection exploring an aesthetic.

This image series aims to define an Art Deco-Japandi aesthetic that emphasizes subtle flowing lines, vibrant jewel tone blues, rich wood tones with vertical slats, general openness, and overall playfulness all with the subtle patterns and verticality of Art Deco in its DNA. Prompts, image references, and an abbreviated description of the design goal are included to help readers understand the process and experiment with similar methods.

Hopefully this demonstrates that with an AI architecture workflow as your design tool, there’s no excuse for not thinking outside the box.

Product-Inspired Design

As noted above, Art Deco architecture was often inspired by Art Deco products, taking the motifs of a car, a radio, or a watch and blowing them up to towering proportions. Similarly, generating a product concept in Midjourney can serve as the nucleus for a much larger design concept, and is a fitting design approach given Art Deco’s history.

Let’s ideate concepts for a fun window design you would be excited to see mass produced. We can put our image-prompting skills to the test and take the Deco/Japandi village concept from the last example (Photo 1 of the slides above) and pair that with a simple image of a divided lite window (left).

The simple window image prompt keeps things more grounded and focused on the desired subject. If you don’t have a ground truth like this, the results can get little out of hand (Photo 1 below). With the “normal” image prompt, we get something more elegant and realistic (Photos 2-5 below).

To develop our façade around a concept window, let’s pick this seashell-inspired divided lite window, with its nice dark teal jewel tone millwork, as a centerpiece product.

Fortunately, Midjourney includes a zoom out function to outpaint additional context around the images it generates. We’ll use this powerful tool to envision different projects that could be inspired by or incorporate this window product, experimenting with image weights, stylization, and keywords along the way. Some of the results are as follows:

For those detail oriented designers out there — those who like to think about day-to-day objects and centerpiece features first, then expand to envision the bigger picture — this approach can supercharge your design process.

Pan-PromeAI Pipeline

One of Midjourney’s drawbacks is the lack of control it gives you over the composition of an image. This is problematic in architecture where you always start with a site or massing and then need to develop it over countless iterations. Unfortunately with Midjourney and many other image generators, the output will usually be a completely different building than the input, where the only thing they share is their general vibe. Here are some examples of attempting to further develop a rough floorplate stack sketch over a Google Earth screenshot using Midjourney Version 4, that didn’t go according to plan, but at least made some interesting results.

The colors and style are sort of there, but the composition and massing is all over the place. Thus, to develop a design further we need to get creative with our workflows.

Once again, we start with our favorite scalloped window, but we would like to use it as the inspiration for a mid-rise tower. From there, we can use Midjourney’s pan function to direct the AI to start outpainting in a specific direction. This gives us more control of the resulting composition than a zoom would. We can repeat this process, tweaking the prompt as we go to first ask for the base of the tower, then the middle, then the top as we continue up the building. The key for each step is specifying the components associated with the part you want to generate such as “street, base” in the first part, “curtain wall, mid-section” in the next few, and “roof, crown, sky, top” in the final pan. The result?

Ok how about another panning project. This time we want a taller, more imposing, and stereotypically Art Deco skyscraper. We start with a large sculptural façade element over a door and imagine it in the context of our skyscraper, resulting in the following:

At a certain point perspective and aspect ratio may become an issue. You will be left with a long image that has lots of detail and structure, but generally has lower quality and poor realism due to the perspective issues.

That’s where sketch-rendering AI comes in to do what Midjourney cannot. In this example we will look at PromeAI, a freemium AI platform with plenty of architecture-focused tools that provides sketch-to-image capabilities and other similar features. By using Midjourney outputs in PromeAI, we can take advantage of the relative strengths and weaknesses of each platform. Specifically, PromeAI’s Creative Fusion feature lets the user blend the composition of one image with the style of another, offering much more control than Midjourney’s blend feature under certain circumstances.

Now with a rough sketch to define our massing and our long Midjourney image to define articulation at the base, middle, and top of the tower, we can envision how they might work together.

Imagine the freedom an AI workflow like this this could give to a design firm. It would allow one designer to develop massing and another designer to develop façade articulation in parallel completely independently of one another. Then all they need to do is periodically fuse their outputs together to develop insight into which ones might work well together in a matter of seconds.

Now you may also ask whether that whole initial panning step is necessary. While not always necessary, it is important to pair images that are of a similar scale and subject matter. If you pair an overview sketch with a close up image like our original window, we may get a more surreal close-up result as the AI struggles to combine the two concepts. These may produce their own inspiring results like the imposing lacquered finishes it settled on in this example below, but that all depends on selecting the right inputs for what you as designer are trying to accomplish.

Preview: Interiors

As with Art Nouveau, Art Deco interior design deserves its own post. However in the meantime I’ll leave you with a brief fourth workflow idea for art deco design (or any interior design for that matter): The prompt “award winning photo of [style] interior design, [style] interior architecture mood board collage” is great for finding interior design inspiration:

“History isn’t linear. It’s cyclical. What was once avant garde becomes mainstream, then outdated, only to be rediscovered and appreciated again or for new reasons.” – Stewart Hicks [16].

Art Deco design may be on the verge of coming back in full force but I’ll admit, this Gatsby-like style can come off as a bit ostentatious at times. It definitely retains a timeless appeal at its core but the key challenge for designers today will be finding ways up update it for a modern audience.

Will this revival follow the path of the neon-drenched 1980s Art Deco pastiche [17][18]? It would certainly be fun if it did. Alternately will it stick to its roots as a serious way of expressing grandeur and affluence seen only in condos and office towers? Will it take a tactful middle road and aim to be a subtle celebration of timeless design concepts targeting the widest possible audience? Or perhaps Art Deco doesn’t take off and some new style seizes the zeitgeist. Either way, we’ll certainly be exploring many other contenders on this blog, so that’s not out of the question.

Some may disagree with Art Deco. Some may love it. Some may look at this whole blog and say “The 1900s called. They want their architecture back”. This blog is not meant to be my way or the highway. It is a series of tableaus to peruse through and find something inspiring, whatever that may be. It’s a stream of ideas paired with practical design tips, tricks, and workflows, with the ultimate goal of helping designers navigate the world of AI design as they bring creative new architectural concepts into reality.

Some of the examples above touched on leveraging the strengths of two different AI tools to compliment each other. In the next post, we will compare some of the best AI image generators for architecture and how to combine them in your design workflow.

About the Author

AcanthusAlchemist

Designer and engineer exploring the intersection of AI, architecture, and urbanism.

email: acanthus@pixelstoplans.com

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Citations:

[1] YouTube – Wayfair – The Rise, Fall, and Revival of Art Deco | A Style Is Born W/ @KazRowe

[2] New York Public Library – Art Deco: A research Guide

[3] The Art Story – Art Deco

[4] YouTube – History of ID Matthew Bird, RISD – Art Deco

[5] My Modern Met – Art Deco

[6] YouTube – Michael Pacitti – Art Deco vs Streamline Moderne 4K

[7] Yesterday’s News -Art Deco Revival in 2020

[8] The Spruce – This Retro Design Style Is 2023’s Next Biggest Trend

[9] Dezeen – Art Deco Architecture Design Projects

[10] YouTube – Nick Lewis – 4 easy tips to bring art deco into your home

[11] Coaster Furniture – Art Deco furniture 101: How to add glitz and glamor to your home

[12] YouTube – Wade McMaster – Creator Impact –  MIDJOURNEY Tutorial: How to get started in 2023

[13] YouTube – Future Tech Pilot – This Midjourney Technique Will Put You in the Top 1% | Chain Prompting Tutorial

[14] YouTube – Future Tech Pilot – The BEST Thing About Midjourney Version 5.2

[15] YouTube – Theoretically Media – Mastering Midjourney v5.2 : A Deep Dive into the New Version! (Zoom, Vary, Shorten, Tips & Tricks!)

[16] MidLibrary – Architectural Genres

[17] YouTube – Stewart Hicks – The 1980s Design Secret We’ve Forgotten

[18] Instagram – Meg Gustafson – 80s Deco

Image References

[i] https://www.linearity.io/blog/art-deco/

[ii] https://www.timeout.com/los-angeles/things-to-do/art-deco-buildings-los-angeles

[iii] https://archi-monarch.com/art-deco-design-in-architecture/

[iv] https://unsplash.com/photos/a-yellow-and-white-building-with-a-blue-sky-in-the-background-tqss4wZILRQ

[v] https://matadornetwork.com/read/coolest-art-deco-buildings-miami/

[vi] https://www.miamiandbeaches.com/things-to-do/history-and-heritage/art-deco-historic-district#:~:text=The%20first%2020th%2Dcentury%20neighborhood,built%20between%201923%20and%201943.

[vii] https://interiordesign.net/awards/nycxdesign/2023/cetraruddy-architecture-rose-hill/   

[viii]  https://www.skyscrapercity.com/threads/the-brooklyn-tower-new-york-325-m-74-fl.2400486/

[ix] https://www.woodsbagot.com/projects/the-brooklyn-tower/ 

[x] https://www.behance.net/gallery/77819671/180E-88th-St-Penthouse

[xi]  https://www.pineave.com.au/architecture.html

[xii] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-03-18/a-new-old-art-deco-tower-marks-manhattan-s-terra-cotta-comeback

[xiii] https://www.dezeen.com/2019/06/07/art-deco-architecture-design-projects/

[xiv] https://www.archpaper.com/2023/09/studio-v-the-green-house-terra-cotta-cladding-long-island-city/

[xv] https://mymodernmet.com/art-deco-architecture/

[xvi] https://www.theartstory.org/movement/art-deco/  

The post AI Workflows for Art Deco Revival: An Architecture Design Guide appeared first on Pixels to Plans.

Introduction

Art Nouveau, with its whimsical approach, fantastical ideas, and unabashed celebration of beauty and nature, is like a fairytale brought to life in an absinthe-fueled fever dream. For over a century, Art Nouveau design has taken a back seat to more austere, manufactured, and geometrical design schools like modernism and minimalism, but today interest in this incredible style is slowly seeing a revival thanks to one revolutionary new trend: generative artificial intelligence. The power to rapidly create AI generated architecture concepts is allowing innovative designers to develop and reimagine design styles both new and old and is priming the architecture world for a renaissance of creativity. As a result, many are realizing the ability of some AI models to recognize and generate intricate highly detailed images makes them uniquely suited for exploring the intricate organic forms associated with Art Nouveau and finding ways to apply this beautiful design style.

So why kick off this blog by discussing a style largely declared dead over 100 years ago? The truth is, it never really died. Rooted in a timeless embrace of nature, it’s been patiently awaiting its resurgence. Just like a desert flower seed, it simply lacked the ideal conditions to flourish after the 1910s. However, it seems those conditions have finally arrived.

In 2023, we find ourselves yearning for something more than the blasé desert of developer modernism, normcore, or the monotony of earth tones and rectangles. We’re craving a bloom of creativity, akin to desert flowers after a flash flood. The accelerating adoption of AI in the design world has shown that AI generated architecture can provide that deluge of inspiration that a style like Art Nouveau needs to thrive. So how can you use generative AI to incorporate more of this incredible style in your practice? Does Art Nouveau deserve a revival and if so, what might it look like? Read on and decide for yourself.

Outline

The role of artificial intelligence in architecture and design is expanding rapidly, letting designers rapidly generate, combine, and expand upon their ideas. By simply inputting text or other images, today’s AI image generators can recognize countless design styles and produce original images inspired by those styles and based on the directions of the designer. However, with infinite design possibilities, we must stop to think what concepts and styles we should embrace. What AI assisted design workflows should we consider? How can we construct these ideas in reality? To explore these ideas, in this post we will cover:

1. History of Art Nouveau
   • Early History
   • Key Figures and Features
   • An Eventual Decline
   • Art Nouveau’s Lasting Influence
2. A Contemporary Art Nouveau Architecture
   • Subtle Sensibilities
   • Dreams of Paris
   • A Timeless Luxury
   • A Style for All
   • Eye-Catching Elegance
   • A Focus on Urban Fabric
   • Modernism Meets Modernisme
   • The Optimism of AI Architecture
   • Making Fantasy Reality
3. Dabbling in Interior Design
4. Unpacking AI – A Peek Behind the Pixels
5. Assessing Practicality
6. Why Now? – An Ironic Conclusion
7. Coming up…

1. History of Art Nouveau

Early History

Before we imagine Art Nouveau’s future in architecture, let’s delve into its past. The term “Art Nouveau” originated in 1884 when it was used to describe the work of Les Vingts, a group of artists aiming to unify all art forms and challenge the notion that decorative arts (e.g., pottery, carpentry, glass working, and metalsmithing) as less respected than the fine arts (painting, sculpture, etc.) [1]. It gained further prominence through the Parisian gallery “La Maison de l’Art Nouveau” and debuted as an architectural style with the works of Victor Horta, who is often considered the father of Art Nouveau architecture. It tended to have a different name in each country such as Jugendstil in Germany, Modernisme in Spain, Tiffany Style in America, and Glasgow style in Scotland, but at its birthplace in France and Belgium as well as much of the world, it went by Art Nouveau [2].

Art Nouveau emerged as a response to the industrialized world’s gloominess and instead took an optimistic, whimsical approach to design promoting integration of art and nature with everyday life as well as the ideal of beauty for beauty’s sake. It offered an alternative to competing styles like the heavy utilitarianism of Victorian, the stuffiness of neoclassical or neogothic, or the seriousness of a similar yet toned down style, the Arts and Crafts movement.

Key Figures and Features

Known for its floral patterns, whiplash curves, and elegant silhouettes, it emphasized the equality of all design disciplines, from towering facades to delicate glassware. From the glass creations of Émile Gallé to the very commercial yet beautiful illustrations of Alphonse Mucha, Art Nouveau found a place in all sorts of art forms. Works from some of the most famous art nouveau artists and designers are illustrated below as an example:

Louis Majorelle Interior Designer	Hector Guimard Architect	Émile Gallé Glassmaker
Louis Comfort Tiffany Stained Glass Designer	Victor Horta Architect	Margaret Macdonald and Charles Rennie Mackintosh Interior Designers
Aubrey Beardsley Illustrator	Alphonse Mucha Illustrator	Antoni Gaudí Architect

Ironically, despite Art Nouveau’s celebration of nature and reaction to industrialism, it embraced materials made possible by the industrial revolution—wrought iron, stained glass, plaster, etc. [3] However, one could argue that’s more a feature than a bug since the movement’s real goal was to develop ways to harmonize and integrate natural beauty into a modern industrialized world. To that end, it included abundant nature motifs like grasshoppers, dragonflies, butterflies, birds of paradise, and peacocks. The style’s architecture boasted extraordinary stairs, ornate lamps, and and soaring organic arches. It was elaborate yet modest, unique and outspoken. In its efforts to be original, it discovered new ways to make use of both progressivism and historicism [4].

An Eventual Decline

Reaching its zenith at the Exposition Universelle in 1900 [4], Art Nouveau’s popularity spread through marketable and mass-produced pieces. However, its dominance was short-lived and lasted only from the 1880s to the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

At the time it was seen as a luxury style that required skilled craftsmen and could not be scaled and produced affordably for everyday people. This association with wealth and influence may have been a part of what led to its demise. The austerity and disillusionment that came about during and after World War I also helped to crush the uniquely optimistic outlook of Art Nouveau. Modernist movements like Art Deco, with its characteristic sharp angles and geometric shapes quickly supplanted the more organic forms of Art Nouveau as the style of choice for trendy designers, especially as France’s cultural influence was replaced by a more English, American, and German driven culture. Finally, since Art nouveau was more prevalent in private residences than public spaces, it quickly faded from the public consciousness, further hindering its survival [4].

Art Nouveau’s Lasting Influence

The 1910s weren’t the last we would see of Art Nouveau. In the 1960s it captivated the public consciousness once more as the psychedelic movement drew upon its whiplash curves, vibrant colors, and ideas about beauty and the environment [2]. Yet that movement too came and went as youth culture evolved. 30 years later the 1990s saw a similar but more toned down embrace of Art Nouveau’s design principles, only faintly echoing previous movements.

Now, decades later, there have been attempts to revive the style, particularly in interior design (e.g. Bohemian style). However, in new architectural design and in the facades we experience as urban fabric, Art Nouveau remains dormant. And while I would highly recommend spending the time to watch the linked videos from the amazing creators cited above, that brings us to today. So, as we move forward, let’s explore how AI can potentially rekindle this artistic flame.

2. A Contemporary Art Nouveau Architecture

While Art Deco is having a bit of a comeback now as an ultra-luxury style in New York (more on that in a future post), Art Nouveau is a bit of a sleeper hit. Designers here and there have been picking up on a desire to rediscover the maximalism, antique aesthetic, and biophilia inherent in Art Nouveau, with various styles like Boho, Cottagecore, and French Revival drawing on it occasionally. It has been featured in a few articles as an emerging trend [5][6]. However, these rely more on piecing together antiques and other existing designs, rather than promoting original works. To start a true design movement, Art Nouveau needs to make a splash in architecture and specifically facade design. To that end, AI architecture image generators can play a pivotal role and give us ideas of what form an Art Nouveau revival could take.

Subtle Sensibilities

So what could a contemporary Art Nouveau building look like in 2023? It might begin modestly, with ornamentation and a preference for timeless natural materials like wood, stone, and plaster. Subtle organic curves in the façade could hint at iconic Art Nouveau concepts. You might need to zoom in and look closely to spot these details, but it might look something like this:

Dreams of Paris

One could also take a bigger more fanciful approach, with cues that blend early examples of the Art Nouveau architecture found in Paris and the grand Haussmann style architecture that preceded it, with whimsical motifs but a stately rhythm echoing the styles found throughout the City of Lights:

A Timeless Luxury

It could continue on its roots as a luxury style:

A Style for All

Alternatively, maybe modern fabrication and construction techniques like laser cutting, CNC fabrication, 3D printing, prefabrication, and innovative materials could democratize the intricate detailing of Art Nouveau, making it more economical and suitable as a style for the fabled “missing middle housing” (e.g. townhomes, duplexes, fourplexes, etc.).

With smaller missing middle housing projects there is more leeway for architects to get creative with the detailing compared to large developments that often just aim to be unobjectionable. This makes mid-size developments like townhomes the perfect proving ground for the intricate concepts AI facilitates. For example, CNC fabrication and 3D printing generally don’t rely on economies of scale, making them an economical choice for prototyping detailed facade elements on a smaller project. With these modern tools paired with generative AI architecture, designers could be freed to rediscover ornamentation as a way of making homes fun, whimsical, and eye catching, while still keeping everything at a smaller more modest scale so they can be built faster and in more places than the megaprojects being constructed today. With the right design and fabrication choices, the housing stock of tomorrow could go from dull imposing boxes to something more like this:

Eye-Catching Elegance

With any style you need to push the boundaries sometimes, and in certain building types like commercial spaces, being eye-catching is key. Fortunately AI architecture image generators excel at coming up with eye catching ideas. For example, a commercial or mixed-use building that really wants to stand out could embrace art nouveau revival to create an intricate statement centerpiece, but include more traditional wings that harmonize with the street and surrounding buildings, like so:

A Focus on Urban Fabric

We could focus less on the intrace flourishes and more on the materiality. A contemporary Art Nouveau could infuse the warm materiality and rustic charm of 19th century materials like brass, stone, and wood into public spaces weaving through our urban areas, drawing inspiration from structures of the 1900 Exposition Universelle that helped this style spread around the world in the first place:

Modernism Meets Modernisme

Perhaps we don’t completely eschew sleek modern design trends, but instead blend them with Art Nouveau’s more natural materials for an elevated design while still conforming to modern expectations. For example, maybe we consider a modern mixed-use building with an earthy, sculptural stone aesthetic akin to the museum/residences at Antoni Gaudí’s “La Pedrera”, which exemplifies the branch of Art Nouveau developed in Barcelona called Modernisme:

The Optimism of AI Architecture

Imagine a residential tower that trades drab blockiness for gleaming brass, colorful filigree eaves, cozy wood millwork, and expansive covered terraces providing a connection to the outdoors to embody the style’s embrace of nature:

Making Fantasy Reality

And then eventually some architect has to go completely off the deep end and just start designing an elven fairytale village or fantastical wrought iron masterpiece, because we could all use a bit more wonder and magic in our lives:

With each concept, the devil is in the details. Sure, there are a few nonsensical ideas in most AI architecture images. Irregular windows; Structural elements that do nothing; Floors that defy gravity. However, it’s the designer’s role to identify those issues and correct them when developing the design further and there are many more details hidden in these images that spark inspiration and offer ideas we may never have thought of. Using AI to further develop these details past the concept phase will be the topic of another post and admittedly some take a little imagination to interpret what the AI is trying to show, but that’s half the fun.

So go ahead. Look closely. You’ll be surprised what you find and what might bring you inspiration.

3. Dabbling in Interior Design

You may want to know what the interiors of all these concepts might look like, and yes one could easily do a less flashy, more personal and pared down interior design for occupants to express themselves. But if you’re really aiming for a cohesive interior and exterior design philosophy, Art Nouveau does make for just the coziest and most playful interiors. This is especially true when blended with modern interior design sensibilities, but that’s a topic for another post. Here’s a preview though:

Have any design projects you would like to share? Email acanthus@pixelstoplans.com about your project if you would like to have it featured in a future post.

4. Unpacking AI – A Peek Behind the Pixels

While AI image generators are fun to experiment with, let’s take a look under the hood to understand a bit more about how they really work and how they make the images in the examples above. Generative AI comes in many flavors, but we’ll be looking at the most common method for the examples shown above: diffusion-based image generators.

Put simply, diffusion is a machine learning algorithm that first trains an AI to identify and reconstruct progressively blurrier and noisier images by identifying what’s in the image and adjusting the pixels to clean up the noise. For example, let’s say you’re training it to identify a stoplight (sound familiar?). Once the model has developed a concept of what “stoplight-like” pixels looks like, it can take a blurry image or field of random noise, find the most “stoplight-like” pixels and start adjusting them step-by-step to produce an image. So what happens if you want to combine multiple concepts and have it draw an Art Nouveau stoplight? Well with enough Art Nouveau images in the training data, it will get a concept for what that looks like too, creating some very stylish results.

It’s a bit like cloud watching. Sure, that cloud might just be a puff of condensed water vapor. But as humans, we know when it looks like a rabbit and our imaginations can fill in the blanks of what should be there to see it as a rabbit[x][xi].

As of September 2023, numerous AI tools have become available, each with its strengths and weaknesses, so it is important to understand the use cases for each one. Images in this blog use one or more of the following platforms:

• Midjourney: The biggest name in image generators right now, excelling at turning simple prompts into high-quality images.
• Playground AI: A freemium AI model that’s good for rapid idea variations. While results are often not quite as polished or stunningly artistic as Midjourney, its image-to-image features are excellent at generating variations on a specific composition (important for buildings which require a lot of variation on a specific massing to further develop a design)
• Additional tools like Vizcom, Dall-E, Blue Willow, Look X, PromeAI and others.

Future posts will dive deeper into the workflow for each of these to provide roadmap of how to use generative AI in your architectural practice. However the examples in this article should give you an idea of how powerful these tools are for developing design ideas.

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5. Assessing Practicality

Of course we have to ask: is art nouveau construction in modern times even practical? I would argue it absolutely is — more so than at its inception in the 1800s. Originally, Art Nouveau was a luxury style, often exclusive and inaccessible to most people. Today though a convergence of technologies has changed the game. We now have 3D printing, laser cutting, advanced materials like silicones and adhesives, and a host of other fabrication techniques at our disposal. These tools could empower creative designers to bring their concepts to life on a grand, cost-effective scale. Art Nouveau, known for its rejection of industrial drabness while creatively utilizing industrial products, could easily flourish in this new technological era and the power of AI architecture image generators to rapidly produce design variations can help architects find new and creative ways to achieve their design intent.

AI has democratized this type of design, so the style should evolve to reflect that. The key to developing an AI-inspired Art Nouveau revival style with modern sensibilities is to explore and determine which ideas also democratize the style and make it something everyone could enjoy. A well justified backlash to excess and fantasy killed Art Nouveau the first time around, but maybe it was just waiting until it had an answer to the very real challenges of everyday people in the 20th century; waiting to fulfil its promise of transcending tradition and rejecting industrial drudgery.

In a quest to turn fantasy into reality and offer beauty for beauty’s sake, the path forward lies in practicality. In the 1920s, Art Deco emerged as a solution (which we will get into in the next post) but Art Deco was a product of its times and a solution using the tools they had on hand. Now, we must seek a solution tailored to the tools and challenges of the 2020s instead of the 1920s.

We may very well be entering a new Metamodern era in design, emphasizing sincerity, pluralism, and open-mindedness. This is a period when many are attempting to balance modernism’s practicality, historicism’s reverence, and postmodernism’s humorous cynicism while rejecting the less desirable aspects of these philosophies. In this context, what could be more fitting than a design style that expresses a love of nature and adds joy and whimsy to the world? Art Nouveau fits the bill.

6. Why Now? – An Ironic Conclusion

The irony of Art Nouveau was its use of technology and industry to celebrate nature while rejecting utilitarian monotony and still building to accommodate burgeoning populations in the late 1800s. Today, we find ourselves amidst a similar era of unimaginative, bland developer modernism and uninspiring architecture on top of an unprecedented housing shortage. The parallels are hard to ignore, making it apt that the response to this modern problem should once again draw inspiration from an even more modern solution: Generative AI.

AI presents ethical considerations for individuals and the industry. Opinions on AI range from “It’s evil, don’t touch it!” skepticism to curiosity and all to way to full-on “Welcome robot overlords” acceptance. Regardless, AI is here to stay and as designers, we must learn to harness this new tool. In doing so, we have the potential to create architectural marvels that will enrich the tapestry of our environment and stand the test of time.

Is Art Nouveau the ideal source of inspiration for this new era? Perhaps. However, the idea of an AI Art Nouveau revival is just one of the many topics we’ll explore as we delve into AI’s role in urbanism and architecture, and turn design ideas from Pixels to Plans.

7. Coming up…

While Art Nouveau exemplifies a style uniquely suited for an AI-driven revival, it’s only the beginning of the creative possibilities designers are now discovering. In the next post, we’ll dive into Art Nouveau’s younger brother, Art Deco, examine how it’s making a comeback, and explore how AI may influence its revival and future design trends.

About the Author

AcanthusAlchemist

Designer and engineer exploring the intersection of AI, architecture, and urbanism.

email: acanthus@pixelstoplans.com

CONTACT

Interested in exploring other AI generated architecture concepts and design workflows? Sign up for our free mailing list below to be notified whenever we post new content here on Pixels to Plans.

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Citations:

[1]  Wayfair – How Art Nouveau Raged Against The Machine | A Style Is Born w/ @KazRowe

[2] Vox – Where the 1960s “psychedelic” look came from

[3] Europeana – Art Nouveau Architecture and Interiors

[4] Radio Retrofuture – The History of Art Nouveau Architecture and Design | From Horta to Guimard

[5] Forbes – In 2023, Will We Fall Back In Love With Sexy, Slinky Art Nouveau?

[6] Designwanted – Is Art Nouveau making a comeback? Here’s a design guide, just in case

Image References:

[i]   Gallerie Yves Gastou – Louis Majorelle Art Nouveau Armchairs

[ii]   I Prefer Paris – Hector Guimard Buildings on Rue Jean de la Fontaine

[iii]   Skinner Inc. – Emile Galle and the Lasting Appeal of Art Nouveau Glass

[iv]  Christies – 10 Things you Need to Know to Collect leaded Glass Lighting by Louis Comfort Tiffany

[v]  UNESCO World Heritage Convention – Major Town Houses of the Architect Victor Horta (Brussels)

[vi]   Visit Scotland – Charles Rennie Mackintosh & Glasgow Architecture: Music Room at House for An Art Lover

[vii]   Wikipedia – Aubrey Beardsly – Peacock Skirt

[viii] Meister Drucke – Alphonse Mucha:  La Danse Lithographs

[ix]  SerenTripidy – Gaudí Barcelona: Casa Batlló, The House Of The Dragon

[x] Reddit – r/clouds – Bunny-shaped clouds!

[xi] Reddit – r/clouds – Bunny shaped cloud in Czechia

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