Quote:
Originally Posted by gaviscon
"According to job search site Indeed, UK university graduates this year are facing the toughest job market since 2018. Indeed, and others, have claimed that artificial intelligence (AI) is a significant factor, with employers in white-collar industries like architecture seeking to cut costs by turning to the technology for tasks typically done by more junior staff.
"Demand for graduates is inevitably going to go down, slightly because of economics but mainly because of AI and its effect on repetitive tasks, which are often entry-level tasks," said architecture educator Jeremy Till, head of Central Saint Martins school in London for 10 years until 2022.
But while AI affects a broad range of jobs, architecture graduates are facing their own unique set of challenges, with additional compounding factors making it even harder to find employment."
https://www.dezeen.com/2025/08/11/architecture-graduate-job-market/
Architecture job is 70-80% glorified consulting..
Entry-level consulting is one of the best examples of jobs that are already being replaced by AI |
I can't speak to the veracity or accuracy of that article vis-a-vis the UK architecture market and field, but as someone in the architecture field here in North America, I can categorically state that this is simply not the case.
Architecture jobs are not being replace by AI any time soon, simply because of the complicated and intricate nature of how architectural design here is structured and functions (by .....um...."design")
Architecture graduates writ large may be facing a tough job market and harder entry into the profession than other fields, but that has less to do with the proliferation of AI than it has to do with other factors like the states of various economies and local downstream impact of things like the downturn in the construction fields and real estate market.
It's the same as its always been in every pre-, intra- and post-recession period over the last several decades.
The architecture and constructions fields are more vulnerable than other fields to the impacts of economic downturns and disruptions like the Inflation crisis we just went through and the pandemic lockdowns before them.
Here in Canada for example, if you're graduating now or soon, a bigger impediment to your entry into the field will more likely be the slowdown in the real estate market we're currently experiencing more than it will be the notion that AI is taking your job.
There's no job in an architecture firm right now that could be absorbed by AI that would otherwise be done by an architectural intern or junior designer wherein the firm would be saving money by doing so.
If you're cutting or downsizing those jobs it's more so because you don't currently need those jobs done (i.e. not enough work for you to have them), and not so much because you need them done more effeciently and at a lower cost.
And even then it's questionable how much of what those interns do could actually be done by AI to the same level they'd need to eb done.
Anyone that thinks they're easily swappable like that simply doesn't understand what architects do.
Even the comment that,...
"Architecture job is 70-80% glorfied consulting" is so laughably reductive as to be comical and also nonsensical.
Also,...
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RE : >>>"Entry-level consulting is one of the best examples of jobs that are already being replaced by AI"
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This may be true in other professions, but it's simply not the case in architecture.
While there may have been some initial excitement about the introduction of AI and what it could save architecture firms, in the period that's followed, a lot of that excitement has pretty much evaporated and died down.
I liken it to not that long ago when everyone got on the
"outsourcing" bandwagon when we believed that all the architecture elbow-grease work (CAD-monkey work) would be outsourced to "CAD monkeys" in India and Asia in general who could work on 24 hour cycles that North American interns, techonologitst and workers simply couldn't, and could therefore (theoretically) get things done faster and at lower cost.
That never panned out, as the way we work changed over time to make those savings practically meaningless (like the introduction of BIM and the necessity of having locally-based technologists who actually understand the context of what they're drawing (including local and regional bylaws) thus mitigating errors and the time lost in correcting....or even catching those errors in the first place - which ultimately cost companies more money than they would be saving from outsourcing in the first place).
It's never a simple case of,......
"1)We have robots. 2) Let's replace our humans with robots. 3)Save Money. -> 4)Profit"
It may be true in some fields, but we're simply not there quite yet in architecture with AI.
Certain aspects of the profession now may be complimented and facilitated by AI, but at the end of the day, even in those sections, you're simply always going to need a trained human being that's driving (and looking over) that AI as it does that work.
Having said all this, there have been some recent innovative uses and integration of AI algorithms in architectural design and planning software - but which are mostly all still largely in the experimental phases right now being tested, and which could radically change the way we work down the road.
But that's much much farther down the road as this has to be caveated with the fact that architects are notoriously slow and stubborn adopters of new technology into their field.
Which is another reason why I question that whole "
AI is taking over our field" sentiment and fear that's permeating the zeitgeist right now - particularly in architecture.
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