Welcome address

Key arguments of the welcome address

In her welcome address, Ms Domschky connects the changes brought about by AI with the development of architectural judgement. She begins with her experience of drawing by hand: hesitation before making a mark gives a decision time. When only seconds separate an idea from an image, she asks what knowledge and experience emerge through designing. This raises a task for architectural education and for the deliberate use of accelerated processes.

Her approach to AI is both pragmatic and optimistic. She describes using it for texts, research and preparation. In her account, relief from time-consuming routines can create room for creative work. Assessing the results remains a distinct professional responsibility: “Judgement simply cannot be delegated.” Ms Domschky relates judgement to experience, knowledge and an understanding of relationships. Choosing a convincing design therefore requires more than access to numerous images.

Her argument extends this responsibility beyond the individual design. Planning and building involve negotiating different interests, participation and shaping good spaces together. She presents quality, sustainability and professionally independent advice as continuing responsibilities of architects. Control over their own data also forms part of this framework. Her address consequently considers technical means together with the conditions of their use.

Ms Domschky explicitly addresses future architects as active participants in this development. They can help develop AI and influence what matters in that process. Her invitation, “Engage fully with AI too”, combines openness with the capacity to direct the tool and assess its results. She concludes by wishing the audience courage and curiosity. The encouragement lies in confidence in professional agency: AI opens possibilities whose quality continues to depend on reasoned decisions.

Selected thoughts and quotations from Ms Domschky’s welcome address at 10:10. Quotations translated from German.