AI on Purpose, Revisited

In early December 2022, I wrote a piece for Estates Gazette about my experience with a newborn AI. Like many of us, I had just taken it for a test drive, with no particular agenda. Over a handful of exchanges, I asked this nascent intelligence to imagine “dystopian cities”, “green future cities”, “hope” and, ultimately, “purpose”. It responded with data points. And dreamlike images; strange, beautiful. A single figure walking down a flowered path, light spilling across the horizon with clouds shaped like hearts.

It didn’t answer the question. But it reminded me that tech isn’t just about intelligent buildings. It’s about meaning. And how to turn that into form.

Now, two and a half years later, AI has moved on. So have we.

Beyond the noise

This is not a piece about smarter HVAC or some automation layer. That’s just table stakes. It’s about the real question: what might this new intelligence unlock?

Yes, we use AI at FORE. It’s modelling energy use, helping optimise construction, reshaping supply chains. But that’s not the point. Real estate is cultural code. Our buildings are repositories of our values; they express what matters. A staircase says “move together”. A locked gate says “not for you”. A plaza full of protest says “we belong”.

And with that, buildings become time capsules. The keys that decode the universal language of our species across place and time. They reveal what we once prioritised, what we feared and what futures we dared imagine. Each a silent storyteller.

Stone, glass, timber. This is how we’ve always communicated what matters. Architecture speaks.

When Disconnection Becomes Design.

And yet, despite the astonishing growth of tech – or perhaps because of it – we’re losing that connection. We’ve built a “click-to-connect” convenience culture, that, ironically, disconnects us.

We’ve traded frictionless efficiency for the micro-interactions that build understanding: chatting in queues, saying hello to strangers, sharing space.

It’s not just connection we’ve lost. It’s the muscle memory of empathy.

The consequences are real. Some 61% of young adults say they are seriously lonely. One in three workers doesn’t have a single close colleague. And loneliness increases your risk of early death by 30%. That’s the same as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

If we’re not careful, our buildings – in chasing efficiency – will start designing that loss into concrete.

Pattern Finder, Mirror Holder

This is where I believe AI can have its greatest impact.

Its power lies in pattern recognition. Not just data crunching, but signal finding. It sees what we often miss.

We can use it not just to optimise but to reveal. To enhance purpose as much as productivity, to illuminate the social patterns we too often miss. To discover the implications of our spatial choices with greater clarity.

Why does placemaking work in one situation and not another? How do we design for belonging?  Why do some buildings feel sacred and others sterile?

AI won’t tell us what’s to do. But it can show us what we’ve chosen – and what we haven’t.

Crisis, Craft

Over the past two years, we’ve leaned into the fact that we are not designing just for function, we are designing for belonging. At Cadworks in Glasgow, we didn’t just build Scotland’s first net zero office building. We created a building that invited engagement. A cycle entrance designed to welcome, not just accommodate. A pop-up for youth empowerment, not as a nice extra, but as essential infrastructure.

At TBC.London, we opened the building to the river. We removed fossil fuels from the building and the supply chain. In doing so, we cut through the narrative that “sustainability means sacrifice”.

These choices weren’t decorative. They were deliberate.  Design, after all, is how values become visible.

We have now started to use AI to help us better imagine these kinds of spaces. The results have been profound. We illuminate social patterns too often missed. We generate gestures now more intentionally. We see the implicit priorities behind our decisions. We fuse art, culture, tech. We synthesise insights across civic policy, behavioural research, anthropology and lived social experience.

From co-pilot to compass

What next? Maybe AI becomes our co-founder in building more human cities. It’s already shifting how we look at places and spaces. For me, that’s the point. Not what it does but what it helps us see.

This next chapter is not about automation or enhancing productivity. It’s about intention. What kind of rituals are we building for? Ultimately, purpose isn’t a tagline. It’s how we decide, it’s what shows up when the answer is not obvious.

So here we are, two and a half years on. The question now seems to be: what are we going to build and how?

By the way, I asked AI to revisit my original provocation, “show me purpose”. And this is what it came up with: a girl holding a flower with a vacant urban landscape as backdrop. And yes, clouds shaped like hearts.

 

This blog originally appeared in Estates Gazette, 4 July 2025