On Friday, March 1, 2024, Waterloo Architecture welcomed British architect and theorist Neal Leach to present, Alien Intelligence: An Introduction to AI For Architects. 

The entire lecture is now available to stream below.

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The lecture was presented by WA Working Group on Artificial Intelligence and Living Architecture Systems Group.

Neil Leach is an architect, curator and writer, and is one of the most prominent thinkers in the world today about artificial intelligence in architecture.  His globally published lectures and writing illuminate how artificial intelligence is both deeply inspiring and terrifying. For Leach, conversations limited to popular AI tools such as Midjourney and ChatGPT detract from a broader reckoning that the architecture profession must have in the face of ever-more-capable AI models and platforms. This AI-induced reckoning includes the supply and demand of architectural labor, liabilities, insurance, and the future of all pillars of the architectural community.

Leach teaches at Florida International University, USA, the European Graduate School, Switzerland, and Tongji University, China. He is the co-founder of DigitalFUTURES. He has also taught at many other leading schools of architecture, including the Architectural Association, UK and Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, USA; he is a member of the European Academy and has been a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Fellow. 

He has published over 30 books on architecture and digital design, translated into six languages. These include: 

Architecture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction to AI for Architects; Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory (Routledge, 1997); The Anaesthetics of Architecture (MIT Press, 1999); Millennium Culture (Ellipsis, 1999); Architecture and Revolution: Contemporary Perspectives on Central and Eastern Europe (Routledge, 1999); The Hieroglyphics of Space: Reading and Experiencing the Modern Metropolis (Routledge, 2002), China (Map Office, 2004) and Camouflage (MIT Press, 2006). In the field of digital design, he has published a number of edited volumes, including Designing for a Digital World (Wiley, 2002), Digital Tectonics (Wiley, 2004) and Digital Cities (Wiley, 2009)  and 3D Printed Body Architecture (Wiley, 2017). He has also been co-curator of the Fast Forward>> exhibition at the Architecture Biennial Beijing 2004, the Emerging Talents, Emerging Technologies exhibition at the Architecture Biennial Beijing 2006, and the (Im)material Processes: New Digital Techniques for Architecture exhibition at the Architecture Biennial Beijing 2008.