Design Smarter, Not Harder: 18 AI Tools Architects Secretly Swear By
Design faster, present smarter, and unlock ideas you didn’t know were possible. Get ready to change - now! Lets go!
This week’s Substack is five days late, but boy, have we got some really exciting things in store for you! Ready Player One?
Every architect has known the silence of a blank sheet—the charged stillness before a line is drawn, before an idea finds its form. It’s not just the challenge of drawing, but of translating: emotion into expression, intuition into intention. In this moment, we’re not designing. We’re revealing.
But today, something else hovers beside us—quieter than graphite, quicker than thought: artificial intelligence. It doesn't sketch or sculpt, but it suggests. It doesn’t decide, but it provokes. As it begins to thread its way into our presentations, process books, and concept decks, we must ask: is AI amplifying our vision, or replacing our voice?
This list isn’t just a cheat sheet for productivity. It’s a field guide for the contemporary architect. A series of tools that don’t just streamline your workflow—they shape how you think, what you prioritize, and how deeply you reflect. Most are still overlooked. But in the right hands, they become more than apps—they become instruments of clarity.
1. Tools for Presenting Thought, Not Just Slides
Canva
Canva is not a design tool—it’s a co-narrator when deadlines loom. Let it do the scaffolding, but you frame the story.
Type: Web-based design platform with AI capabilities
Key Features: Magic Design (text-to-template), Magic Write (GPT-powered copywriting), and Text-to-Image generation
Subscription: Free with limitations, Pro plan at $ 46.5/year.
Ideal Use Case: Client presentations, AI-generated mood boards, and fast ideation decks.Rayon
With Rayon work faster, design with precision, craft stunning drawings and collaborate with ease.
Type: AI-driven floor plan and presentation collaboration tool
Key Features: Auto-zoning, smart annotations, schematic-to-deck conversion, real-time collaborative editing
Subscription: Free version available; Pro plan at $27/month if billed monthly.
Ideal Use Case: Internal charrettes, spatial planning, interior construction drawing production.Matto Board
A good mood board is not made of images, but of intent. Matto reminds you to design from feeling before function.
Type: Mood board generator and visual curator
Key Features: Text-to-mood board, AI-curated image search, colour palette extraction
Subscription: Free with limitations, Pro plan at $19/ month or $150/ year for one user.
Ideal Use Case: Concept boards, visual storytelling, design language framing
feeling before function.
2. Beyond the Chatbox: Intellect vs. Intuition
Claude
Developed by Anthropic, Claude is the most contemplative AI chatbot. It handles long documents and complex reasoning with grace. With a calm and deliberate tone, it is best used for deep reading, design briefs, or breaking down legal clauses in contracts. And who can forget vibe-coding?!Key Features: Capable of handling up to 200K tokens of input
Subscription: Pro plan at $20 if billed monthly.
Ideal Use Case: architectural research, proofreading specifications, refining proposals, building small-use apps
ChatGPT
The most dynamic of them all, ChatGPT (especially in its GPT-4 version) is your partner for brainstorming, rapid content generation, or writing technical blogs. Key Features: With access to DALL·E and a browsing option, it is a modular brain with many arms. (The new image generation is the bomb! More on that in the next issue!)Subscription: Free with limitations, ChatGPT Plus at $20/month.
Ideal Use Case: writing concept notes, generating client responses, prompting design ideas
Gemini (by Google)
Gemini is designed to be a multimodal, general-purpose AI model.
Key Features: Directly integrated with Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Slides for AI-powered productivity making it a good workflow assistant more than a creative engine.Subscription: Free with limitations, Gemini Advanced at $20/month.
Ideal Use Case: Able to handle longer, more complex tasks like understanding a full research paper or hours of meeting transcripts.
These chatbots do not just respond—they shape your cognition. They become mirrors to your thought process. But remember: real architecture isn’t made of data. It’s made of decisions, filtered through presence.
3. Writing, Reimagined
Quill Bot
AI-based paraphrasing and editing tool. Like the architect redrawing a line until it feels right, Quill Bot helps refine language into structure.
Key Features: Paraphrasing with tone control, grammar checker, summarizer, and plagiarism detection
Subscription: Free basic version; Premium at $4.17 / month, billed annually.
Ideal Use Case: Refining client documents, grammar-polishing design descriptions, editing academic or technical reportsJasper AI
Jasper is less of a writing tool and more of a voice tuner. It helps your firm's identity echo with clarity, It is mostly used for AI copywriting and long-form content.
Key Features: Templates for blog posts, newsletters, emails, brand voice memory, and marketing copywriting
Subscription: 7 day free trail available, Creator Plan at $39 / month, billed annually.
Ideal Use Case: Producing newsletters, writing firm profiles, crafting campaign material for design studiosQuiet Quill
Quiet Quill is an AI ideation and journaling assistant
Key Features: Context-aware drafting support, reflection prompts, distraction-free interface
Subscription: Basic plan at 9 USD/ month with 7,000 Credits.
Ideal Use Case: Reflective journaling, early-stage idea capture, writing design philosophies.Quick Fact: Quiet Quill was used in writing my book “Delirious Architecture: Midjourney For Architects”
If you haven’t checked it out yet, click the link below
4. Visualizing the Unbuilt
Midjourney
Midjourney a text-to-image generation tool doesn't just draw what you say—it dreams what you mean. It helps you visualize spaces before structure.
Key Features: For artistic ideation and visual brainstorming
Subscription: $10 to $120/month depending on usage plan.
Ideal Use Case: Architectural concept art, speculative landscapes, early-stage massing studiesLookX
Transforms text and sketches into rendering images instantly. Brings your design to life with a simple click.
Key Features: Pre-trained models by aesthetic category (Brutalism, Futurism), light and realism sliders, model training option
Subscription: Freemium model with few credits; Paid plan at $ 20/ month.
Ideal Use Case: Generating consistent visual styles for projects, portfolios, or design competitionsStability AI (Stable Diffusion)
Stability AI is the raw clay of this new craft—open-ended, complex, and ultimately shaped by your discipline.
Key Features: Highly customizable with ComfyUI, ControlNet, LoRA, and inpainting capabilities
Subscription: Free via local setup; paid plan is pay-per-credit system with stability AI membership at $ 20/ month.
Ideal Use Case: Diagrammatic rendering and visual brainstorming.
5 Moving Ideas: AI for Video
Runway ML
Runway ML video generation platform. Runway is where still ideas start to breathe. It turns emotion into motion.
Key Features: Motion brush, video inpainting, stylized video creation from stills
Subscription: Free with watermark; paid plans from $15–$95/month.
Ideal Use Case: Creating animated walkthroughs, visualizing narratives, bringing storyboards to lifeLuma AI Dream Machine
Dream Machine is a text-to-video model created by Luma AI. It generates video output based on user prompts or still images.
Key Features: noted for its ability to realistically capture motion, also generates audio for the video clips.
Subscription: Free with export limitations; paid plans starting from $10 / month.
Ideal Use Case: Creating animated walkthroughs and visualizing narratives.Hailuo MiniMax
Hailuo-AI is an AI-powered video generation platform that allows users to create short-form videos using simple text prompts.
Key Features: AI avatars, motion transfer, text/image to video narrative building
Subscription: Free with limits; Paid standard plan priced at $14.9 per month
Ideal Use Case: Crafting design narratives, speculative architecture reels, visual essays.
6. Sharpening the Vision: AI Upscaling Tools
Magnific AI
Magnific AI is a premium image upscaler and enhancer that can achieve extremely high-resolution upscaling, not just by increasing image size but by also hallucinating and adding new details guided by your prompts and adjustable parameters.
Key Features: detailed hallucination, high-res output suitable for print.
Subscription: $39/month for 2,500 tokens.
Ideal Use Case: Elevating concept art from Midjourney or LookX to presentation-ready qualityReal-ESRGAN
Open-source AI upscaling model.
Key Features: Noise reduction, detail restoration, strong edge preservation for technical graphics
Subscription: Free
Ideal Use Case: Clarifying elevations, plans, and orthographic views without stylistic alterationTopaz Gigapixel AI
Professional image enhancement software
Key Features: Multiple models for real-world photos, CG renders, and illustrations
Subscription: One-time license fee ($99), frequent discounts.
Ideal Use Case: Portfolio boards, competition panels, and client-facing presentations
Presentations as Pilgrimage
Perhaps it’s time to reclaim the architectural presentation not as a pitch but as a pilgrimage. Each slide is a threshold. Each image, a parable. Each plan, a poem of proportion and presence.
AI can assist in this sacred act. Midjourney conjures what we imagine. Magnific hones it. Runway animates it. Claude questions it. Jasper narrates it. Quiet Quill contemplates it. These tools are co-travellers, but they are not the destination.
In this new terrain, the architect must remain the one who sees through the fog of easy answers. Who uses AI not as a shortcut, but as a compass.
Pro Tips for the Thoughtful Architect
Don’t auto-pilot. Let AI offer, not decide.
Curate your decks like exhibitions. Matto + Midjourney + Magnific is a powerful flow for moodboard-to-presentation pipelines.
Use Rayon early, not late. It’s strongest at spatial ideation, not final output.
Don’t just ask AI for outputs. Ask it better questions. Claude thrives on this.
Combine chatbot + visual AI. ChatGPT prompt + LookX model = unique perspective.
Upscale with purpose. Match tool to need: Magnific for mood, Real-ESRGAN for diagrams, Topaz for final boards.
Reclaiming the Sacred Screen
In architecture, as in life, it is not the tools that define us, but the questions we dare to ask while using them. AI, with all its speed and spectacle, offers us mirrors, but not always meaning. It can build the scaffolding, but it is still the architect who must choose what kind of world to hang upon it.
In an age when presentations can be generated in seconds, what stands out is not the precision of pixels, but the presence of philosophy. The silence between slides, the pause between paragraphs, the gaze that lingers on an image before a word is spoken—these are the gestures that no AI can imitate. They are human. They are sacred.
So reclaim the screen. Not to impress, but to express. Use the tools, but do not lose the touch. Design, always, from the inside out.
For in the end, it is not about how fast we can present. It is about how deeply we can be seen. Stay curious, stay sceptical, and keep designing. The best ideas are still ahead.
I’m Sahil Tanveer of the RBDSai Lab signing off for the week. I promote, consult, and apply AI for Architects along with my Architecture and Design Studio, RBDS. If you liked this Substack,
You will love my book, DELIRIOUS ARCHITECTURE: Midjourney for Architects. It is a 330-page hardcover showcasing the potential of AI in Architectural Design. It is available on Amazon worldwide.
You can bend your minds with our WhatsApp channel AI IN ARCHITECTURE where we talk about AI and its impact on us and the built environment.
You can consult with us on AI for your architecture studio. We have multiple levels of learning and integration, from a Beginners session to the AIMM Assessment and beyond. Get in touch with us at sahil@rbdsailab.com or check out our page www.rbdsailab.com
I’m talking about AI. Our team is set to visit key cities of India for architectural conferences, Podcasts and exclusive student interactions at architecture schools. We’d love to come over for an engaging meetup, hands-on workshop, or a creative collab. Enquiries to sahil@rbdsailab.com