Dezeen has published its coverage, and film, of The Productive Architect: How AI is Changing Our Approach to Design: the talk it hosted with Trimble SketchUp at the Skybox at DiamondView Tower during the AIA Conference on Architecture and Design 2026 in San Diego.
Moderated by Dezeen co-CEO Ben Hobson, the panel brought together Marissa Ritchen, Kestrel's Chief Industry Officer, with Christopher Cronin, senior vice president of architecture and design at SketchUp, and Omar Calderon Santiago, design principal at Perkins Eastman. The throughline of the conversation: AI is becoming embedded in the design process, and that makes human judgement, ingenuity, and storytelling more central to architecture, not less.
Marissa, a licensed architect, pointed to Kestrel's code compliance platform as an example of what AI should be doing in practice: automating the time-consuming, repetitive work so architects can spend that time on design. The point is not to replace creative exploration. It is to give it room.
“I think an architect will always be a storyteller.”
That is the thesis Kestrel is built on. Code compliance is some of the most repetitive, highest-stakes work in a project. When the checking runs inside the model, continuously and with citations, the hours it used to consume go back to the part of the job only an architect can do.
Read the full piece and watch the talk on Dezeen: Architecture fundamentally a human endeavour, says panel at Trimble SketchUp talk in San Diego →
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