TALAMANA · THE AI LITERACY MAP FOR ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN · Studio Practice · AGE 18—21 · POSITIONAL · HELD

Route the task, not the app

A task belongs to one of six families, and the family outlives every product launch.

The dilemma

A task arrives — say, a massing study for a tight corner plot. You know three apps well. Do you open the one you know best, or stop and ask what kind of engine this task actually needs?

The choices

Open the familiar app and bend the task to fit it. Or sort the task first into one of six families: reasoning (a model that plans and argues), dreaming (an image engine that explores freely), grounded (a generator that holds your geometry), data (tables, numbers, a spreadsheet brain), geometry (a modeller or a parametric tool), or cinema (a video engine). Then pick an app from the right family. The six families are the Lab's routing frame; the app names under them change every season.

The consequence

Route by brand and you get a dreaming engine doing a geometry job: beautiful massing that will not stand on the plot. Route by family and the app becomes replaceable, because the routing decision outlives every product launch. The same task often changes family as the project moves: dreaming at concept, grounded in design development, geometry at delivery.

The case

A student wants "options for the façade." In week two that is a dreaming job: explore widely. In week ten, with the structure fixed, the same words are a grounded job: hold the geometry, vary the skin. Same sentence, different engine. The student who routes by brand does week ten in a dreaming engine and drifts the structure without noticing.

Take it to crit

When the student reaches for a tool, first ask which family the task belongs to, and why that family at this stage. Do they choose by the goal, or by the brand they happen to know?

How it works

The Lab's app routing map — its own material, shared in workshops — names current apps under each route. The apps on it go out of date in months. The question the map was built to ask does not: what kind of intelligence does this task need, and where should it go?

What this idea builds on

What this idea opens up

Sources

Open this idea on the map · The complete map · Logika · RBDS AI Lab, India · revised every edition.

Age grows from 11 at the centre to 22 at the edge, and six sectors show the learning strands. Tab into the map and the arrow keys step from idea to idea, following the links where there is one. Enter opens the idea under the cursor, and E reads out its links and the reason recorded on each. Press slash for Search, question mark for the full key list, and Escape to leave. Open Ideas for the complete readable list, including what each idea builds on and what it opens up.

LOGIKA · RBDS AI LAB INDIA
ON-RAMP · AGE 11 · FIRST ENCOUNTERS, NOT GATES — IDEAS · — DEPENDENCIES
DONE
OPENS NEXT
SOLID — STANDS ON