Norman Foster
Architect, founder of Foster + Partners
One of the world’s most influential high-tech architects says the profession does not need AI — that the technology “has the ability to deceive, to invent,” and that the physical reality of buildings and streets cannot be replicated by a machine.
In his words
Artificial intelligence at the moment has the ability to deceive, to invent.
We live in a world that is physical, we live in buildings, streets, squares. That physicality, you cannot replicate by artificial intelligence.
Biography
Norman Foster (born 1935 in Manchester) is a British architect and founder of Foster + Partners, a Pritzker Prize laureate whose “high-tech” buildings — the Gherkin, Apple Park, the reconstructed Reichstag dome, Hong Kong’s HSBC headquarters — helped define modern architecture. Few architects have embraced advanced engineering and technology as enthusiastically over six decades.
Unconvinced by the craze
Speaking in Paris in May 2023 during a major retrospective of his work at the Pompidou Centre, Foster made clear he was not sold on the sudden enthusiasm for AI in design. He cautioned that the technology can fabricate and mislead, and argued that the physical, inhabited reality of architecture — the felt experience of buildings, streets, and public squares — is something no machine can reproduce.
Coming from an architect synonymous with technological ambition rather than nostalgia, the skepticism carried particular weight. His argument was not that architects should shun tools, but that AI has no purchase on the part of the discipline that matters most: making real, lived space in the world.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/norman-foster