KUWAIT: A faculty member at the College of Architecture, Dr Yousef Al-Haroun, won the IASTE Berkeley Award for the best research at the nineteenth conference of the International Association for the Study of Heritage Environments (IASTE), which was hosted this year in Riyadh under the title “Heritage Dynamics”.

The conference brought together more than 300 researchers from around the world who presented researches on three broad topics: “Theorizing Tradition as a Dynamic Project”, “Dynamics of Spatial Social Practices and the Industry of Built Environments”, and “Opening the Path.” The conference was held between Jan 5 to Jan 10, 2024.

Organized annually by the University of California-Berkeley, one of the world’s leading academic institutions, this competition provides an opportunity for researchers to share their work and discuss their findings, research methodologies and practical applications in relation to heritage in general and architectural and urban heritage in particular.

In turn, Dr Yousef Al-Haroun stated that the conference is a vital platform to highlight the importance of preserving heritage and enhancing the interaction between tradition and modernity, through the participation of a number of experts in the fields of architecture, urban planning, sociology, and history. It aims to promote the concepts of developing cities towards a sustainable and culturally diverse future, noting that his winning research was entitled “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Architectural Design, Identity and Culture Industry in Kuwait and the Gulf”.

“The aim of this exploratory study is not only to find out how architects can use artificial intelligence as a design tool, but also how the results affect architectural cultural identity, form and style with significant implications for the future of design and participation in architectural heritage conversations and preservation, where interactive workshops were used as a way to understand landmarks in the cities of Kuwait, Riyadh and Doha,” he added.

Dr Al-Haroun indicated that the results of the research revealed that artificial intelligence only understood global ideas and did not fully understand local concepts in architecture. “The perception about Islamic architecture is a general and vague one,” as he described it as “digital bias” without understanding the diversity of cultures among Muslim peoples.

“Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool for architectural visualization, although the data indicates that when it comes to expressing culture, artificial intelligence still needs further development, as it constantly feeds on people’s comments and opinions, which is the main means by which it grows,” he stressed pointing to the importance of improving the platform’s algorithms, which in turn will make it more accurate and closer to reality.