Design for Excellence in the Era of Generative Artificial Intelligence: A Critical Review of Research

Design for excellence (DfX) is a design philosophy and proven process that is widely adopted in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, achieving quality, cost, time, safety, buildability, and sustainability excellence. Generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) and advanced computing have introduced new prospects and challenges to DfX in AEC, yet a comprehensive review of its current state and future trends is lacking. This paper fills this gap with a critical review of DfX research in the context of generative AI within the AEC design domain. Using an analytical framework developed in this study, a pool of DfX literature is evaluated. It is found that that DfX covers multiple indicators spanning manufacturing, assembly, sustainability, and safety, and has developed a variety of qualitative or quantitative optimization methods. This paper analyzes the differences in the capabilities of human designers and generative AI designers in dealing with qualitative or quantitative methods and constructs a collaborative framework for both designers in the DfX of the AEC domain in the era of generative AI.