2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Generative AI (GenAI) is rapidly entering architectural education, accelerating precedent analysis, concept generation, and visualization while raising concerns about cognitive dependence, ethics, and the cultivation of independent design judgment. While prior research has focused primarily on GenAI’s role in idea generation and representation, its influence on students’ learning processes and design reasoning across the full design workflow remains underexplored. This study examines GenAI not as a single-stage tool but as a design companion supporting students from early research through final representation. A structured pedagogical experiment was implemented in a graduate seminar that integrates AI literacy, ethical awareness, and design practice. Students engaged tools such as ChatGPT, SciSpace, Consensus, and Midjourney for brainstorming, argumentation, and iterative problem-solving, while critically examining bias, verification, and risks of over-reliance through reflective activities. Funded by a national grant, this in-progress qualitative study analyzes design artifacts, think-aloud videos, reflection journals, and interviews to examine cognitive depth of AI use, design agency, and ethical awareness. Although situated in architecture, the findings offer transferable implications for engineering education, particularly for AI-integrated design courses emphasizing ill-structured problem solving, design thinking, and responsible AI use. The study identifies conditions under which GenAI enhances—or constrains—design quality and independent judgment and contributes a pedagogical framework to support creativity and analysis while preserving critical and autonomous design thinking.