AI-Driven Design and Generative Architecture

ArchSeek: Retrieving Architectural Case Studies Using Vision-Language Models

Danrui Li, Yichao Shi, Yaluo Wang, Ziying Shi, Mubbasir Kapadia

Published 2025-03-24

Thumbnail for ArchSeek: Retrieving Architectural Case Studies Using Vision-Language Models
📄 Paper💻 Code
Efficiently searching for relevant case studies is critical in architectural design, as designers rely on precedent examples to guide or inspire their ongoing projects. However, traditional text-based search tools struggle to capture the inherently visual and complex nature of architectural knowledge, often leading to time-consuming and imprecise exploration. This paper introduces ArchSeek, an innovative case study search system with recommendation capability, tailored for architecture design professionals. Powered by the visual understanding capabilities from vision-language models and cross-modal embeddings, it enables text and image queries with fine-grained control, and interaction-based design case recommendations. It offers architects a more efficient, personalized way to discover design inspirations, with potential applications across other visually driven design fields. The source code is available at https://github.com/danruili/ArchSeek.

Abstract

Efficiently searching for relevant case studies is critical in architectural design, as designers rely on precedent examples to guide or inspire their ongoing projects. However, traditional text-based search tools struggle to capture the inherently visual and complex nature of architectural knowledge, often leading to time-consuming and imprecise exploration. This paper introduces ArchSeek, an innovative case study search system with recommendation capability, tailored for architecture design professionals. Powered by the visual understanding capabilities from vision-language models and cross-modal embeddings, it enables text and image queries with fine-grained control, and interaction-based design case recommendations. It offers architects a more efficient, personalized way to discover design inspirations, with potential applications across other visually driven design fields. The source code is available at https://github.com/danruili/ArchSeek.

Topics

Form FindingGenerative Design and Design Space ExplorationParametric, Computational and Algorithmic DesignPerformance-Driven Design

Cite this paper

@misc{li2025archseek,
      title={ArchSeek: Retrieving Architectural Case Studies Using Vision-Language Models},
      author={Danrui Li and Yichao Shi and Yaluo Wang and Ziying Shi and Mubbasir Kapadia},
      year={2025},
      eprint={2503.18680},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.IR},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.18680},
}

%%%%%% Performance-Driven Design %%%%%%