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Deep seeking answers about AI in interior design

  • Ideas & Inspiration
Mar 27, 2025
A modern rustic lounge with wooden interiors, pastel seating, and a vintage TV wall centerpiece - Beautiful Homes

One of the key figures exploring the intersection of AI and design is Ayaz Basrai, co-founder of The Busride Design Studio. From surreal visuals to sustainable ideas, Ayaz Basrai reveals how AI tools are sparking new design conversations

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has evolved from a conceptual framework into a powerful tool that continues to redefine various disciplines. Its capabilities range from simple text corrections to complex data analysis and predictive modelling, influencing fields as diverse as urban planning and design. While some still approach AI cautiously, many designers have fully embraced it, leveraging its potential to generate intricate and thought-provoking visualisations through carefully crafted prompts.

One of the key figures exploring this intersection of AI and design is Ayaz Basrai, co-founder of The Busride Design Studio. Specialising in built environments across the hospitality and institutional sectors, he also leads The Busride Lab in Goa, integrating speculative fiction with heritage conservation to conceptualise future scenarios. Ayaz believes, “the future will be messy,” much like the present—a continuous work in progress. His AI-generated artworks envision scientific predictions of the year 2035 in compelling ways, exploring themes such as AI-driven transportation systems in Mumbai, agricultural transformations in Siberia, and the emergence of zero-carbon societies worldwide.

Futuristic drones building a zero-carbon enclave in Indonesia, showcasing tech and sustainability in 2035 – Beautiful Homes
With an increasing awareness of planetary boundaries, AI was tasked with creating a zero carbon economic system. The image shows a zero carbon enclave in Indonesia in 2035.

In this interview, he shares his insights on AI’s role in design, its expanding influence, and what the future holds for this dynamic collaboration between human creativity and artificial intelligence. Edited excerpts:

Beautiful Homes (BH): How has AI influenced your design philosophy and process over time?

Ayaz Basrai (AB): At The Busride, we've always been fascinated by new and fun workflows. Restaurant projects like Smokehouse Deli were seeded in the idea of hand-drawing a parody of opulence, and the thought behind Social was to harness the rebelliousness we saw all around us with the emergence of subcultures. Early on, we explored AI tools like Google's Co-lab, Stable Diffusion, and image or video-generating systems like MidJourney and Runway to enhance our Speculative Fiction projects. It’s both thrilling and unsettling to see how quickly the field is evolving. What’s most striking—and ironic—is how design and architecture remain obsessed with novelty, constantly asking, “What’s new?” when the real question should be, “What’s best?” In that sense, we are more Artificially Intelligent than the AI systems that we fear will replace us.

Cozy study corner with a wooden desk, rattan chair, and vintage décor against a grey wall – Beautiful Homes
The frames at The Second House are an imitation of the “Old Goan Family Photo” stereotype often seen in themed restaurants.
Wall of vintage TVs displaying a moonlit ocean in blue hues – Beautiful Homes
Halloween vibe with AI generated images at The Second House.

BH: The visualisations at the restaurant, The Second House in Goa blend technology and aesthetics. What role did AI play in shaping these elements?

AB: The visualisations at The Second House are built on layers of irony. It’s fascinating and absurd to create a media-driven art space in Goa, a place surrounded by natural beauty. It was strange to see people often overlook this beauty to sit in closed-off spaces, gazing at simulated images of nature they could freely experience outside. This paradox inspired the first set of visuals that populate the space. It was also meant to be an imitation of the “Old Goan Family Photo” stereotype often seen in themed restaurants. These AI-generated portraits feature surreal elements like people with televisions for heads or kids watching TV on a beach and lush landscapes overtaking dead Televisions. The visuals couldn’t have been created without AI, which we intentionally used as a constraint. To push the concept further, we framed these pieces like vintage wedding photos, collaborating with a wedding album photo-making studio in Madgaon for authenticity.

 

BH: You’ve used AI to create visualisations of potential futures in design. What have these explorations revealed about the future of architecture and interior design?

AB: At The Busride Lab, our Speculative futures studio in Goa, we aim to ask uncomfortable questions of ourselves. We’ve realised how we're outliving our relevance as design practitioners by focusing narrowly on stylised homes and interiors under the garb of luxury and ignoring the shared public realm. This creates a tone-deafness within the discipline. Architecture and design can play transformative roles in reallocating resources, fostering equitable exchanges, and enriching the public realm—but only if we move beyond superficial stereotypes. AI is one of many tools aiding our storytelling, allowing us to reimagine possibilities and critique our practice more meaningfully.

Portrait of Ayaz Basrai, co-founder of The Busride Design Studio – Beautiful Homes
Ayaz Basrai, co-founder of The Busride Design Studio.
Elegant dining space with a grand cathedral interior projection – Beautiful Homes
Projections of AI generated images at the Goan restaurant The Second House.
Futuristic drones building a zero-carbon enclave in Indonesia, showcasing tech and sustainability in 2035 – Beautiful Homes
Indonesian zero carbon enclave construction and monitoring through drones will allow real time sensors on AI-enabled perimeter walls to collate and enforce atmospheric data.

BH: As a designer, how do you balance the intuitive, human aspect of design and the data-driven precision of AI tools?

AB: AI tools can churn out novel visuals at the press of a button, but that speed risks skipping critical stages of design. Traditionally, our process involves sketching, modelling, rejecting, re-modelling, tweaking and pushing and pulling ideas and constructs—steps that build consensus with our teams and clients and include diverse viewpoints. This slower process fosters equity and richer conversations. While AI accelerates certain workflows, it’s crucial to retain critical thinking and critique. Emerging hybrid tools, like Vizcom, are particularly exciting as they integrate the human touch with AI-generated outputs, offering the best of both worlds.

BH: Do you believe AI has the potential to make good design more accessible, or is there a risk of it further polarising the field?

AB: Like any technology, the technology itself is not self-deterministic. AI’s impact depends on the maturity of its user, and this needs to be taught with as much rigour as hand-drafting in technical schools. AI can democratise design by giving clients the tools to articulate their ideas visually, pushing designers to ask better questions. Tools like MidJourney allow for incredible creativity—combining ideas, introducing unexpected material palettes, unimaginable style transfers and repurposing works by famous artists and dead designers in new ways. However, it's an ethical minefield, and we don't yet have the legal frameworks to engage with the production of these images.

 

BH: What excites you most about the future of AI in architecture and interior design, and what challenges do you foresee in its integration?

AB: The ubiquitous use of AI tools creates the possibility of a flatter relationship between clients and designers. With access to similar visualisation tools, we can co-design projects instead of working in isolation. This transparency fosters playful, curious, and meaningful processes. AI could even help commission bespoke art for homes or quantify carbon footprints for smarter, greener designs. It’s a fundamentally new domain—one that invites us to measure homes by intelligence-per-square-foot rather than conventional metrics like market value. Exploring these possibilities is incredibly exciting!

AI-powered harvesters in a Siberian wheat field, envisioning agriculture in 2035 – Beautiful Homes
As per a report on future climate changes, warmer temperatures in Russia in 2035 will present an opportunity in the agriculture sector. This vision shows how automated robotic harvesters and pollinators will work on the fields.
A modern rustic lounge with wooden interiors, pastel seating, and a vintage TV wall centerpiece - Beautiful Homes
Old and dead televisions stacked together form an art piece at The Second House.
Futuristic robotic safety prostheses on a Mumbai train in 2035, enhancing passenger security – Beautiful Homes
Looking at Mumbai in 2035, robotic safety prosthesis driven by AI will make sure casualties associated with overcrowding trains will be minimised.
Framed vintage family photo with old TV sets on a textured grey wall – Beautiful Homes
These AI-generated portraits feature surreal elements like people with televisions for heads or kids watching TV on a beach and lush landscapes overtaking dead Televisions.

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