Carlos Bañón is the Co-Founder of FORMAS.AI, an AI-native creative & design workspace for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC). He is Associate Professor of Architecture and Sustainable Design at SUTD Singapore, where he founded AirLab, pioneering the integration of AI, computational design, and digital fabrication in architecture. A recipient of the Singapore President’s Design Award, the London Design Museum’s Design of the Year Prize, and a Mies van der Rohe Award nominee, his work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the London Design Museum, and the Triennale di Milano. Carlos has held visiting professorships at MIT and EPFL and is an influential voice on AI-driven design innovation across the global AEC industry.
How we communicate with AI is evolving fast: from prompts and references to agents working alongside us. Each new interface opens new ways of designing, introducing new methods, new fluencies, and more natural forms of interaction. A new language of design is emerging.
This talk explores how we are redesigning the process of design itself without losing what has always defined it: intent, agency, and authorship. Multimodal, multi-agentic AI can dramatically expand our capabilities. As these systems become more autonomous, an important question arises: how can this evolution strengthen our agency as designers, and not compromise it?
AI can generate fast, but too often it produces generic results without clear intent, authorship, or firm identity. FORMAS.AI proposes a different workflow: a design canvas where architects can express, explore, control, and create with AI while keeping agency at the center.
Through a live demo, Carlos Bañón and Yiping Goh will show how FORMAS.AI supports architectural thinking across sketch, geometry, references, materials, constraints, lighting, spatial relationships, and text.
Not just faster workflows. More intentional ones. Form follows you.
