Reflecting on the potential integration of generative AI in architectural pedagogy: Insights from a student competition

This article explores the potential integration of generative AI in architectural education through a three-day student competition at the Liverpool School of Architecture. Using Midjourney and Adobe Firefly, participants engaged in structured challenges designed to build prompt literacy, encourage critical reflection, and explore AI’s role in design ideation. The event highlighted strong student engagement, enhanced creative output, and growing awareness of authorship and conceptual control in AI-assisted workflows. Observations suggest that generative AI can enrich architectural pedagogy, particularly when scaffolded to support both skill acquisition and deeper creative inquiry. Student feedback, thematically analysed and summarized, revealed positive perceptions of AI’s potential to expand design thinking and foster peer learning. The paper concludes by offering practical strategies for integrating generative AI into architectural curricula, including prompt-based exercises and collaborative critique formats. While the study is grounded in architecture, aspects of the format may be transferable to other creative disciplines where visual ideation and conceptual experimentation are central to learning. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .