This is a short demo video by Christopher Parsons (Knowledge Architecture) showing a new AI search feature in Synthesis tailored for AEC firms to surface sustainability content across mixed-format resources. The demo walks through multiple example queries (mass timber use, project use, VOC mitigation, recommended window-to-wall ratios, IAQ, embodied carbon materials, sustainable concrete, glazing strategies, resources and a one-page sustainability overview), highlights source citations and clickable verification, and notes the feature is currently in private beta with public beta planned for December.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Chris from Knowledge Architecture and I'm going to talk about our new AI search feature for AEC firms. Today we're going to look at sustainability content. So I'm on a sustainability guide in synthesis. This guide organizes a lot of different information on different sustainability topics, materials and resources. And so what I want to do is show how our AI search for AEC firms can help you navigate across that content in a really intuitive way. So let's start with a search that's something like why use mass? And what's happening is synthesis is searching across all of the content on synthesis. Right? So pages, posts, documents, videos, and generating this search summary using AI. So you can see that mass timber is used as a material and sustainable architecture for a bunch of reasons. Sustainability, efficiency, aesthetic qualities, performance, and so on. And so in each case we're citing the source of where we got that information. So most of the citations for this answer come from a video we did on mass timber Basics. You can also see that I have the ability to ask follow up questions. So how about are we using it on any projects? And again, we're going to search across the resources on synthesis. And I find out that yes, we're actually using mass timber in several projects. And here are some of the benefits of doing so. And again, I'm citing sources, which is again, that Mass Timber Basics video. Cool. Let's ask a few more questions. How can we mitigate VOCs? So again, searching across all the content on the Internet and generating a search summary, starting with the definition of what VOCs are. And then again, you can see that we've got six different strategies for mitigating volatile organic compounds. In this case, the first result is coming from our toxic chemical avoidance page. You can see I'm also pulling from our indoor air quality page. I can always click on that and it will open in a new tab and I can go verify the information that was cited in the AI search result. Okay, let's try another one. How about recommended window to wall ratio? All right, it's saying that for most buildings the recommended winner to wall ratio is between 20 and 40%. I see that's coming from our Windows and Doors page. And I'll just drill in and yep, there it is. That's where we pulled it. So cool. Let's try another one. Let's search on iaq. Let's say I'm new to the firm and I heard people talking about iaq, but I don't know what it is, so I just want to look it up so I can get a sense of it. It turns out IAQ stands for Indoor Air Quality and I get a pretty good explanation for how what indoor air quality is and how at CJP Design we prioritize it in our projects and why and and again it turns out that there's an indoor air quality page that explains that. Cool. So I saved a few other search terms just so you can see how search queries so you can see how they went. So here's one on what materials are recommended for re reducing embodied carbon. You'll notice I made a typo there, but we're fine. We covered it up in the in the AI summary result. I've got a search here on sustainable concrete options. I did one on energy efficient glazing strategies for reducing water usage, recycled steel irrigation systems. In this one I asked what resources are available to help me learn about sustainable design and you can see that we actually pulled in a bunch of different kinds of resources like lead exam resources or building structures or information about the 2030 challenge and sustainable flooring and so on. Let me just look at one last query I pulled in. I asked please write me a one page overview on our approach to sustainability. And again you can see that it combs all of those different resources, whether they be pages or videos, posts and the like, to craft this one pager on how we approach sustainability. So I think you can see this is a pretty exciting way to take content that was created in a variety of different formats but by different people, and then recombine or synthesize it in new ways to make it easy to consume. So this is in beta now currently with our private closed group and it's going to be going into public beta in December. So please let me know if you've got comments or questions and I'm excited to keep building this and sharing as we go.
