Generative AI leads to designs that prioritize cognition, emotional resonance, and health, thus offering a tested alternative to current trends. In a first AI experiment, the large-language model ChatGPT-4o generated six visual environments that are expected to boost creative thinking for their occupants. The six test cases are evaluated using Christopher Alexander’s 15 Fundamental Properties of living geometry as criteria, also using ChatGPT-4o, to reveal a strong positive correlation. Living geometry is a specific type of geometry that shows coherence across scales, fractal structure, and nested symmetries to harmonize with human neurophysiology. The human need for living geometry is supported by interdisciplinary evidence from biology, environmental psychology, and neuroscience. Then, in a second AI experiment, ChatGPT-4o was asked to generate visual environments that suppress creativity, for comparison to the cases that boost creative thinking. Checking those negative examples using Alexander’s 15 fundamental properties, they are almost entirely deficient in living geometry, thus confirming the diagnostic model. Used together with generative AI, living geometry therefore offers a useful method for both creating and evaluating designs based on objective criteria. Adopting a hybrid epistemological framework of AI plus living geometry as a basis for design uncovers a flaw within contemporary architectural practice. Dominant design styles, rooted in untested aesthetic preferences, lack the empirical validation required to address fundamental questions of spatial quality responsible for human creativity.
