Korean Pre-AGI AI startup VIDRAFT has made its architectural design service, Building (빌딩), available to the public at no cost through an open research preview, the company announced on July 10. The service runs on VIDRAFT's proprietary AI model, Darwin-398B, and is designed to compress hours of repetitive early-stage design work into a matter of minutes.
Building ships with two distinct modes targeting different phases of architectural planning.
Unit Design (세대 설계) lets users type a single natural-language prompt in Korean — for example, specifying apartment size, room count, living-room orientation, and kitchen layout — and the AI generates a floor plan that conforms to Korean Standard KS F 1501 drafting rules. Behind the scenes, the system produces multiple draft proposals in parallel, then applies an AI reviewer to automatically select the best candidate. Outputs go well beyond a simple image: users can download AutoCAD-compatible DXF drawings, A3 PDF plan sheets, IFC files for BIM software, room-by-room material take-offs, and a cost-estimation Excel workbook.
The service also runs six layers of automated compliance checking — covering building-code basics such as daylighting and ventilation, fire-safety distances and evacuation routes, barrier-free accessibility, design benchmarks, preliminary construction costs, and a final AI review pass, each accompanied by citations to the relevant statutory provisions. Notably, the spatial-quality score that evaluates zoning, privacy, solar orientation, circulation, and proportion is computed through a deterministic rule-based algorithm rather than AI self-assessment, giving it a more objective character. Completed plans can be explored in a first-person walkthrough mode, examined under seasonal sun-shadow simulations, and rendered into photorealistic images.
Site Design (대지 설계) takes a land-parcel address and, within roughly three seconds, pulls public data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's V-World platform to retrieve zoning classification, site boundaries, land area, and officially assessed land value. The system then automatically applies the statutory floor-area ratio (FAR) and building-coverage ratio (BCR) ceilings under the National Land Planning Act and builds a 3D massing model. Crucially, VIDRAFT implemented these regulatory limits as geometric constraints rather than advisory warnings: the building footprint is mathematically capped at the BCR limit, and in residential zones the north-facing solar setback line required under the Building Act Enforcement Decree physically cuts into the upper floors of the model, producing the stepped-terrace profile familiar in Korean apartment construction.
A FAR slider lets users instantly recalculate gross floor area, building area, story count, estimated cost, and projected unit count in real time — practical for quick feasibility reviews. The surrounding streetscape, rendered with actual neighboring building heights, provides immediate context for view corridors and daylighting impact. A grey massing block can be converted into a photorealistic aerial rendering — day, dusk, or night — in about 15 seconds.
VIDRAFT CEO Kim Min-sik framed the tool as a productivity aid rather than a replacement for licensed architects. "Spending a weekend drawing up a concept plan for a project that hasn't even been commissioned yet is the reality of architectural practice," he said, adding that Building is meant to compress the repetitive analytical labor of early-stage site review and schematic design so that practitioners can focus on design itself.
He also underscored transparency about the tool's limitations, noting that outputs are concept-design reference materials with no legal standing and that BCR/FAR figures are based on statutory national ceilings, with local municipal ordinances still requiring separate verification. "Honestly distinguishing what the tool can and cannot do is the foundation of trust in an AI product," he added.
The open research preview is currently free while VIDRAFT collects user feedback.
Source: 지디넷코리아 (2026-07-10) — original article