Meet Hamza Shaikh | Digital Artist & Architect

We had the good fortune of connecting with Hamza Shaikh and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Hamza, what role has risk played in your life or career?
Despite the tendency to be overly critical of our parents in adulthood, having a child of my own has shown me just how challenging parenting can be. One thing I am particularly grateful for is my parents’ support, especially my mother’s, in nurturing my creative disposition.

As a child, I was frequently in trouble and often took silly risks. I felt that conforming to imposed rules marked the beginning of the end. However, the urge to express my true interests, passions, and ideas—albeit obnoxiously at times—is something I have grown to be proud of. Now, as a father, I look at my son’s relentless questions, ideas, and creativity with the same acceptance and pride my mother had for me. I realize that while it’s easy to conform to societal norms, true fulfillment often lies in embracing one’s unique path.

When it came to my early education and career, I remained steadfast in pursuing what made me happy and passionate—art. This was a significant risk. While my friends selected STEM subjects to secure university placements, I chose art, drastically reducing my career and university options. As a result, I didn’t get into any universities. However, my art teacher, Ms. Hall, took the initiative to find me a foundation course in Art & Design at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) in Canterbury, which also had an architecture school. Recognizing my proclivity for depicting the built form, she encouraged me to take my next risk—moving to a new city to pursue a course in art with a potential path into architecture.

In the end, I thrived in my foundation course and was accepted into the Bachelor’s program for architecture at UCA. Despite struggling for the first year and a half, I graduated with distinction honors and began pursuing a career in architecture. True to form, I approached this field with an evolving passion for experimental drawing methods. For me, excelling at architecture wasn’t the priority; my focus was on making my passion and interests my job. This led to my next big risk: creating social media platforms, writings, and art to discuss, explore, and express my personal drawing explorations and concepts related to architecture, a discipline vital to impacting people’s lives.

By staying true to my interests, even when they didn’t always align with traditional practices, I eventually found the perfect career and practice for me. I now work at Gensler, one of the most influential design firms in the world, within the design technology studio filled with elite experts. We explore the forefront of technology as it relates to design-led solutions, currently addressing the challenges and opportunities of AI. This new world of technology and design is the dream I had while sitting in the principal’s office doodling in detention. It’s where design, experimentation, and purposeful impact converge. None of this would have been possible without the risk of being myself – the risk of staying curious.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My wife once remarked that she envied my ability to draw or paint for hours, only to throw the work in the bin. I remember, even as a child, delighting in tearing up my drawings after days of effort. For me, art has always been a communication tool used cathartically. Consequently, in my career, I found that the process interested me far more than the final outcome. The magic lay in the meaning and instinct behind each stroke. Now, with generative AI augmenting the creative process, the magic also lies in the metadata and prompts driving each stroke.

I’ve been enthralled by experimental approaches to utilizing generative AI technology to rethink the creative process in impactful ways. What fascinates me most is integrating human information, agency, and analogue engagement with AI tools to create a new form of craft. We are at a pivotal juncture as a society, increasingly integrating into the digital world with each passing decade. For the first time, we are witnessing the extent of digital and artificial intelligence, prompting us to realize our true value as humans. In this dance of agency and technological fusion, the creative industries might seem unlikely candidates for automation risks. However, my journey in AI and art has revealed that the excitement and focus lie not in full automation but in semi-automation.

In my art, I now strive to embed layers of AI-powered dimensions, whether in concept development, form finding, computer-vision analysis, or real-time mind-machine inference guiding each stroke. I am creating art by experimenting with and developing novel tools and configurations. You can see some of these experiments here.: https://www.instagram.com/hamzashaikh.design/

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I am from London! I always recommend Borough Food Market, located under a railway track, it offers some of the most tasty street food and drinks, representing the diverse vibrancy of London. Also I’d recommend St Paul’s cathedral – the awe inspiring palimpsest of history and architecture – a sacred escape from the city.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My mother. My Art Teacher. My Mentors.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamzashaikh.design/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamza-shaikh-97974193/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCispmZXt3_g4h9o3XsqoqaA