Imagination Unbound

KLEEMANN’s AI Lifts invites users to envision lifts without limitations. 

images courtesy of KLEEMANN

It’s not a product — not really — and it’s not something you can touch — not really. In April, Kilkis, Greece-headquartered KLEEMANN introduced AI Lifts, a “pioneering concept powered by AI that presents a virtual world of lifts,” at AI Lifts. AI Lifts is “a digital environment that invites architects and building design professionals to discover and envision lifts in buildings of the future — without limitation.” A gallery of images shows viewers just what KLEEMANN is talking about. It includes eight sections: Gateways, Homes, Hotels, Public Spaces, Sustainability, Technology, Urbanity and Work Areas. A viewer can also opt to check out all AI-generated images at once. Selecting this option took your author to a page bursting with vivid color — shimmery yellows and oranges; vibrant shades of pink, purple and blue; marbled browns, greens and other earth tones; shimmery chrome; and much more. Images, many of which feature passengers, boast impressive physical depth. A multilayered, rainbow-colored arched plexiglass entrance to an elevator bank at a new commercial venue, for example, looks as if you could walk right into it, Black Mirror-style.

Another image shows a trio of stylish rock musicians clad in shades of orange in a dystopian-looking elevator cab that could be from the 1970s, or maybe sometime far in the future. This concept is titled “Imagine the Elevator as a Past-Time Machine.” Along the same dreamy lines, but with a softer color palette, is “A Journey Through a Tunnel of Dreams,” which shows a woman in a sleek pink dress walking through a hallway that appears to have giant rolls of fluffy pink and green sushi lining both sides. An “Elevator in the Middle of the Sea” rises up from the frothy depths as the setting sun glints off the cab’s industrial, metallic exterior. Really, you have to see it to believe it. 

Maybe a few of these AI creations could be made real, but KLEEMANN’s “virtual world of lifts” certainly provides visionaries with food for thought about what their next daring elevator design could be. Perhaps best of all, KLEEMANN has created an AI Lifts Creator interactive “game,” ailiftscreator.com, that invites users to generate their own surreal lift images by selecting specific architectural styles, trends, materials and surroundings. “Through this tool, KLEEMANN enables users to experiment with lift design while exploring the imaginative field of architecture, KLEEMANN states, continuing: 

“Each image reflects the KLEEMANN design philosophy that views the lift as a unique space, not merely a box moving within a building. It challenges the form, the shape, the color of the lift, exploring the possibilities that arise when we do things differently, when we ask ourselves, ‘Why not?’ and envision what deserves to be the next ‘new.’”