The role of technology in the survival of Architecture in the 21st Century

“I wish I had studied computer engineering or something more… you know… of the 21st Century”.

A friend of mine recently said this while discussing his latest job at a well-known Architecture studio based in London. Like him, many millennials decided to study architecture because of the field’s supposed creativity and the great impact it can have in improving society. However, 5+ years of college and subsequent positions in not too profitable jobs with debatable working conditions seem to disengage many of those passionate aspiring architects. I should know — I am one of them.

As an architect and economist currently studying a MBA at Columbia Business School, I have come to a somehow painful but enlightening realization. Every profession that you have in 2019 belongs, by pure definition, to the 21st Century. If you feel like you are working in something old-fashioned and out of touch of the latest technological trends, it is up to you to show the will to change it.

In a course called Digital Literacy for Decision Makers, the professor drew a simple house to use architecture as an allegory to explain what programming languages and frameworks are. I could not help but think: how is it possible that architecture is always a useful field to explain complex subjects like finance and technology but feels remotely isolated from them?

A couple decades ago the professional path of an Architect seemed quite clear: get your degree, work for a couple years in a well-known studio and then become an entrepreneur by signing and managing your own projects. Nowadays the picture is drastically different, since the market has consolidated and most people cannot afford to open their own architectural company. The key problem? Differentiation.

“Most architectural competitions and potential clients choose a project based on the brand of the architect. Buildings cannot be as innovative as a new technology (we are talking about brick and mortar anyways), and the cost-side of competition proposals is a double-edged sword. If the only way in which we can difference ourselves is by asking for lower fees… is that sustainable? If my professional portfolio does not already include a prestigious museum in a European capital or a mansion designed for a celebrity with more than 50K followers on Instagram… are fees the only way in which I can really compete?”

My friend told me this while discussing the prices of 2 bedroom apartments in London. He is planning to start a family and he really could not see how to make it work.

I empathize with his frustration. Many professional fields (like e-commerce, streaming, public transport or media) have renovated in the last couple decades by effectively incorporating technology into their latest trends and know-how. Architecture and real estate? Let’s just say that they pale in comparison. An example that was mentioned in our heated conversation was the appearance of streaming services.

“The entertainment sector saw how the times were changing. They realized that people were developing new patterns for entertainment-consumption and decided to evolve their business model and the way that shows are produced” — he argued. This made me wonder: did the media sector as a whole really realized that? Or was it just a case of some visionaries pulling the rest towards the future? I really think it was more of the latter.

Architecture as a technological silo

My friend really thinks that if he was a programmer or an engineer he would be involved in more relevant projects and enjoy a career full of achievements and groundbreaking technological achievements. Personally, having almost finished my 1st year of MBA and taken courses on entrepreneurship and technology… it is my humble opinion that architects and real estate professionals need to put a brake to an attitude of self-compassion and resignation that has driven the creativity and will of very creative individuals into coma.

We need to wake up; and work hard; and understand how everything, also architecture and real estate, IS technology. We need to do this as soon as possible.

There already are ways in which we can differentiate projects and architectural ideas with the successful incorporation of relatively new technological tools. The example of streaming platforms will be useful in delineating some possible initiatives.

Platforms like Netflix and Hulu changed some aspects of their business:

1. They identified a demand for new ways in which to consume entertainment and built the means (apps and platform) through which to offer the new service.

2. They evolved into producing their own content once the business model was more established.

3. They identified new ways in which to optimize the offered services by building on the huge amounts of data collected.

So… what about housing, for instance? Can it really show any type of innovation apart from changing the aesthetics of facades? I have identified some examples to point at some sources of differentiation that could be really useful for architectural entrepreneurs.

New Products: A better match between demand and supply

Sure, people still need a place to call home, and it still needs walls, roof, enough thermal insulation and appropriate lighting conditions. Is that really all? Are the requirements for new houses and offices really the same that they used to be 20 years ago? Not according to some enfant-terrible of the sector.

• WeWork: companies just need to rent a whole office and sign some medium- to long-term contracts, don’t they? This New York-based giant based its entire business answering “no” to those two questions. Why not offer companies the option of renting just small spaces within bigger offices and offering short-duration contracts? 9 years later, it has more than 5,000 employees and is located in more than 500 cities around the globe.
• Quarters: launched in Berlin 6 years ago, this company’s goal is to become the WeWork of co-living properties. The main concept is that of a shared urban residence in which furnished apartments have communal kitchens and common spaces, leading to affordability, flexibility and ease of use.

Most people prefer to own houses that incorporate all the typical spaces, you say? Tell that to the real estate developers who are already experimenting with this trend.

New ways of production

Ok, now let’s ignore whether we can really offer a new product that people would actually demand. Can we at least produce it more effectively so that we can really compete on the cost-side without necessarily driving architects’ and professionals’ fees down? Some companies seem to prove so.

• Foyr is an online automated interior designer based in India. Could this completely replace the role of interior designers? Perhaps it is unlikely, but it does fulfill a role in low-budget and not too complex projects.
• BIM (Building Information Management) technologies can really improve the efficiency of the construction process. Explained simply: traditional architecture and engineering programs are vector-based software that produce 2D drawings that are readable thanks to an appropriate understanding of tradition-based graphical codes. BIM, on the other hand, are live 3D models of buildings in which ALL consultants involved in a project collaborate. They produce a model in which walls are created using the “wall” tool and engineers incorporate pipes by choosing the real model in the MEP tab. They avoid problems of communication and lead to increases in efficiency of up to 40% in the construction stage.
• Companies like Seeable are making a big bet on an increased adoption of this technology by aiming to make BIM asset information visible and accessible to a wider audience.
• Arx Pax : architect Greg Henderson has focused on developing Magnetic Field technologies to make buildings more resistant to natural disasters such as earthquakes. They have even produced the world’s first hoverboard

• Performance-based contracts : a portion of an architects’ fee can be held until post-occupancy data verifies its design performance.
• Machine learning for Architecture & Urban Design. How many meeting rooms do you need in an office? It’s a tricky question that companies like WeWork managed to answer more accurately thanks to machine learning techonologies. Other companies, like Google, have done some research on how to predict parking difficulty in urban areas.

New post-completion management functions

And finally, there is some space for technological innovation even for those architects who decide not to put the traditional product and construction processes into question. Some companies innovating in other real estate-related spaces are:

• Buildium provides affordable cloud property management software solutions to landlords
• Enertiv uses data to design tools for making buildings easier to operate and improve building operations in commercial real estate with a focus on office and multifamily buildings .
• With the adoption of BIM, there is a growing expectation that architects will produce datasets, such as the COBie spreadsheet , as their regular deliverables. This means that architectural data has to be as rigorous as drawings.

Professionals in need of new tools: teaching Architects to fish

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime

This quote has been used on several ocassions to discuss different views on public policy, but it will be useful to conclude this article.

Architecture is art.

Architecture is economics.

Architecture is finance.

Architecture is technology.

While at business school, I have come to realize that many of my colleagues (myself included) are to be blamed for believing that our profession was an old-fashioned one in which innovation was relegated to formal extravagance and revolutionary aesthetics. There is so much to be done, both in redefining what a building must be and in which new technological tools can be used to achieve true competitive differentiation.

Architectural schools do a brilliant work in teaching their students about Architectural History, art, materials and many other subjects. However, there are almost no courses focused on entrepreneurship, technology (basic coding knowledge, BIM techonologies, data science)or finance.

It is a tremendous error to think that the profession will survive without understanding the importance of those areas into the redefinition of architecture itself, and only those professionals that incorporate new added value in their services will manage to move the field forward.

After sending a draft of this article to my London-based friend, his reaction has been somewhat defensive. He has argued that he does not have much time to look into improving his knowledge in some of these areas, and all he can do is kick the can down the road.

And yet, I already feel that we have acomplished something with this article, since we have scheduled a Skype session to discuss the role that machine learning could have had in a project he finished last month.

Let’s discuss how to fish, then.