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Over the past few years, there has been a growing shift in recruiting among big architecture firms. More emphasis is being placed on young candidates who possess a broad skill-set, especially when it comes to design and modeling software, even if their level of hands-on design experience may be lacking.

This trend is creating a new one in its wake, particularly for those who are already more than five years into their career. In order for these individuals to advance professionally, they are facing a growing list of requirements, such as familiarity with several complex design and modeling applications, skills in presentation and business communications, data analysis and management, time management, as well as business management.

The professionals who rise up the challenge and get training in all or most of these areas then often find that they are caught in a funny catch-22. The more they learn, the more responsibilities they are given and the less time they have to really develop any of their skills on the job. This can be very disheartening. It’s as if trying to do a good job is becoming more of a burden, even a deficit, rather than an asset.

Jack of All Trades, Master At None

Architecture is rarely a private endeavor. One of the unspoken duties of an architect is to design buildings and spaces that promote public welfare. But to do this properly, the architect has to have a solid combination of skills, experience, and the time and space to focus on the project at hand. This is pretty self-evident. The reality within many architecture firms, however, is that such qualities are starting to give way to a never-ending stream of interruptions, increased project complexity, and the ever-present pressure to meet tighter budget and time constraints.

The result is that in these same firms less hands-on experience is being replaced by fluency in time-saving design software, coupled with the ability to professionally juggle several balls at once.

So, the question for experienced architecture professionals part-way through their careers is where should they draw the line? Should an architect be expected to compromise on the quality of his or her work or keep skills at a superficial level in the name of “career advancement?” Consider that it costs time and money to get trained and stay on top of software updates and other technological changes, and that’s in addition to the routine training architects need to go through. Big project mistakes due to poor focus or know-how can also quickly stunt the growth of a promising career.

My advice: Today’s architects need to seriously consider the trajectory of their careers. If they feel that they are not advancing because they are spreading themselves too thin, then it’s probably time to work for another firm. Small and mid-sized firms, in particular, tend to give their employees more room to grow in their roles- not just in breadth, but in depth. At a time when quantity is given preference over quality, it can be not only a good career move, but a welcome breath of fresh air.

Some smaller architecture studios that I’ve dealt with feel that they are at a deep disadvantage when it comes to bringing in new clients or recruiting talented candidates. Bigger firms, they argue, just have more name recognition, better resources, and better benefits to offer their employees. While that may be technically true, problems with marketing and recruiting often go hand-in-hand, and they often have little to do with things like access to resources.

The real issue over here is one of messaging. If you have difficulty explaining why your firm is best suited for a particular project, other than “we’re great, hire us,” then chances are you’ll have an equally difficult time explaining to potential candidates why they should come and work for you, other than “we’re great, work for us.” Many bigger architecture firms in particular still don’t seem to understand that they cannot rely on their reputations alone to communicate critical messages about their areas of expertise, the quality of their work, their culture and ethics. Previous projects won’t always speak for themselves and word of mouth will only get a firm so far.

This prevalent attitude creates a big opening for smaller studios to make some serious in-roads in the market, since good marketing isn’t just about press releases, paid advertisements, or slick copy writing. The way a firm promotes itself is closely tied to a whole bunch of intangibles, such as its culture, mission, and values. The benefit to being a smaller operation is that the architects who run these studios as well as their employees are generally more invested and connected to the business and more naturally express the culture and values guiding their work.

Smaller architecture firms also typically have small budgets to match. While this can be a challenge, in certain respects it’s a blessing because it puts more pressure on principals and their employees to get their name out to potential clients as well as talented candidates in a clear, compelling, and focused way.

Where Smaller Studios Have a Leg Up in Marketing

That said, there are several strategies that successful smaller architecture firms typically do better to make themselves stand out from the pack of their bigger competitors. Here are five of the most influential ones:

1. They know who they are. The architects and supporting staff at smaller firms tend to be more in touch with the things that make their operation different, such as what they distinctively have to offer clients and employees, what they stand for, and what they hope to accomplish with their work. In other words, they know what they are good at.
2. They are good at telling their story. Smaller firms tend to have more personal stories behind them, and that tale about who they are and where they come from affects how they do business. This becomes an important part of their brand that gives the studio a distinct culture and vibe.
3. They form strategic alliances. One of the biggest trends affecting the architecture industry today is that a growing number of clients prefer one-stop-shopping rather than having to work with several contractors to get a project done. This saves the client time, money, and energy. The most successful small architecture firms are deliberately partnering up with other, compatible companies in order to offer their clients a boutique of complementary services.
4. They get involved in community outreach. Community outreach can take on many different forms. Exhibitions, lectures, articles and research for design publications, pro-bono work, and even participating in strategic competitions, can all help to get a firm’s name out there.
5. They dare to specialise. Being a generalist isn’t a real marketing strategy- especially for a smaller firm. Instead, it’s a subconscious a fear of making a commitment. Doing everything for everyone may seem like a good marketing strategy, but by not targeting a particular market segment not only is messaging unclear, it confuses potential clients and leaves them wondering what the firm is truly an expert at.

Successful small firms actively target the clients that make the most sense for them and turn away the ones who don’t. Of course, this doesn’t mean that they never, ever accept work outside of their targeted market segments, they just don’t put precious resources into pursuing these kinds of projects in the first place.

Bottom line, the architecture industry today is broad and deep enough to accommodate architecture studios of all sizes and flavors. How successful a firm is often has little to do with how many employees or offices it supports. Instead of just trying to beat their bigger competitors at their own game, smaller firms should be busy re-writing the rules to their advantage.

In my executive recruiting firm, we are witnessing the beginning of a seismic shift in the kinds of talent that architecture and designs firms are targeting for key positions.

Today there is a growing demand for “non-traditional” skills and experiences. Firms are looking for talented people who know how to collaborate with others, rapidly learn new things and adapt, and who not only display the ability to think outside the box, but who can turn those thoughts into a physical reality. Some firms are even actively recruiting candidates who have experiences that lie outside of the architecture and design industry.

Though this shift is stemming from a variety of factors, most of it can be traced to a combination of changing work attitudes and values among younger employees, evolving client expectations, and emerging technologies.

Architecture and design professionals simply can not afford to ignore all of this movement. Those who get too comfortable at their current position may find that their skills and experiences have become out-dated and irrelevant and that their career options are significantly limited.

The Curse of Career Apathy

In many firms, especially the big, well-known ones, architects are hired and then find themselves in an environment that encourages them to lose touch with the very qualities their profession truly calls for. Skills such as creative thinking, problem solving, and artistic expression get put on the shelf as these once promising candidates begin to conform to their surroundings and find their own comfort zones to fall into.

Some become overly-reliant on technology; others drown in the administrative side of their jobs; still others lament the disconnect from their co-workers as well as the clients and environments they are trying to serve.

All this disillusionment often gets transformed into an apathy towards career advancement and personal development that has claimed the career lives of many a talented candidate.

It’s not a good place to be in.

The solution of course is that candidates need to put on a new pair of glasses and change their focus. They need to move away from trying to follow the typical career path, assuming that their job and position will just improve over time, because more likely than not, it won’t.

Instead, today’s architecture and design candidates need to attend to their personal development and get in touch with their unique strengths, skills, and experiences.

As I’ve mentioned here before, we are seeing that the most successful candidates are those who are taking their career development and advancement in their own hands. This means they are actively seeking the opportunities and experiences (both inside their current firm and outside of it) that will ultimately move their careers forward.

While this may seem a bit risky to some, the greater risk is turning a blind eye to the real changes that are taking place, failing to adapt to them, and then waking up to find that your skills and experiences are no longer relevant.

M&A activity has been steadily growing over the last ten years throughout the architecture industry. In fact, a recent study by the research and consulting firm Zweig Group indicates that 62 percent of architecture and engineering firms are actively looking for a merger or an acquisition within the next five years. But as 2018 picks up steam, I feel that we are at a tipping point.

What has changed this year is the convergence of three very distinct trends:

1. The way projects are designed, planned, and built is fundamentally transforming.While client demand and project scope continue to grow in complexity, the architecture industry has begun to embrace a more integrated business model. Many firms now offer a boutique of services, such as engineering, design, construction, and landscaping. Some are even selling building and design supplies. As a result, many small and mid-sized firms are realising that they can’t keep up. A merger or an acquisition is a better alternative that allows the firm’s principals to expand their services without shutting their doors entirely.
2. The market has become more competitive. Prior to the Global Recession, when the architecture industry was experiencing a healthy boom, many architectural practices big and small grew their staff and expanded their organisational structure. A number of construction and engineering companies did this as well.

Now that the recession has passed, these same practices need to work much harder to sustain their previous expansion even while there is market pressure to keep their fees low.

But this is only part of the story…

Studios are also competing against the very technology that is helping them be more efficient. BIM made a splash quite a few years ago for its ability to speed up the design process and reduce design errors. But, the architecture industry is already starting to move beyond the limitations of this software. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and eventually computer learning, architects can easily simulate the built environment, analyse spatial dimensions, predict how people will interact with a space, and test a design against a range of weather conditions.

This is a threat because it means that “technicians” could soon do a significant amount of design work armed with only the most basic architecture training. It practically opens the door for construction, engineering, and planning companies looking to expand their services into the architecture industry.

3. Baby boomer practice owners are entering retirement. An increasing number of baby boomer firm owners and principals are heading towards retirement, but don’t have a succession plan in place. An M&A is a practical way to either get out of the business or hand over the leadership reigns to someone else. Many of these firms are smaller and target highly specialised niche markets, which make them attractive options for acquisition.

These three trends are leading to a perfect storm of M&A activity, and in its wake the architecture industry will be fundamentally altered.

The use of modelling and design software among architecture firms continues to grow, bringing added accuracy, flexibility and efficiency to the design process. But underlying all of the benefits that these tools have to offer, there has been a growing unease among some industry veterans.

It could be argued that advances in computer aided design cheapen the knowledge and experience of architecture professionals- making a significant part of their training irrelevant and even obsolete. Yet, I believe this is really just the tip of the iceberg. The real threat to architects and to the profession as a whole is Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Why AI is Such a Big Deal

AI refers to the “intelligence” of computers and software. Three decades ago, computers were hailed for their ability to access, manipulate, and analyse vast amounts of data that they could then use to reach probable solutions or assumptions. Today, when a computer or a collection of code is called “intelligent,” it means the system is adaptive, inquisitive, borderline intuitive and ultimately able learn from past experience. In other words, it has the ability to get smarter over time.

Of interest to architects in particular is the fact that AI is even making its way into uncharted territory: non-technical, creative tasks, such as writing and art. As computers get better at manipulating and analysing data, images, and 3-dimensional spaces, and as advances in speech recognition coupled with virtual and augmented reality blur the separation between man and machine, self-generating design solutions are no doubt on the horizon.

This leads to an intriguing question: Could an intelligent machine or piece of software navigate the complex needs, desires, ambitions and ideas surrounding a given project and come up with a viable, even likable, design solution?

We are definitely edging closer.

But, there is an even bigger picture over here. AI has the potential to influence the design and build process at every stage– from site research to the realisation and operation of the finished structure. This comes as the increasing complexity of design, engineering and construction meet up with economic pressures demanding that architects provide even more service for less money.

In this brave new world, architects could be replaced by algorithms and big data, and an architecture “technician” working in a construction or engineering firm could theoretically be put in charge of the kind of complex projects that require several human teams today.

Finding the Hidden Opportunities

The idea that a computer or a piece of software could be smart enough one day to do almost all the work of a trained architect may not be so comforting to those already in the profession. But for the industry to survive the worst thing professionals and the firms they work for can do is stick their heads in the sand.

AI isn’t going away… and while these technologies may not entirely replace the architect, it promises to dramatically transform the architect’s role in the scope of a project as well as how he or she is trained.

That said, here are three areas where AI may bring the biggest disruption to architecture. But at the same time these very areas offer the biggest opportunities. Discerning and courageous architecture studios can (and should) start experimenting with some of this technologytoday. By doing so, it gives them the best chances of maintaining their place in the design and build process:

1. Automation. With automation, routine, transaction-based and analytical tasks, such as preparing schedules, measuring, calculating, and even evaluating safety concerns and zoning compliance, are performed by algorithms that can not only tap into big data sources, but both upgrade and improve itself over time. With the need for human-input into these areas eliminated, architects are then free to direct their attention to the overall quality and suitability of the design.

2. Site and social research. The first stage of any project is collecting and analysing information about the project location as well as the people who will be interacting with the finished space and then matching this data up with the project goals. Today, much of that data is available online. Some forward-thinking BIM programs, such as Google SketchUp, are already starting to tap into these data pools in order to create a surprisingly accurate simulation of a site. This means architects can instantly conduct environmental and construction analysis without having to visit the location.

Moreover, for projects that will be used be a large group of people, AI can reference socioeconomic data to predict how various aspects of the space will be used and automatically draft plans that best represent and suit all those involved.

3. Design autonomy. Perhaps one of the most threatening areas of disruption to architects is the loss of autonomy in the design process, since giving design autonomy to a machine would be synonymous with the loss of their artistic expression.

While this is certainly a valid point, creativity need not be lost; rather there would have to be a change to the way it is expressed. In this setup, the computer would become a partner, rather than a competitor, in the design process. The architect would “plug in” various project variables and goals, and then let the system suggest a range of plans which fulfill these parameters. This means architects would be less focused on the actual design process. In its place, attention would be given to deciding which variables, factors, and goals to emphasise over others in order to reach a certain outcome. The value (and talent) that future architects would bring would thus lie in their ability to arrive at a creative intention that stems from their very human understanding of the space and the people who will use it.

In short, when it comes to the issue of AI in architecture, it isn’t a matter of if; it’s a matter of when. While this technology may not entirely make the architect’s role obsolete, it will, for better or for worse, fundamentally transform it, and architects need to be ready when that happens.