Innovation: the Future of Architecture

I am looking forward to participating in the Practice Innovation Lab October 12-14 in D.C., hosted by the American Institute of Architects' Young Architects Forum, where I'll collaborate with 60 other leaders in our profession to "redefine the practice of architecture and move our profession forward."

As part of the application process, we were asked to respond to the following prompt outlining our vision for the future of our profession. My ideas are below. Let me know your thoughts and, even better, let's work together to continue to innovate within our profession.

In your ideal world, where will architecture as a profession be in 2030?

• The diversity in the profession reflects the diversity in the population. Our projects are better because of the richness of experience and perspective brought to the table.

• We engage communities to seek solutions to the world’s biggest problems within the budget of their project regardless of scale. We make the process fun and hopeful by gamifying complex and messy issues and seeking stakeholder input.

• We prioritize wellness not only in our projects, but in our careers. We recognize that healthy and happy architects are better designers.

• We spend less time drafting and more time dreaming, designing, creating, and testing. We utilize technology to minimize our time spent sitting in a chair using a mouse. The transition between digital and physical becomes seamless as we walk through our buildings in virtual reality, digitally capture analog models, and 3D print our digital models.

• We collaborate as a profession more than we compete, increasing our value proposition together. We work with our clients and contractors to develop projects as partners through delivery methods that engage the client well before the Request For Proposals.

• We move fluidly between design, research, and building, each informing the other. We respond to performance-based contracts confident in our ability to deliver high-performance buildings, because we’ve built them and measured their post-occupancy performance. We recognize that carbon neutrality is not just a problem for engineers and that architects have elegant, program-driven solutions to contribute. We’ve met our Architecture 2030 commitments.