From Projects to Products: The Uncomfortable Leap
📰 How can architects can shift from designing individual buildings to creating systems that produce better outcomes repeatedly? This post discusses the trade-offs of system design, the impact of growth pressure, and the value of architectural thinking in tech.
What if the most impactful thing you could design isn’t a building at all, but the system that produces better buildings over and over again?
Summary
My recent conversation with Zach Kron of Autodesk in episode 218 explored what happens when architects stop designing buildings and start designing systems. We talked about career transitions into tech, the uncomfortable tradeoffs of leverage over craft, and why growth pressure (the infamous “hockey stick” graph) incentivizes (read: distorts) how software, firms, and people behave.
This was about where architectural thinking actually creates the most impact today, not about “escaping architecture.”
Key Takeaways
- From Objects to Systems: Designing repeatable frameworks creates more leverage than designing one-off buildings.
- The Hockey Stick Problem: Exponential growth expectations shape product decisions more than users realize.
