Practice Rebuilt: your website is describing the architect you were two years ago

Hello,

Most of what the profession says about itself online is a year or two out of date. Read a firm's website or an architect's bio, and you're usually meeting the person they were the last time someone sat down to update it. The work has moved on. The words haven't.

I noticed this in my own presence before I fixed it. I was describing how I think about practice in language I'd have written a year ago, back when I understood a lot less about where this was all going than I do now, especially with all the change that's happened just in the last quarter. That's the strange thing about a static site: it freezes you at your least current, and then quietly continues to speak for you.

So when I rebuilt both of my sites this month, the goal wasn't a new look. It was to make them move. Practiceofarchitecture.com now updates itself from the podcast. Every new episode lands on the site without anyone touching it, something that used to be a manual chore I'd let slip for weeks. Evelynlee.com does the same with the rest of my work: a talk gets added to the calendar, and a speaking line appears; I take on a client or publish a piece, and the site reflects it. The work updates the presence. I don't.

Here's why this matters beyond my own website. What you say about your practice is a claim, and clients increasingly check the claim against what they can see. If you tell them you're moving with where the profession is going, but your public face describes the firm you were two years ago, the gap does the talking. A presence that keeps pace with the work is the rare claim a firm can't fake, because it only stays current if the practice behind it actually is.

I'm still finding new ways to make both sites move with the work instead of lagging behind it. That's the real project, and it's the same one I keep pushing firms toward: stop treating the parts of your practice clients can see as a snapshot, and start treating them as something the work keeps writing.

If someone read only the version of your practice that's public right now, how many years behind the real you would it be?

Keep learning and growing,

Evelyn Lee, FAIA | NOMA Founder, Practice of Architecture Host, Practice Disrupted & Fractional COO

There's a reason Arcol fits this week. The same problem I'm describing with a static website, a snapshot that stops being true the moment the work moves, is the one Arcol solves inside the design model: it pulls real-time cost, area, and feasibility straight into the massing, so the picture stays live while you and the client are still deciding. It's also the platform behind this week's episode. If you've ever lost a project in the gap between "interesting" and "what will it cost," it's worth seeing in motion.
See Arcol in action.

/// practice disrupted ///

Redefining Client Trust with Warren and Mahoney, co-created with Arcol

Brad Sara and Anton Shaw of Warren and Mahoney built "Quick Stack," a live feasibility workflow that puts massing, area, and cost in one place so they can have honest conversations with clients before the brief is locked. A clear look at moving architecture upstream, into the decisions that set a project's direction. listen now

/// the signal /// - news you may have missed

Three things that crossed my desk this week, none of them about design, and none of them in my LinkedIn Sunday roundup.

The thread: the money is moving into the parts of your firm nobody shows a client.

Trunk Tools closed a $40M Series B to put AI agents on the coordination and paperwork most firms still pay people to chase. Read it as a price signal. The work you can't bill for but can't avoid is exactly what's getting funded, and the firms that adopt early stop staffing around it. read here​

The real race in AEC right now is over the "knowledge layer," turning your drawings, specs, and RFIs into data software can reason over, with money like AECOM's $390M move on Consigli's autonomous engineering platform behind it. Whoever structures that knowledge captures its value, and the firms staring down a retirement wave have the most institutional memory to either lose or finally put to work. read here​

Y Combinator's summer class is full of startups aimed at the construction back office, generating takeoffs, estimates, and proposals straight from uploaded plans. The overhead you treat as a fixed cost of doing business is now a venture category, which means it's about to get much cheaper to stop doing it by hand. read here​

/// the handoff /// - something you can do on Monday

This week, take one thing you already do for clients and price it as a product instead of an hourly service. About ninety minutes:

1. List the three things clients most often ask you for before they hire you: a feasibility read, a test-fit, a "can we even afford this" gut check. Pick the one you give away most.
2. Write what it actually takes to deliver it well: the steps, the hours, the judgment. Mark where AI now carries part of the load and where it still needs you.
3. Price the outcome, not the hours. If it saves the client a bad decision, price it against that decision, not against your time.
4. Name it in a line a client would repeat back: "a two-week feasibility read that tells you go or no-go before you spend a dollar on design."
5. Offer it once this week, to one prospect who isn't ready for a full engagement. Watch what changes when the first thing you sell is a product, not your calendar.

Why it matters: the value is leaving the billable hour, and the firms that move first are the ones packaging their judgment into something they can sell on its own.

/// up and coming ///

Practice Disrupted is back this Thursday, July 30. Season 13 kicks off after the summer pause. listen here​
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AIA Oklahoma Conference, keynote, Enid, September 23
​register here​
NOMA Annual Conference, moderating the AIA/NOMA Leadership Panel, Miami, October 16
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​register here​
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Your Firm Is the Project, workshop at the Trimble Dimensions User Conference, Las Vegas, November 9
​register here​