A Founder’s View on AI and the Next Era of Architecture

A Welcome to Practice Disrupted, a podcast where we find ways to create new solutions to current challenges while elevating the value of architects. I'm your host Evelyn Lee, an architect who spans tech as an angel investor, startup advisor, and founder of Practice of Architecture. Whether you're a seasoned architect or just starting in the field, this podcast is your gateway to think differently about the role architects play within our global community.

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A Hello Disruptors. Welcome to this week's episode of Practice Disrupted. Today we're talking with someone whose career spans technology, entrepreneurship and a lifelong connection to the world of building. Brandon Levy is a founder and CEO of eachi. While he is widely known for his two decades in tech, including founding Stitch Labs and later leading the R and D platform teams at Square, he also grew up around construction through his family's H Vac business. That early exposure shaped his understanding of how buildings come together and why this work matters. It is this blend of hands on experience and technology leadership that informs Brandon's perspective on where AI can support architects. He brings a thoughtful and grounded view on how AI might reduce administrative work, simplify compliance, and help practitioners reclaim more time for the design work that brought them into the profession in the first place.

A In our conversation we explore that intersection. We talk about what architects are asking, what is actual possible with AI today and what still needs to evolve. Then we turn to iqii, a promising young company experimenting with tools for code, navigation, quality review and knowledge management. Brandon is clear that this is not an all in one solution, but rather one of the emerging approaches that could make the operational side of practice more efficient and more joyful. Brandon brings humility, curiosity and a values driven mission to this moment in the industry. I am excited for you to hear how he is thinking about the future of AI and architecture and what becomes possible when we imagine technology that supports better practice, better cities and a better built environment for everyone. Hi Brandon, welcome to Practice Disrupted. I'm glad you could find time to work us in before the end of the year.

B Yeah, it's really nice to meet you. So thank you so much for making space for us on the show.

A Yeah. So we're here to talk about IQI and you as the Founder and CEO of iqi. Can you tell us a little bit about your background first and then we'll kick it off from there?

B Yeah, yeah. There's two parts to my background so in terms of technology. Worked in tech for about 20 years so used to work for DOE National Lab and then started a couple small brands while working at night which led to a Software company and we ran that company for 10 years until selling it to Square in 2020. And then at Square, I ran a handful of our R and D teams for our platform while there before starting Ichi full time. The other part of my life though is I grew up in construction. So truly my first memory is construction because my dad had a H Vac business for about 40 years of my life. And I started going to job sites when I was five or in the sheet metal shop when I was nine. And then translating even to I'm sitting in the basement of the house that my wife and I remodeled, mostly with our bare hands, where I drew the architectural plans myself.

B And we worked with an engineer and did about 90% of the work ourselves, getting everything to the studs. And so just have really loved the any industry, anything about construction industry and building homes and buildings and stuff.

A Why don't you tell us a little bit more about Ichi and what you're doing that relates and brings your technology background into the AEC industry?

B Yeah, Ichi was built with a belief in mind like that. It was really started because I have a deep seated belief that the physical spaces that we live, the homes and cities we occupy, have a very profound impact on our lives in many ways, but for me, most notably around our sense of community, economic opportunity and access to human needs, inclusive of housing for everyone. And so over the long arc of the business, we really want to make that better in the world. Before starting, the company spent about five years like really thinking about the space, looking at the different problems that exist for that vision combined with construction, and ultimately landed on. There's a lot of challenges that exist with compliance, design and administrative sides of construction that end up creating an enormous amount of strain and pressure on the timelines and cost of projects. I think often this gets pointed at of like, well, permitting is a really big challenge. We just need to evolve permitting. But permitting is actually just one small part of a bigger set of problems that really impact the overall life cycle of any construction project.

B And so Geechee has been built focused at a tool that both private sector and public sector are able to use to help projects, particularly in the compliance, administrative and design realm, get done better, faster, more efficiently. And our company is really focused on AI tools. And it's a deep belief that AI can have a material impact in doing this in ways that were never possible before with previous technology. Not so much in a way to replace all the work that humans were doing, but really to help remove a lot of the rote work and enable them to do a lot of their jobs just like better in a way that creates a bit more joy.

A I like how you ended it with creates a bit more joy. I wish that architects looked at AI and saw it as a means to an end. In creating more joy, you were talking about the other things that each year is solving around compliance, administrative and design. Can you get a little bit more specific about what ii is doing within those processes?

B Yeah, absolutely. So on the compliance side, and that's really where we started more focused on code compliance, where we focus there on. We work with both government customers as well as architecture firms in that capacity. So the things that we do to help are say, like during a design process there could be really nuanced codes or the full set of codes that you need to comply to for any particular project in any jurisdiction. We make searching, navigating, accessing and validating that information very easy and fast and done in a way where you can actually use it in your professional work product, like all in one view. So I would say a difference to that would be you're not just like searching in chat GPT and getting some answer and then having to validate it. We work directly with code publishers, like we have a licensing agreement with the ICC to be able to present AI results side by side with actual code language directly in the application. So people are using this to say like help lay out a parking lot or plumbing fixture calculations or what is this nuanced thing that I have to do in Redwood City that is documented very deep in their municipal code.

B That's hard to find otherwise as it relates to more other aspects of design or construction administration. There's a lot of challenges I think that architects face in QA qc. Some of it's very bespoke and nuanced to a project like is this chair, Are there enough chairs like in this room or whatnot? There are many things that you have to look across the entire plan set and do a lot of manual work. I think a hallmark example of that is a customer that we have right now as a 500 page plan set. And the architect needs to review the entire sheet, index and every page one at a time to verify that every sheet matches and every title matches in the design so that it's a quality product that they have for their client. And submitting to a jurisdiction. We are working to help automate a lot of those tasks. Furthermore, like within construction administration, architects are I think overburdened to the extreme with the amount of submittals RFIs and other work that they have to do in order to help keep the project moving forward.

B There's a lot of opportunity to help them navigate the construction documents, the specs that we help make them, or help enable them to do that in ways that they couldn't before. And then finally, I'd say this is beyond, like, compliance. This is thinking, not just administrative, of a project, but also across a firm. The architectural domain, I think, suffers from both a vast quantity of information and also there's a lot of information that's received at a certain point in time that isn't needed until months or years later. So two quick examples would be you have a senior architect in the firm who holds most of the knowledge about building a particular occupancy or in a particular jurisdiction. How do they transfer their knowledge? The other type of information could be, I'm working on a project and the client has given me a particular preference or requirement that they need. So, say, like they only buy black carpeting in their conference rooms or something, but the firm doesn't need to apply that till 18 months later. How does that knowledge exist? How do they transfer it across the team when it can be a completely different person that receives that information compared to the person that needs that information and sometimes years later? And so we look at solving all these types of problems together to help the individual and to help the firm essentially be able to work on their projects, not just faster, but to take away some of that work that they really don't enjoy doing either.

A Thank you. That was a thorough answer that I was looking for. But I also think that product, or what you just explained, promises a lot. Is all of that completely built out within the product or some of these things on the roadmap that you're still working towards right now?

B Yeah, it's a great question. So things that already exist, like all the code compliance, side navigating those codes, enabling easy sharing of information across a team, like the firm knowledge, or what we would call memory, all that's already implemented and we have a number of different organizations using it today. The newer parts of what we're building are what we would call the automation tools. And automation is a really interesting realm. Automation does not imply, like, fully automating away someone's work. I think more practically it's augmenting a lot of the work that they would do, but being able to do that not just consistently enough, at a high enough accuracy, but also construction documents, particularly in large projects, are notoriously large and complex. And so we are both working on the resiliency of the system as well as to be able to navigate these really large documents through automation. So that's something that is newer technology that's coming to fruition now.

A So you mentioned the license with the icc. I think a lot of our listeners might be hearing this and being like, but AI is involved. So what does that mean for privacy of data? And also ensuring that everything that I am sourcing is correct. So how do you respond to those type of questions?

B Yeah, it comes up in 100% of conversations with people that we talk to, truly 100%. We have designed our tool in a different way than I think others are. There's the all I think fundamentally the thing that people are nervous or afraid about is I don't want to put a drawing or a piece of information into a system that's going to learn it and then going to take that learning and apply it like broadly across the Internet. So anybody can participate in that. And it's not all about copyright. A lot of it, especially in the architectural domain, are real concerns and considerations around their client information and what their client allows them to do with that information. We have designed our tool that ICHI will not train any models, whether it's our own or third party, on the information that's put into the system. And so because of that, as well as other decisions that we've made in our own design, we're able to safely and securely manage people's information within the walled garden of their account and store everything or in an encrypted way, both in transit and at rest and domestically as well.

B And that, amongst other things, really helps to protect that information. Furthermore, because of the regulate like regulatory content that we work with, either that's content that's publicly available but really hard to get and parse in a structured way, like municipal codes are a great example of that. Or information bulletins like, you know, San Francisco or Long beach or whatnot are notorious for those. Furthermore, though, there are a number of things that fall into a gray space of copyright. So say codes from the ICC are a good example. And so we work on licensing agreements so that as an architect, if you use ichi, you don't have to worry about am I using content that is okay to use? The answer is yes. And in many cases they also wouldn't need their own additional subscription to those licensed products because they can access them through ICHI and they know that we're paying the licensing fee on their behalf behind the scenes.

A So another question that I'm sure you Get a lot, especially when you begin working with. Well, there's a number of small firms that obviously work across multiple jurisdictions. I would say pre AI a question I would always ask about these code compliant software is what information is currently uploaded to the system, how long does it take to pre populate new information as it comes out? And there's changes happening all the time. Right. So how does eachi say on top of all that?

B The short answer is it's complicated. It's a combination of we've built a lot of tools that allow us to bring in, and sometimes seconds or minutes, new codes and things like that to be able to process them and propagate those across our system. We have a variety of tools of how we're able to handle municipal codes or other bulletins or other documents and bring that in. We with municipalities that we work with, like we talk to them so that we're up to date on their code cycle changes. Or this is a good example of a year like within California where there's a lot of jurisdictions that are making those changes. And so we stay in touch with them as they update them so we can bring them into our system and someday that will also happen more like automatically behind the scenes as well. So it's a lot. Some of it is just manual work, some of it are communication with folks, and a lot of it is building technology tools that can actually ingest, structure and navigate this information really quickly.

B We have our own proprietary format of how we do that behind the scenes.

A So you mentioned that, you know, a part of a subscription to eachi means that you're covering subscription to all of these, accessibility to all these other platforms or some other platforms that architects would otherwise pay. I feel like architects, as technology is taking off, are not necessarily positioning their firms for greater investment into technology on a yearly basis. So how have you been managing, you know, the additional costs of say an ICHI subscription against what they're already doing?

B So I think it's still actually like really early days in architecture. The way that there's, I guess, let's say two parts to this. One part of it is like finding a pricing structure that is amenable to an architectural firm. So I think a real pain point that firms face is they want to adopt technology firm wide, or at least studio wide if they're a larger firm. But there's often an asymmetric adoption curve that exists and they don't want to pay for a lot of people that aren't using the tool, but they want that person to have the tool when they need it, you know, once every three months. Our pricing model is actually modeled like somewhat off of slack in that regard, where they're able to invite their whole firm to use it, but they're only paying for the people that actually use the tool. And that helps to manage different people needing different things at different points in time on a project. And as we roll out more automation tools, it'll be geared more towards the actual use of the tool, not just paying a fee to have it in existence or accessible in the account.

B So we're focusing a lot on the pricing model being based on what their actual needs are, not for them to just have to pay for a bunch of seats and not actually use it. The other component I think is on the adoption itself. So I think a fundamental challenge that exists not just with software, but more acutely with AI is I've yet to see anybody that can predict what the firm wide adoption is going to be. Nobody knows. And what we focus on is working with our customers to do like targeted pilots with a small number of people, often just over a small number of projects, so that they can get a sense of what it actually looks like, what it feels like, how they can use it safely, how they can prompt it. Now they have a lot of ways of sharing that information across their team and we're about to release more, but they're able to do that before having to make a bigger commitment. And so that also helps in how they think about budgeting for the tool because they don't have to budget so much upfront, rather they can kind of work into it as they see what the real adoption and need is across their team.

A I want to go a little bit further into that because I think a lot of the other or a lot of things that I for instance have complained about is architects pay for revit and still might be using it like a CAD application because the learning curve is so high on some of these softwares. You kind of alluded to it a little bit, but how are you really supporting and helping architecture firms understand the full breadth of what each offers them to ensure that they stay up to date for us.

B I look at it as like it's a lot of hands on education. We always try to have kickoff meetings with the teams to do lunch and learns when they're ready to start to deploy more across the firm. We started investing a lot more into our library tools as well. So as an example, it started with creating prompts that you could save, then editing them, then sharing them across your team or working on some things for categorizing them and turning them more into your quick set of tasks that you can just easily pull from so that the power user on your team can create a lot of good tools that the rest of your team can benefit from. But I share all of those examples largely to illustrate that it's not a one thing. I think it's an evolving education, not just for Ichi, but AI and more broadly of how do people get the most from it and understand how to use it in the most effective ways. And I don't know a better way other than teach. Have them try.

B As they try and learn, come back, teach more. You can kind of think of it like a 101, 102, 103 type. Of course, not to say we have it as structured as that, but I think thematically we look at it in that way and just. We also try to have a really close relationship with all of our customers. So almost every customer we have, we either have a shared Slack teams or gchat channel, so they can reach out to us anytime with questions as well. And that, I think, also helps a lot of just having that open line of communication.

A I feel like when we talked earlier, you were talking about how you're kind of on a discovery phase, but you're also introducing Ichi to a lot of architects right now and having a lot of conversations. What other type of questions are you seeing architects ask about the product that you would love to share, how you respond to?

B So I think there's different levels of this in terms of its hierarchy. The biggest, I. I don't know if it's. I would call it like the specific question we get asked, but it's what comes up universe. I think I've spoken to like, 14 different architecture firms in the last two or three weeks, and these are firms of 30 people, up to like, some of the, you know, top 10 largest firms in the world. Everybody is saying we are really interested in AI. We're investigating it, we're putting a budget towards it, we're trying to figure it out. We know we need to use it, but other than image generation, we haven't really started to use anything across the firm.

B And truly, I don't know of a firm right now that has a different answer to that. And so some of the questions are just on that bigger theme of just like, how do we even adopt AI safely and securely in the firm? And so for us, our answers to that question are, well, there's a technology component we Built a tool that's safe and secure. There's the pilot approach. How do we get a small team, three to eight people at most, help them use it, be really hands on, give them the education for it. And then there's just like, what can it do? And people don't ask this question in this way. This is my just like my articulation of just filling down a bunch of them. But oftentimes people will ask questions of in a very hyperbolic way of, well, can it just do this like very base foundational thing or can it do everything? Like a common thing is, can I put in like two 600 page plan sets that have gone through revisions? And it tell me every single detail of what's different between the two set of plans in a really nice summarized way and do it in like five minutes. And he's like, no, unfortunately no.

B Like that can do at a high enough quality yet. Like, is it getting there? Sure. And so I think a big part of our job is just educating people what is possible with our tool? What is possible with the technology more broadly, where do the seams exist? And it's a lot more like giving somebody like a paintbrush and a set of paint and a canvas when they've never painted before, but they've heard that it's like a really great thing. And so it's about showing them, like, here's what a painting could look like. Here's like a brushstroke that you can use, figuratively speaking. And for us, I don't know of a better way to do that other than to show a product demo. And the product demo really helps to illustrate to like, I just had a conversation with an architect earlier today where she was like, I didn't even realize I could use this for ca. It just wasn't even on my radar that that was possible.

B And so I bring that up because you asked, like, what are the questions people ask? Those tend to fall into like the safe and secure, like, what does it cost? That type of a thing. But once they see it, that's when they start to ask the questions more about, well, how do I use it for CA in my job? What are the actual steps that makes that possible from an AI perspective? What do I need to know? Usually that doesn't come until people have actually experienced or seen the product.

A One of the interesting things that I think firms are facing right now is there's a lot of generational gaps in architecture. We tend to lose a lot of people every recession. And then they, they just don't return. So there's this huge gap between the boomers that are retiring and the next generation of leadership. Can you talk a little bit more about maybe opportunities even outside of a specific product to capture the knowledge of those individuals that are retiring and sharing for the next generation the wealth of their knowledge that, that they have.

B Oh, and I mean, just a quick tangent before answering that question more directly. It's, it's something that's I think systemic across the whole industry beyond architecture. And I find this to be really quite fascinating. And I also think like it's going to get harder. Your, your recent LinkedIn post around the, like a critique of architecture. What is it like whether or not it's like a degree that can get as much funding for it? Oh yeah, yeah. Which is like, I, I very much agree with what you posted. I think it's a, a really hard and skilled field that does take, there's a reason that it takes a long time to become an expert at it.

B It's, it's a hard, it's a, it's not just a hard thing to do. It's a very large set of information and it requires a high degree of collaboration and that touches on a whole bunch of different skill sets. And I share that in advance of answering this question because I think that that gap is actually widening. And to share one additional example of where this is systemic, we started ICHI selling actually into government and the data that the ICC continues to put out there is that the average age of a plan examiner in the US is approaching 60 years old and it's expected that upwards of 80% will be retiring in the next 10 years. And so I think this is a really important paradigm because I shared that data with architecture firm we work with that has 180 people in it. And they said the same thing. They said their most experienced folks are nearing retirement and the consultants that they would hire are starting to become less and less available because they're also retiring. And so I think it's a really, you brought up knowledge transfer, but I think it's a more systemic problem because knowledge transfer is a part of it.

B But there's another part of it which is we have, I would argue we have to accept that there's not going to be enough people to meet the demands of the work that are coming over the next 10 years, given the complexity of that work and what's required to actually get it done. So going more specifically to your question, I think from like a knowledge transfer perspective, a lot of it is, we have to find ways of just making it really like easy for the people that are retiring to share. I think that's one of the like a big barrier is making that easy and creating like quick feedback loops so that they believe and see that the knowledge that they have is not only being shared, but is, is finding actual like practical use which creates an intrinsic motivation to share more. Furthermore, beyond sharing though, I think it's, I think it's accepting that it's actually like it's not just about the knowledge transfer. It's a different set of skills that somebody has to learn in a different amount of time. And so part of it is the yes will be the knowledge share, but from a mentorship perspective and the like. Others are, how does that generation enable the next generation to understand what tools to use so that they can actually accelerate their ability to be proficient in their job? To share one example of that, and this often comes up in the code compliance realm, whether it's government or architects and designers or even real estate developers we talk to, Everybody says like 30 years ago when they started on their job, the code book was, and I know there's no video here, but it's like two inches, right? And then now people like literally like in California, it's beyond a wingspan of a six foot person often, but then architect that's starting in their job, they don't get 30 years to go from 2 inches to 6 foot wingspan. That's what they have to start with on day one.

B So it's a different problem as well. Not just imparting the knowledge from the retiring generation, but also learning how to navigate a broader set of information more quickly and efficiently than they ever did before.

A I think it's interesting that you kind of bounce between the two because that's additionally where a lot of people are struggling with AI bringing us more joy, but also kind of doing the work in a way for us. I feel that there's a lot of practitioners that are concerned about how do we train this next generation of architects Coming out of school, is there a place too where Ichi can kind of support the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of helping those individuals? Not even just access to knowledge, but kind of a deeper understanding of all of the things that are coming together and that are showing up on the screen rather than just saying like, okay, this is kind of what needs to be applied, if that makes sense.

B Yeah, it does. And I think it's, it's evolving. I think every month or every few months this changes going More to like the code compliant side. Just because it's where you have like longer foothold, it's actually really common for people to use it for. Hey, can you give me 10 quiz questions about X? Or why does this have to exist in this way? Like, where did this regulation come from? Why is it important? What are the exceptions to it? Why are those exceptions? What's different of how this is applied here versus there? We get a lot of questions like that in the system, which I get really excited about because I think it's demonstrating the curiosity of people to learn the thing I find. You didn't say this exactly, but maybe, maybe this was implied. It's not uncommon for us, particularly from senior leaders, to express a concern of the next generation becoming overly reliant on AI and not knowing how to do out for themselves. And I think it's a very rational and real concern.

B I mean, I also, like, from a personal perspective, worry about this with my daughters and as they grow up and is that going to be a problem for them? I have yet to see an example of that actually in architects on the government side. Because what I find, and I want to believe that this is just part of human nature, is we do want to know and understand. And in these more complex domains, like all the different things you have to do for architecture, the curiosity that people have to understand the why behind something does persist. And I think it's incumbent upon people that are building AI tools, like we take this very seriously to always support any type of AI answers with the real sources of the information of where that answer came from. And I think that that's a really important part of the discovery and learning process that people go through because it allows them to be curious, to try to understand why, and then it allows them to also, like, get to the roots and fundamentals as well and to build that foundation too.

A Thank you, Brandon, for that answer. But I want to jump to a little bit more of a fun question. Where did the name Ichi come from?

B Oh, thank you for asking. Yeah, I really love the name of the company. So my wife, nor I, nor daughter, none of us are Japanese, but we have a lot of ties to Japanese culture. Like both my daughters go to Japanese school, my wife speaks Japanese, I'm the only person in our house that doesn't. And ichi is a Japanese word that is both the number one, and it also means like city center or town square or marketplace in historical context. So we gave the company that name because of the double meaning one pragmatically we want to help build better cities of the future. So that's where that, like, kind of older, like town square, city center came from. And then the number one is an aspirational goal of part of the company.

B And where that stems from is from my experience growing up and just talking to so many different people. When you really peel back the onion, whether you're an architect or a plan examiner or building official or subcontractor, whoever, I think everybody wants to do like a really good job. Like, they want to be proud of their work, have great craftsmanship, what have you, and build like a great home city, what have you. But there's so much complexity and communication that's required with really tight timelines and budgets that a lot of tension and stress and therefore, like, animosity gets formed between people. And so our longer vision is to create more of a one team feel across the entire life cycle of a project of everybody working on it. And that is part of where the joy component comes in. It's not just about getting to the finish line, but, like, how we get there, I think matters, and I think we have an opportunity to make that better.

A So I appreciate the response in the name because at the beginning of the conversation I talked to you about what is IQI about, and you mentioned, I think honestly you gave an answer that is not dissimilar from a lot of why architects became architects when it comes to creating a better world. What do you hope eachi as a product continues to do as it grows over time to support architects in that mission? And are you enough to what they are doing to really believe that ICHI is delivering upon that promise?

B So I think the core of it is getting back to design and whatever that means for a particular individual. Like, for some people it's lines on a page, and for other people, they just have different ways to approach their research, how they think about things. But in talking to many architects, it's common for us to hear that they generally get to spend 25, maybe max 50% of their time doing design work.

A 50% would be lucky, I think. Yeah, yeah.

B And that's like. It's bananas, right? I mean, you go to school, especially if you get licensed, all this stuff, to then spend less than half of your time doing the thing that you actually started to do. It feels really strange to me. So I think, like, in the world of architecture, from just like an individual person level, I think if over time more people are able to get back to design, I think it will be better not just for them. But I think the product of what will be designed for the rest of all of us will also be better. As humans, we operate better when we have more freedom and space, you know, to explore the space, rather than feeling like we're, you know, kind of being like chased down to have to get something done in a very short amount of time and very limited time to actually do that work. Do I think we're close enough to, to make sure I understand your question? It's like, do I think that we're close enough to Architect's actual day to day that we can create meaningful impact there? Is that what you're asking?

A Yeah, the thought was it's so altruistic. I think the opening and wanting to build better, architects believe that we are a part of that because we're very much touching the ecosystem of what goes into our communities and creating, I would hope, better places for people to live, work and play. Is Ichi and the product you're developing for you as a founder and your people as a company close enough to that to see that realization as well.

B Oh, so I think the answer is no. But it would be hard for me to say yes, I guess ever. But, but not, not, not because I'm not trying to be flippant about it just because for, for me and for us at et, our development philosophy is heavily centered around understanding the customer's problem. So we spend hours a week on calls every week shadowing our customers, talking to them about their problems. Anytime we have an opportunity to be in person and sit next to someone, like, we'll take advantage of it. And I cannot think of a time where I didn't learn something new. And so I think like, are we close enough? I'd say, oh, we're pretty close. I think we can do better.

B Just like practically speaking, running a business, like, can you always be Yes, I think so. Do I think it's close enough and that the way that we're operating that we can do a really extraordinary job at it? Yes. Do I think that there's always opportunities to get in more depth and double click even further on problems and pain points people have? Yes, I really do. For me, that's like one of the most fun parts about software development is I think there's a paradigm of do you have the person who's an expert in the domain or a person who's an expert on the software? And the ideal answer is they're both, but like, there's just not a lot of those in the world. And to build like a Big great company that's actually going to have a world impact. You need a lot of people to do it. And so I think our greatest challenge is how to engender as much empathy as possible for our customers inside of our company with a focus on expertise of software development. And we can always do better at that.

A A lot of criticism that has been put on some of these tools or software products that are entering into the architecture space, even though you're having a tremendous amount of conversations with architects, is that they aren't necessarily hiring architects on staff. If I'm a young grad from an architecture school or if I am somebody maybe on the opposite end of my career spectrum, is there an opportunity for me to work at a company like Ishii?

B Yeah, I believe so. Even if today we're not hiring people specifically from the domain? Yes, absolutely. I mean, I don't think. I think to build a great software company, like, we can't fill our entire company with architects and plan examiners as an example. Like, we need people that are really great at software engineering as well. And so I think there's a really good mixture of it. But yeah, at my past startup, which was in a different space, we operated in commerce, we hired salespeople that had worked in fashion, we hired a lot of, like, customer support people that had come from the industry, and then we would teach them those skills. We did similar things in some places in square.

B I don't see why we wouldn't do similar things here in ichi. I think it's really interesting. I also believe that AI is dramatically changing the way that we build tools. Like the concept of a traditional engineer, product manager, designer is. I think it's melting. And I say melting because all those roles are kind of melding together into this new role. And so I think the opportunity to bring, say, someone with a strong architectural background with a tool set where they can actually start to play with software development in a safe and effective way is becoming possible. And I'm extremely curious to explore that.

B As the technology matures, as architects hopefully.

A Look to adopt more AI function into the work they're doing. And Ichi partners with architects going forward, what do you hope is the outcome of both you building Ichi successfully, but also architects using AI tools going forward? Kind of the most opportunistic outcome, like.

B The best, best possible outcome, complexity is going up. Like, the challenges of the work are going up. The people that actually can do the work are going down or staying the same at best. But there is this, like more utopic future where, I guess, like. Yeah, where people are able to get back to design, like, feeling like, less under the gun for every single project that they're working on and the spaces that they're designing, it really does matter. Like, there is an enormous difference between a space that's well designed and what it feels like when you walk in it and what it feels like to live in it or work in it every day. And if there's an opportunity to take people that really care about that and give them more time and space to do that, I think that's ultimately like, the win. Yeah.

A As architects look to adopt more AI tools, especially tools like Ishii, what is kind of the silver lining that you see for their profession coming out of all of this?

B I think directly within their profession, the biggest silver lining is that they're going to get back to being able to do more of what they love and just get back to design for more of the time that they spend every day and spend less of their time doing those things that don't bring them joy, those administrative, rote, repetitive tasks that they have to spend the majority of their time doing. I think what's really amazing about that is these are people that went into the field because they believe that the design of these buildings matter. They matter to how it feels as we go into them. They matter how it feels for us to live in them. And giving those people more time and space to be able to invest in that is just going to yield better impacts for society. It's both going to yield to, like, better structures for all of us to live in, but also should lead to efficiencies that we don't see today. And I genuinely believe those increased efficiencies can help bring housing costs down, can help create better cities where access to things like health care and healthy food and all of that are more within reach for every person. And I think it will take time.

B You know, that's something you kind of got to squint to see it. But I genuinely believe when you look at this holistically and being able to impact everyone that's involved in these processes, like, it will actually lead to a better place for all of us to live in.

A Hi, disruptors. Thank you for joining us today on an episode of Practice Disrupted. If you like the content for today's show, you can find all of our past episodes over on practiceofarchitecture.com podcast. Be a part of the conversation by joining me, our speakers, and other disruptors in our community. Community@practiceofarchitecture.com community our social media handle is practiceofarch. That's practiceofarch. We'd love to hear from you, so feel free to drop us a DM and say hello. Tune in next week for a new conversation on change in the profession.