From the Inside Out: Larry Sass on Digital Fabrication, AI, and Architecture's Next Chapter

A Welcome to Practice Disrupted, a podcast exploring how architects can build better businesses, embrace emerging technology, and create more sustainable, fulfilling practices. I'm your host, Evelyn Lee, architect, angel investor, and founder of Practice of Architecture. Whether you're running a firm, starting your career, or reimagining what's possible, this podcast challenges you to think differently about the future of architecture. This episode is brought to you by Gelt. Firm owners, are you overpaying on taxes? I use Gelt for my business and saved over $10,000 in year one. Visit joingelt.com and mention Practice of Architecture for 10% off your first year. Hello, disruptors. Welcome to this week's episode of Practice Disrupted.

A This season, we have been asking a hard question from a lot of different angles. Is the architecture profession actually transforming, or are we just getting better at describing the same old problems? We have talked to digital practice leaders, community engagement pioneers, entrepreneurs who left firms to build something new, and young architects rethinking how the profession tells its story. And running through all those conversations is a tension that has not fully resolved. The profession is changing, but maybe not fast enough, and maybe not from the inside. Today's guest has been watching that tension play out for 30 years from one of the most unusual vantage points in the profession. Larry Sass is a professor of architecture at MIT, where he leads the Design Fabrication Group. And here is the thing about Larry: becoming a professor was never the plan. Practice was the first choice.

A But when he returned to a firm after finishing his PhD in 2000, he found an industry with almost no interest in the computer as a part of its work. So when MIT created a position around the one thing nobody else wanted to do, digital fabrication and 3D printing, he took it. Not his first choice, He will tell you, but his best one. Since then, he has spent decades building towards a single conviction that the tools to design and construct a home should not be reserved for the top 10% of the world. His digitally fabricated house for New Orleans was exhibited at MoMA, and he is still pushing, still asking why the architecture industry has so much technology while construction has so little, and why the middle industry that could bridge the two does not yet exist. But Larry also lives on campus. He has for nearly 30 years, first as a graduate resident in the '90s and now as head of house at McGregor, where on Sunday mornings he makes pancakes for students. Students who once told him to pay attention to something called Bitcoin, students who went on to co-found Fusion Plants, graduate students who arrive as architects and leave as something the profession does not have a name for yet.

A That is what this conversation is really about. What 30 years of watching brilliant young people choose their futures tells us about where architecture is headed and whether the profession will lead the change or watch it happen from the outside.

B Hi, Larry, welcome to the show. I'm so glad to have you on Practice Disrupted with us this week.

C Glad to be here.

B So just as a frame of reference for everyone, uh, Larry and I have been working decently close over the last 2 years as outside board of directors or board members for Shepley Bulfinch. But that's not why I brought you on the podcast today. So, I'd love for our listeners to kind of get an understanding of who you are, what makes you, you, where you come from, your connection to architecture. So, why don't we start from the beginning?

C So, yes, I'm a professor of architecture at MIT. I was here as a graduate student in the '90s as a PhD student and a master's student. During the transition from hand drawings to computing and 3D printing in the '90s. And I've been, I worked at Shepley Bulfinch actually for about a year, but I had worked at other firms like Peiatt for 3 years and Schwartz Silver for a little while and a couple of other firms in New York, like throughout my undergraduate at Pratt. And Once I came here as a graduate student, I got to see what it looked like to explore design. And you have to think back in the 1990s, people weren't doing research here at MIT. And architecture was really a professional program. And it still is.

C But it was much more heavily focused on practice. And so for the few of us who were doing research work who were not history, theory, and criticism, it was seen as kind of like bizarre. Like, why would you do research on architecture? And so now it's become commonplace, and I actually really enjoy it. And my area is computing, design computing, but probably not the typical type of design computing that you find in other universities like SCI-Arc or maybe the GSD.

B So I want to back it up a little bit because you did say PhD, and I don't think we get a lot of people that end up pursuing a PhD in architecture. Why did you decide to pursue one?

C Yeah, that's a good question. Sometimes I still ask myself the same question. Well, I kind of did it for a couple of reasons. The first was I knew I did not want to go back into practice in the traditional sense. This was the 1990s, mid-1990s. So I was trying to figure out how I wanted to shape my career as an architect in particular, because I really wanted to just practice. I didn't want to become a professor. It was the last thing on my mind.

C And I realized that I wanted to be— I wanted to do like a lot of professors. I wanted to teach part-time and work at a practice full-time. And what I started to notice in my undergraduate was, before I came to MIT, was that a lot of, I would say, non-standard architects like Frank Gehry and Michael Graves and people like that, they had teaching positions at universities in the earlier parts of their career. So they were publishing and doing a lot of experimental work with schools and students and studio before their practice took off. So I assumed that being a professor had a lot to do with the experimentation part of their work. So I wanted to become a part-time professor. I just didn't know how. And I said, well, I know I need a portfolio of something that's different.

C And I met Bill Mitchell, the dean at the time, and I did an animation with him when I was a master's student. And that animation was a computer graphics animation. It was the first of its kind. It was before Jurassic Park. I think it was right after Pixar started and it won a big award. And then I said, oh, I really like animation, computer animation.. And I found that it was a great tool for presenting work. I sometimes would use it to present projects.

C And so then I said, I would love to stay here and do more of that and get a PhD. I wasn't really thinking so much of the degree. I was looking at the time to build a better portfolio.

B Oh, interesting.

C If that makes sense. It was kind of like, it was kind of like the time, the having someone else support you to do something different, which everybody understands now.

B Yes. No, I think so. But then you ended up staying. What happened, I guess, after you got your PhD?

C So then, oh, so after I got my PhD and also while I was getting my PhD, I also applied to professorial jobs and I got two offers and I got interviewed for another job. So I realized I could eventually, I'm going to get a job. That was pretty clear to me. So I said, I want to get my license over with. And so then that's when I went back and I worked at Shepley. I interviewed at a number of places and I landed in Shepley. But at the time, I was so— I was so discouraged and sad at how little they were interested in the computer as part of their practice. This is 2000.

B So you did that for a couple of years, and then you ended up back being a professor, which you never intended on being in the first place.

C No, I— no, it was not my bet. It was not my first choice. It was my best choice. My first choice would have been to become an architect, get licensed, have projects, and all that stuff. And I mean, just to be very blunt and honest, there weren't that many Black practitioners there. The ones that I did know, like Max Bond and Harry Simmons, the ones in Roberta Washington from New York. They talked about how hard the practice was from the point of being Black. There were a couple of other Black architects here, Donald Stull and David Lee.

C They talked about how hard the practice was as a Black architect. And I like the idea of experimentation and the idea of playing and exploring. And so then after I graduated, I worked at Shepley, then I left Shepley before I had another job, and I had 3 kids at the time, so I was terrified. But then they offered me the position here. Actually, they made the position for me back in 2000 because I was the only one interested in doing digital fabrication and 3D printing at that time. And so they made the position around that, but it was an assistant professor position. I started to go through tenure. I still had to publish and do all of the stuff that any tenure-track professor had to do.

C I just, I was just fortunate enough to be able to do that here in the earlier part of my career.

B But, and now you've had a long, I think, I would hope a fulfilling career. Yes.

C No, it's been fantastic. I'm not, oh no, no, I'm not, even though it's not my first choice, it still is fantastic. I'm not upset or anything about having to do this at all. In fact, The more I look at practice, the more I realize I probably would not have been a good practitioner. There are a lot of painful things in the practice, things that I would find difficult, like, you know, doing construction administration, you know, filing papers.

B I was going to say lack of play and exploration, actually.

C Yeah. Like, you know, doing construction documents and BIM modeling. I would have had a very hard time with that stuff because I tend to I like the creative side of the industry and I struggle a lot with like the management part of it. So I think this was the right profession for me. I think it was the best thing I could have done.

B I also wanted to bring you on because you have a very interesting perspective on students, not only students of architecture, but students in general matriculating through MIT. Can you tell us a little bit about the position that has given you this broader perspective?

C So I'm also head of one of the dormitories as well. I live on campus. I'm certain most people, when I, when I told them I was leaving my house, my home back in 2015, and I'm moving on campus, I think most people felt sorry for me. And the first thing that people said is, oh, is everything okay? Like, why are you leaving your home? And the honest answer is I love living on campus with students. I lived on campus for 7 years with an undergraduate group in one of the dormitories. Graduate students at MIT, PhD students, you have the opportunity to live with 30 students at a time. So you get to— you're sort of the RA, but it's not an RA because you're a graduate student. And Harvard and Yale have the same program, Princeton as well, where it's a graduate student living with undergraduates, and you get to tutor them and take care of them and get to know them and get to understand the MIT student, particularly the undergraduate.

C So that perspective, MIT undergraduate perspective, I've known that now for almost 30 years. I feel it's a very special opportunity to know a very special group of people. They're really smart, I have to tell you. It's actually not a joke. They actually are genuinely really smart.

B What would you say characterizes students graduating now versus maybe the students back in 2015 when you first moved back on campus?

C Yeah, I would say so. Back in 2015, so undergraduates is kind of the same undergraduate population. Yeah, the undergraduate students that graduated back in 2025, I was the same type of student that graduates today, for example. And I would say, but the graduate students are different. The graduate students in the architecture program The architecture program here is mostly graduate students. We have very few undergrads, but the undergraduate program still graduates students who start businesses, who participate doing really complex operations on things that we don't understand. Particularly, you know, most human beings don't understand half the things that they're doing. And I'll give you an example.

C There was this one student, and I think he'd be honored that I remember this. The student, Nchenda Nchenda, in 2015. He was in my apartment. We were having pancakes. We do pancakes with the students on Sunday mornings. We have a group of them, probably 15. And he said— and he had this hat on, this red hat. That was 2016, I'm sorry.

C He had a red hat on. It was November and it had white lettering. And my first thought was, oh my God, it's a MAGA hat in my apartment. But it said The hat said, "Make Bitcoin great again." And I didn't know what Bitcoin was. And no one knew. Most people didn't know what it was in 2015. And he said, "Oh, you should invest in this. You should get involved with it." Not invest, but he said, "You should get involved.

C It's going to be a big deal one day." So a lot of the students— Oh, yeah. So I don't know what happened to him, but, you know, he nailed something that was going to be— whether you're invested in it or not, he was right. It is something really big. And I find I had another student who was talking about starting a fusion, fusion plant. And right now there's a big fusion plant that was built over the last 3 years right outside of the greater Boston area. And he was one of the founders of it. And he was a student in my apartment at one point. So, you know, I have those kinds of conversations, but those are ongoing.

C It's always been that way with student undergraduates. Graduate students are different. The graduate students, when they come in, they start off wanting to— they come in as architectural students from the, uh, students from the architectural programs, from an architectural program in the past. And then they find something different to explore. And it could be anything from biology to robotics to, uh, AI. And they tend to look for work and jobs in other areas. Once they graduate, they're all usually doing something dramatically different than when they entered MIT as a master's student. But the undergraduates are pretty consistent.

B Being a developer of a fusion plant doesn't seem like the most traditional path that I was offered when I was an undergraduate.

C Yeah, so yeah, that's, that's true. Yeah, so engineering— MIT is an engineering school first. It's It's a military organization. A lot of the research money that comes into MIT comes from the military. So a lot of the pathways that the students take in their career is related to engineering, some science. The science school is not as big as most people think, but the engineering school is enormous.

B I want to circle back on what you said about computational design and what you're working on now. I'm a SCI-Arc alum, and you're like, but it's not exactly what most people think it is from a computational design perspective. And I definitely have a very— that, like, brings to mind something very specific. So, tell us what it is, then.

C Yeah, so, I think that— so, first, there are 3 buckets when you talk about computation and design. Then I would say the first bucket is one that people don't categorize as computational design, which is digital design. And digital design is 3D modeling, drafting, visualization, and fabrication. It's those three. 3D modeling, visualization, fabrication, and, uh, I mentioned, oh, drafting, right? The middle bucket is generative design, and that's computer programming of some type. It's some type of generative system, whether it's evolutionary modeling, parametric modeling, or Grasshopper, which is visual programming. It's also shape grammars. Yeah, I would say that those, those are the main ones.

C It's mostly programming, computer programming of some kind. And then there's AI and machine learning and rendering engines, things that make, you know, beautiful renderings and animations. And that's a separate— those, those are— that's another bucket. That's the third bucket, which is the AI bucket that people call it now. I still think it's some version of generative design. I still think it's in the bucket number 2, but most people categorize it as bucket number 3. And the reason why I don't categorize it as bucket number 3 is because it doesn't do a lot of the things that we do around intelligence. So for example, when people remember, and I I'm glad that we're speaking to an architectural audience because everybody can relate to this.

C When you're laying out a piece of trace and you're sketching on trace and then you roll another piece of trace on top of it and you sketch a different set of lines on top of the prior drawing, you're— and you see things that are different in the new sketch and outline and draw things that are different. That's— that term is technically emergence. You see things that are slightly different. And a good example of that is if you look at the logo for the Met. Yeah, if you look at the Met logo, for example, as a really— or the New Yorker logo, you'll see that the letters are connected in a certain way and designed in a certain way so that they flow together and the serifs are taken off in certain areas because it makes it easier to read with the serifs on in certain places and off in other places. But only a designer can do that type of work. Only a designer can, your eye, can emerge those different shapes and symbols, whether it's by trace or by going through an iterative process. You emerge new things and AI and all of the generative systems are not good at those things.

C They're not good at picking out lines and shapes the way that a person would. And creating clarity with a— through an iterative process. They're not— computers aren't good at picking those things out.

B Will they ever be?

C Probably not. And the reason why is there are three— there are three constant problems in computing. And also, I just want to say the AI bucket, I actually— so first, I've been here since the early '90s, and since that time I've met a lot of people that were doing AI that nobody wanted to talk to at the time because it wasn't popular, right? Like Patrick Winston and Leslie Kabling. They were doing all of this stuff that was really hard to do, like language modeling, but language models didn't exist back in the '90s and in the early 2000s. So they would talk about it theoretically. And anybody who's been around knows Patrick Winston. Patrick Winston was one of the early founders of AI in the 1950s. And one of the things that they— well, some of the common problems that they talked about were— 3 problems that they always talked about was it's hard to get a computer to reason, it's hard to get a computer to infer, and it's hard to get a computer to discover things.

C Those 3 things— inferring, reasoning, and discovery— are the 3 things that you're doing when you're tracing over something else, a person. It's hard for a computer to do those three things. And so it's hard for a computer to get the result, which is an emerging result. It's an emergence of something else. Here's a good, another good example. I'm certain a lot of architects have done this where you play with the Lego kits, right? Like there's the standard Lego blocks where you try to make things that are random with Lego blocks, which are symbols. And then you have a Lego kit, which has very specific parts that make the shape of a car or a dog or a cat, and the, the certain bricks have curves on them. And so those special kits, someone had to design each little curved block, the eyes, the ears, like they had to make those special parts.

C Or like a person, right, like the hands and stuff. If you take the standard kit, which is, you know, like a just the 8-prong and 4-prong, eventually to make that kit over here, you have to emerge new shapes and new blocks and stuff like that. A computer can't do that. It's just, it doesn't have the visual capability. We still don't know how that happens in ourselves, like with people. We don't understand how we do those incredibly intricate tasks on our own. So how do you get a computer to do this?

B So you did mention the 3 different buckets. Where are you following, I guess, in those buckets when you talk about being different than like what CyArk is doing around computational design?

C Well, I would say, so there's a general part, which is I think computing, the one thing that you can do is automate certain parts of the process of generating a model. So my thing is digital fabrication. I've always wanted to figure out how to make houses directly from computer models. Like, I wanted to figure that out since the mid-'90s. I came to MIT to learn about housing from, you know, some professors here who are really interested in housing. And so that sort of migrated into trying to figure out how to 3D print houses, and then it migrated into, okay, well, wood is a common material. Let's figure out how to decompose wood in shape so that you can make houses from decomposed shapes and Snap fit them together, but to make a snap fit model with all of the intricate connections and parts and points is so hard to program. It's almost impossible to program because you're, you're replacing a carpenter and carpenters have a very intricate eye.

C They know how to make really complex connections spatially and computers are terrible spatially. All of the top people that are in computing markets, Gary Marcus, people who talk about spatial stuff all say that computing is very hard when you're talking about spatial stuff. It's great for text.

B Okay. Housing and fabrication. I mean, that would sound like a potential solution to the affordable housing crisis that we're facing right now.

C It should. It should. But, you know, let's face it though, at this point, I think people thought that this Claude Shannon, who's one of the founders of, like, the early founders in computing, and Claude Shannon's whole thing was machines that would make machines. And the thought by now would be that you could print your phone on your printer at home, and we're not even close to that. That idea came up back in like the early 2000s, that you could 3D print a phone with all of its electronics and from your home 3D printer. And it's so complicated that the thought of that is just gone. And I think with houses, there's a potential for it, but I think we need more research work around how to make a language that's spatial. All of the language modeling now is text.

C We need a spatial language, one that cuts across robotics, one that cuts across like CAD programs and systems.

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B So talk about that. I feel like that's kind of where you've migrated your work from in terms of creating what that more comprehensive spatial language is, and then developing people that could eventually solve that problem. Is that kind of where you're operating now?

C A little bit, a little bit. I mean, I, I think what I'm trying to do right now, um, this is the weird part, is I've said, okay, I'm going to back off of doing a lot of experimentation with, uh, machines and making stuff because I've spent a lot of time making objects and I could— I know a lot about what it takes to make an object. Thing that I don't know a lot about is what it takes to program to sit and write algorithms with. I work with another programmer to write algorithms with this person that does really complex— generates complex geometry that's useful. So imagine trying to generate a small hut, like a hut that's 3 meters square and one that actually holds water, and like a hut, like a basic little hut. That's really hard to generate that geometry and make it and walk into it and hope that it'll stay afloat in a storm. Like, to do that is very, very hard. And my hope is that over time I can figure out how to write software that'll do that stuff with this my friend BlueJeans.

C But that, that's such a long way away. I think right now we're still just trying to figure out some of the basic functions that go into writing software to generate big objects, like objects that are bigger than 3 meters square. We don't know how to do that. We know how to make little things.

B There's no ability to scale the little things up in a meaningful way right now?

C Well, how? Think about it, right? Like, think about 3D printing. It goes straight up, but it doesn't go over. 3D printing is walls, but it's not ceilings and roofs and overhangs. Somebody has to You walk along side of the machine while it's getting ready to print the overhang of a window or a door, and it doesn't 3D print the ceiling. So we don't know how to make things that are complex assemblies of very large objects that are not modeled. Like all of the stuff you see now, there are a bunch of companies now that are doing the same sort of interlocking plywood constructions that I do, but they 3D model it. And that's why I said before, like, digital design is 3D modeling, and that's in the first bucket, and that's keyboard entry. And you want to move over to the second bucket, which is generative, which is writing software to generate that geometry.

C You don't want to, you don't want to keyboard everything. It's too slow.

B The next question for you would be then, so it's one thing to to keyboard write it. It's another thing to have the hardware to take in what you keyboard to build. So is there another group you're working with that is bringing together that, or do you ever see those two meeting?

C No, I still, I, I'm not working with another group yet because I still haven't defined the, the, the problem. But if you think about it, the, and it's funny cuz a lot of people when this is where the part where I'm gonna say this is the part that's different, SCI-Arc than MIT. If you— on MIT's campus, there are very few machines. We have very few robots. We have very few CNC machines. And this historically has been the case, even though the CNC machine was invented here. CAD was invented here back in 1962. Like, all these things were— email, they were all invented here, but we don't have the machines.

C And it's because the real problem is computing down at the level of lines, points, planes, like how you organize those, how you compute them, how you get them to understand each other, how you detect intersections so that you turn intersections into connections. Like all of that math work, you don't need a machine for that. You need smart people who can figure out how to work with vectors and how to manipulate lines and planes.

B Yeah, no, I'm following. And as a daughter of a plasma physicist, I can kind of understand the more theoretical side of all of that coming together. So I want to circle back a little bit around to how is that work that you're doing now related, if at all, to the curriculum of the students that are matriculating through and what you're seeing them do and where they're off to, and then maybe bring this conversation all the way back around to, well, what does that actually mean for the future of architecture and the future of practice?

C Yeah, no, first of all, it's a great question because I think we're— so where we are now is where computing was in the field of architecture back in the early 1990s. So back in the late '88, late '80s, I'm thinking '88 because of, uh, that's when I was in my— that's when I took my first CAD class. Late '80s, early '90s, that was when the industry had a major resistance to CAD. Um, and at that time, there were a few firms like Russo and Saunders, I don't know if anybody would remember them, in New York who adopted CAD systems as part of their regular work. And then in the late '90s was when the industry started adopting and expecting and accepting just basic computing, like drafting and not even renderings, but mostly just drafting. So research work was at that time in 2000 was mostly renderings, 3D printing, and the beginning of robotics. So right now we're at that transition where we need to figure out how to move over or transition into some form of generative modeling and generative work in general, where we're connecting more closely to robotics. We're at the beginning of that where we don't even have the money for that stuff yet.

C I think a lot of faculty are still trying to raise money around those topics, but it really is a— I think the students, this is the best part, the graduate students want to explore varying topics in AI and they take classes, AI classes when they get here. A lot of them don't stay in the class because they're too hard. Meaning they're just like studios. They are just so incredibly difficult and challenging. That I find that even when I was taking programming classes, some of them, I just, I couldn't take it. It was just so hard. And so I think the AI classes here now are like that. They're just really hard, time-consuming courses.

C But eventually it'll come around in another 5 to 6 years where some of that AI work will make its way back into research work here in the department. And I think it will make its way into the industry in another 10 years. If you think about major changes, it takes 15 years from conception to the time that it makes it to the industry. And I, I think we're at the beginning of that 15 years.

B Will that make us further behind? So, I, so, I, I posited on LinkedIn, cuz I know you like to check in on my LinkedIn every once in a while, a question of whether architects would figure out startups before startups figure out architecture. Is there any worrisome about a competing thread if it's taking 15 years in architecture to kind of have that adoption cycle versus is some outside force coming in and trying to, to reframe it, what it is we do? Is, is there, is there any concern about that?

C There is one reframe potential that hasn't been discussed, but I could see it happening, which is we have two industries, right? We have the architecture industry and all the other firms like architecture, structure, you know, structural engineering, things like that. Mechanical, and then we have construction. They're really two industries. The internet doesn't have that, or the web doesn't have that. Like, you have something in between, which is design engineers, right? They take, they take the conceptual work, the visual work from a designer, and they translate it or craft it for the backend people. The UI, the major programmers, there's an industry that's in between the constructors and the creators in the UI/UX industry. And we don't have that in architecture. And I think that that's the next big thing is some sort of industry in between.

C And I don't know if it's going to be called design engineering or if it's industrial engineering, but you need a field that's in between.

B How would you say that's different than kind of design-build then and bridging the two?

C Because design-build still has the two opposed, two separate fields. You still have architects talking and working more collaboratively. It's in theory, in theory, but you really need an industry in between that can translate the conceptual work of an architect or even the technical work of building information modeling to machine languages and machining. You, you need some industry that's between the two today, and that doesn't exist.

B So if startups figure that industry out, or if outsiders figure that piece out before insiders, does it then become—

C it'll happen from outsiders.

B It'll happen from outsiders. So, but then, yeah, then my next question is, do architects become employees? Rather than being the employers?

C Yeah, that's a very good question because there's a secret that most people don't know about, and that's the Stata Center here at MIT. The Stata Center was a collaboration between Frank Gehry and Skanska. And unfortunately, that collaboration didn't have that middle person. And one of the business partners, Jim Glymph, who at the time was one of Frank Gehry's partners, he always said, we need an industry that's in between architecture and construction. He always had this vision of some other type of industry that's in between the two. Unfortunately, I think all the law, the insurance and law, the law would not allow the two industries to really collaborate. Looking at what happened with Frank Gehry, because MIT ultimately sued Frank Gehry. For $15 million.

C And I think most architects don't want to take that kind of risk. So I think that handing over data to a contractor is not a wise idea. And most contractors don't want to use architect's data. So you need something, and the contractor doesn't have the capacity to do all of the digital work that is needed prior to construction. So you really need a new industry. You need an industry of master— I think he called it master digital, master fabricator or something like that. But it was some— it was this term he came up with, but it's still digital. It's some form of design engineering.

C You need that in between the two. And it will come from— I can tell you this— it will not come from the architecture industry. It will not come from construction. It's going to come from something else.

B So back to it, are we going to end up being employees rather than employers?

C You know, that's a good question. I don't know. You know, that's the scary part because I'm still in architecture school. I still believe in architecture. I still believe that architects should be the ones responsible for crafting details and determining how things look. I've been fortunate enough to watch and get to know some great architects here on campus., you know, to design the campus. And so I would hate the thought that architects are just doing the front end. But if you think about how the industry is going, the construction industry has to make changes to become more digital because right now that's where young people want to be.

C They need young people to go into that industry and young people are digitally savvy. They want that. Right? And so the architectural literacy is already digitally savvy, but the architectural industry will not be able to take on the risk of handing over digital information to a contractor.

B So how do you prepare students then for what this could be going forward?

C That's a good question. I really don't know. You know, I actually, well, first I wanna put the question out there, you know, is it possible to How do we create an industry that brings all of these two together? There's so many new ideas that are coming from the architecture industry, but the architecture industry doesn't, can't really support them. So like reuse. So there are three big topics in, I would say here at MIT in general that are of major topics. And the biggest topic here is climate. Climate is, and doing research work around climate, that's the president's initiative. That's been the initiative of some of our donors in the department.

C And it's just the biggest topic on campus. The second is computing with AI as it relates to AI and digital manufacturing. And the third is culture, meaning the culture of immigrants, the culture of race, the culture of gender. Like culture has always been an important topic that influences the other two in some ways and contributes to the other two. So, you know, those three things, climate, computing, and culture. Are all this sort of stew. And I don't know how it's going to turn out, to be honest with you. But I think that if you sort of pose the question to the students, that's when you'll get the best answers, because the students are the ones— the young people are the ones who really come up with the brilliant ideas that— I mean, I just have to qualify, MIT is great because of its students.

C The faculty are good. Like, I love the faculty and we're all relatively smart. But the, but the students are absolutely spectacular. They're the ones who come up with most of the great inventions that you see in the world. It really, the question really has to be posed to them.

B I want to flip that then a little bit and say, do you think the firms and what you know of firms today ready for the students that are graduating out of MIT? Or are students just going to find their own path that eventually disrupts what they don't see at firms?

C Yeah, I don't think they can disrupt the architecture industry. I mean, architecture industry, architecture and construction, it's number one, it's incredibly complicated and takes, it takes a long time to learn how to put together a shed, let alone a tall building. You need the, the amount of intelligence that goes into an architect. It's just unheard of. Your architects are problem setting and problem solving all the time. So you, you'll never be able to replace the industry of architecture or architects or architectural education. That can never be replaced. The thing that the question becomes, how do you add other industries to it? So a really good example is Dennis Sheldon.

C Dennis Sheldon was a graduate student, a colleague of mine, and he started Gehry Technologies back in the late '90s. And Gehry Technologies was supposed to be that firm that's in between the builder and the, the designer. And I think one of the things that he really learned and his contribution has always been that somehow you can bring the industries together through that middle industry. Whatever that is. Gary Technologies was that middle industry. I think he was right. I think, I think you still need to develop more industries like Gary Technologies where they're sort of that middle ground. You have architects and builders, but they're all in computers, but they're all working together.

B Let's talk about a little bit about then what you hope for the future of the profession. You did put it kind of back on the students.

C But for research work, for research work.

B Okay. What does the future of the profession look like with this middle ground and our voice? And are we taking on more risk? What does that all mean in the future for architects?

C That's a tough question. I think that's a really tough question. What does it mean? You know, and the reason why I say it's a tough question is because I don't think we expected the industries like Facebook and stuff like that to ever happen. I don't think there were too many people that predicted the boom of social media and dating and things like that back in the early 2000s. I don't think that many people have predicted it. I think that right now it's hard to predict what industry leaders are going to need to do to prepare themselves for this next industry. The main thing to keep in mind is the the cost of construction is super high. The cost of making a new building, like we were making a collection of new buildings on the other side of campus, and all of those buildings are easily close to a billion dollars apiece.

C And so it's kind of, you know, those types of expenditures are just, it's not sustainable. So you're, you're at a point where automation and digital manufacturing have to somehow make its way into the industry in order to reduce costs and control construction timing. So that's the first thing is the need is there and the need is growing and it's stronger. And also too, labor. We have very little labor. The construction industry labor is going down. And unfortunately for housing, you know, we're losing a lot of that labor due to immigration laws and things like that. And it's really unfortunate that The industry doesn't— there isn't a wave of new people who want to go into the industry of construction.

C So that has to change. And I think that that desire to change and that need to change is what's going to affect the architecture industry. I think at some level, the architecture industry is going to have to figure out how to split itself up into other industries.

B Talk a little bit more about that.

C So there are going to be some that'll go into the digital industries. Whatever that is, some that'll go into construction, but it'll be a different type of construction. I mean, you see it now. There are a lot of architectural people who go into the construction industry, but I think they need to go in with a, uh, with a desire to bring the digital aspects of architecture to the construction industry. I think the architectural industry has so much technology in it, right? With 3D printing, laser cutting, stuff like that. The construction industry has so little, and I just think you need the migration over to the other side. But think about it, right? The architecture industry has pretty much been the same for a long time. You still, you get a license, you practice in an office.

C The construction industry is the one that hasn't changed, and it's the one we really need the biggest changes.

B But we don't need a change at all? I mean, I guess like from a, from a value standpoint, I almost see people from MIT matriculating to outside of architecture. So how do we keep folks like that inside of architecture in a meaningful way?

C Inside of architecture is a good question. We struggle with that one every day. You know, it's really funny because our— first, you have to acknowledge the problem, which, you know, what is the problem? The problem, I think, with keeping people in the industry is that it's a very complex industry. It's very hard to explain it to students and young people going into that industry, and then it's very hard for them to get their first job. The wonderful thing is AI hasn't taken over the entry-level jobs, right? Like, you still need people to model and draw and, you know, do a lot of the early work that happens in architecture. So I don't think there's any chance of that happening. So you still, you have a good pipeline, but I think the hardest part about keeping people in the architecture industry is finding a way of explaining and creating a pipeline for people to stay in the industry. It's a really tough industry.

C People still don't acknowledge it. I think when in the '80s people did acknowledge that the industry is very hard and that it, a lot of people won't stay in the industry. I still think it's like that today. And I think that those that really want to be in the industry stay in the industry. And I think for schools, the way the schools will keep people in the industry is to continue to give them those hard problems that they have to solve as part of their life journey in the industry. I mean, one thing I just want to say, one thing that has happened here that I think is very unfortunate is, and I really say it's more MIT. We don't talk about design as much as we should. We talk about all of the other things.

B Okay. So I'm a parent of a student applying to MIT undergraduate architecture. What do you tell the parents about the career that their kid can have?

C Okay. So, I think I said most people don't want to hear that. Will not want to hear this. So first, as you know, going to MIT is— oh my God, it almost feels like a reality— applying to MIT feels like a reality TV show, like Love Is Blind. You have no idea who's going to get married at the end. Like, going in thinking that you're going to get married is just— when you get to the end, you don't know.

B And I would say the fact that you know that much about the details of that particular show is also interesting to me. But please keep going.

C Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's the likelihood that someone will get into MIT is very small because they only accept— for undergraduate, they only accept 1,500, and out of that, I think only 1,300 are U.S. citizens because they accept a certain percentage from overseas. So they accept 1,300 people a year, which is out of the United States. So that's, I mean, Right? So Olympics, Olympics, MIT, they're kind of the same, right? Like, it's a little hard to say for sure if your child's going to get in, but here are the ways you can increase your chances. First thing is make sure your child can do something other than math and science. If your child has some other, you know, if they're a Division I whatever, or if they play— oh my God, I met this one student, this student wrote a classical piece and wrote the music for all of the different instruments. Yeah, that's not me.

C I've met students who are amazing dancers, undergraduates, or they are— oh my God, I met this one student.

B She was—

C she's just an interesting person. She was trying to get on the TV show Survivor. So she did all of these things around the campus. But You know, it's more like you need to be somebody that's doing something different than math and science. You have to do that. Like, everybody who applies gets, you know, has a, I guess, the perfect, almost a perfect score in their SATs. They have all A's or B's, a few B's. You know, that's, that's the standard.

C They have to have that. But then you have to have something that you do that's a passion and interesting.

B So I'm in, or my, my child is in. I'm not in. Okay. My dad actually got accepted, but he couldn't afford it. It's another conversation. He ended up at Ohio State. Yeah. Well, why should I allow my kids to go into architecture right now? As a degree program, you're convincing me to allow my kid to go to MIT to pursue architecture of all things.

C Yes. So first of all, I— wow, that's a good question. So a lot of students here, so we have a— keep that at 1,500, we only get a few students that go into architecture, like maybe 20. But of that 20, those who are there, they're in it. They really love architecture. They want to become architects. And a lot of the firms in Boston, like Shepley Bulfinch, the CEO, Angela Watson, she was an undergrad here, and Rebecca Berry. Who I think is a CEO for, I want to say CBT, I think.

C She was also an undergrad. No, she was a grad student here. I'm sorry. But I still think that architecture is such a great industry for a young person to go into because you learn how to do the two things that architects know how to do so well. They problem set and they problem solve. They, you learn that as part of just the way that you think and operate. And a lot of the engineering programs here, which are great, and of course number one in the world in many cases, they spend most of their time problem solving. And I love that the architect, the students from mechanical will take an architecture class and learn how to come up with a problem.

C Okay.

B And now I'm one of your grad students or the undergrad student. What advice do you have for them as they are pursuing life after school? Leaving school and going into the profession and going into the industry when it comes to like jobs they should be looking for or creating or businesses they should be starting? Where do you send them off to be most successful after finishing the program? Or where do you see them going?

C So there are a couple of things that are happening here that I wish other— I would wish for other schools. One of them is a program called Design X, which is run by, um, really amazing person. And her first name is Schwaba. I wish I could remember how to say her last name. I should. I've known Schwaba for 10 years. I should be able to say her last name. She's, she's from Iceland, and she runs this great program.

C It's all about starting businesses. It's, it's to, it's to teach you the entrepreneurial aspect of starting a company. And so you have to come up with an idea. You have to take that idea through all sorts of rounds of ideation, and then you have to figure out how you're going to raise money and start a business around this one idea. And I— and to present it to founders, other founders who will mentor you, and also present it to people who will invest in your business. And they give them seed money to do stuff. And I know some of the other engineering schools do this as well, do things like this, but architecture schools, I don't think do this. And I think it would be great to do something like Design X in all schools of architecture.

C It is fantastic. I wish I would have done something like this when I was in school. But that's the main thing I would say in architecture schools is try and figure out how to teach people how to start new businesses around the industry of architecture or the industry of architecture reinvented.

A And rethink it. 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 at practiceofarchitecture.com/community. Our social media handle is Practice of Arch. That's Practice of A-R-C-H. We'd love to hear from you.

A So feel free to drop us a DM and say hello. Tune in next week for a new conversation on change in the profession.