Architecture’s Memory Problem | The Profession That Keeps Forgetting

A This episode of Practice Disrupted is brought to you by the American Institute of Steel Construction, AISC. The center's staff architects provide a curated collection of structural steel resources to help architects save time and money, reduce risk. Learn more at aisc.org/architecture. Welcome to Practice Disrupted, the podcast on the business of architecture and how it's changing. I'm your host, Evelyn Lee. FAIA, NOMA architect, angel investor, and founder of Practice of Architecture. Whether you're running a firm, starting your career, or rethinking what practice looks like, this show gets into how architects actually change the way they work. Hello, disruptors.

A Welcome to this week's episode of Practice Disrupted. This season keeps returning to architects who stopped waiting for the profession to change and went and built something. Some of them built firms, some built products, and this week's guest did both in that order. Natalia Bakova is a registered architect in Ontario who ran her own practice in Toronto across residential, commercial, healthcare, education, and public art. She now is co-founder and CEO of Archy full-time, building an AI system of record that runs on a firm's own internal project data. We start where she started in the Russian Far East and follow that path through Moscow, London, and Toronto into senior roles inside firms and then out of them. We ask what the first year of a tech company demanded that running a practice never had. What she and her software co-founder each had to teach the other before Archi could move, and what the profession gets wrong about how it talks to itself.

A And we close on the honest thing she tells an architect who is thinking about leaving to build something. Let's get into it. Hi, Natalia. Welcome to the show. Welcome to Practice Disrupted. We're so lucky and happy to have you here. Thank you for joining.

B Hi. Thank you for having me, Evelyn. Very excited. I've been following your podcast for quite some time and excited to be here. Yeah.

A So we talk to a lot of founders in the tech space, in the AECO tech space, but most of them actually happen to be male. So I'm really excited to have the female perspective on here, but we usually always start our conversations off with Where did you get your love of architecture? Because before you were a tech founder, you were on quite the traditional route when it came to architecture and school.

B Yeah, great question. I actually started architecture school very early when I was 16 years old. That surprises a lot of people, I know, but I never saw myself anywhere else except of architecture. And, you know, sometimes People think that maybe I had some architects in my family or maybe someone was related to the field and not the case. I never had anyone who even closely related to the profession. At the same time, recently I learned 2 years ago during the Christmas break talking to my grandmother that her dream was to become an architect when she was young. And it turned out that when I was growing up, which I don't remember, She would walk around holding my hand around the city and talk about architecture and sharing her dream of becoming an architect one day. And that dream was never fulfilled.

B And now I believe that she actually programmed me from the young age and she put this thought in my head because when I was in my teens and again, no architects around, I just one day woke up and I was like, that's the only thing I want to do. I was fully dedicated to it. I was also learning languages, which then I had to drop and focus fully on architecture since a very young age. And that's been my life ever since. So I thank my grandmother, but at the same time, it's a very interesting development, which I learned very recently.

A So a little bit through osmosis sounds like.

B For sure.

A Why 16 or what happened at 16 or what you mentioned that you were in languages and you had to kind of change course and and studies? What happened that year for you?

B Great question. So, I'm originally from Russia, from far east of Russia, beautiful city called Vladivostok, which is a place kind of wedged in between Chinese-North Korean border, and there is Japan on the other side. So, it's a very unique place in the world. And at that time, everyone in my family had different vision for my career. My father wanted me to study Japanese, which I did, and also English as well. So my work can be always international. My mom, she's an economist, so she wanted me to study economy. And then my grandparents wanted me to study international affairs.

B Don't ask me why. I came out with this idea of being an architect, which were not something that they accepted right away. It was a bit of a, I guess, shock to the system because they thought that I'm gonna be following the path that they me. And you graduate high school in Russia when you're 17. Uh, so it's only 10 years of education. It changed since then, but at that time when I was going through, uh, the school, that was the case. And then at the age of 16, you start the prep course in architecture school if you want to be admitted, because the way we go through entrance exams in Russia where I'm from is slightly different than here. So you have to go through 4 exams.

B And then those exams are extremely related to everything we do today. So like drafting by hand, when I'm talking about drafting, it's like AutoCAD drafting, but by hand. Then you have also, uh, the Greek head that you have to draw in, in academical drawing basically. And then there's also a, a one called composition where you're presented with 3D shapes and then you need to create, um, resemblance of a building out of them over a course of, uh, several hours. So those are very rigorous exams and I never went to art school. So those who go to art school, they somewhat prepared to a certain extent. I never went to art school. And for me, the only way to get it, even to even think about architecture is to go, to go through one year of that preparation.

B You go to architecture school 3 times a week, several hours you spend there, and then basically you already getting introduced to professors, you're getting introduced to the practice, even though technically you're still in, It was almost like a, if you wanna move into architecture, this is a decision you need to make now. That's true. And also if you want to be successful in being admitted to school, because without going through that preparation, it's very unlikely that you pass the exams because the bar is very, very high. And the level of preparation they require from you, it's the level where you almost already like a meta architect, I would say. Like you already kind of know ideas of composition, ideas of drafting, so they don't want to like train you from scratch. They basically expect you to know something already.

A So after that, you went and got your MArch. You wanna talk a little bit about that program? Because that brought you to London.

B Great question, Evelyn. So that was actually a joint program between, uh, British Higher School of Design, uh, which is located in Moscow and London Metropolitan University, which is in London, UK. And that was the only bilingual architectural program in Russia at that time. And we would move between Moscow and London. So it was a cross-unit, so they call it. And then we would have professors from both the United States, Europe, some, you know, well-known European and Russian architects would be our professors as well. So it was a very holistic view of the world of architecture and construction and so on and so forth. In terms of why I decided to go that route.

B So if you look at the country where I'm from, the end of the Soviet Union was in early '90s. So education that I received, it was more of a formal Soviet education. So we had in architecture school, we had theoretical theoretical mechanics, we had heavy mathematics, we had architectural physics. There was a lot of construction management, counting the amount of soil you need to dig out, something that we don't typically do in architecture school here. And if we are talking about, you know, North American setting, so it's a very technical education with a lot of hours, things that architects— later on I learned that they actually do. But at that time, I thought that that was not very helpful. And, you know, I realized that we were trained really well in calculating rebar, producing drawings, construction structures. But at the same time, if we're talking about critical thinking, if we're talking about communication with the client, presenting yourself as a professional, getting their respect and getting them to listen to you, that is not something that in this form of education you will hear or receive because In that framework, professor is the main person.

B You listen to the professor and you basically obey by their requirements. You get the functional program. All the rooms and spaces are allocated with their sizes and where they need to be in relation to each other. And then based on that, you design a building, you submit it, and then you get your grade. It's a great framework To start your training, but then I believe that for you to become a wholesome professional, to really understand this industry, you need to be able to get another set of skills, which I actually had a chance to get when I was doing my M.Arch, which was shock to my system first because they would give us a site and they would say, what do you think is wrong with the site? And that's not something that I ever experienced in my life. So the transition was actually extremely hard for me. And then the result of those studios would be, you know, one person would design a tower and another person would design a bench. That would be their conclusion of what's wrong with this site.

B Just for you to, to kind of get an idea how different those 2 frameworks were. And during my M.Arch, they would always ask our opinion. There's a question in the room, and then you have to provide kind of like your take on it and then the reasoning behind it. So more similar to what we see here. In North America, I'd say, since I've been here for quite some time. So I know now, but at that time I'm like, what do you mean opinion? Just give me a functional program and I can fulfill the functional program.

A Yeah, it sounds like a lot of difference between what we would call more of a technical school and then what we would call more of a design-forward school in the US.

B 100%. Yes, I think so.

A So you did take your MArch and go into Practice. Any surprises? You kind of talked about the surprises from your bachelor's to your master's. What surprised you most about practice?

B I love that question. That's one of my favorites to unpack. I think that only about this question I can talk for hours. I'm thinking about this a lot and reflecting back because I do believe that I received quite a robust education. But when I started working at the firm, I realized that I know nothing. And I think that a lot of professionals go through this. So I think it's a, it's a normal process. But at the same time, I think the lack of conversation about budgets to begin with, about the admin side of things, about the business side of things, about clients and how to manage the clients or help them navigate this process.

B That's something that was completely ignored. And I think that unfortunately, I see a lot of professionals being extremely frustrated when they graduate to the profession and they realize that that's what they now need to do. For me, I'd say, you know, I expected more creativity day to day, less admin work, but at the same time, I understood kind of the connection why you need to do that. And that was enough for me to just continue and kind of go on with it. In terms of the being able to present to the client, I think that's one of the biggest challenges together with the budget, because I think that at least in when I went through education and where I did that, it was like you design it, you show it to client, and then they basically sign off. So it's more of a kind of Frank Lloyd Wright. I don't know if you know the story. We went to one of the Frank Lloyd Wright houses and the bed was extremely short.

B And then when the clients complained, Frank Lloyd Wright basically told them, you can just sleep diagonally because that's the best proportion for the room. So I think that's the type of mentality that we were trained with. You know, like, I'm an architect, I'm the prime consultant, I'm carrying all the decisions, and then everyone else just sits down and agrees with everything we say. Which then once you graduate to reality, a lot of people getting crashed because they understand that first of all, the reality changed a lot since Frank Lloyd Wright. And second of all, there are all sorts of different factors starting from economical side of things to stakeholders, to types of different project deliveries and everything else in between. And I think a lot of dreams have been broken every day. And I wish architecture school can address that more and not ignore the subject. I think that would help a lot too.

B Everyone in our profession.

A So what was the impetus amongst any of that frustration, or was it a different frustration, or maybe not a frustration for you to go off and start your own firm? Because before you even started a tech company, you had senior-level roles at several architecture firms, and then you decided to go out on your own. What drove that decision?

B Actually, you know, I mentioned that I started the architecture school when I was 16. At the same time, I had the idea of starting my own studio, and for me it was a journey of creativity and freedom as well. And that's something that I was working towards to all these years, and that was my— at that time I thought that was my end goal. You imagine yourself running a lot of projects, traveling, meeting with clients, have this kind of unbounded, you know, opportunity and just nothing can stop you. You have no limitations. And that was my kind of ideal case scenario if we talk about it. And I think then once I started working in my own practice, what I found very quickly is that, again, the admin side now is even, you know, it's a, it's a larger amount of time that you spend, which is okay. I understand this is just the reality of the profession.

B But then I think that the, amount of creativity that I could experience day to day was even less than when I was just inside of other firms and when I was working. So it was now creeping up, dealing with more day to day rather than actually being an architect the way I imagined it. That's one side of it. Another side of it is that I always try to think about architectural services as product. So, We would always try to issue some sort of packages or options, how clients can purchase, you know, different tiers of services when they engage with us as architectural firm. And that never worked, quite frankly. I don't think I figured out a way to do that because I don't think architectural services are productizable. Maybe I'll change my opinion in the future, but so far it's not something that I figured out.

A What even gave you the idea to even think about productizing architecture? Because I mean, even though it didn't prove out for you, I feel like that is a different approach that most architects wouldn't even consider.

B It's a million-dollar question. So, I think it's a hunt for efficiency. I think that maybe it's just the type of thinking or way of thinking that some people have, or myself, maybe I have that as well. I just thought throughout my years and years in different firms and different geographies. And, you know, I was fortunate to live and work in 5 different places and different countries as well. And I would always wonder if the teams would actually think about doing it a little better, but I didn't feel that was the case. And I think productizing services kind of came out of that frustration. Because like I felt that the inefficiencies are so prominent and they're so in your face, then to me at that time, the only answer and the only way to formulate it was to think about the product.

B I'm like, okay, so if you don't have repeatable business model, if you don't have repeatable workflow or repeatable kind of journey for all the projects, at least try to limit your scope by those packages. So you have at least more control. So I felt like there was, a lot of guessing always, and very little data that's been used to make decisions. And we are talking about not a purchase of a kind of household item. We are talking about a building. Some of them last 3, 5, 10, some of them last 50 years if you're talking about hospital phasing large projects, right? And a lot of those fees and a lot of those work plans and schedules they put together based on kind of I always talk about it based on vibes. So that's, I think, something that really got me in this headspace. And that's how I first time started thinking about products and the efficiency.

A Help our listeners kind of understand this timeline. You've been through MR, you got your B.Arch, your M.Arch, you've worked in firms, you started your own firm. How many years How many years of practice have you now, like, had behind you?

B Everything included, 20 years.

A Now, let's talk a little bit about Archi and what it was like for you to go from firm founder to tech founder and what problem you decided you wanted to tackle with all of these things that you have kind of addressed and alluded to.

B Yeah, for sure. One thing that I should also mention is that if we are talking about the timeline, after completing my master's, which was more European-focused, I actually moved to Canada. That's where I'm based now in Toronto, Canada. And I've been living here for over a decade now. And that's where, you know, I started my own practice and that's the context that we are in today. And that's what was majority of my architectural experience. Like, so in Ontario as a part of the Ontario Association of Architects. So in terms of the transition to tech, there are a few components here.

B So first of all, I think that when I was still working as an architectural firm, one thing that I as well struggled with was the lack of innovation. So I think that I always felt like R&D is something that people do over lunch or after work. And, you know, there's no time and we understand why, because all the hours are billable. And then if they're not billable, then they're overhead. We know it's just kind of baked in into business model. And I think that when COVID happened, I started looking at the tech world and how quickly everything was developing and the quick iterations, the agility, the process that is extremely flexible, but in a good way, not to its own detriment. And I think I started getting very curious about that. And that's how I ended up working for a tech company for a split second, which is a year and a half.

B And that company was a very long time. I was considered a veteran, but it was short considering the entire journey. And that's where I learned about, you know, different aspects of a tech company. Fundraising, building products, working with software engineers, working with different stakeholders, sales, marketing. So I, I got a good glimpse at that at that time. So that helped me a lot. And I also been very frustrated in the profession after working on my own and also working at the firms. Again, it felt very not scalable and I knew that My firm could grow only if I hire more people, I sell more hours, I get more projects, and that's the only way to scale.

B Just basically throwing people at, at a deadline, essentially.

A Speaking my language.

B And then I, um, you know, I was, I was looking at myself. I'm like, okay, I'm pretty new at this. Let's look at some other architects who've been in profession for 30, 40, 50 years. Do they do it differently? Maybe the problem is me. And then when you look around, the situation would be even worse because then, you know, there are some kind of beliefs that, you know, they carry over the years, the way of doing things that's been kind of legacy, like inherited, and they just move forward with it. And then I think having that in mind, I had few ideas, or I wouldn't call them areas of interest that I saw big, big problems in my career. So one of them was data. Second was working with the municipalities, cities, and how inefficient that process is.

B And the third one was the design automation and basically creating packages, but then for smaller spaces. I was like, okay, if we are doing a bathroom renovation for a condo building where we technically do need an architect, but also don't need an architect. So how do we automate those mini permits? So that was the third area of my interest.

A A quick thanks to our partner, the American Institute of Steel Construction, AISC Architecture Center. It takes a huge amount of time and energy to create an elegant structural system, but as an architect, where do you start? With the diagrams and terms architects need to express their design intent, find resources and inspiration, at aisc.org/architecture or contact the team at architects@aisc.org. Can we talk a little bit about data specifically? Because I think I, I think I know what you mean by data, but I don't know if all of our listeners would think, what data are you talking about?

B So when we are talking about data, we are talking about drawings, details, all the information that we produce as professionals. So whether you're producing floor plans, construction details, elevations, uh, Archi handles all of that. So the way we approach it, we harvest the data that you decide to file on Archi, and that's something that you believe that is valuable for your practice. We are saying turning that dead data into gold, which is kind of like cheesy phrase, but it explains it, right? There's dormant data and then we surface it and we allow you to then leverage it. And then it goes through our backend system, which is charged with AI. AI, and then you create your own firm's wisdom hub. We also call it second brain, which now instead of going and talking to a colleague or talking to your senior architect or principal or founder or partner who are typically never around, you go to Archi and you will ask a question. And this question does not have to be specifically what you're looking for.

B The question is based on design intent, and then the software will Fill the gaps and return the information that is relevant for you for that specific use case. And design intent could be anything starting from a layout all the way to a detail. And I think my personal aspiration or the future that I see for Archi is how can we complete the project 30% from the get-go? So how can we launch a project, let's say in Revit, because that's a common software. And by the time we are launching the project, it's already 30% completed based on the past projects that we have done, based on the budget data that we have, based on the statistics that we sourced from previous completed projects, ongoing or canceled projects. And I hope that we will spill out of the world of just drawings and Revit and be able to actually factor in the business data the schedules, who worked on the project, project scope and cost, and the profit, even if we made any on that project. And how then all that information actually plays role in how we execute this project. Or sometimes maybe do we even take on this project? Because maybe it's not even profitable for us from the get-go, but something we need to skip on. I think that's where we see the future for Archi.

A So, Archi is a tech company. I think to some degree architects have been— know about libraries and data at a very high level, but that doesn't necessarily translate to let's go out and start a tech company. So, can you tell us a little bit about your co-founder and whatever confidence you needed to find in order to go out and do that?

B Yeah, great question. So Mehdi and I met here in Toronto and Mehdi is coming from a robust software engineering and AI background. He actually wrote papers on AI before it was cool, which was a long time ago. And we essentially got together on the fact that I knew that I need a strong technical co-founder, but at the same time, with the strong business sense as well, because the idea was so early, it still needed to be rationalized and cooked. So I felt like I need someone who is both technical and business savvy as well. And on Mehdi's side, used to work for Salesforce. So he was a lead engineer at Salesforce. So he worked with data and with graphical information.

B He was part of Tableau team when it was a acquired by Salesforce, and that's how he transitioned and ended up in Salesforce. After that, he tried to start several startups. Some of them were even in the proptech space as well, but he was extremely interested in working in a multidisciplinary domain-driven space and like working with architects. He was actually choosing between software engineering and architecture was kind of, for him, that was a, you know, come back or some of the, you know, maybe unfulfilled path that he didn't take. So it was personal as well. So we connected pretty well. And as I already said, we interviewed a number of architects and different professionals, and that's how we validated the hypothesis that the problem exists. So we never started just building or, you know, even prototyping.

B It was all driven based on the research that we've done in the industry. And, you know, if you know what mom test is, is when you ask questions that are not essentially kind of leading to the answer that you'd like, that you're actually asking more general questions. So that's how we would speak with those interviewees and that's how we would validate or invalidate the hypothesis. And then going back to your question, I think it's, again, it's an idea of product efficiency. So the transition of me being an architect and then working for a tech company, I think this thirst for innovation and thirst for change and R&D, that's something that I was not able to get inside of architecture firm. And essentially, you know, I love architecture. I still think of myself as an architect. I still hold my license, but I think it almost feels like the profession pushed me out of.

B itself. And I'm sure, Evelyn, you can relate to that.

A Do you feel like pushed out by people?

B I think it's— I don't say pushed out in a negative connotation. It's more of a kind of like a, you belong somewhere else. And it's almost like what I'm doing today, I hope will have an impact on a large amount of people, save them time, give them less headache so they can, you know, maybe take a couple of hours off or maybe finish their week early, spend less time in front of the computer. That's my real inspiration. And I think for me to get there, I actually needed to be outside. So, that's kind of how I think about being pushed out.

A Just because I think a few of my, our listeners might be like struggling wrapping their head around everything that Arky is. What is your elevator pitch?

B Great question. So Archy is an AI memory layer on top of data of your firm. Today we are harvesting drawings. We use AI to categorize, label, and store them. Something that was not possible before. Now with Archy, you can search for window in Swedish. And then it'll return the results for window in English. And we have a machine vision component.

B So if something is mislabeled, doesn't have a proper name, doesn't have annotations, Archi actually understands what is drawn, just like an architect and engineer would. If you have a parapet detail with zero annotations on it, and the name of detail is Section 12, and you search for parapet. On Arki, you'll be able to find and retrieve this kind of information. That's not something that 3, 5, 10 years ago we can even think about. Now it's already working, it's live, and it's solving a lot of bottlenecks for our users every day.

A Can you give a specific use case example for that?

B Yeah, great question. We actually have one of our customers who's been working with us for over 2 years now. reported that in the beginning of the year they had a project where 100% of the details at late design development came from Archicad. So they went, they documented their past projects, they cleaned up their standards, they came up with the typical detail library based on their past projects and harvested data. And then they come to Archicad, they say, give me a foundation detail and residential typology, give me a parapet detail. And they collect those, we call them minimum searchable units of information, and then they bring them forward to their project that they're working on right now. To the listeners that may be curious, how does it look like? We recently introduced ArchInside Revit, which means that now you can not only search, you can drag and drop directly into your sheet. And the goal here is not to copy and paste between projects and carry forward information.

B Blindly. The idea is about increasing quality. So we use a detail as a foundation. Archicad brings us to 50%, sometimes 70%, depending on the type of the detail and typology. And then we are finishing it off with the current requirements, with the current project reality. We resubmit it back to Archicad. It's been recorded. So next person will continue increasing quality.

B And now with AI, we have a number of triggers and mechanisms like deduplication, finding patterns and similarities. If let's say you have 10 different details with code which changed over time and the code reference is actually different, that's something Archy is really good at. It will actually find all these assets, it'll group it, and then you can decide whether you want to keep just one. Delete all of them or keep all of them for record. So those kind of exercises you can be doing on your data, on top of your data. So think about it as a data layer for your drawings.

A Are you just gonna stick with drawings or is there a bigger hope in terms of what Archy ends up categorizing in the end?

B Great question. So we actually started with construction details. That was our, uh, first, uh, angle. Since then, uh, we expanded. We now taking care of a lot of different view types, including even unit layouts or classroom layouts, restroom layouts, anything that is essentially a design block. So now you can file it on Archi, you can reference it, and you can even bring it to your project. Again, if you're in the early schematic design, maybe that's something that can, you just inform your team of some of the decisions or some of the information that was collected previously, or some of the decisions that were made previously. We know that, let's say, educational projects like we have here, school boards and the way the schools are designed have— they changed in terms of materials, they changed in terms of sustainability requirements, but the classroom configuration and layout did not change in the last 30 years.

B We have customers who have 10, 20, 30, 50, 60— we have one customer who's turning 100 years old, 100 years worth of schools with their classroom configurations. Why to not tap into that wealth of knowledge? And I'm starting now to think about artificial intelligence and all this tech journey is more of a coming back to the craft. My ideal scenario is, you know, we automate the processes that can be automated so we can spend more time on, on things that we actually like to do. on creativity, on the parts that are maybe related to materials or what users experience every day, something that is tangible, something that makes a real impact.

A I mean, Mehdi had a natural inclination to kind of want to be in this space. You even mentioned that he looked at some prop tech startups, which is property tech, usually on the owner side and/or operator side typically. What did you have to teach him kind of about About the business?

B I had to teach Mehdi a lot about architecture, like the process of creation of a building. Just like, where do we start? How does this process go? What do we do? And we are still going through specific workflows every single day. So I think it's like a moving target. I don't think it's like, okay, now I'm gonna teach you about how the building is made, and then from there we move on. We are learning that our processes and the way we work as architects and engineers are so connected to other processes and intertwined and complex that sometimes even for me, I was coming into this feeling like I know everything about how we work and how we transfer data and how we work in Revit and other things. But I'm learning every single day from our users, from our customers. They're just So many different edge cases. There are just so many different workflows and ways that people do things, and some of it efficient, some of that extremely backwards.

B If I tell you all the stories I heard how people try to document their details different ways before Arky, I have a I have a collection of those. It's actually pretty entertaining. But yeah, so that's the reality. It's a complex. It's a complex workflow, it's complex user journey. So we both learning every day, I'd say.

A What do you miss about being on the architect side of an architecture firm versus being a CEO of a tech company?

B It's a very simple answer. I miss design. Now I spend my creativity on building products, working with users, working through their problems and their every day-to-day, you know, kind of hardship of this little things and figuring them out, making those workflows seamless and helping them save some time. But I truly miss just designing a space, just grabbing my pen, having a, you know, requirement from a client and just kind of going at it. Sometimes I'd find myself staying till 1, 2 AM just thinking about a random porch that I saw outside when I was walking and listening to my audiobook. And then just sitting and redesigning that porch that I saw, which I don't even know who it belongs to, but just your mind goes there. And, you know, I would find a house online and I see a floor plan and I'm a bit like, okay, this does not work. And I would sit down and just redesign all the levels and connect them and think about the potential renos that the house can take.

B So those just are the things that I really miss, and I think that If we are talking about vision, I think maybe one day there will be an AI-powered architecture practice. I don't know if it's gonna be my practice or just the type of practice in general, but something that is extreme automation meets extreme creativity. That's something that I would love to have or be a part of or experience somehow. And I think that, I hope that Archi helps in that journey.

A So, I've documented, and I talk a lot about COVID Architecture, who was a software as a service, not dissimilar, like offering different things obviously than Archi, but they really struggled with selling to architects. And this is true of a lot of different software companies when it comes to selling to architects, mostly because I also think that architects aren't looking at their overall cost right now and saying, I need to increase my tech budget too. And what am I getting back for that tech budget? So how have those conversations gone for you when so many architects are just trying to figure out what this AI thing is and so many architects want things for free?

B So we sometimes meet companies that believe that they don't have any issues, so processes are perfect and they don't need a solution, right? So I think this is a, a first type where I think it will take some time to get there. Maybe the level of BIM maturity or tech maturity is not, it's not there. They're not there yet. And then they will get there themselves or someone else will help them. So those are the kind of like, this is the first type that I see. Also, there is another kind of aspect here is that software is getting more expensive for architects. And I think we know that there are some larger companies in the play, right? Driving those prices higher and the architects are kind of getting squeezed. So I definitely see a fatigue of subscriptions and all the things that they need to pay for.

B But at the same time, I think that if we are talking about AI, there is a trend of curiosity that I see. So if we are talking about 2 years when we, 2, 3 years when we were first starting, I think that trend was not there yet. It was more of a kind of like, we are a little bit scared. We're a bit cautious. Now I think people are way more open. And they are coming to us actually asking that question. And I think they, architects now, they understand, they realize that they have to figure this out, otherwise they might be left out. So I think there is a kind of like a bit of a more visceral reaction right now.

B I think that if you show the real value, if you show the real use case, if there is a kind of like a hard data to back it up, I think that it's becoming less challenging to sell to architects. Like, I don't think it's perfect. I don't think it ever will be perfect, but because we are technical professionals, uh, we are focused on numbers and hard data, and we also, uh, profession that carries a lot of liability, approaching it from the angle of conclusions, solutions, workflows, day-to-day adhering to how they work, meeting them where they are. That's what makes a difference. That's what I experienced so far.

A And they understand the value of that?

B With Arki, we very often don't even have to, first of all, talk about the problem because the problem they understand, they already come to us with a problem. And we have a mechanism in place to actually track ROI in real time. So it's hard data that's very hard to challenge. I mean, they still try to, but, you know, if you can say how much time you saved by implementing the software, and it's real-time data, and we transparently show how we calculate it, there is not really a way to challenge it unless you just deny it.

A So, there's a lot of architects that are listening that may or may not be interested in starting a product. What would you tell anyone who is on your path and Seeing things in firms who may or may not be interested in following you down your path and trying to figure out what path to take?

B Yeah, great question. I think that's one of my favorite questions as well. And actually I get this question asked from me a lot because it's not a very conventional path, right? To go from architecture to tech and also kind of go through all these milestones. So I get I get this asked a lot. I think it's extremely important to listen to yourself. I think women often have a strong intuition, but I think too frequently they ignore it themselves because of pressure into fitting into some society norms. And I think to me, the most important journey is the journey of self. actualization and doing what feels right.

B I believe in finding your ikigai. If you know what ikigai is, it is a Japanese concept that translates to a reason for being or the reason to jump out of bed in the morning. So it basically represents the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, And what the world needs at the same time, what you can get paid for. So finding that right place for you, I think, is extremely important. And I think that if you're driven by that notion of self-actualization and that kind of thirst for finding yourself and, you know, kind of being where you belong, I think that that's something that I really would suggest to looking into, kind of looking, looking at yourself, asking yourself, what do you wanna do? And, uh, yeah, kind of digging deeper. I think it's a part of this journey.

A You mentioned earlier what you hope the future of practice looks like, whether or not that is with Archi. Is there anything else that you wish for the future of the industry to look like?

B I would like the industry to be optimistic. About the changes, and I think that it's also extremely important to make sure that we don't see it as a something that's going against us, but rather something is working together with us, something that will help us. I think that there are like mixed reviews that I hear that some people are making fun of the renderings made by AI. Some of the other architects are using it day to day. You know, so we see a lot of everything, and. Some of them are saying that now I can come to a first client meeting with few options already and they love it. But then others would challenge them and say, you know, you shouldn't be given options so early because then the client will ask you for more and more later down the road. So I think that what I would like the practice to, to look at is to be open to transformation because I think that we are always talking about the change in technology and AI and kind of day to day, it's, it's very overused.

B But I think what, what I would like to understand and what I would like to wish for us as architects is to start a conversation about how will the structure of our, our profession look like? How will our governing bodies look like? How our licensing will work, how our education will change? Because I think now some universities just go down the route, prohibit using ChatGPT or something like that, which is— Extremely unrealistic because we understand that in the future this will not be the case. And we have to learn how to live with it and how to adopt it effectively and learn from it. So I think that the transformation is both technological and cultural as well. And I really wish us as architects that we are embracing that transformation and we are not trying to fight with it, but actually we We want to be the ones who are making all the decisions. Part of starting Archy for me was very important to make sure that there is a, there's a person from the industry who is building the software for the industry. And whether this person is me or someone else, I just want to make sure that we are not at the mercy of someone who knows nothing about our workflows. And now we're stuck with the software that does not answer the questions for us, but then we have to use it because of XYZ. So I think we need to be in the driver's seat and we need to drive that change and know what that change is and know our stance on it and be very, very proactive and very upfront about it.

A Hi, disruptors. Thank you for joining us on This episode of Practice Disrupted. Want more of this between episodes? Start with Practice Rebuilt, our weekly newsletter on the business of architecture at practiceofarchitecture.com/newsletter. And when you're ready to stop reading about change and start testing it in your own firm, get on the list for The Lab at practiceofarchitecture.com/lab. We'll see you next week.

B Bye.

A For a new conversation on change in the profession.