Who Will Build The Connected Environments of Our Future?

Picture a future modeled after the popular sci-fi vision of architectural spaces and urban landscapes. It’s a vision that has been reinforced by countless filmmakers, artists, writers, and architects. Even if hyperbolic, these visions of the built future are the front for what will ultimately be completely invisible: persistent, location-specific networks of information, right-sized storytelling, relevant, augmented data layers, and fluid choice through an array of non-traditional interfaces that allow us to interact in more natural, human ways. Sound good?

But what about the optics of the physical world around you, not just the data underneath? How will it change? If we rely on broad sci-fi visions, there will certainly be more screens, everywhere, as the predominant sci-fi architectural landscape is screens. This vision presents the ultimate irony for the architect. As technology and connectedness advance rapidly toward invisible, interconnected perfection, those in control of building at urban scale sometimes still regard “the screen” as the ultimate definition of technological progress. It's no wonder that some believe that our journey toward truly digitally-connected environments is destined to be lead by architects who are building those very spaces. But the truth is far more complicated.

Photo: A scene from the film Ghost In The Shell

The architectural profession is a business dealing primarily with innovation in the physical world of materials and space. However, it’s constrained innovation. The profession and its processes are rigid, especially at scale, and seem incongruous with many of the fundamental aspects of the digital age - above all else, being agile, nimble, recursive, iterative, and exploratory. There’s simply no room for “agile” in architecture when a linear methodology and heavy liability ensure that even the most audacious architects remain shackled to inflexible, legacy processes.

But if the architectural profession is too confining, who will make our digital/physical dreams a reality? 

The Problem with “Architects First”

I love architecture. There is simply nothing more immediate than the gravitas of a beautiful, well-designed space. I’ve studied architecture’s impact on both the urban landscape as well as us humans inside. I get excited by the idea of architecture in its purest form, controlling creativity and engineering simultaneously, juggling technical training, process and management, mathematics, and complexity at scale. But how it’s actually done - with its toolkits, policies, standards, rate cards and a fiefdom of vendors bound by rigid, interconnected dependencies - seems antithetical to the agile processes of the digital age.

This isn’t the architect’s fault. It’s the system. Many openly complain of the large gap between the “idea” of architecture and its actual practice. Keep in mind that buildings are meant to stand the test of (long) time and their inhabitants. This is a burden that most purely digital design doesn’t have to juggle. While there may be big opportunity for new ideas in the architectural process, there is also an archaic system engineered to carefully avoid risk and maintain standards. There’s simply more value in optimizing repetition, so the innovation and improvisation we see in digital development becomes an impossible dream.

And this is why our futuristic spaces all have screens. If not strategically designed and integrated, they represent an afterthought, a retroactive attempt at defining the future of our physical worlds. In most cases, screens are scars on the architectural landscape, all in the name of appearing “digital” when in fact the future of our truly connected environments will likely look much different.

Photo: Photo by Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

How does it keep going wrong? Architects, developers and planners have the power and opportunity that comes with scale - especially when they are privy to the earliest stages of large scale design and development. They are early movers in the shaping of our future environments and can define the way people inhabit private and public areas of the world. They could have an enormous effect on our technical systems infrastructure, as was demonstrated with Related’s partnership with SAP to become the core IT infrastructure provider for Hudson Yards. These early deals reveal the potential of a broad digital canvas within the hands of the architecture and real estate worlds.

But just because a huge canvas exists on which to paint, doesn’t mean the artist is capable of painting at scale. Because the gross majority of the industry isn’t “agile” in the ways most modern digital industries operate, it’s hard to imagine that those in control of these built environments will successfully create the connected future we all hope for – at least, not by themselves.

A More Experience-Centered Approach

The process of designing large scale spaces has always been collaborative. Real estate developers are critical in defining the value of infrastructure at scale. They create the literal and figurative foundations on which any large-scale systems are built to make future (and sometimes still unknown) experiences possible. Without their support of the core aspects of connected spaces, the pipes and the throughways, nothing worth inhabiting will come to life.

The architecture industry then gives definition to those large volumes. They design the way people occupy cities, buildings, offices, and their own living rooms. They give form and material to the physical spaces that become the cradle for our overwhelmingly digital lives.

Experience designers who harness creative technologies, however, add a critical third layer that can supply the nimble innovation missing from the equation. Experience designers approach the design of places, not with the effects of concrete and steel in mind, but in order to maximize the human sensory experience as it relates to digital technologies, interaction and information - our futures. They deal in the experience of perception at virtually any scale, leveraging physical form as an integrated canvas for digital messaging and interface, dynamic motion, and generative visual and sonic systems. They understand how to harness data for communal, creative and artistic enjoyment, but also as the technological backbone that optimizes any future experience.

In this world, experience always comes first. Technology is a means of producing desired effects, not the effect itself. And as a result, experience design doesn’t start with hanging screens everywhere just because it represents the optics of “futurism.” Like the technology industry’s iterative processes, the digital/physical experience designer’s goal is to optimize human behaviors and the way we relate to each other through information. This means we think about the physical world as a digital handshake - we understand how to optimize physical design in reference and relation to digital design. This makes tech-savvy designers crucial in envisioning the spaces of our future.

Realizing Our Digital Future

As we continue down a path towards exponential levels of digital connectivity, we’ll reach the ultimate efficiencies in shopping, travel, entertainment and work. Along this ride, it will be critical to remember that while there is huge potential, there are also major challenges that no entity or industry practice can face alone. Global architecture firms have enormous ambition for building the future but are held back by the very traditional processes and systems they’ve optimized over decades. The industry’s risk tolerances, partner ecosystems, political positioning, talent matrix and, most importantly, business model will struggle to capitalize on the new paradigm hard at work within agile, integrated, digital industries. It will be a difficult pivot to make.

Instead, we’ll see more and more collaboration between all of these industries - developers, planners, civic organizations, architects, experience designers and creative technologists - that will ultimately lead the way. Sidewalk Labs, an Alphabet company chaired by Dan Doctoroff, is already demonstrating this kind of vision. With a mission defined as “reimagining cities from the Internet up,” they are about to test out the promise of a digitally-minded, experience-first point of view with the largest North American development project on the Toronto waterfront. It’s clear that working with digital 1s and 0s demands different, more nimble processes not necessarily bound by time or space. We can finally move past “the screen” and build new kinds of spaces and urban environments that are beautifully responsive to our human behaviors and desires. It will be a world elevated by digital, inhabited by the physical, and one that remains in flux - just like software.