Impact of Working Remotely on Architectural Practice and Process

While technology enables us to work efficiently and continue communication despite working and collaborating remotely, it offers new challenges in architectural practice.

Architecture is made through a fluid process, uniquely challenging in its need to be coherently visualized and expertly documented. While expertise, experience, communication tools and 3D modeling software might still offer architects the process of making a building, I think it distinctly limits architects in their ability to make a great building. The process of making a great building is defined by close collaboration with a team, but also very sensory and intuitive decisions as well. Physical model making, sketching and drawing by hand, face to face interaction, material selection, and pin-ups are a solid foundation for design that have been taken away by the necessity of remote work.

As a designer, those tools and means are perhaps my strongest suit, and make my aptitude for visualizing and iterating a valuable asset to a team. My challenge, like millions of others, has been a continuous period of time in which collaboration looks like video conferences and screen shares. My iterations are now all digital, aside from the design thinking I do in my sketchbook. It’s clear to that my work suffers from a lack of the character that deliberate manual studies can lend to a project, and I look forward to the day when I can offer that as a professional again.