Architecture Will Never Be The Same

Last year around this time I got the hankering to write my first article on LinkedIn. It was a great article about Architecture Firm Brain Drain — you should read it as a primer for this one. Quite a bit has changed in the last 12 months.

Milestones of Note

• TestFit raised $2M in January to continue disrupting the long-entrenched architecture industry
• Released TF2.5 StreetFit (here we come urban planning)
• Got an office to work out of (then didn't work out of it)
• Released TF 2.9 Hotel (while hotels were at 5% occupancy)
• Hired five more people for full time work (80% are outside of Texas)
• Released TF 2.10 Structured Spaces (here we come mixed use)
• Somehow got approved for a home loan, and bought a home (American dream!)
• Released TF Office Beta (while the future of office is up in the air)

The Impetus to Write this Article

Somehow, TestFit — this tiny startup out of Dallas — has shaken the industry enough to be mentioned during the AIA's Large Firm Roundtable in 2019 as a threat to the architecture industry. Reflecting on this fact after several rounds of open letters raging against the perceived lack of Revit development by Autodesk, I have a hypothesis, and the problem isn't Revit.

I wager that architecture is the biggest threat to the architecture industry, and it has 100% to do with process. If you want to be a firm that survives the onslaught of procedural algorithms and APIs, the path forward is not in the tools — it's in the thinking.