What convinced you to join the hej.build Architecture Advisory Board?
The industry and the profession of architects face major challenges and changes. AI, generative design tools and the industrialisation of construction will produce completely new value chains. Industry and design, as well as industry and clients, need to move closer together. In the future, we will see completely different processes from today’s. For that, we as an industry need to understand technology, interact with each other and work on solutions together. As an advisory board member at hej.build, I’m looking forward to helping manufacturers and architects benefit from the transformation of the market.
What is most on your mind at the moment in architecture, interior architecture or building products?
Historically, the construction industry has been subject to very long innovation cycles: cycles measured in decades. Now we are in the middle of the digital transformation. Through AI, algorithms and robotics, innovation cycles that run from a few months to two years are entering our industry. The industry is not prepared for this.
Technologies are being combined into ecosystems, ecosystems will create new value and bring forth new market participants and segments. More and more tasks are being taken over by agents or by GenAI.
More and more processes will shift to the client. For manufacturers, this means building the right sales channels early on; for planners, redefining their own role; and for planners and construction companies, jointly bridging the gap between design and construction.
But there is also undreamt-of potential here. Studies forecast over 70% more profit potential in the construction and property industry through AI and robotics. Industrially prefabricated buildings use fewer resources and less CO₂. In design, more factors can be taken into account at the same time, so that sustainable buildings become possible as early as the concept stage.
Through such digital value chains, we will not only be able to offer housing that is affordable for the general population again, but also build it sustainably.
What does good architecture/interior architecture mean to you?
On average, we spend 90% of our day indoors. Architecture must provide us with these spaces in line with our needs and, at the same time, may stimulate our minds and senses in unexpected ways.
Is there a current highlight or an all-time favourite project?
I was BIM manager on the pilot project for the first BIM-based building permit application in Germany. This project showed that in Germany we don’t just complain about the status quo, but can also change it. It takes transformation, and with it brave people who are willing to set up and push through projects or markets away from the norm.
The construction and property industries are stuck in their processes and methods. Why is industry-wide transformation so difficult, and what does it have to do with Kodak?
On the one hand, the construction and property industries are drifting further and further apart in their understanding of each other, even though supply and demand should actually be moving towards each other. On the other hand, they are two highly fragmented industries. Both make it difficult for new technologies to achieve high market penetration.
There were at least ten very »fat« years in the industry. Too little was reinvested during that time.
The Kodak effect will often be seen in the construction and property industries in the future: fear of transparency, fear of breaking up knowledge silos, fear of sharing data and processes and of betting on new technologies or ecosystems. There is a fear of cannibalising existing, possibly powerful structures within one’s own company. That is exactly what happened to Kodak with digital camera technology. In the end, it led to Kodak’s decline, because the company failed to develop its business further and compete with its own films.
On top of that, we have the master builder syndrome: in our industry, we want to develop and create everything ourselves. In 2023, the main construction trade in Germany generated revenue of €162.6 billion. By comparison, Amazon invested around €79 billion in research and development in the same year, which is approx. 48.6% of the total revenue of the German construction industry. We need to pool resources and work on solutions together, instead of everyone staying in their own silo.
More experts on the board
Which topic is keeping you busy right now?
Tell us briefly which building products it’s about and what you want to achieve. We’ll get back to you with an initial assessment. We often start with our »Day One« workshop: a day at your premises, where marketing, sales and senior management set priorities together.