The architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry is often portrayed as a symbol of progress. Future-facing, solution-driven, deeply collaborative. But speak to anyone who's worked in it for long enough, and a different truth shows up: a culture where massive inefficiencies are normalised, where entire careers are spent designing things that never get built.
In architecture especially, the amount of work that disappears into the void is staggering. Not just in early concept stages, but deep into project development. Entire teams commit years of effort, only to see projects get defunded, indefinitely paused, or radically redesigned on a whim.
And somehow, this has become business as usual.
A Culture of Waste
It’s entirely possible (and incredibly common) to spend 3 to 5 years on a project that results in nothing tangible. Not a single brick laid. Not even a competition entry to show for it. Just shared drives full of studies, decks, design iterations, and countless late nights that will never see the light of day.
This isn’t theoretical waste. This is real, measurable loss of creative energy, professional momentum, and in many cases, personal sanity. Years of labour with no real-world impact add up real quick as you stay longer in this industry
The Disposable Nature of Architectural Work
Architecture is meant to be one of the most enduring expressions of culture. Ironically, it’s become one of the most disposable.
Design teams are asked to pivot direction instantly, even after months of careful development. “Can we make it feel lighter?” “This looks too architectural.” “The client’s vision has changed, again.”
Rework is requested in seconds. It can take weeks or months to actually do it. Time, budget, and recognition? Almost never match the effort.
What makes this worse is the normalisation of speculative labour.
Unpaid competition entries and pitches. Endless design revisions. Competing for attention through increasingly speculative work.
We’ve created a system where ideas are generated at volume, not value.
The Normalisation of Dysfunction
Everyone knows it. Few say it aloud.
The structure is broken. The process is inefficient. Creative labour is undervalued. And we’re complicit.
From junior architects to directors, most professionals know how wasteful the process is. But there’s little incentive to speak up, especially in an industry where projects are high-risk, long-term, and clients hold disproportionate power due to the highly competitive nature of it.
You’re expected to care deeply, but not question the system that wears that care down.
Why Am I Writing This?
Just an brain dump from reflecting on the months and years I’ve cumulatively wasted designing unbuilt work in the past 9 years.
And no please do not try and sugar coat this saying, “the beauty is in the process.” or ”Design is iterative.”
Ive heard it too many times. Heck, I’m guilty of using it. And honestly? It’s often a cop-out. A lazy excuse to justify waste and avoid asking better questions.
You wouldn’t hear a surgeon saying the incision is an iterative process.
“I needed to try various angles before I could transplant the liver”.
You wouldn’t accept that.
I can already hear some of you thinking “Not a creative field. Unfair Analogy!”
We romanticise our inefficiencies because we’re creatives.
Guess what, we have thousands of years of precedent architectural knowledge. The world is full of precedent studies, and to be frank (and here’s where the big egos can drop off) most buildings don’t need reinvention, just execution.
We do not need to be creative geniuses. Not every project is or needs to be our magnum opus. There’s no real incentive in an industry where the lowest bidder often wins to go above and beyond.
While, yes, groundbreaking innovation exists, just look around any metropolis - they’re mostly just skyscrapers. It’s not an ego contest about who has the biggest ... building.
It’s repetition. Systems. And that’s okay. Efficiency isn’t a dirty word.
One of the most impactful things I read and it’s stuck with me since 2019 was a paper from 2002 called Darwinian Processes and Memes in Architecture (Way before memes became what they are today online) this was talking about how design ideas evolve like living organisms. Mutation, replication, survival of the catchiest concept. Not genius. Just memetic fitness. You start to see how much of our "process" is just cultural Darwinism, not deliberate craft. What’s the Real Cost?
This isn’t just about wasted time. It’s emotional. You burn bridges. You fight internally. People lose drive. People burn out. People leave the thing they once loved.
And the industry’s answer? “You need passion to survive.” Heard that one in my first year. Either it’s a lie we keep telling ourselves, or it’s the price of staying in an underpaid, unsustainable loop.
Learning from past experiences, while important, should also teach us to stop repeating the same mistakes, dressed up as part of the 'design process.' If we’re just looping through the same inefficiencies and calling it iteration, is that really growth?
We should be learning from our processes, not recycling them.
So What Comes Next?
This isn’t a manifesto, a debate or an outrage bait. Just a conversation starter.
Ask yourself (be as unbiased as you can)
How much of your time could you have saved if the you hadn’t made that one design change. If you had not gone above and beyond the brief to impress the client, only for them to change the entire brief?
It’s not about rejecting complexity. Architecture is (and will always be) iterative. Fluid. Collaborative.
If you’ve worked on too many unbuilt projects, if you’ve watched years of design work disappear without impact, if you’ve started questioning the way we practise, maybe it’s time we stop calling this normal.
To be continued in Part Two: What Architecture Can Learn from Product Design