The idea of automating or productizing architectural design services is a contentious one and it trickles down to the very definition of architecture. But when it comes to the business aspect of the profession, it becomes clear that many among today’s most renowned architects owe their success to the idea of productizing their services.

Instead of reinventing their work with every new client and repeating the same time-consuming processes, these architects have reoriented their businesses towards creating products. Customer-driven business strategies and the necessity of staying competitive are pushing AEC professionals to become faster, more efficient and convey their work to clients in the most succinct and clear way possible. The latter is particularly relevant to architects, since the nature of the profession has long suffered from the inability to translate services into tangible values that clients can recognize. For too long architectural services have been seen as a cost, rather than value.

Thanks to the huge technological advancements of the late 20th century, the scope of ‘problems’ architects can address has become wider. This freedom allows them to not only expand their field of professional interests, but also choose new, more efficient business models. Designing and selling plan sets, creating apps, generating libraries of BIM components, designing software and project management tools, optimizing manufacturing processes, self-publishing and creating online courses are among the most common methods for architects going into product development.

Albrecht von Alvensleben, founder of Bullenberg

Albrecht von Alvensleben is an architect and founder of Bullenberg, a furniture label based in Berlin. Bullenberg manufactures handcrafted wooden tables using wood sourced from von Alvensleben’s family estate in Saxony, near Berlin. The idea of creating a business had a humble beginnings – a friend was looking for a solid oak tabletop.

Being a trained architect enabled Albrecht to do a lot of the work himself, including designing the website and taking photos of the finished products. Bullenberg is currently planning to move from direct sales to retail and expand the brand’s work to include other types of products. If you want to learn more about Bullenberg, check out the interview with Archipreneur.

Seth Grizzle and Jonathan Junker, founders of Graypants

Architects Seth Grizzle and Jonathan Junker founded Graypants as a company dedicated to making pendant lights made entirely of repurposed corrugated cardboard. Their flagship line Scraplights embodies the team’s interest in repurposing and environmentally responsible design. In 2012, they set up their European office in Amsterdam, from where they started distribution to over forty countries, while the Seattle studio still provides local production for North America and functions as a prototyping shop.

Their portfolio includes public artworks, architectural installations and several lines of lighting, furniture, packaging designs sold throughout the world. Their debut architecture project Garage won the coveted AIA Seattle’s Award of Honor in 2013.

Michael Kohn, founder of Stickyworld

U.K. based architect Michael Kohn has recognized the need for a closer and more interactive collaboration between all the stakeholders in the process of building. He left the practice he worked in and created Stickyworld, a web- and mobile-based tool that enables sharing of projects and multimedia with the possibility of commenting and posting virtual sticky notes directly on images. The software allows more voices to be heard during the design and construction process.

Before creating his business, Kohn collected insights from customers and managed to pinpoint the problems they needed solving. Organizers are offered a suite of tools to prepare and publish interactive content websites called ‘rooms’, supporting different formats of engagement such as ideas forums, consultations or design reviews. Organizers can set the time frame for opening participation, automatically publish invites and also close participation at a set time. It allows interactive content including images, maps, 360 panoramas, videos, PDFs, and Powerpoints.

Edwin Heathcote, founder of Izé

Architect Edwin Heathcote set up Izé in 2001 as a manufacturer of a wide range door handles and fittings in collaboration with different designers and architecture firms. Heathcote has been the architecture and design critic of The Financial Times and author of several books on architecture and design.

Izé has licensed Lina Bo Bardi’s famous horn-shaped door handle design from the Lina Bo Bardi Foundation and received rights to produce them commercially 62 years after they were designed. “It turned out that the door handle was, proportionate to its size, the most influential piece of the building that I could think of that I could get into manufacture,” Heathcote told Dezeen.

Igor Siddiqui, founder of ISSSStudio

Igor Siddiqui, another architect-turned-product designer, worked as a practicing architect before setting up his own office ISSSStudio in 2006. The firm designs and manufactures everything from product prototypes to single-family houses using digital techniques and fabrication technologies. The team explores materials properties, flexibility, mobility and performance-driven design.

Their Tessellated Floorscape is a prototypical mass-customized rug originally produced for Aronson’s Floor Covering. It is based on a digital animation from which a different key-frame is extracted each time a new piece is commissioned or sold. The material is cut in a way that maximizes the intricacy of the contoured shape of each tile, while minimizing waste throughout the fabrication.

Protoplastic is made from biodegradable plastic and the acrylic formwork, while Ceramic Tesssseltile tiles are manufactured through conventional methods of mass-production as a single tile shape that produces the greatest degree of variation when multiplied across the larger field.

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While these five examples showcase design collectives or architects that have dedicated their work entirely to creating products, those who want to keep offering mainstream architectural services can also start by adding products to their existing offering. Turning ideas into products is fun, creative and can be a fantastic, scalable business model.

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The architectural profession is dominated by service-based businesses. The conventional way in which architects run their studios requires them to reinvent their services with every new client. Specific requests and project briefs are mostly approached with a high level of customization that is time-consuming and inefficient.

In recent times, a new business model has entered the field of architecture, enabling businesses to become more competitive. The concept of productized services proved to be a superior alternative to the established business model, offering a faster turnover rate, more freedom for principals and employees and more room for scaling.

The idea of productized services draws from the field of product development. While services offer greater flexibility and adaptability, products are considered to be standardized and inflexible. In order to reconcile these two contrasting approaches, business owners can appropriate the efficiency and scalability of products with various levels of customization.

The idea behind productizing design services in not to make services more inflexible, but to systematize them in a way that benefits both clients and service providers by creating repeatable, standardized, and automated practices. This can significantly reduce risks for clients and establish trust through consistent delivery of reliable services. By standardizing prices and billing procedures, clients are more likely to perceive architectural design services as value instead of cost. The often intangible qualities of good design are made more transparent and measurable.

Firms looking to offer productized services have different profiles. Some are just starting out, while others are existing businesses with a healthy client base. Productizing existing business models can also be achieved by adding products to your offering which will complement existing services.

It all starts with the customer/client experience and feedback. Explore what new value a productized service would provide to your clients. Define which parts of your business are the easiest and important to standardize. You can use different online tools to automate parts of your processes. A simple pricing system can go a long way in helping you get new clients. Complement this with a consistent look and feel that make specific service elements recognizable.

MIMA Lab introduced productizing very early on. Marta Brandão and Mário Sousa started their business from scratch, offering prefab housing concepts with plan sets that can be ordered online. The structures are delivered together with a folder of drawings that may be necessary for licensing procedures, as well as fact sheets, and guarantees for fixed prices, components and finishes, construction, electrical installations, sewage and water installations, house permits, five-year warranties, and transportation and assembly within Portugal.

They decided to create a business around the idea of affordable, productized architectural designs. As they said in an interview for Archipreneur, software engineer Miguel Matos helped them to create a software that translates all the design information for the factory and simplifies the construction process. The software also allows clients to locate their property on Google Earth and generate an automatic 3D model of their future houses and its position on the site.

Finnish firm Workspace, on the other hand, is a great example of how productizing can be enhanced by focusing on a specific niche. The firm is a leading Nordic consulting and design agency specializing in workplace design and management. Their approach focuses on creating integrative design that combines resource, space management and information communication technology in order to appeal to businesses in need for environmental solutions for new, emerging organizational structures and business models. They create designs that supports various scenarios of use.

In an interview for aec-business.com, Jyrki Yläoutinen, Executive Workplace Consultant at Workspace, said that a large part of their productizing strategy was to focus on finding businesses and not individual clients. They were inspired by the gaming industry in which developers get user feedback very early and fast.

Their services include workplace management and consultation, support for change management and communication in workplace changes, interior design, and architectural design. With their services clients are saving up to 30% in real estate costs and productivity and speed is increased by 5-50%. The resulting business model led to clients fully understanding what they get for their money and the firm now requiring less time for sales and negotiations.

Eric W. Reinholdt took a more gradual approach to productizing his business by introducing products that complimented his existing services. He started his firm, residential design studio 30X40 Design Workshop after gaining extensive experience working for other architects and seeing the consequences of the recession first hand.

His business struggled until he introduced pre-designed plan sets that cut energy consumption. He established a fee structure for schematic and construction packages. Reinholdt added this new product line to his established service-based model, adding customers that didn’t fit the established model as driving force for his passive income model. His website also allows visitors to buy his influential books on architecture and entrepreneurship.

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The key to productizing architectural services is to replace the time-consuming model of billing by the hour with a more efficient model with set prices similar to those of products. Potential customers are easier to target, hiring people is more straightforward and project turnover rate increases. It is important to remember that productizing services is not a one-off endeavor, but a process developed by looking at what clients need.

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