Hello Reader,

This week, I have been sitting with a question I cannot quite shake: What would change if architects applied the same rigor to their business model that they bring to their buildings? Not as an abstract exercise, but as a real design problem with real stakes. The profession is full of people who are brilliant at the work but have never been asked to question the structure around it. The billing logic. The revenue model. What it actually means to build something sustainable, not just something beautiful.

That question is at the center of this week's episode.

Larry Sass is a professor of architecture at MIT, where he leads the Design Fabrication Group. He has spent 30 years watching brilliant students arrive as architects and leave as something the profession does not yet have a name for. His digitally fabricated house for New Orleans was exhibited at MoMA, and he is still asking why the architecture industry has so much technology while construction has so little, and why the middle industry that could bridge the two does not yet fully exist.

But the conversation we had goes somewhere else, too. Larry talks about the "third practice," the path where architects use their expertise to create products and software rather than bill for time. He talks about what VC money flooding the AEC space actually signals. And he makes the case for why entrepreneurship needs to be part of architectural education, not an afterthought. His question: will architects lead the firm of the future, or will they become employees of people who figured out the business model first?

That is not hypothetical. It is a trajectory. And it has been sitting with me all week.

I would love to know where you stand on it. What is one assumption about how your firm makes money that you have never actually questioned?

🎧 Listen to Episode 226 with Larry Sass: https://practiceofarchitecture.com/2026/03/12/226-from-the-inside-out-larry-sass-on-digital-fabrication-ai-and-architectures-next-chapter/​

Keep learning and growing,

Evelyn M Lee, FAIA | NOMA Founder, Practice of Architecture Host, Practice Disrupted & Fractional COO

/// PoA Podcast - Practice Disrupted ///

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