Architecture as a Product: What Makes a Building Worth Repeating?
Architecture praxis has traditionally focused on customized, project-based services – a well-established model continually favored by industry professionals. While this approach yields remarkable built environments, it struggles to achieve scalability and longevity. The architectural industry has shown little interest in exploring alternative practices, processes and business models, considering that the traditional mode is equally vulnerable to market cycles as other industries are. Bespoke design solutions, the cornerstone of conventional practice, make standardizing processes and scaling services challenging. This focus also leads to fragmented workflows among firms and stakeholders. The stability and establishment of traditional practices can breed a risk-averse culture, hampering disruptive innovations within the industry.
The “productization” of architecture is an emerging concept that deviates from traditional forms of practice, viewing buildings as repeatable, scalable products. This approach augments the real estate value chain by fragmenting the design process. McKinsey & Co.’s “The Next Normal in Construction: How Disruption Is Reshaping the World’s Largest Ecosystem” identifies product-based approaches as one of the likely forces shaping the industry’s transformation in the coming decades. Many startups are experimenting with modular technology and component systems to productize buildings.
For instance, Moliving, the first nomadic hospitality group, is a revolutionary startup using modular technology to “productize” hotel rooms. The startup offers a unique end-to-end sustainable and scalable solution, enabling landowners to monetize underutilized assets. At the forefront of innovation, Moliving has created a process that allows hotels to be built in months instead of years, at a fraction of the traditional cost, enabling a hotel to be “at the right place, at the right time.”
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Similarly, the mass-timber housing company Juno aims to democratize access to high-quality, sustainable living spaces by designing scalable and repeatable solutions. Co-founded by Apple’s former design director BJ Siegel, the company designs and builds multi-family housing using a system of around 33 prefabricated components that can be assembled in various configurations. By applying product design principles to housing, Juno seeks to achieve economies of scale and continuous improvement.
What Makes a Building Worth Repeating?
A key aspect of productization is creating buildings worth repeating. Productization aims to break traditional design cycles by creating higher quality, more beautiful, and more sustainable buildings that deserve repetition due to their inherent value. Juno invests in systemic and structural changes needed to drive greater precision, efficiency, and lower risk. In other words, by changing what is made, they can focus on optimizing how to make the best version. Juno believes that for a building to justify existing more than once, it needs to provide an exceptional experience and support occupants extraordinarily well. As Siegel explains, “To overcome architecture’s taboo of repetition, we needed to find a way to offer an aspirational product, similar to consumer product design.” Mimicking consumer product repetition, Juno rethinks how their product reaches the market. Acknowledging diverse customer values, Juno focused on a universally appealing design offering aspects like access to air, space efficiency, and natural materials to seem modest yet high-quality.
Prototyping is crucial to this process. At Moliving, repetition was prioritized from the design stage to develop a truly scalable model. The team went through around 50 design iterations over three years to arrive at the “building worth repeating.” This immense effort ensured compliance for installation across the 50 U.S. states, with each structure tailored to specific municipal requirements. Maximizing design, manufacturing, and transportation efficiency were also key priorities, alongside incorporating ESG strategies. “We’re trying to create the best hotel room for the planet while offering the best guest experience. After all, the hotel room is just one aspect of the larger experience,” shares founder Jordan Bem.
At Juno, balancing systemization and efficiency to achieve a high-quality product was paramount. Creating a prototypical system applicable to many scenarios required systemic thinking. This resulted in designing the fewest possible components combinable in the most ways, allowing focus on individual part quality or supply chain optimization. “Modular generally implies volume-based application,” says Siegel. “By breaking down the building into components, we could find more spatial use combinations, designing buildings that don’t seem like copies.”
Sustainable Architecture as a Product
Sustainability is a key driver behind productized architecture. Moliving argues that their modular and prefabricated construction methods streamline the building process while significantly reducing construction waste. “Traditionally, constructing a suite generates approximately two dumpsters worth of debris. Yet, by integrating automotive technology and processes into our approach, we precisely calculate the required materials, thereby limiting waste to just a single trash can. This not only reduces our environmental impact but also enhances both the quality and quantity of our output” Bem illustrates. By “repackaging” existing techniques “in a smarter way,” modular construction reduces their environmental footprint while delivering efficient, functional living spaces.
Juno believes creating buildings that sequester carbon instead of emitting it is just the start. Beyond more sustainable materials and processes, they’ve prioritized fostering sustainable spaces residents can tangibly experience — through thoughtful finishes, design, and everyday living. And thanks to their focus on all-electric buildings in cities with clean energy roadmaps, Juno’s residential system trends toward net-zero embodied carbon in its multi-family units. This “productization” of architecture represents a paradigm shift from traditional practice norms. By viewing buildings as scalable products, firms like Moliving and Juno streamline design and construction through modular systems and prefabricated components. This approach enhances quality control, reduces waste, improves sustainability, and unlocks new economies of scale.
However, productization requires a fundamental reframing of how we conceptualize and deliver the built environment. Arriving at a “building worth repeating” demands extensive prototyping, systemic thinking about components and combinations, and a relentless pursuit of exceptional quality. Architects must intimately understand occupant needs and regional requirements to create flexible, universally appealing designs. While breaking from established models poses challenges, the potential rewards are immense – more beautiful, sustainable, and accessible architecture achieved through transformative efficiencies. As more professionals explore productization, the industry may finally catalyze the disruptive innovations long overdue in our approach to the built world.
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