Episode 120 - RIBA Horizons 2034

This week we will be talking about RIBA Horizons 2034. This episode content meets PC1 - Professionalism of the Part 3 Criteria.

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Episode 120:

Hello and Welcome to the Part3 with me podcast.

The show that helps part 3 students jump-start into their careers as qualified architects and also provides refresher episodes for practising architects. I am your host Maria Skoutari and this week I will be talking about the RIBA’s Horizons 2034 programme. Today’s episode meets PC1 of the Part 3 Criteria.

In order to keep on top of most recent global trends of the near future, the RIBA has put together the RIBA Horizons 2034 foresight-gathering programme shaping society, the built environment, and the architectural profession.

It provides a ten-year review used by policymakers and commercial companies, including the UK government, professional bodies, and the private sector, to think about the future. It is a systematic process for identifying emerging trends, events and issues that may affect businesses, society, and individuals. Looking beyond the present, it also helps organisations to anticipate what is coming up in a world where the pace of change is ever-accelerating. Horizons 2034 supports decision-makers in making more informed choices. It is not about predicting the future but about spotting upcoming sources of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

The Horizons 2034 programme is split into four different themes exploring significant global trends:

The themes launching in 2024 include the Environmental Challenge, the Economics of the Built Environment, Population Change and Technological Innovation.

RIBA chose these themes because they capture some of the most pressing issues of today. There are other significant global trends, of course, and these may be covered later. For now, though, the RIBA will focus on these four as the most fundamental to the profession and the shared future. Each of the four themes is divided into four further topics, making a total of 16 topics, which are covered by a horizon scan.

Each of the 16 topics are written by an expert contributor. Some are academics with expertise in disciplines, such as demographics and economics, which are less familiar to architects; others are design and construction professionals with deep industry knowledge. They aim is for experts to share their expertise, to point toward what might lie ahead, and to invite everyone to act. They do not aim to provide definitive solutions to shared challenges.

The aim of RIBA Horizons 2034 is to encourage new and innovative approaches to shared challenges so that the profession and the Institute can adapt to, and create, global change.

Now let’s deep dive into the themes, starting with:

1. The Environmental Challenge theme explores:

The urgency of the climate crisis and how the built environment is accountable for almost half of all global emissions and how the design and construction industry has a pressing need to recognise its responsibility.

The topics covered in this theme address mitigation of carbon emission, climate adaptation, biodiversity, and the role of engagement and activism.

Under mitigation of carbon emission:

Highlights how the next decade is crucial for significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors, including energy consumption, fossil fuel phase-out, sustainable materials use, and decarbonizing energy supply, manufacturing, and transportation. The built environment sector, responsible for around 37% of global energy-related emissions, has a significant role in this effort. In Europe, efforts to reduce energy use and implement renewable technologies in buildings have been ongoing for over two decades, primarily driven by the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) since 2002. Despite improvements, total energy consumption in buildings has not significantly decreased, largely because existing building stock has been overlooked and embodied carbon has not been regulated.

Upcoming revisions to the EPBD, effective in summer 2024, aim to address both the energy use of existing buildings and the embodied carbon in new buildings. Future mitigation measures in the built environment will focus on low-carbon energy technologies, innovative construction materials, and circular economy principles. Technologies like decarbonizing electricity networks, energy storage, and energy management systems, along with design approaches like Passivhaus and EnerPHit, are becoming more popular. Construction materials are evolving due to stricter industry standards, environmental product declarations, and European funding for bio-based materials like timber, bamboo, straw, and hemp.

The circular economy in construction emphasizes repurposing and recycling materials, with a growing focus on retrofitting existing buildings rather than demolishing them. The European Commission’s Renovation Wave strategy highlights the importance of retrofitting for carbon savings. These changes promise widespread impacts, including supporting urbanization, improving health and quality of life, creating jobs, growing local economies, reducing energy costs, and increasing property values. For architects and designers, whole-life carbon considerations offer opportunities for innovation and collaboration. Governments and international organizations must provide financial incentives for green buildings and low-carbon materials.

Under climate adaptation:

Actions to address climate change broadly adopt a two-pronged approach: mitigation and adaptation. As mentioned, mitigation strategies slow climate change by reducing carbon emissions. Adaptation strategies, on the other hand, accept that climate change is already underway and respond by bolstering our capacity to cope. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it will be difficult to avert the effects of climate change even with “the most stringent mitigation efforts”. Consequently, climate adaptation becomes indispensable and unavoidable.

Adapting to climate change is a complex challenge that necessitates preparing for multi-dimensional severe weather phenomena, including intense ﬂuctuations in temperature and precipitation, rising sea levels, ﬂooding, prolonged droughts, and intense winds. Presently, the practice of architectural design is advancing to meet the demands of a changing climate, which includes departing from traditional building materials and construction practices to embrace climate resilience.

One of the daunting challenges for the science of designing for climate adaptation concerns how to include local knowledge. The only way to ensure that buildings are resilient to speciﬁc local weather patterns and cultural practices is if their design harnesses accurate contextual knowledge. This is about understanding unique region-speciﬁc data on historical climate exposure, stress-coping mechanisms, thermal history and socio-cultural dynamics to design and construct buildings that not only respond to the local climate’s idiosyncrasies but also resonate with the community’s way of life. Utilising advancements such as weather-responsive façades, green and energy-efficient methods, and AI-driven climate control systems, innovative technologies help designers optimise comfort, reduce energy consumption and adapt to the current and future impacts of climate change.

To evaluate the tangible advantages of adaptive designs, it will be necessary to develop new metrics and tools that can accurately assess the economic, social, and environmental benefits and reliably correlate them with particular climate adaptive design strategies.

Under biodiversity:

The increasing prominence of cities in addressing the biodiversity crisis stems from concerns about urban expansion threatening nature. The 2019 IPBES Global Assessment Report highlighted that biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, with urban land use being a significant driver, alongside agriculture, climate change, invasive species, and pollution. Nature-based solutions (NBS) have emerged as interventions working with nature to achieve sustainability goals, but three major challenges remain.

Firstly, NBS in the built environment are rare. Architects need to rethink current risk, investment, and value assessments to make NBS more mainstream. Secondly, there's a risk that NBS efforts may merely offer a superficial solution to the deeper problem of urbanization's impact on biodiversity. Effective NBS require architects to consider broader urban sustainability goals and how various projects interconnect within urban ecosystems. Thirdly, and most critically, urban NBS must address social and environmental justice. Architects must navigate the public-private boundary to ensure developments benefit investors and urban communities, fully harnessing nature's contributions to cities. New system-wide partnerships are essential to integrate nature into urban development sustainably.

And lastly, under the role of engagement and activism:

Activism is of such importance to the UN’s Decade of Action to find sustainable solutions to all the world’s biggest challenges that it has its own UN Sustainable Development Goal – SDG 13. Its objective is to “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”. For architects, activism means engaging in civil and democratic society, as individuals and as members of communities and businesses, to effect the change only the profession can make. The role of not just architects but engineers and planners too in shaping the built environment becomes increasingly important the longer the climate crisis deepens. These professionals can be radical activists or passionate persuaders working to influence client decisions, government policies and industry standards.

Designers cannot know everything, but they can engage and consult to ensure more holistic and collaborative outcomes. They could more actively engage the wider community in the architectural process. Also, addressing global challenges is designers’ highest calling. To tackle it successfully, they must recognise human needs, expectations, hopes and desires. A critical tool in doing so is horizon scanning. A horizon scan is a systematic approach for identifying and monitoring emerging trends, issues, and developments that could have a significant future impact on a particular industry, organisation, or domain. The goal of a horizon scan is to help individuals, groups or organisations anticipate potential challenges and opportunities so that they can consider strategies and actions to prepare for the future. In the end, the goal is to challenge a group’s understanding of what is driving change so that they can act to influence its direction. Activist-architects can connect with practitioners from other countries and cities to co-create a new manual for what ‘good architecture’ and ‘regenerative urbanism’ look like.

Key trends identified for shaping the future of architecture are sustainable building certification, environmentally considerate solutions, glocal knowledge sharing, retrofitting, and partnering through meaningful collaboration. The next 10 years matter. They are an urgent opportunity for all built environment professionals to be activists and advocates in their communities, towns, cities, counties, countries and global regions.

So that covers the Environmental Challenge theme and its topics addressing mitigation of carbon emissions, climate adaptation, biodiversity, and the role of engagement and activism.

2. The Economics of the Built Environment theme explores:

What the global economic systems are and forces that will continue to drive the development of the built environment and how will the way money is spent on new and existing buildings by the public and private sector impact on social equality and the life chances of individuals?

The topics covered in this theme address interconnectedness and specialisation, emerging economies, inequality and financialisation.

Under Interconnectedness and Specialisation:

The built environment, consisting of the structures where people live and work, is shaped by economic, historical, cultural, and institutional forces. These forces influence the location and form of structures, impacting the economic geography of areas. This topic explores these factors, how they've evolved, and their implications for the future built environment.

Economic geography balances the benefits and costs of proximity. Benefits include social interaction and productivity, necessitating proximity for businesses, workers, and customers. Scale and density advantages can occur within organizations or through agglomeration economies in business clusters. Conversely, proximity incurs costs like space limitations, travel expenses, congestion, and pollution. Markets and governance mediate these forces. Markets ensure efficient land use, with high rents in city centers reflecting economic density's value. However, good governance is crucial for infrastructure and urban productivity, beyond market mechanisms alone.

Employment structure shifts have driven urbanization, with transitions from agriculture to manufacturing, and then to services. Technological changes and global competition have reshaped urban centers into high-productivity hubs for finance, business services, and high-tech industries. Developing economies continue urbanizing, influenced by climate change and evolving employment patterns, like premature deindustrialization and growth in service-oriented trade.

In high-income countries, service employment is changing, with personal services growing faster than business and financial services. Demographics, especially aging populations, and AI development will impact these trends. AI, likely labor-augmenting, could rapidly transform sectors like finance and business services, affecting workspaces and employment structures.

Transport and connectivity advancements have mixed effects, enabling urban cluster formation while reducing proximity benefits. Despite the ICT revolution predicting deconcentration, knowledge-intensive sectors' need for face-to-face interaction led to urban density and land price increases in key areas. The pandemic and remote work have further shifted office space needs and commuting patterns, potentially strengthening large urban clusters.

The concept of 15-minute cities proposes urban restructuring for walkable access to amenities. While attractive, many workplaces require scale and centralization, making complete decentralization unlikely.

Policies and regulations significantly influence the built environment. Effective governance can harness urban benefits and mitigate costs, crucial for developing economies facing unplanned growth challenges. The UK, with issues like inefficient land use, poor transport, and outdated planning, highlights the need for investment in infrastructure, housing, and better policy measures to support economic growth and efficient built environments.

Under Emerging Economies:

The urban population in emerging economies will grow significantly in the coming decade. New and forward-looking ideas are needed to reduce social inequality and create sustainable pathways to urban development, all without aggravating the global environmental and climate crisis. To sustainably reap the global construction’s economic benefits, the built sector must decarbonise and, critically, retrofit the existing housing stock. This is especially true in hot climatic regions where there is an increasing demand for cooling and, because so much housing is in informal settlements, low resilience to climate change. It is unclear how much of this housing stock will be in fast-growing cities and whether it will be accompanied by appropriate urban planning policies.

Architects’ and urban planners’ competence to tackle these challenges needs to be enhanced. They will need to be equipped with suitably context-based understandings of places and the skills to deal with culturally sensitive issues. At the same time, they need to rise to the professional challenges of digitisation and AI. The legacies of cities, including their inhabitants’ traditions and indigenous knowledge, will need to be reassessed and reused in ambitious, innovative urban futures.

To be credible, new multilateral collaborations need to be built on a different basis. They must be more responsive to the diversity of local contexts and designed to enable regenerative processes. They must forge more mature and equal partnerships between countries in the Global North and the Global South.

Under Inequality:

Over recent decades, international efforts to tackle poverty have transformed millions of lives, yet stark inequality persists. The wealthiest 10% hold 76% of global wealth, while the poorest half have just 2%. This disparity is critical for the coming decade. Inequality stems from uneven resource distribution, often unjustly based on race, religion, sex, and citizenship. It is perpetuated by structural systems of wealth accumulation and power, obstructing socio-economic development. The UN's Sustainable Development Goal 10 aims to reduce inequality within and among countries, acknowledging this persistent issue.

Addressing inequality requires more than poverty alleviation; it involves dismantling unjust wealth structures. Sustainable development in the built environment is essential, as wealth inequality correlates with carbon emissions inequality. Wealthy countries, historically high emitters, have an ethical duty to reduce emissions and redistribute wealth to poorer regions. Inequality manifests in residential segregation and access to public resources. The platform economy, such as short-term rentals, exacerbates this divide by reinforcing existing spatial patterns of inequality.

Political decisions about the built environment have lasting impacts on inequality. Land use regulations can perpetuate socio-spatial inequality, as seen in gentrification and elite enclaves that displace local communities and create utopian visions for the rich.

To combat these trends, built environment professionals must prioritize social and environmental considerations alongside aesthetics and functionality. Participatory consultation with impacted communities throughout project lifespans is crucial. Many professionals are already advocating for equitable urban and climate resilience strategies, but scaling up these efforts is necessary. Ethical guidelines, like those in RIBA’s Code of Professional Conduct, emphasize promoting stronger communities and improving equality in the built environment. Prioritizing social and spatial justice in their work is essential for a more equal world.

And lastly, under Financialisation:

The architectural profession in the 21st century faces the challenge of positioning itself amid increasing financialisation. Historically, buildings have represented wealth, but now they are deeply integrated into complex financial systems, serving as primary financial instruments. This transformation influences how architects, institutes, and the public perceive and create the built environment, revealing both opportunities and constraints for justice and beauty in architecture.

Since the 1980s, finance has grown significantly, with real estate at its core, forming what is known as the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) economy. This shift has made real estate a highly liquid asset, facilitated by new financial instruments and technologies like mortgage-backed securities, Real Estate Investment Trusts, and proptech. This integration has led to an unstable, finance-driven architecture, evident in rising housing unaffordability and speculative building designs.

Financialisation has global impacts, varying across regions and socioeconomic contexts. In the Global South, for instance, housing micro-finance intertwines with informal urbanism, while proptech expands micro-financing across Africa. Financialisation also links disparate geographies, as seen in programs connecting luxury condo sales in Vancouver to housing projects in Phnom Penh.

Looking ahead, digital twins, AI, and digital investment platforms will deepen financialisation. This will likely standardise and simplify architectural design to enhance liquidity, potentially reducing the uniqueness and social value of built spaces. Architects might respond by exploring alternative forms of practice, such as activism, development, co-housing, and community land trusts, to counteract financial constraints and promote socially just architecture. As financialisation continues to shape the built environment, it remains crucial for architects to adapt and find innovative ways to maintain design integrity and social relevance.

So that covers the Economics of the Built Environment theme and its topics addressing interconnectedness and specialisation, emerging economies, inequality and financialisation.

3. The Population Change theme explores:

How design professionals can respond to the level of change at the urban scale, while supporting social cohesion for diverse and intergenerational communities by taking into consideration the wide variation of demographic patterns emerging internationally with rapid growth, ageing and contraction, coupled with wide-scale movement.

The topics covered in this theme address demographics, urbanisation, international migration and displacement and designing for an increasingly diverse population.

Under Demographics:

The next decade will witness profound demographic shifts that will reshape both national and global populations, profoundly influencing urban and architectural design. After a century of rapid growth, global population expansion is decelerating, marked by declining birth rates and increasing life expectancy due to medical advancements. Consequently, populations are aging, with median ages rising globally. This demographic evolution varies widely by region, with implications ranging from changing demands for housing types to healthcare needs.

The trend towards fewer births and delayed marriages is fostering an increase in single-person and multi-generational households, challenging architects to innovate homes that accommodate diverse living arrangements. Examples include co-housing for older adults and communal living spaces for young professionals, reflecting shifts in lifestyle choices and economic factors.

Moreover, the demand for age-friendly housing and urban environments is escalating, driven by a growing population of older adults who wish to age in their own homes. Architects are already producing creative solutions and innovations such as adaptable interiors and smart technologies are becoming essential to meet these needs, ensuring that homes remain functional and supportive throughout their lives.

Looking ahead, architects and planners will play a pivotal role in designing cities and buildings that promote healthy ageing and social inclusion across generations which has recently been recognised by the World Health Organisation to be of high importance. This shift is aligned with global initiatives like the Decade of Healthy Ageing, highlighting the urgency and opportunity for built environment professionals to integrate age-friendly principles into their designs, thereby fostering communities that support well-being and connectivity for all ages.

Under Urbanisation:

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 11, emphasises the importance of the role of cities in achieving inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable human settlements. It notes that urbanization is a major global megatrend, with projections indicating that by 2050, two-thirds of the world's population will live in cities, primarily in Asia and Africa. Urbanization poses significant challenges, particularly in the Global South, where rapid growth leads to informal settlements, inequality, and inadequate infrastructure. With a lack of basic services (such as energy, waste treatment, and water) together with a lack of access to facilities such as education, healthcare and public transport. Therefore, the imperatives for cities in rapidly urbanising countries are to address rising levels of poverty and the challenge of slums, and to provide basic services together with adequate affordable housing.

In developed countries, cities face different challenges such as decarbonization and aging infrastructure. To Deliver the Sustainable Development Goals in 2020, the Commonwealth Association of Architects along with its planning, engineering, and surveying counterparts, published a survey of the built environment professions in the Commonwealth. Their objective was to establish how well-prepared the professions were to deal with the challenges ahead. The role of architects and built environment professionals in addressing these challenges has identified that there is a lack of professional capacity among professionals in rapidly urbanizing countries, where shortages in public sector expertise and educational resources hinder sustainable development efforts. There is also a lack of educational capacity and poor governance in terms of standards, implementation and enforcement.

Architects and built environment professionals have a pivotal role to play in the need for better governance, policy enforcement, and collaboration across disciplines to effectively tackle urbanization's complex issues. Initiatives like the UKBEAG and partnerships with UN-Habitat, the RIBA, the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Institution of Structural Engineers and the Landscape Institute are aimed at working together and enhancing resilience and urban planning in developing cities.

The key findings from FCDO’s Global Future Cities Programme identified five common areas of weakness in many of its subject cities. These were: a lack of integrated and inclusive planning, a weakness in governance and collaboration, the ineffective use of data and lack of evidence-based policymaking, poor business case preparation and weak procurement practices, combined with poor monitoring and evaluation, implementation and enforcement. The overarching lesson from the programme was the critical importance of effective leadership.

Under International Migration and Displacement:

In recent years, international migration has become an increasingly prominent driver of population change as fertility and mortality rates have declined in many parts of the world. Because international migration influences both population size and demographic structure, it has a direct impact on the demand for housing, public services, and infrastructure. For the architectural profession, this presents both challenges and opportunities.

Architects are uniquely positioned to innovate and adapt the built environment to accommodate the diverse needs and experiences of migrant populations. Professional membership institutes like the RIBA also play a critical role in advocating in excellence in building design and empowering professionals to rise to the challenges posed by migration and to contribute positively to society. Together with architects and building industry professionals, the wider community also has a crucial role to play in migration and displacement.

International migration is driven by diverse factors such as economic opportunities, political instability, climate change, and social networks, and it significantly impacts individuals, communities, and countries. Migration impacts countries unevenly, with some, having a higher proportion of foreign-born residents compared to others.

Regional migration patterns are influenced by geographical proximity, historical ties, and shared languages. Perceptions of migration often exceed reality, with many overestimating the foreign-born population due to media and political influences.

Forced migration is a critical issue, with over 108.4 million people displaced worldwide by the end of 2022, mainly due to conflict and persecution. Future migration trends are unpredictable and influenced by economic conditions, policy changes, demographic shifts, political instability, and climate change.

Architects and urban planners must adapt to changing migration patterns, designing inclusive and resilient environments to accommodate diverse populations. Migration fuels diversity in the population, bringing together different cultures and traditions to the UK. This cultural diversity not only influences architectural styles but also fosters innovation and hybridisation in design. Therefore, collaboration among architects, policymakers, and communities is essential for sustainable and inclusive urban development.

And lastly, under Designing for an increasingly diverse population:

This topic examines Britain's increasing neighbourhood diversity and its implications for the architectural profession, professional institutes, and communities. It highlights the need for architects to support diverse, intergenerational communities and promote social cohesion. Properly managed diversity can reduce inequalities, challenge stigmas, and enhance community well-being and solidarity. Over the past three decades, Britain’s neighbourhoods have become more ethnically diverse and less segregated. Age segregation, driven by socio-economic factors, is also increasing, particularly in small cities and urban peripheries. Wealth disparities influence residential patterns, with younger and older age groups living apart and ethnic minorities facing housing affordability challenges due to gentrification and market changes.

Designing inclusive places requires architects to consider the diverse orientations of building users, including age and ethnicity. This involves creating environments that foster a sense of belonging and accommodate different needs. Design strategies should address multiple orientations to support anti-racist approaches, decolonize the profession, and create age-friendly spaces. Addressing housing needs through diverse, affordable property options is crucial for intergenerational and ethnically mixed communities. Collaboration across sectors and reforms in planning models and housing systems are essential to achieving these design ambitions and promoting social and spatial justice over the next decade.

So that covers the Population Change theme and its topics addressing demographics, urbanisation, international migration and displacement and designing for an increasingly diverse population.

4. The Technological Innovation theme explores:

Machine learning which has recalibrated the human relationship with technology. Moving beyond the existential threat of replacement, which artificial intelligence can pose, this theme explores the emergent technological tools and how architects can best take advantage of their innovative use.

The topics covered in this theme address innovation strategy, digitalisation in design, automation in construction, architecture in the age of AI.

Under Innovation :

This topic looks into how the next decade is crucial for the global economy and the building industry, with innovation being the key to advancement by 2034. Learning from the overpromise of Building Information Modelling (BIM), the industry should focus on leveraging data, adopting a systems approach, and realizing the digital twin. Collaboration across the industry, breaking down silos, and embracing technology are essential for progress.

BIM's slow adoption and failure to meet high expectations highlight the need for better integration and collaboration facilitated by cloud technology. The industry's future success lies in embracing AI and fostering an information-sharing culture.

Three key areas will drive change: focusing on data as a resource, adopting a systems view of the built environment creating safer more resilient structures with far less environmental impact, and realising the digital twin enabling recording accurate and up-to-date information about an asset’s design and construction and, during operation, about its maintenance and improvement. These strategies will enhance collaboration, improve design processes, and enable sustainable and resilient building practices.

To achieve this, the industry must support tech adoption, integrate new tools, and foster innovation through partnerships and investments. Embracing these changes will allow architects and other stakeholders to adapt to a more tech-enabled, outcome-based business model, ultimately reshaping the building industry and contributing to a better-built world.

Under Digitalisation in Design:

This topic focuses on technological advancements that have significantly transformed the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) sector since the release of Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad in 1963. The transition from analogue to digital has seen the evolution from hand sketches to Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Building Information Modelling (BIM), and now artificial intelligence (AI). These technologies have revolutionised design, collaboration, and creativity in architecture. BIM, in particular, has enabled stakeholders to collaborate using a single, shared source of truth from concept to completion.

Emerging technologies, originally developed for gaming and rendering, such as graphics processing units (GPU) and distributed computing, are now enhancing performance-driven design. Open formats like Pixar’s Universal Scene Description are improving interoperability between software applications, while augmented and virtual reality technologies are transforming spatial appreciation and collaboration.

Digital twins, representing live, as-built assets, help monitor and improve building performance. AI and machine learning are automating design processes, making them real-time, immersive, and collaborative experiences. The exponential growth in computing power has accelerated AI and machine learning development, with models supporting design, business insights, and generative tasks. Digital technologies are transforming building design from a labour-intensive, time-consuming, occasionally fragmented and often repetitive process into a real-time, immersive and collaborative experience.

In the future, AI could automate and augment every aspect of construction and design, posing questions about the role of architects. The profession must adapt, ensuring that technology augments rather than replaces their creative and collaborative skills.

Under Automation in Construction:

This topic looks at how automation in construction elicits mixed reactions, with some excited about its potential and others worried about its impact on human jobs. Rather than focusing on futuristic visions of robots on construction sites, the goal should be to improve processes through industrialisation, enhancing sustainability, safety, and efficiency. Industrialised construction merges construction with manufacturing principles, using Modern Methods of Construction (MMC), off-site manufacturing, and robotics where appropriate. This approach aims to tackle systemic issues like labor shortages, low productivity, and poor safety records.

Automation, applied from design to data analysis, will centralise high-quality data, driving real-time improvements. By 2034, construction will heavily rely on automation, with robotics handling specific tasks and Modern Methods of Construction becoming the standard. Off-site construction in controlled environments will enhance productivity and safety. Companies like Mace have demonstrated the benefits of this approach, significantly improving quality and efficiency.

Generative AI will aid in design, enabling architects to create manufacturable products with precise data, improving project predictability and safety. The adoption of Modern Methods of Construction and automation will redefine architects' roles, requiring collaboration with the supply chain from the project’s start. This shift towards integrated project delivery will foster greater predictability and higher productivity, transforming the construction industry by 2034. Architects will need to understand more about buildability and what the supply chain can do to deliver better project outcomes. Greater openness between collaborators will benefit everyone, from main contractors to clients. This will elevate the architect’s role and create long term opportunities to build much bette

And lastly, under Architecture in the age of AI:

This topic look ahead to 2034, at how the intersection of architecture and AI will be shaped by four key signposts, guided by scaling laws that predict AI's capability growth.

1. Acquiring Professional Knowledge: AI systems need to access vast amounts of architectural data to achieve professional-level knowledge. This involves training on publicly accessible data and private repositories within firms, posing challenges regarding fair use and copyright

2. Achieving Human-like Judgement: AI must develop the ability to make and justify professional judgments based on uncertain information. This includes intuitive decision-making and aligning AI behavior with human values such as fairness and truthfulness.

3. Integrating into Business: Effective integration of AI into architectural practice could transform workflows, potentially reducing costs and changing job structures. The rise of AI-specific roles like ‘prompt engineer’ suggests a shift in job dynamics rather than outright displacement of architects.

4. Clarifying Professional Responsibility: As AI systems become more capable, delineating human vs. machine responsibility becomes crucial. Legal frameworks need to adapt to scenarios where AI plays a significant role in decision-making, ensuring clear accountability.

These signposts highlight the need for architects to address broader societal issues, as AI's rapid development influences not just architectural practices but also the design and purpose of the built environment in an AI-driven world.

So that covers the final theme Technological Innovation and its topics addressing innovation strategy, digitalisation in design, automation in construction, architecture in the age of AI.

To sum up what I discussed today:

Horizons 2034 is a new initiative that identifies some of the most significant emerging trends for the next decade and aims to help members to equip themselves for the future. It is a systematic process for identifying potential future trends, events and issues that may affect businesses, organisations, society and people.
It explores four key themes that will characterise and underpin the next ten years and is used by many including, government bodies, professional bodies and the private sector to think about the future
The themes it covers include the Environmental Challenge, the Economics of the Built Environment, Population Change and Technological Innovation. Each of the four themes is divided into four further topics, making a total of 16 topics, which are covered by a horizon scan.
The Environmental Challenge theme covers topics addressing mitigation of carbon emission, climate adaptation, biodiversity, and the role of engagement and activism.
The Economics of the Built Environment theme covers topics addressing interconnectedness and specialisation, emerging economies, inequality and financialisation.
The Population Change theme covers topics addressing demographics, urbanisation, international migration and displacement and designing for an increasingly diverse population.
The Technological Innovation theme covers topics addressing innovation strategy, digitalisation in design, automation in construction, architecture in the age of AI.
The scans are relatively broad and not technical providing a different and diverse view, coming from across continents and sectors of expertise.

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Episode 120 - RIBA Horizons 2034

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