Architect as Developer: Custom Tools for Architect-Developer Collaboration

Architecture is transdisciplinary. This project explores integrating a pair of roles that are becoming increasingly relevant to the discipline: software developer and real-estate developer. Architect as both real-estate developer and software developer leverages bespoke, in-house computational tools throughout the entirety of a project–encompassing site selection, programming, cost estimation, and generating pro formas for financing. This framework empowers designers to proactively engage in interdisciplinary collaborations, increases their design agency, and facilitates quicker feed¬back and dialogue between design and financial parties. The approach seeks to repair the current housing crisis through innovative design solutions, and the pilot project for testing and developing these tools is a building in the design phase: a live-work fourplex and gallery situated on the periphery of a burgeoning urban arts district.1