The world of architecture is undergoing a profound transformation.
If in the past the architect was a solitary creator armed with sketches, drawings, and renderings, today they are increasingly becoming the conductor of digital processes. The era when design relied on fragmented tools — visualization in one program, budgeting in another, and endless coordination through emails and chats — is giving way to a new generation of integrated systems that connect the entire lifecycle of a project within a single platform.
The idea for such a platform emerged gradually — through years of observing how architectural and interior projects evolve in different contexts.
In Russia, where I practiced for many years, architects often face bureaucratic fragmentation and a lack of cohesive digital tools. In the United States, where I now lead my Chicago-based practice studio, the process is more client-driven and data-integrated, with growing reliance on digital ecosystems that link design, documentation, and execution.
Between these two worlds, a shared idea began to take shape — to create a system that unites design, management, and visualization into a single technological flow.
Together with my American colleagues, we are now developing a SaaS platform where I serve as the lead architect, overseeing its conceptual and design direction.
The project brings together automation, 3D visualization, contract management, and real-time budgeting in one environment. Its mission is clear: to make the design and construction process transparent, predictable, and collaborative — for architects, clients, and contractors alike.
From Craft to System
Architecture has always been a synthesis of art and logic.
But today, it also demands a synthesis of people, data, and process. The leading architectural firms of our time have already begun to embrace this digital shift.
Foster + Partners continues to expand its in-house BIM and cloud infrastructure, enabling global teams to work on live models simultaneously. Zaha Hadid Architects, through its research unit ZHA Code, explores AI-driven generative design and urban data analytics. And Gensler, one of the world’s largest firms, developed the Intelligent Design Data Platform, transforming decades of project experience into a living knowledge system.
These initiatives signal a broader evolution: architecture is no longer just a project — it is becoming a product. Dynamic, adaptive, and intelligent.
A New Architecture of Interaction
Our platform follows the same philosophy — it connects every participant in the design and construction chain within one digital ecosystem.
Clients can select layouts, finishes, and furniture with instant 3D previews directly in the browser. Every decision updates the budget and contractual framework in real time, while contractors receive immediate access to revised specifications.
This changes the very structure of collaboration. The architect becomes not a “file provider,” but a curator of the process. The client, in turn, becomes an active participant — involved, informed, and empowered.
In this environment, communication becomes part of the design itself.
AI as a Tool of Intelligence, Not Replacement
The integration of artificial intelligence represents the next leap.
AI in our platform acts not as a replacement, but as an assistant — one that enhances creativity rather than automating it away. It can generate spatial layouts, analyze circulation and lighting, suggest materials within a given budget, and simulate cost implications before construction even begins.
This evolution echoes a global movement in architectural practice.
BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group has established BIG LEAP, a team dedicated to exploring machine learning in façade and sustainability design. Perkins&Will employs AI to assess how architectural choices affect health and well-being. Across the industry, AI is no longer experimental — it is becoming a trusted collaborator.
Through these tools, architects can reclaim what machines cannot replicate: the human ability to imagine, interpret, and compose meaningful space.
Virtual Reality: The New Sensory Dimension of Design
If AI helps us think, then virtual reality helps us feel.
VR immerses clients directly in their future environments — allowing them to walk through unbuilt spaces, sense light and proportion, and experience atmosphere long before construction begins. Together with the architect, they can adjust finishes, furniture, or lighting in real time, transforming design review into an emotional, tactile experience.
Many leading firms are already embracing immersive technologies.
Morphosis Architects operates a full-scale VR lab for experiential walkthroughs, while UNStudio has developed custom VR tools to analyze spatial perception and daylight dynamics.
In our ongoing development, VR will play a central role — enabling clients to explore projects remotely, collaborate virtually, and co-create in shared 3D spaces. What once served as a presentation tool is evolving into a design environment of its own.
The Digital Culture of Architecture
SaaS, AI, and VR are not just technologies — they represent a new cultural language for architecture.
The architect is no longer only the author of form, but the orchestrator of systems and experience. When design, visualization, budgeting, and implementation coexist in one digital framework, confusion gives way to clarity. Clients see the real cost of their choices; contractors operate with live information; and designers regain the space to focus on what matters — ideas, meaning, and expression.
This is not the end of artistry — it’s its evolution.
Technology, when guided by design thinking, becomes a medium of creativity rather than a constraint.
The Future Is Already Here
We are entering an era of synergy — between human and algorithm, emotion and logic, vision and data.
SaaS platforms provide the structure, AI accelerates the creative process, and VR restores the physicality that design was always meant to evoke.
Together, they form a digital design ecosystem — one where collaboration replaces fragmentation and where creativity finds new forms of expression through technology.
Architecture has always been the art of space.
Now, it is becoming the art of interaction — between designer and client, between imagination and information, between today and the future.
Author Bio:
Oleg Kardaev is a Chicago-based architect and interior designer, founder and principal of KODDIZ Studio.
01/01/2025 
01/03/2020