AI in my Architecture Practice - 2025 Update

Over the past few months I've been experimenting with AI and discovered something counter-intuitive: the most impactful AI tools I return to each day aren't design-related at all. It's the ones that eliminate the administrative burden stealing my creative time.

I tracked every hour of my work for a month and the results were sobering:

  • 35% administrative overhead

  • 25% meetings, site visits, coordination

  • 20% client management

  • 20% design and production

That doesn’t match how I see myself—or how most of us do. We imagine we’re in the business of designing. The reality is, we’re in the business of everything else!

While everyone's talking about AI for concept generation, I've found it's far more valuable as an administrative partner to help me reclaim some of that 80% (!!!) of non-design time.

Here are few quick use cases to inspire you:

1. Estimate Taxes + Optimize Paying Them

Tax time is closing in and this quarter, I used Claude 3.5 Sonnet to estimate my quarterly taxes for me, including the QBI deduction (that’s a bummer to calculate accurately, IYKYK!) I fed it my P&L and asked:

“Estimate my quarterly taxes, include QBI deduction, show your math, and document assumptions.”

It gave me a breakdown of AGI, deductions, and payments for Federal and State. Then I asked:

“What’s the best business credit card to use if I want to pay this tax bill and get the highest return, including signup bonuses? Factor in processing fees, annual fees, rewards and bonuses.”

It compared rewards, fees, and point value based on my actual spend. I picked one, applied and when I pay my taxes on April 15th I will have earned at least $1,100 in travel value plus some cash back. Now I have a 'tax project' in ChatGPT I can use moving forward.

BONUS HACK: When your new credit card arrives, don’t toss the Guide to Benefits. It’s a dense, jargon-filled list of every perk the card offers—trip delay insurance, extended warranties, purchase protection, and more. I used to ignore it too. Now, I snap a photo or upload the PDF to a dedicated ChatGPT project (mine’s called Credit Cards). I ask it to extract a summary: annual fees, renewal dates, and key benefits. Then I drop that into a Notion page for quick reference.

Even better, I’ve trained ChatGPT to create context-based reminders. For example, when I’m preparing to book travel, I just prompt:

“Act like my travel concierge. Based on the benefits from my [Card Name] guide, what should I remember to use, activate, or avoid when booking a trip?”

It replies with a checklist—flight protections, unused travel credits, which card to use for coverage, and claim instructions if something goes wrong. It’s actually saved me real money. I once left a new iPad on a plane and got it replaced because ChatGPT reminded me the card I used covered theft and loss.

You can do the same with memberships. AIA, for example, comes with perks that are easy to miss—rental car status, product + insurance discounts, even legal resources. Catalog them once, and your future self will thank you.

Other uses + ideas:

→ A. Forecast project cash flow month-by-month
Feed your live Google Sheet of invoices, payment milestones, and planned expenses into Claude or Gemini and prompt:

“Map expected cash flow by month for the next 6 months. Flag risk periods and suggest payment timing strategies.”
It’ll show you where things might get tight—before it happens.

→ B. Identify underperforming projects
Upload project-level budget actuals and ask:

“Which projects are tracking below projected profitability and why? Sort by fee structure and project type.”
This is insight you can act on—whether to adjust scope, schedule, or staffing.

→ C. Optimize recurring business expenses
Dump your last 6 months of business expenses into Claude and ask:

“Identify subscriptions, tools, or services that I haven’t used in 90+ days. Suggest where I can cut or consolidate.”
This is the digital equivalent of spring cleaning—and it saves real money.

2. Meeting Notes That Write Themselves

Client calls, site visits, coordination meetings—they pile up.

I use Granola.ai (you can also use Whisper transcription) to record all my meetings, then I upload the transcript to GPT-4o and prompt:

“Summarize this by (1) decisions made, (2) action items by stakeholder, and (3) unresolved issues.”

If the result is messy, I iterate:

“Now rewrite this as an email to each stakeholder in the form of a follow-up email—clear, concise, bullet points for each decision.”

The real shift happens when you use these meeting summaries to build a dedicated project in ChatGPT or Notebook LM (powered by Google's Gemini). I've started prompting:

"Compare this meeting's decisions to our last three meetings on this project. Identify any reversals or inconsistencies in client requests."

This catches potential scope creep early and provides documentation when change orders are submitted.

In Granola you can chat with any meeting too. I can't count how many times I've left a meeting only to forget the final decision we agreed upon for a minor project detail just a few hours earlier.

Other uses + ideas:

→ A. Auto-generate discipline-specific punch lists
After a consultant meeting or site visit, upload audio or transcript and prompt:

“Generate three punch lists: one for the GC, one for the electrical engineer, one for my internal team. Include photos if referenced.”
Use tools like SuperWhisper, Granola, or Whisper transcription + ChatGPT to pull this off.

→ B. Track design decision history
Feed in weekly notes and transcripts and ask:

“Track all decisions made about the kitchen design since project start. Include client rationale and status.”
It’s building a searchable memory—one you’ll be grateful for when changes come up.

→ C. Polish Design Narratives for Awards or Clients
LLMs excel at improving clarity and tone over multiple passes. Feed in your initial project description, then iterate:

  • Pass 1: Tighten the language

  • Pass 2: Highlight innovation without jargon

  • Pass 3: Match a specific style guide (e.g., “write this like a Dwell piece”)

The more you guide it, the more precise the result.

→ D. Throw your project meeting notes into Notebook LM
Take your project meeting minutes, site visit notes, and any related PDFs or emails and upload them to Notebook LM. Once the material’s in, prompt:

“Summarize these notes into a 6-minute podcast I can listen to on my way to the site. Prioritize unresolved issues, decisions made, and any changes since the last visit.”

Notebook LM will generate a natural-language conversational summary and you’ve got a quick, customized pre-visit briefing—no more scrambling to remember what happened last time.

3. scaling your expertise

I've started documenting any specialized workflows—the things only I know how to do—to make them transferable. For example, I recorded myself on Loom as I completed a zoning analysis for a new residential project. I took the transcript that it auto-generates and dropped it into Claude and asked:

"Transform this into a detailed SOP that a junior designer could follow. Identify steps where additional context is needed. Flag opportunities for automation and suggest ways to simplify or speed it up."

Once I had that draft, I asked GPT-4o to review it:

“Improve clarity, remove redundancies, and make sure a junior staff member could follow this without needing context.”

Now I have a reusable, self-contained + more efficient process I can easily share with a remote team member.Other uses + ideas:

→ A. Document your social media workflow
Record yourself outlining how you take a finished video or project photo and schedule it for Instagram or YouTube. Then ask:

“Turn this into a repeatable checklist with tool recommendations and time estimates. Make it usable for a VA.”
Now you’re delegating marketing without starting from scratch.

→ B. Formalize your proposal writing approach
Document how you create fee + scoping proposals. Feed into Claude and ask:

“Write an SOP for proposal development that captures performance goals, cost review, and documentation.”
You’ll spot steps that can be templatized or automated.

→ C. Create onboarding for new collaborators
Walk through your project folder structure, naming conventions, and communications process. Then:

“Create a ‘welcome doc’ for new freelancers or consultants that explains how to work with me effectively.”
You only write this once. It pays off every time you onboard someone new.

The most powerful addition I've recently implemented is a weekly "meta-review" where I ask the LLM to analyze its own outputs: "Review all AI-assisted tasks from this week. Identify patterns in what I'm asking for and suggest workflows that would anticipate these needs." This recursive learning loop has identified several repetitive tasks I wasn't even aware I was doing regularly.

Start small this week: pick the administrative task you find most draining and apply one of these approaches and experiment from there.

None of this is theoretical. These are small, compounding wins. Over time, they’re forming the backbone of something bigger—until I can think of a better name, I’ve been calling it, Project Intelligence. It’s a system that evolves alongside each project, remembers everything, and handles more of the overhead with every iteration. If you’re unfamiliar with the current AI tools, now’s a great time to begin experimenting.

Model Selection MATTERs:

Not all AI models perform the same. Each one has strengths depending on what you're trying to do. Here's how I choose:

GPT-4o (ChatGPT Pro)

  • Best for: General writing, email drafts, meeting summaries, everyday prompts

  • Why: Fast, reliable, well-rounded. Good at tone and formatting.

  • Use when: You want clarity fast, or you’re iterating on written content.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet / Opus (Anthropic)

  • Best for: Complex reasoning, SOPs, long context (e.g. project docs, transcripts)

  • Why: Structured, cautious, and good at step-by-step logic.

  • Use when: You need it to “think” clearly across multiple steps or large chunks of info.

Gemini Advanced (Google)

  • Best for: Financial modeling, spreadsheet logic, parsing PDFs from Drive

  • Why: Great with structured data and math-heavy prompts.

  • Use when: You’re projecting cash flow, comparing options, or dealing with numbers.

Perplexity Pro

  • Best for: Research, source-backed summaries, trend scans

  • Why: Cites everything. Good for learning something fast.

  • Use when: You’re researching materials, methods, or unfamiliar territory.

Grok (xAI / Twitter)

  • Best for: Real-time sentiment, trends, social-adjacent ideas

  • Why: Built on social data. Can be surprisingly creative.

  • Use when: You want to know what people are saying right now—or just explore ideas.

Bottom Line:

  • Use Claude for structure + logic

  • Use GPT-4o for clarity + versatility

  • Use Gemini for numbers + documents

  • Use Perplexity for citations + research

  • Ignore Grok unless you're very online

Kaizen in 2024

I don’t know about you, but I bristle at all the, “New Year, New You” post-holiday admonishments we hear every new year. As if we have to completely reinvent ourselves to make any kind of progress.

Typical new year resolutions set aggressive goals (tripling revenues, more projects, better clients, etc.), then force you to make equally major changes to achieve them.

It may feel like the ‘right thing to do’ as the CEO vision-casting the year ahead from your studio desk in early January. But in my experience, all too often it ends in burnout, frustration, and failure. By February you’re back to old habits, grinding it out, doing what you’ve always done.

I believe you can achieve more each year by focusing on small, continual improvements.

Improve what’s already working and gradually upgrade and phase out the things that aren’t.

The Japanese call this Kaizen, a practice of making continuous, incremental improvements in processes, products, and services. The goal is to enhance efficiency, quality, and overall performance gradually over time.

It’s similar to Apple releasing an update to iOS. They don’t throw out the entire code base and start over, they release patches and updates to fix bugs, add features and plug security vulnerabilities.

Instead of making major changes every January, I keep the word Kaizen at the top of my Notion dashboard and it’s become a guiding principle for the business. Think of all the small improvements you can make each week and implement a daily routine for checking them off your list. It’s easy and it’s attainable.

The Pareto principle can show you where to start.

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, can help you prioritize your efforts for maximum impact. The principle suggests that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

  • 80% of your revenues will come from 20% of your clients.

    • Implement a referral system to access their network to bring in new leads or ask about their next project (ready to start on that guest house?, brand new ADU incentives in '24, etc.) Keep it simple.

  • 80% of your new clients will come from 20% of your marketing.

    • What top-of-funnel activity can you do each day to find new (+ better clients)? One social post a day: maybe a sketch each morning posted to IG?

  • 80% of your challenges are coming from 20% of something in your career or business (i.e. - not enough work or revenue, client X is terrible to work with, collaborator Y takes all my time, boss Z is a micromanager)?

    • Focus your efforts on these critical issues first. Take small steps each day to make the change you’re seeking.

Small changes aren’t nearly as exciting as, “Triple my revenues this year.” But, they can be more impactful because they compound over time. If you invest in ‘average’ index funds, you know this to be true:

 
 

So to get more done in 2024 here’s an 80/20 challenge for you: what's something you're going to apply Kaizen to this year?

If you don’t know where to start, think about all the systems and processes you rely on each day but are repetitive and take time to execute. Formalizing your SOPs, creating branded templates and processes are table stakes for achieving bigger things with less overwhelm and higher profit margins.

Here’s a few examples:

Create presentation templates for client meetings. Do you search through the countless project folders to find a presentation you can cannibalize? I used to do that. Now I use pre-formatted templates when I need to prepare for a presentation. I have one for hardware + fittings, lighting fixtures + devices, interior + exterior material palettes, plumbing fixtures and just last year a new one for interior design + furnishings. The fonts are preset and my branding is there, so I simply paste in images of the relevant products and compose the presentation. I can export it as a PDF and then send it to the client after the meeting for their review and comment. A consistent look across all my documents is a professional deliverable that commands a professional fee.

Do you spend a lot of time answering prospective clients’ questions? Create a simple document that answers the most common questions you know every new client has. Talk about your process, your fee structure, and how long a typical project takes to design. This positions you as the expert, builds trust and allows those who aren’t a good fit to self-identify. Net effect: it reduces hours of back-and-forth answering the same rote questions everyone asks.

There are more of course and a few small improvements made each week will net massive results by the end of the year. If you’d like to shortcut the process, I’ve packaged up and included these documents in my Startup Toolkit, designed exclusively with the needs of design professionals in mind. Field-tested, beautifully designed and curated and on-sale through this Sunday (1/28/2024).

New tools for the Studio (iPad for Architects)

Do you really need an iPad as an architect, an intern or student? See if any of the four uses I came up with resonate with you. Having always sketched on paper or trace with pencil and ink, a tablet never really appealed to me or seemed entirely useful. I wasn’t sure how it would fit into my workflow, but the Apple pencil and Procreate have changed my mind.

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This underscores the importance that access to daylight had in shaping even the largest of cities, the individual buildings that make up those cities and, more broadly, sensible building design. With an increasing focus on sustainable design practices, the smart use of natural daylight in our homes is no longer a luxury — it has become a necessity. At the heart of any good daylighting strategy is a concept of “borrowed” light: the capture of light falling on the exterior of a home and transporting it to the spaces where it’s needed.

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For modern baseboard details I've designed see:

Pond House

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