Editor’s Note:

This article is part of Entralon Hub’s Leadership View series, where senior real estate leaders examine the structural forces shaping the next phase of residential investment and market behaviour.

In this feature, Iwein Meyskens, Managing Director at archipelago architects, reflects on how architectural practices themselves must adapt; rethinking skills, positioning, and internal structures to remain relevant in a market where buildings are judged by long-term performance rather than completion alone.

Long-term, performance-based delivery models do not only change projects. They change practices.

When buildings are evaluated across decades rather than at handover, architectural offices are forced to reconsider how they position themselves, how they organise knowledge, and how they define their contribution. Traditional workflows optimised for short design phases are no longer aligned with contracts that reward sustained performance.

The shift is not cosmetic. It is structural.

New value requires new capabilities

In DBFM(O) contexts, architectural value is tied to lifecycle behaviour. This demands capabilities that extend beyond conventional design production.

Practices are required to work with performance criteria, lifecycle considerations, and long-term adaptability as integral parts of the design process. This affects how decisions are made, documented, and communicated. Architectural intent must be legible not only to contractors, but to operators and asset managers who will engage with the building for decades.

As a result, the architect’s knowledge base expands from form and function toward long-term use, maintenance logic, and change readiness.

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Moving upstream in the project timeline

Long-term contracts pull architectural practices earlier into decision-making.

Key choices affecting performance are made before drawings are finalised: spatial flexibility, material strategies, system integration, and assumptions about future use. Practices that remain focused solely on downstream deliverables risk being excluded from these conversations.

To remain relevant, architectural offices must position themselves upstream where long-term value is shaped rather than documented.

This does not require abandoning design excellence. It requires anchoring it within a broader understanding of how buildings operate over time.

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Redefining practice, not just projects

The cumulative effect of these shifts is a redefinition of practice identity.