Abstract

With the advent of Industry 4.0 and technological evolutions, the dawn of a new era for architecture has clearly commenced. The unprecedented possibilities of robots and artificial intelligence in applications at every stage of the architectural design and construction process are transitioning from research labs to industry. At the same time, experts debating ‘the future of work’ deem architecture as one of the jobs least likely to be automated. We evaluate and expand on a skills list forecast by Bakhshi et al. in their 2017 book The Future of Skills to be crucial to the workforce of 2030. We project further ahead, outlining a list of key skills for architects in 2050. We argue that architecture demands a unique hybridity of skills that makes the profession both relatively resistant to wholesale technological outsourcing and uniquely positioned to benefit from the innovations the digital age will bring.