🔍 What’s shaping architecture in 2025?

In Q1’s Architecture Industry Insights, curated by Ed Akins II, AIA, LEED AP, dives into billing data, market pressures, and economic indicators from the AIA ABI and ConstructConnect. With practical advice and forward-looking forecasts, it offers key insights to help architects stay resilient and strategic through continued industry shifts.

✅ Key highlights:

• Firm billings remain soft, with project inquiries and design contracts declining.

• Regional divergence deepens with the specific regions falling short.

• Firms say maintaining strong client ties is the top driver of profitability, outweighing tech and service diversification.

• Renewed attention on steel and aluminum tariffs impacting construction costs due to the expected time lag.

• The relationship between U.S. and Canada -- and how each country's construction is projected to grow.

• Sector snapshot into Residential, Institutional, and Industrial interest rates, who is on top, and which sector to watch.

• Commercial real estate lending is nearly flat, hovering at $3 trillion, the lowest growth since the Great Recession.