Architecture has always lived in the space between culture and technology. For Aksel Alvarez, that space is not theoretical. It is something he has lived through across countries, systems, and radically different building cultures.
A profession searching for its center
Born and trained as an architect in Venezuela, Aksel began his career where resources were limited and improvisation was part of everyday practice. After five years in professional practice, he moved to Germany where precision, engineering culture, and technical rigor reshaped his understanding of how buildings are conceived and delivered. Since 2016, he has worked in Sweden at White Arkitekter, one of Scandinavia’s most sustainability-driven firms, where he now operates at the intersection of Total BIM, climate data, and circular construction.
This geographical and professional journey has shaped not only how he designs, but how he understands the role of architecture itself.
“Today, everyone calls themselves something new. Digital specialist, computational designer, technologist. But all these roles drift away from what architecture is actually about.”
For him, architecture’s essence has never been the drawing itself but the capacity to interpret society, balance competing interests, and bring coherence to complex conditions.
“Architecture is less about visual expression and more about coordination.”
From inside a large international practice like White Arkitekter, Aksel sees clearly how the title “architect” has been stretched thin. New digital roles carve the profession into fragments. Simulation experts here, parametric designers there, modelers somewhere else. Many of these roles now sit far from the societal responsibility that once defined architectural work.
He does not blame the shift. The tools are powerful, and the building industry depends on them. But he worries about what disappears in the process.
“In many studios, the digitally literate migrate toward performance and simulation, while others drift toward form-making. The middle ground, the space where architects once connected technology, culture, and meaning, is dissolving.”
From his BIM leadership role, he sees how easily technology becomes an end in itself rather than a means. Architecture, in his view, should remain deeply technological, but never technocratic. Technology must inform judgement, not replace it.
Architecture has reinvented itself before
To understand the present, Aksel often turns to history. He points out that the very concept of a “project”, taken from the Latin prōicere, meaning to throw forward, emerged in Italy during the Renaissance. It marked the moment when architects moved away from secrecy and guild control. Knowledge became visible through drawings, perspectives, and shared representations. Designs could finally be communicated, discussed, challenged, and reproduced. Mathematics, geometry, and new tools transformed how cities and buildings were imagined.
“But we are now reaching a similar breakpoint. The technologies we rely on no longer hold the profession together. They fragment it.”
Just as earlier technological shifts redefined architecture, today’s digital infrastructure is forcing another redefinition. For Aksel, the question is not whether architects will survive, but whether they will recover their societal purpose inside a highly engineered industry.
From object-makers to context shapers
One of Aksel’s strongest convictions is that architects must stop thinking of buildings as isolated artifacts. Urban life, ecosystems, infrastructure, and climate are now too intertwined for that way of working.
“We are designing within systems that are already alive. Trees, rocks, people, water, logistics, politics. Everything interacts.”
At White Arkitekter, where sustainability, circularity, and climate performance are embedded into nearly every project, this way of thinking has become operational. The work is no longer only about how a building looks or functions, but about how it behaves within a broader living system.
“Designing biodiversity strategies, climate-responsive spaces, or adaptive reuse is not an add-on. It is increasingly the core of the work.”
Architecture, in this sense, becomes less about form and more about consequence.
Architecture must stay larger than its software
Aksel is deeply embedded in the digital ecosystem. He works daily with BIM environments, simulation tools, data platforms, and AI-assisted workflows. He is also painfully familiar with the legacy of older software infrastructures that still shape today’s building industry.
Yet he remains cautious about what he calls technological determinism.
“I do not believe technology decides our future. Culture and society shape the tools we create. It is a two-way street.”
He has experimented with VR and AR for nearly a decade, from early Enscape-based experiences to on-site augmented reality setups. While he sees clear value in field-based tools that connect models to built reality, he rejects the idea that immersive visualization should replace thinking.
“If a device generates the vision for you, it stops you from imagining. Visualization is not the same as thought.”
AI, however, has found a quiet place in his daily work. He uses it for research, restructuring legacy code, and cleaning up computational workflows. It is not spectacular, he says. But it is quietly reshaping how architectural labor is performed.
A future built on consequences
Where Aksel becomes most engaged is when he speaks about the future of the profession. He imagines an architectural practice where decisions are made with full awareness of long-term impacts, not only on climate, but on social structures, material cycles, and cultural life.
He envisions a profession where architects reclaim their role as synthesizers: people who connect environmental data, human behavior, structural logic, and economic constraints into one coherent direction.
“In ten years, we may look back and say: I cannot believe we once worked that way.”
Not because buildings will look radically different, but because the thinking behind them will.
For Aksel, architecture is not losing relevance. It is rediscovering responsibility. Moving away from isolated authorship and toward societal stewardship. Blending technical literacy with cultural understanding. Recognizing that design is not only a creative act, but an ecological one.
“Architecture cannot remain a profession of isolated intentions. It must become a practice of connected realities.”
This article originally appeared in ONSIGHT Magazine Issue #01 2026, the magazine for digital transformation in the construction industry, published by Vitus. Download the full magazine for free.
