How architectural technologists helped bring three iconic buildings to life
Posted on: 25 August, 2026
By Linda Serck
From Battersea Power Station’s painstakingly restored chimneys to the digitally modelled concrete shell of V&A Dundee, architectural technologists help turn ambitious designs into reality. But how do they do it?
Landmark buildings are often presented as the work of a single celebrated architect. The familiar story begins with a sketch, jumps to a glittering opening and leaves the difficult middle largely out of shot.
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Yet a dramatic concept cannot tell a contractor how glass should connect to steel, whether a façade can expand and contract safely, how pipes, cables and ventilation ducts will fit above a ceiling, or how a historic wall can accommodate an entirely new use. Between vision and completion lies a complex project of drawings, specifications, digital models, regulations, testing and coordination. Architectural technologists are among the professionals who make sure this technical detail translates into a safe, workable and buildable design.
Concept, innovation, realisation
Architectural Design Technology is the common degree title, while the professional discipline is generally known as Architectural Technology. The Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists (CIAT) describes it as the application of science and technology to the design of buildings, stating that chartered Architectural Technologists “are leaders of technological design, forming the link between concept, innovation, and realisation”.
Architectural technologists can work within multidisciplinary practices, contractors and developers, or manage projects themselves from inception to completion.
Three celebrated UK developments below highlight how much technical intelligence sits behind an architectural headline.
Battersea Power Station
The transformation of Battersea Power Station presented a huge conundrum: how could a vast, decaying Grade II* listed industrial monument become a functioning neighbourhood without losing the qualities that made it famous?
WilkinsonEyre led the restoration and repurposing of the Power Station, introducing homes, shops, restaurants, entertainment venues and more than 58,000 square metres of office space while preserving the dominance of its turbine halls, brick elevations and four chimneys.
Purcell Architecture’s conservation team surveyed the masonry and prepared repair schedules covering the building’s seven million bricks. RIBA reports that 1.8 million replacement bricks were produced in 12 different blends to recreate subtle variations across the elevations. All four chimneys were reconstructed using wooden shuttering and hand-poured concrete to reproduce the markings and character of their predecessors.
On a project of this kind, architectural technologists would typically help convert surveys into coordinated repair drawings, specifications and schedules. They might detail the junctions between retained brickwork and new windows, roofs and floors; integrate accessibility and fire-safety requirements; coordinate newly inserted circulation cores; and resolve the interfaces between heritage fabric and modern building services.
The glass lift rising through the north-west chimney offers a vivid example. The technical team would need coordinated information covering the existing structure, lift installation, glazing, weatherproofing, maintenance access, passenger safety and the tolerances between historic fabric and new components. Architectural technologists help turn such an idea into something that can be approved, procured and assembled.
Battersea also demonstrates that technical design is not the enemy of architectural heritage. Careful detailing allows historic character to survive a radical change of use.
The Shard
Renzo Piano Building Workshop conceived The Shard as a vertical city, bringing together offices, restaurants, a hotel, apartments and public viewing spaces. Its structural system changes as it rises. WSP describes a steel-framed structure across the first 40 floors, a post-tensioned concrete frame extending to level 72 and a steel-framed pinnacle above.
Each section had to accommodate a complicated network of lifts, service risers, escape routes, internal finishes and mechanical systems serving very different occupants. A hotel room, office, apartment and viewing gallery may share the same tower, but they have different requirements for acoustics, servicing, security, circulation and environmental control.
Mace says 80% of the mechanical, electrical and public-health services were prefabricated. The 500-tonne, 66-metre-high spire was also assembled from prefabricated sections and incorporated around 800 pieces of glass and steel.
Off-site manufacture can improve quality, safety and speed, but it places enormous pressure on the accuracy of the design information. If done wrong, it can become an expensive component arriving on site with nowhere to go.
Within a development of this complexity, architectural technologists’ work would include detailed façade and interior packages, model coordination, specifications, integration of fire and accessibility information, and checking how architectural elements connect with structure and services.
They may also help manage design changes as information passes between the architect, specialist manufacturers, engineers and contractor. Every alteration has a ripple effect. Moving a wall can affect a ceiling grid, ventilation route, fire compartment, door schedule and floor finish.
V&A Dundee
V&A Dundee provides perhaps the clearest published account of work closely aligned with architectural technology.
Designed by Kengo Kuma and Associates, the museum’s twisting form was inspired by Scotland’s coastal cliffs. Its curved concrete walls, floors and roof work together as one interconnected structural shell. The geometry was too complex to communicate effectively through conventional two-dimensional drawings, so the design was conceived, developed and delivered through an integrated three-dimensional model.
The model allowed architects, engineers and contractors to examine the building as a whole, analyse structural changes and find routes for services through exceptionally restricted spaces. Arup produced a fully coordinated services model that was subsequently used by the contractor to develop installation drawings.
Virtual reality allowed the team to enter the model at full scale and test whether plant controls could be reached or whether technical spaces were becoming too congested. Three-dimensional printed models helped explain how windows, doors, internal walls and complex concrete formwork would fit together.
The museum’s façade translated Kuma’s irregular cliff-like concept into 2,429 manufactured reconstituted-stone elements. Parametric modelling generated the different panel lengths and shapes, while a bespoke bracket held each element away from the curved concrete wall at the required angle. The fixing was designed to accommodate numerous variations without requiring an entirely different solution for every panel.
Here, the architectural technologist’s world becomes visible: model accuracy, component schedules, fixing details, construction tolerances, weatherproofing, buildability and communication with manufacturers.
A technologist working on a comparable project could coordinate digital models, develop façade and internal-detail packages, check clashes, prepare construction information and help ensure that the geometry remained faithful to the architectural concept while being practical to manufacture and install.
Invisible profession, visible architecture
Architectural technologists are not confined to supporting another designer’s work. Some lead their own projects, while others become crucial members of large multidisciplinary teams.
Their particular value lies in connecting different worlds. They understand architectural intent but also ask what happens at the edge of the drawing: how a component will be fixed, drained, insulated, accessed, protected, maintained and eventually replaced.
Architectural technologists are the bridge between grandiose architectural designs and reality. Their work preserves the force of the original idea while giving manufacturers, contractors and site teams the precise information needed to build it.
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