Principals aren't encouraging young architects to sketch any more. What firms hire for is Revit proficiency; sketching has been demoted to a personal plus, useful to the graduate but not asked for by the organisation. So I put the question to a former student of mine, Aminuddin Zakaria — a design architect and BIM lead working on civic and institutional projects at Arkiskape Sdn Bhd — and his answer was blunt. He sees very few graduates sketching in practice, and even experienced architects skipping straight to production. That, he says, is how we end up with such generic architecture, always justified by time and cost.
His own view is the opposite: he still sketches, right through to construction stage, because it explains faster, goes deeper and solves problems quicker than any software. CAD and Revit are tools for contract documentation. Anyone designing at concept stage without sketches ends up slow, rigid, and with no authentic intent. AI belongs in the workflow — it automates, simulates, frees up time to experiment — but it shouldn't replace this stage. We aren't using the tool we were given. And a rigid solution makes for a stilted conversation: with engineers, with fabricators, with anyone you need to work a joint out with in a room.
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