Every architectural project has two faces: the one on show, made of forms and materials, and the one that stays backstage. We’re not talking cranes and hard hats, but that grey area of permits, logistical dovetailing, teams co-existing and the management of the unexpected. It’s the invisible side of building: the part that never appears in the renderings yet decides a project’s fate.
Bureaucracy is not a detail (No, really.)
Forget reinforced concrete: the first real wall is paper. Stamps, authorisations, regulations. Not the most glamorous bit, granted, but without it nothing moves. And ticking boxes isn’t enough: you need to read the system’s fine print, anticipate friction, use the rules of the game as your compass. In other words, the legal backstage is already part of the project.
Logistics: the Tetris no one imagines
A building site isn’t just construction: it’s a choreography of materials, equipment and people. When logistics work, no one notices; when they don’t, everyone remembers. The backstage is an exercise in synchronicity: coordinating suppliers, managing access, keeping to schedules. A less tangible art, but a decisive one.
The unexpected isn’t unexpected
In theory they’re obstacles; in practice, they’re the norm. Delays, supply errors, structural surprises: every site knows them. The difference lies in preparation. Reading complexities early, anticipating criticalities and steering them through to handover is what separates a loosely organised approach from a solid one. We call it Consult – Design – Delivery, and it works because it sequences what usually stays disconnected: we read real requirements and the context’s rules before we draw, we design choices that simplify logistics and reduce snags, and in delivery we coordinate timing, players and surprises under a single direction.
If you’d like to see how Altis keeps the visible and the invisible sides of a project together, write to [email protected]
