Architecture and construction are latecomers to the digital transformation that has taken hold in other industries in recentyears. Presently, however, it is taking off fast, driven not least by government policies geared to encourage, support, and partly mandate the use of digital technologies in planning and construction, first and foremost Building Information Modelling (BIM). BIM still encounters considerable reluctance in parts of the industry, but also raises high hopes and expectations. BIM proponents, including governments, consulting firms, and the pertinent software producers, expect that it will reduce technical and managerial risks in the building process, strengthen transparency and collaboration among project partners, and improve the performance of buildings in various respects. Sceptics, mostly among architects and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME), are concerned that it might entail a stratification of the market, for reasons we will return to in this article, and possibly a loss of creativity, autonomy, and relevance for architectural practitioners. In addition, proponents are promoting BIM as a gate-opener for further, advanced digital technologies and approaches such as robotic prefabrication, AI, drones, sensors, and the Internet of Things, which, in combination, will lead to a profound digital transformation of architecture and construction. In this article, we seek to achieve a better understanding of the political-economic dynamics behind this transformation: what are the driving forces? Who is likely to benefit and who is more likely to lose? What reconfigurations of actor and power relations can we see in these ongoing processes and how will they most likely affect the chances of developing a more sustainable, more environmentally and socially just building culture? For our analysis, we draw on in-depth interviews with architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) professionals in Germany carried out in 2019 and 2020, along with document analysis and the literature on the digital transformation of architecture and construction. The document analysis mostly referred to Germany and the UK but also took international organisations into account. In order to assess the potentials, challenges, and implications of the ongoing digital transformation, we argue, it is important to take the socio-technical, economic and political dynamics into account that are driving it, intricately enabling and shaping each other as well as the power constellations they are embedded in. We examine these constellations and dynamics in light of the intersections of digitisation, datafication, and the current re-organisation of global capitalism, referring to the literature on platforms and platformisation, assetisation, platform capitalism, surveillance capitalism, data-driven, digital, or technoscientific capitalism. The focus of this article is therefore on the larger political-economic and techno-economic conditions that are shaping the implementation of digital technologies in architecture and construction. We explore how the use of these technologies has affected architectural practices and reasoning, which we suggest holds implications for the fundamental meaning of architecture.
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