Why the future of the built environment depends on how, and who, we invite into the story

The future of the built environment won’t be drawn in authoring tools or programmed in code alone. It will be imagined first, by someone who notices a gap, follows a thread, and quietly asks, “What if it looked different?”

But many of those people, especially those with the most to offer, never get the chance to show up.

That early step, the one taken in curiosity, not certainty, is often where the journey should begin. Yet across the industry, we’ve built systems that make that step harder to take.

We’ve optimised everything: project cycles, digital workflows, performance indicators. But in doing so, we’ve left little space for something upstream of it all. Imagination, not as decoration, but as foundation.

When someone can’t see themselves in the systems, models, or language of the industry, when there’s no invitation that says, “You’re allowed to be curious here,” they drift away. Or never look in the first place.

Many of us remember that early spark. When we learned what a building could do. When we described our work with pride, maybe even a little smugness. That quiet wonder mattered.

Somewhere along the way, we lost touch with it. And the systems we’re designing are starting to reflect that loss.

And when we ask where the missing voices are, the answer often isn’t found in what we’ve said, but in what we’ve failed to notice.

Exclusion rarely announces itself. It happens through repetition, silence, and what no one questions.

A neurodivergent student who learns through metaphor instead of method, thinking like a designer before ever hearing the word.

A working-class boy who maps spatial sequences intuitively but struggles to articulate them in a personal statement.

A multilingual student from a culturally rich background who navigates meaning and identity across three worlds each day, but is rarely offered a fourth: the language of systems.

A teenage girl who sees the world in 3D, mapping structure, flow, and sequence in her mind, but rarely sees herself reflected in the spaces where those patterns take form.

These aren’t edge cases. They’re structural patterns. Too many minds are filtered out long before they reach a studio, site, or system. Not because they lack ability, but because no one thought to design for how they naturally process the world.

To truly address this, we have to stop treating inclusion like a checklist and start seeing it as a design challenge.

Current strategies often isolate inclusion into identity categories: race, gender, class, neurotype. But exclusion is rarely that neat. Most barriers are overlapping. Social, cognitive, racial, gendered, economic. They stack quietly and often go unseen.

This is why connection, if it’s going to be real, has to be structural. Not reactive. Not symbolic. Structural.

Inclusion can sometimes feel like a game of musical chairs. By the time ‘someone new’ arrives, the music has stopped and every seat is taken. But these aren’t one-off exclusions. They are layered, systemic blind spots.

We don’t need to add more chairs to a room that wasn’t built for everyone. We need to question how the room was designed in the first place.

Designing for difference isn’t about making space. It’s about starting with space in mind.

And sometimes, the best way to begin that design is by changing how we extend the invitation.

We often introduce the industry through job titles. “You could be an engineer.” “You could be a planner.” But for many, the invitation begins not with a label, but with a reflection.

You might be someone who simplifies complexity.

You might connect the dots faster than most realise.

You might already think like a strategist, even if no one’s called you that yet.

When you describe how someone thinks before assigning them a role, you de-pathologise difference. You give them more than a title. You give them a thread.

And that moment, when someone pauses and says, “That sounds like me,” is where connection begins. That pause is infrastructure.

This is where stories do what diagrams can’t.

A diagram explains. A story invites.

At ThreadPoint Studio, we call this Narrative Infrastructure for Future-Ready Learning. Story-led experiences that help young people make sense of the systems shaping their world, from how their cities move to how digital tools operate in the background of their lives.

Especially for learners who are neurodivergent, multilingual, or underrepresented, story isn’t a soft tool. It’s a scaffold. A structure. A way in. It’s how we honour how people actually learn and how we design for them from the start.

And this isn’t just a theory of change. Other sectors have already shown what happens when you redesign around cognition and connection.

Companies like SAP, Aviva, and Bank of America are hiring based on how people think, not just how well they fit a template. They’re building autism hiring pathways, redesigning onboarding, and consulting on cognitive diversity.

The results?

More innovation.

Greater retention.

Stronger adaptability.

Better human alignment across digital change.

These aren’t built environment companies. But the principle transfers. Every sector built on systems depends on those who can think across them.

Inclusion doesn’t dilute excellence. It expands the system’s intelligence.

And as our tools get smarter, our need for human intelligence, not just efficiency, becomes more critical.

We are building faster than ever. Automating. Optimising. Simulating.

But AI can’t tell when someone is confused but afraid to ask. It can’t reassure a learner that they belong. It can’t say, “Come in. You’re needed here too.”

That’s still human work. And it’s more urgent than ever.

As George Bernard Shaw wrote:

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will.”

If we want more people designing the future, we have to begin where creation begins.

Because connection isn’t a side benefit. It’s the start of everything.

Every learner is looking for a thread, a pattern they recognise, a path that feels plausible.

But even when they find the thread, they still need a threshold. A doorway. An invitation. A moment that says, “This space is for you too.”

We often ask why more people aren’t entering the sector.

Maybe the better question is: what kind of invitation are we offering?

At ThreadPoint Studio, we believe infrastructure isn’t just physical. It’s emotional, cultural, cognitive.

Our work weaves story, identity, and access into the systems that shape our world, so more people can imagine their place within it.

Through my role at Women in BIM and the work we’re doing at ThreadPoint Studio, I’ve seen what happens when someone not only finds the thread but is invited through the threshold.

Connection isn’t decorative. It’s foundational.

And if we design for it now, we won’t need to retrofit it later.