Gleanings · No. 01 · November 4–10, 2026
The house nobody counted
Seattle tallies its first year of fourplexes, architects report that AI has become ordinary, voters turn on data centers and the climate talks open with a harder number.
This is the first Gleanings. Each week we gather what changed in building, in AI and in the wider world, and read it against the six themes we work by. Every item links to its source and ends with a question, because the questions are usually more use than our opinions.
Six items this week.
Building
SeattleCircular
One year of fourplexes: 588 homes on 147 lots
Seattle has allowed four homes on most residential lots since July 2025. A Seattle Times column this week counted the first year of permits and called the result a mess. The Urbanist answered with the same figures: 65 projects of four freestanding houses, 52 of two duplexes and 30 of a duplex with two houses. That is 588 homes on 147 lots that would each have held one.
The column’s complaint is that older homes are being bought, razed and replaced by tall, bulky houses on lots “scraped of every living thing.” The reply is that teardowns are nothing new, and at least these ones now yield four homes.
Through our lens
We think both sides have a point, and both skip a question. One argues about whether the new walls should touch. The other argues about how many homes result. Neither asks whether the old house had to go. By our own estimate, keeping a sound house and building around it avoids far more carbon than any choice about the new buildings, and it keeps the trees that grew up with it. More homes and less demolition are not opposites.
PracticeAEC Innovation
Three in four architecture firms now use AI every day
The American Institute of Architects published The Business of Architecture 2026 on November 9, drawn from nearly 900 firms. It reports that 74% use artificial intelligence in day-to-day operations, and that more firms are writing formal AI strategies. Firms averaged $152,000 in net billings per employee in 2025.
Through our lens
Using AI is no longer a distinction. When every firm has the same tools, drawings and reports get cheap, and what is left is what a firm knows that the tools do not: how its buildings performed, what its mistakes cost and whether its word can be trusted. That is why we think the record matters more than the software.
ToolsAEC Innovation
A building model you can question in plain words
Qonic, a cloud modeling platform, added built-in AI agents on November 5 and opened a connection for outside assistants. AEC Magazine reports that a user can ask whether every window has a fire rating, get a list of the ones that don’t and tell the tool to fill them in. The makers stress that changes can be undone like any manual edit.
Through our lens
This is where design software is heading: models that can be read and changed by asking. It will catch errors that people miss. It will also make it easy to accept an answer nobody checked. Our own rule is that a named person stands behind anything that enters the record, however it was produced.
The wider world
EnergyNet-Zero
Voters in ten states said no to data centers
In the November 3 election, voters in dozens of localities across ten states approved measures to ban or pause new data centers, the buildings that house the computers behind AI. Construction Dive reports that an NBC exit poll found 76% of voters opposed new data centers in their own communities. One professor quoted put it this way: people are not rejecting AI, they are rejecting the cost they are asked to pay for it.
Through our lens
We use AI, including to gather this review. The electricity and water behind it are part of our footprint, even though they are spent in someone else’s town. Honest accounting has to include that. We don’t yet know our own number.
ClimateNet-Zero
The climate talks open with a harder number
The United Nations climate conference, COP31, opened in Antalya, Türkiye, on November 9. The number hanging over it comes from the UN’s Emissions Gap Report, published in October. The world will pass 1.5°C of warming. Current policies point to 2.8°C this century. Holding the peak near 1.7°C would take cuts of 18% by 2030 and 45% by 2035, measured from 2025. The Secretary-General’s line was that “overshoot is not surrender.”
Through our lens
A small studio can’t move a global number. It can decide what its own buildings add. For us that means keeping existing houses, taking gas out and judging every green measure by what it really displaces. It also means designing for the weather that is coming: more heat, more smoke and harder rain.
NorthwestNet-Zero
The Northwest’s power plan is delayed by an error its authors found
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council writes the plan that guides the region’s electricity for twenty years. Its staff found an error in how their hydropower model was set up, said so in public and will issue a second draft, possibly in December. Public sessions on the corrected results run through November 19. (The delay was announced October 30.)
Through our lens
Our argument that solar panels do little for the climate in Seattle rests on the region’s hydropower, so this plan matters to us. But the part we admire is the correction. A public body found its own mistake, published it and took the delay. That is the standard we want to hold ourselves to.
One question to carry
Three of this week’s items are about counting: homes per lot, firms using AI, votes against data centers. The thing that did not get counted was the old house.
What else are we not counting because nobody asked?
Gathered and drafted with AI assistance from public reporting. Every item was read, edited and approved by Keith Cash, co-founder, before it was published. Each links to its source. Found a mistake? Tell us.