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Real estate hasn’t fundamentally changed how buildings are designed, even as technology has reshaped nearly every other industry.
Most buildings today are still designed the same way they were decades ago. The layouts, systems, and assumptions all revolve around people doing the work: people cleaning, people fixing, people inspecting, people delivering.
In a conversation with Mark Cuban, he made the case that this assumption is about to break. AI and robotics won’t just change how buildings are operated. They’ll change how buildings are designed in the first place.
Walk through almost any apartment building or home and the design logic is obvious. Cabinets are placed for human reach. Appliances assume human interaction. Maintenance access assumes someone physically showing up to inspect and fix problems.
Cuban’s point is simple: “We design any type of home to fit a person doing everything.”
That works when humans did all the work in and around the home and systems have limited alternatives. It starts to break when labor is the largest operating expense and machines can do many of the same tasks continuously at a fraction of the cost.
When people think about robots in real estate, they picture humanoids walking hallways and fixing sinks. Cuban thinks that’s the wrong mental model.
Most robots won’t look like people because they don’t need to. They’ll be purpose-built machines designed to do one thing well: crawl, scan, lift, inspect, deliver, or monitor.
Once you stop designing for people-shaped machines, the constraints change. Robots don’t need doorways at human height. They don’t need kitchens laid out for standing work. They don’t need lighting, comfort, or aesthetics.
Designing for machines opens up an entirely different set of architectural possibilities.
As robotics and AI mature, buildings will increasingly be designed with automation as the default.
That means dedicated access paths for machines, embedded sensors, standardized connection points, and systems that allow robots to move, recharge, and communicate without human intervention.
New buildings can account for this from day one. Older buildings will have to be retrofitted, often at much higher cost.
Over time, the gap between automation-ready buildings and legacy buildings will widen.
Cuban also pointed to delivery and logistics as an overlooked driver of design change.
As autonomous delivery vehicles and robotic couriers become more common, proximity to distribution centers matters more than proximity to retail storefronts.
In the future, homes may be designed with direct, automated delivery access built in. Goods won’t just arrive at the front door. They’ll move through buildings via systems designed to route, store, and place items automatically.
Location value starts to shift from walkability and frontage to speed, efficiency, and integration with logistics networks.
The clearest place to see this shift start to happen is maintenance.
In real estate, payroll and maintenance are often the largest line items. Most of that cost comes from reactive work: something breaks, someone notices, a ticket gets opened, and a person is dispatched.
Cuban described a different model. “Instead of all that data going into a spreadsheet that someone looks at later, agents will just take care of anything that’s out of tolerance.” Small sensors the size of a button, computer vision, and AI agents continuously monitor systems. When something drifts out of tolerance, it’s flagged immediately. In some cases, it’s fixed automatically.
Instead of scheduled inspections or emergency calls, buildings move toward continuous oversight.
This changes design priorities. Access panels, sensor placement, and system visibility become more important than finishes and cosmetic upgrades.
The biggest gains in real estate will come from buildings designed to operate with fewer people, less friction, and tighter feedback loops.
Cuban’s point is about leverage. Designing for systems changes how buildings are monitored, maintained, and improved over time, in ways human-first design never allowed.
For developers and operators, the real question is whether today’s design decisions create flexibility for automation as these systems mature.
Want more operator-level thinking like this?
This piece comes from a longer conversation on Unordinary Pod, where we talk with founders and operators about how technology actually changes businesses, not just headlines.
Subscribe to the newsletter or listen to the full episode for deeper context and future-facing ideas.
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