About
At the Intersection of Intelligence, Engineering, and Reflective Inquiry
WHO WE ARE
The Current Institute is an independent research institute dedicated to exploring how intelligence, organizational learning, and engineering practice evolve together. Through disciplined inquiry, practical observation, and collaborative research, we investigate ideas that have the potential to influence future professional practice.
OUR PURPOSE
We believe meaningful progress begins with better questions. Rather than pursuing optimization alone, we explore how understanding, context, organizational memory, and human judgment contribute to wiser decisions and more enduring knowledge. Our work spans research, publications, practical experimentation, and long-term initiatives that bridge theory and professional practice.
A QUIET COURSE CORRECTION
In an era increasingly defined by acceleration and optimization, we intentionally shift our attention toward understanding, stewardship, and long-term learning. We believe some of the most important advances occur not by moving faster, but by seeing more clearly.
Guiding Questions
Rather than organizing our work around products or technologies, The Current Institute organizes its research around enduring questions.
How might we discern the orientation of intelligence—beyond outcomes and outputs?
How might organizations remember as long as the buildings they create?
How might engineering preserve understanding—not simply information?
Current Initiatives
The Intelligent Building Initiative (IBI)
An independent initiative dedicated to advancing understanding throughout the built environment. Through research, publications, practical engineering, and industry collaboration, IBI explores how owners, engineers, and operators can better understand, operate, and continually improve the buildings entrusted to their care. Ongoing essays and research are published on Substack.
SOMA™ — Symbiotic Operations & Memory Architecture
An architectural research framework exploring how organizational memory can be intentionally preserved, connected, and applied throughout the lifecycle of complex facilities. Independent of any particular software implementation, SOMA investigates the enduring architectural principles required to preserve operational understanding across generations of buildings and professionals. What is SOMA?
Operational Stewardship
Buildings provide one of our principal laboratories for investigating how operational understanding develops, matures, and endures. This research explores the conditions under which organizations preserve knowledge, cultivate sound judgment, and transmit understanding across generations of people, technologies, and organizational change.
OBI™ - Operational Building Intelligence
The first comprehensive implementation of the SOMA architecture. OBI transforms organizational memory, engineering knowledge, and operational experience into practical tools that help owners and operators better understand their buildings, make better decisions, and continually improve operational performance.
The Resonator
An ongoing research initiative exploring how meaningful understanding emerges between human and artificial intelligences. Rather than optimizing for performance alone, The Resonator investigates alignment, reflection, context, and the conditions under which understanding itself can deepen.
The Foundation Library (Coming)
As our research matures, certain observations demonstrate an unusual degree of persistence across disciplines and applications. These observations are carefully stewarded within the Foundation Library, where they serve as enduring reference points for future research and practical application.
Our Focus
The Current Institute exists to explore how understanding emerges, matures, and is intentionally preserved so that it may continue to inform future generations rather than being diminished, fragmented, or forgotten.
The Intelligent Building
How Buildings Learn, Organizations Forget, and Engineering Can Remember
UPCOMING BOOK: A long-form research publication currently in development exploring organizational memory as an emerging engineering discipline. Drawing upon more than four decades of engineering practice and observation, the work examines how buildings accumulate understanding, why organizations lose it, and how future generations of professionals might intentionally preserve and apply that knowledge throughout the life of a facility.
Do Organizations Make a Habit of Forgetting?
Perhaps organizations do not intentionally forget. Perhaps they simply never develop an intentional practice of remembering. If remembering is not designed into the organization, forgetting becomes the default.
