This thesis explores how architectural knowledge contributes to New Product Development (NPD) in the Swedish timber building industry and how the architect's role is affected as design moves beyond the architectural office and into long-term industrial development processes. The research is based on five applied research projects conducted between 2013 and 2026 focusing on the development of prefabricated timber façade systems for new construction, renovation, reuse, and adaptation to architectural contexts.

The point of departure is a perceived gap between architectural practice and product development in the timber building industry. While architects are often associated with form-giving and early design phases, the development of building systems is typically driven by engineers, manufacturers, and production specialists. At the same time, growing demands for circularity, digitalization, architectural context adaptability, and resource efficiency suggest new forms of collaboration across the building value chain. This raises questions about what architectural knowledge can contribute in these contexts and how architectural influence can be maintained throughout NPD processes. The research adopts a Research-through-Design approach, combining co-design, prototyping, workshops, interviews, digital tool development, and full-scale testing. As an architect and researcher embedded in the projects, I tracked how ideas, materials, digital models, prototypes, Design Criteria, and façade systems evolved over time and shaped collaboration among architects, manufacturers, engineers, researchers, property owners, and material suppliers. A central finding is that architectural knowledge contributes to NPD not primarily through form-giving, but through its capacity to connect and negotiate aesthetic, material, technical, contextual, and circular concerns. Across the five applied research projects, boundary objects became crucial for this process. Design Criteria, prototypes, material samples, digital models, workflows, and façade systems enabled different forms of knowledge to meet, be challenged, and gradually stabilize into shared decisions and façade systems. Rather than operating as passive representations, these objects actively shaped discussions, exposed conflicts, supported learning, and enabled collaboration across disciplinary boundaries. The findings further suggest that digital tools and workflows are not neutral instruments. They influence what knowledge becomes visible, what discussions become possible, and what architectural intentions survive as projects move towards manufacturing and implementation. Similarly, circularity became effective when it was embedded in systems, materials, joints, workflows, and future use scenarios rather than treated as a separate sustainability ambition.

The façade systems and prototypes represent materialized negotiations between architectural intentions, material behavior, manufacturing requirements, digital processes, and circular ambitions. Rather than being understood as fixed products, they function as boundary objects and adaptable frameworks designed to support variation, contextual adaptation, renovation, and future transformation.

Taken together, the findings suggest a repositioning of architectural agency within industrial NPD. The role of the architect expands from form-giver to system developer, mediator, facilitator, and curator of socio-material relations. Architectural influence depends not only on what architects know, but on how that knowledge becomes embedded in boundary objects, systems, materials, and collaborative processes. The thesis argues that these capacities are increasingly important as the building sector moves towards more circular, digitalized, and industrialized forms of development.