Venture capitalists have long used a simple but powerful analogy to evaluate potential investments: is this product a painkiller or a vitamin? Painkillers address urgent, acute problems—people will pay almost anything to make the pain stop. Vitamins, on the other hand, are about long-term wellness, gradual improvement, and quality of life. While this framework resonates with the startup world, it offers surprising parallels for the fundamental question of what makes architecture truly successful.

In architecture, the painkiller approach is everywhere. It’s visible in the spreadsheets that define project success: square footage requirements, room counts, capacity metrics, and budget checkboxes. This quantitative methodology treats buildings as outcomes of solved problems. A school needs to accommodate X number of students, therefore it requires Y classrooms of Z square feet each. Problem solved, pain relieved. “Butts in seats” on the first day of school. Success becomes a matter of whether the building can physically contain the required number of bodies on time and on budget.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach. Buildings must function, and functional requirements are real constraints that architects cannot ignore. A hospital that doesn’t have enough examination rooms fails at its fundamental purpose, just as surely as a painkiller that doesn’t relieve pain. But when we reduce architecture entirely to this painkiller paradigm, we miss something essential about what makes buildings meaningful to the people who inhabit them. We.focus on efficiency at the expense of the “why” behind a project.

Vitamins

If painkillers address acute needs, vitamins nourish long-term wellbeing. In architecture, the vitamins are fundamentally experiential—it’s about using space, materials, and light to evoke positive emotions and create memorable experiences. It’s the difference between a building that merely houses its program and one that genuinely enriches the lives of its occupants.

Consider the use of natural light, the most universally praised characteristic of beloved buildings. From a purely painkiller perspective, artificial lighting solves the problem of visibility—occupants can see what they’re doing – box checked. But thoughtfully orchestrated natural light does so much more. It blurs inside and out, creating awareness of time and season, and suffuses us in a biophilic hug. This architectural vitamin therapy does not solve an acute problem, but elevates everyday experience.

Vitamins manifest in other ways too: processions that take occupants on a journey through a building, creating anticipation and surprise; moments of contrast and drama that make spaces memorable; careful editing of views to frame relationships with the surrounding landscape; and the fostering of connections—both to the natural world and to community with thoughtful sightlines within and beyond the building.

Critically, painkillers and vitamins are not mutually exclusive. In fact, our most successful buildings weave these approaches together. This integration becomes particularly important in building types that we are familiar with. Schools, arts and cultural institutions, religious buildings, and nonprofit agencies all serve missions that extend beyond mere spatial accommodation—they’re explicitly about building human capital, fostering growth, and nurturing communities. For these building types, the vitamin approach isn’t a luxury; it’s integral to fulfilling the institution’s core purpose.

Even more essential are vitamins in buildings whose occupants have experienced trauma or loss. Healthcare facilities, crisis centers, memorial spaces—these buildings serve populations in vulnerable states where environmental quality directly impacts healing and recovery. Here, the experiences in buildings become as functionally crucial as the program requirements listed on any spreadsheet.

The challenge for contemporary architecture is that the painkiller approach dominates not just design thinking but also how projects are evaluated and valued. Clients often find it easier to justify expenditures for quantifiable needs than for experiential qualities. Budget cuts invariably target the “extras”—the carefully detailed entry sequence, the thoughtful material palette, the transparency—precisely those vitamins that transform a functional container into a place people genuinely want to inhabit.

Yet the irony is that a painkiller mindset often fails even by its own metrics. A school designed purely to maximize capacity may fit all the required students. Still, if it’s a dispiriting place to spend time, it undermines the educational mission it was meant to serve. The painkillers addressed the immediate constraint, but the vitamin deficiency persists for generations.

As architects, we need to advocate for both approaches—to meet the measurable, quantifiable needs while also championing the experiential qualities that make buildings truly successful. This means helping clients understand that aspects like natural light, thoughtful spatial sequences, and responsive site design aren’t decorative flourishes but fundamental components of buildings that fulfill their intended purpose over decades of use.

The painkiller-versus-vitamin framework ultimately helps us articulate what we instinctively know: great architecture addresses both urgent needs and long-term flourishing. It solves the problem and elevates the everyday. It solves the program while feeding the soul.