Last Meal: Unveiling the Delivery Window Architects, Why Have We Been Silent?
By Ibrahim Joharji
Cities today are being remade not by planners, but by delivery riders. A sleek curtain rises on a new urban reality: restaurants carving delivery windows, teams of motorbike riders forming in silent corners, and architectural space being quietly repurposed. And yet, as architects, we remained silent. With Last Meal, I aim to ask the obvious question: Why did we, as designers of cities, stay on the sidelines?
Worldwide, the motorbike delivery economy isn’t niche it’s surging. In the U.S. and Canada, DoorDash reports that the share of deliveries made by bike, e-bike, or scooter has tripled since 2022. In San Francisco alone, a staggering 76% of all DoorDash orders use two-wheeled transport so efficient that couriers earn about 10% more than car drivers Axios+1. At the same time, projections value the global motorcycle transportation market at $82 billion in 2024, forecasted to reach $144 billion by 2033 at a 6.5% CAGR Business Research Insights. These shifts are not local—they define how cities move.
“Today, tapping the app to buy your meal is purely a financial transaction. But everything that follows is architecture: receiving the order in a spatial setting, moving through the urban fabric, navigating elevators, staircases, and doorways. It is an entire chain of architectural dialogues, even if we have never named it that way.”
— Ibrahim Joharji
And yet, in architecture schools and studios, few have questioned what this means for our built environment. Why have architects not asked: Shouldn’t this new mobility model demand new design standards? Shouldn’t delivery windows, rider rest hubs, quick maintenance zones be part of our code?
My research, Last Meal, offers that very alternative. It proposes the world’s first architectural code for delivery windows standardizing dimensions, materials, and placement and goes further to integrate rider-centric features like rest pods, maintenance nodes, and sanitation points. This isn’t extra decoration it’s design for a shift we’re already living.
This is a plea to my fellow architects: stop debating about identity while ignoring transformation happening in front of us. In cities around the world from Miami to Riyadh you’ll find drones, robots, and micro-vehicles edging into the delivery game. Yet our profession remains unengaged. It’s time to reclaim our role and to be the ones writing the code, not reacting to it.
Last Meal is designed to reclaim that narrative. It’s more than research it’s a wake-up call and an invitation. Let’s build together, architect a new code, and redefine how cities serve their riders and by extension, all of us.
✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight
This piece exposes a silent architectural tension: the delivery window. What begins as a logistical detail in building design quickly unfolds into a deep critique of modern urban expectations, where immediacy and efficiency trump beauty or meaning. By focusing on the architectural negligence surrounding delivery access, the article elegantly raises questions about hierarchy—why are back-of-house experiences so often treated as afterthoughts?
The writing smartly draws connections between design, dignity, and how architecture subtly communicates value—especially to those working in overlooked, “invisible” roles. As the world urbanizes further, and on-demand logistics dominate cities, this topic will only grow more critical.
Looking toward the next five years, articles like this will age well. They reveal blind spots in contemporary practice and challenge architects to design not just for the client or user—but for the ecosystem that sustains the project’s life. Quietly radical, and timely.
