/minibooks/architecture-lenses-2025/en/cover/Cover-image-for-InfoQ-eMag-Issue-120-Architecture-Through-Different-Lenses-2025-1764922451465.jpg)
Why does your code look the way it does? What forces shaped that general utilities library everyone contributes to? How can platforms succeed by being invisible? Software architecture in 2025 extends far beyond technical diagrams and design patterns. Accordingly, this eMag explores architecture through five distinct lenses: the socio-technical forces that invisibly shape our code, the paradox of infrastructure that succeeds by disappearing, the power of distributed intelligence over centralized control, the evolutionary advantage of iteration over revolution, and the pragmatic reality of designing for inevitable complexity.
As architects, we constantly navigate tensions between ideal and pragmatic, innovation and stability, speed and safety. This eMag won't give you a single answer, because there isn't any. Instead, it offers perspectives that help you see your own challenges more clearly and provides patterns others have used successfully. Most importantly, it reminds you that the best architectures emerge when we stop pretending technology exists separately from the humans who build and use it.
Free download
Before you download this book...
Wondering how to scale software delivery without added complexity? Discover how teams use Harness’s intelligent platform to automate pipelines, improve governance, and keep deployments reliable as they grow.
Note: By checking the box you grant InfoQ permission to share your contact info with this sponsor.
This eMag includes:
- Vanessa Formicola opens with a provocative observation: your code carries the visible signs of decisions you haven't made. In "Holistic Engineering: Organic Problem Solving for Complex Evolving Systems," she identifies recurring patterns across organizations - the shared “kitchen sink” library, the domain identity crisis, the over-engineered codebase - and traces each back to career frameworks, reward systems, and organizational structures that inadvertently shape technical outcomes.
- Matthew Liste brings twenty years of mission-critical infrastructure experience to "Building Resilient Platforms: Insights from over Twenty Years in Mission-Critical Infrastructure." He reveals that great platforms succeed when they're taken for granted, operating so seamlessly that users never think about the underlying infrastructure.
- Peter Hunter and Elena Stojmilova draw an unexpected parallel between slime molds and software teams in "Empowering Teams: Decentralizing Architectural Decision-Making." Just as these organisms create efficient networks through local decision-making, their organization transformed architectural governance using the advice process, context maps, and architectural decision records.
- Luca Mezzalira explores how frontend architecture mirrors backend distributed systems evolution in "Micro-Frontends: A Sociotechnical Journey Toward a Modern Frontend Architecture." He clarifies that micro-frontends represent socio-technical shifts rather than mere technical patterns, optimizing for team autonomy and flow rather than code reuse.
- Finally, Teena Idnani confronts the reality that eighty-six percent of organizations already operate in multi-cloud environments in "Building Distributed Event-Driven Architectures Across Multi-Cloud Boundaries." She provides practical, code-level patterns for the challenges every architect faces: latency optimization, comprehensive resilience beyond immediate availability, event ordering across provider boundaries, and multi-layer duplicate detection.
We'd love to hear which perspectives resonated with you and what you're learning. Reach out at editors@infoq.com or on LinkedIn, Bluesky or X. Happy architecting!