Depends on what you're building. If it's another crud app sure, but if its something remotely novel you just can't understand the landscape without walking through it at least once.
> if its something remotely novel you just can't understand the landscape without walking through it at least once
Sure you can. Mapping out the unknowns (and then having a plan to make each one knowable) is the single most important function of whoever you have designing your architecture.
Up-front architecture isn't about some all-knowing deity proclaiming the perfect architecture from on high. It's an exercise in risk management, just like any other engineering task.
> there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.