How Architects Can Lead the Climate Movement

Hello and welcome to the Conscious Design Podcast. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, and I turn product ideas into sustainable 7-figure businesses. Join me for another episode where sustainability meets innovation and business savvy. Today, I'm excited to have Kevin Kennon. He's the founder of Kennon Design Consultancy, where he's bringing all of his experience to designing resiliency and eco-friendliness into architecture. Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

So, as we were just chatting off recording, when you probably didn't wake up, get born doing this, so I'd love to kind of step back and, and how did you go from, you know, getting into architecture and then going, hey, well, how do I approach this from from a sustainability and resiliency standpoint.

Okay, well, thanks first of all. It's a pleasure to be here, Ian, and I like your show and listen to it, and I encourage people to do this 'cause, you know, you're kind of doing it the best way, which is as if you and I had just met, which is actually the case. And, but we met in a forum where we could sort of talk just one-on-one, and then it's always great to get feedback from people who listen to this and because it sparks more conversation. And I think that's the really beauty of this particular medium.

Thanks.

And its power, right? It's basically that you could actually have that kind of reach. Anyway, so I grew up and we moved around a lot when I was very little, including a stint in South America for 2 years, Santiago, Chile. That was a very important experience for me and foundational. I then essentially moved to California where I lived in a place— the area is called Palos Verdes and I lived in a place, a very idyllic place called Portuguese Bend. And it's up in the hills. It's an area— what's interesting about this place where I lived is that there had been some work done really in the 1920s and it created a sort of landslide And then half of this development was flooded in the ocean, and the other half was left exactly as it was. They put a moratorium on building it. So when we actually got there, our house was a beautiful house. I mean, unbelievably beautiful house. Kind of very Japanese. And what was interesting is that it was done by a Japanese gardener's family, and they built these amazing gardens all around the house. But the area, it was like frozen in time. So it basically stopped development in the 1930s. And so all of the houses and everything in it were from that era. And it was very rural. It was kind of wild, but it was a great place to live. Unfortunately, recently, because of the heavy rains— this is prior, obviously, to the fires— because of the heavy rains, there's so much water came in that it caused the area where I lived, Now to start to slide, but it was sliding at a rate of 6 inches per month. I mean, it was— it's an incredible thing. They declared it a disaster area, and I think they've managed to sort of control the speed, at least, of the kind of slide. You know, everybody has— theoretically, they've told everybody to evacuate, but there's still people there who are living in their house. Some of the houses are completely twisted and— And Turner, there's a great sort of video in the LA Times of this guy who just wanted to stick it out in this wild area just because it's so beautiful. And he, and he liked the fact that it, that the, it was the, the very thing that was causing the neighborhood to really start to deteriorate was actually the thing that was keeping it pristine, um, from being developed. So it was, I don't know what the, the story, the moral of that is, but for me, what's interesting is that I'm somebody who's, you know, childhood home is literally slipping away. Into the ocean. And, you know, it's a long time since I've lived there and we moved away, but nonetheless, it's something that's indelible to all of us, right? You think about the place where you really grew up. And so, of course, I spent years of my life, you know, where we would help fight fires, you know, creating firebreaks, living that life. I completely understand. And I can't begin to tell you how How horrific it is to feel like your house is about to just go up in cinders any second. There's nothing— it's so sudden and it's so horrible. I think it's almost one of the worst things that someone can suffer through.

Yeah, hard thing to go through for sure.

I have a lot of empathy for people out there right now. I think it's going to take a long time to sort through that. Just the legal issues alone, I think, are going to be horrendous.

Yeah, yeah, that stuff, yeah, that stuff always takes forever. Yeah, as soon as you get, get that involved, right? You grew up there, right?

Yeah.

And when did you get into architecture? When was that like your hit?

To full disclosure, my father was an architect, so I was always, okay, around architecture, and he was quite a successful architect too. That story about my father was He had grown up in Louisiana and he was a football player and was a high school All-American. And then he got a scholarship to go play football at Texas A&M. This was in the '50s, early '50s. And the coach at A&M was Bear Bryant, who's a famous football coach. Anyway, he was very good at that, but he took some architecture at A&M and sort of liked it. Then he was actually drafted by the Chicago Bears and he decided instead that he wanted to go to, to, uh, Michigan and study architecture with Eero Saarinen. He didn't work with Eero Saarinen. And so, uh, you know, I kind of grew up in that. My father went on to, uh, become the dean at Rice University and the president of a— then the sort of largest architecture company in the world. So that was obviously a thing, but I wasn't necessarily gonna do that. I was an English major in college. And, but the thing that really kind of, you know, made the difference for me is I, you could through my college go to New York and study for a year architecture for a year at this kind of crazy program called the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. And I did that. I was at the right place at the right time. in the city because that was really the center for a lot of, I would say, intellectual activity and, you know, a lot of work on theory because at the time it was a major recession, inflationary recession. It was really, really bad. So there was no work and so that's what people did.

I like that idea of being able to go and study something for a year and really Yeah. Go try something outside your major like that.

Well, and this was in the late '70s, and so, you know, New York was a very different place. The city was, and we lived right on the edge of Times Square. So that was a sort of dumb thing and great thing to do at the same time. But in my experience, those 2 words are not mutually exclusive. Yes, that is very true. Yeah, it's like, because it's, it's that sort of just leap of faith and we'll just go with this. And it turned out to be great. It was a terrific thing. And I fell in love with architecture through that, you know, because I had very great teachers and, and I think that helps a lot.

Yeah, having people that can really guide you, especially as you're getting into something, is invaluable, I think.

Yeah.

Helps you figure things out faster.

It is. And I don't know, you know, I have 2 kids of my own, so I've taught, you know, at Yale and Princeton and Columbia and Cooper Union. And, um, yeah, I've taught architecture in these different places and given lectures and podcasts. And it's a great way to actually communicate what it is you're trying to do because I think the profession is undergoing Is about to undergo through some significant changes, and I hope so. And I think that for me, the conversation needs to be more and more about how do we do things better and how to take people from different perspectives across the AEC industry and, you know, listen to people from all the way up, because I don't think we really have the right ecosystem yet to build things in a way That's in the best interest of everyone involved. So not just in the interest of a few people who want to get something accomplished and will stop at nothing to do that. But to me, the success of a project is, is when everybody takes ownership of it. Yeah.

You need that.

Right.

Well, I'm curious because I've talked to— I have a buddy who's an architect and he's very much into His, I guess, kind of the way he's described it to me from the architecture— I'm industrial design, so I'm good with the product, but he's—

I like that.

He's the architect side, and he's like, well, if you think about it, how have we built— we've built houses in the same exact way for the last 100 years, right? Everybody else, industrial design, like, we're using all kinds of new materials and, you know, right? Really exploring and driving consumer products, right? And he's like, right, his thing is, well, why are we stuck? Why aren't we building better stuff? Why aren't we looking at different materials? There's, you know, things have changed a lot in the last century. How can we use that to what you're saying, right? How do you build something that's more efficient? How do you build something that's more sustainable, easier, better for everyone involved, Really thinking through what that process is.

Yeah, really, you know, lean, you start with lean construction. I mean, you know, that to me is the thing that it's so amazing to me is that, that how much our industry is still dependent upon a completely antiquated way of design, you know, bid, build, just as the sort of classic example. That's a— I think it's at least a 19th century construct.

Right.

Legally, as far as I know. And taking that structure, which, let's face it, if everybody plays by the rules up front, it theoretically should work and you should get the best ideal. And I think, you know, back in the time when you would submit a drawing set of maybe 4 images or 5 sets of drawings for a house, and that'd be enough. Today it would be 35, 40, maybe 50 even, depending on how many different disciplines are involved in it. So each one having their own set, and so it gets, it gets bigger and bigger, and the more complex our buildings, the more it gets to thousands of pages just for the drawing set. And I think the, the issue has become so regulated by liability that the real— the sort of— it had gotten to the point when I first started working, especially on sort of complex building projects, you know, the first thing I learned was that— and I fortunately had a real, like, old guard construction superintendent who taught me this lesson. But basically, you know, the name of the game was That his job was to make me look bad, right? You were trying to find as much fault in the drawings so that you could basically claim a change order, you know, and especially if you— if the whole purpose of the bid was just to pick the lowest bidder, everybody sort of races to the bottom, skims over their estimates artificially, you know, says, oh, we're going to do it this way this time, or, you know, whatever, and does whatever it gets to get the The low bid, and some people will sort of knowingly undercut it, you know, to do that, figuring, oh, well, this is going to be a complicated job. There's going to be 200, 300, 1,000 change orders on it, whatever. And, you know, we're going to get 15% of all that no matter what. That's how people would sort of kind of construct this to make their money. And so the incentive wasn't to collaborate, just the opposite. It was basically to make it adversarial. And so, and that's what OAC meetings, owner-architect construction Meetings were like, you know, when I first started working in New York doing skyscrapers and then people just screaming at each other. And so that fortunately, I think it's— people are trying to get beyond that, but even still, it really does constrain, you know, how much people are willing to do. It's a little bit like the same problem on a construction site, which is so— especially if it's a union job, which is so constrained. By what the union is telling its members it can and cannot do on a job site. So we have these constraints to efficiency that I think are the things that you have to start to tackle first. And obviously if you created a more collaborative environment, you know, theoretically that's what BIM is supposed to do, Unfortunately, it doesn't really work that way because BIM is still— it's still a pretty complicated ecosystem to get into. And increasingly what's happening is just firms are hiring BIM specialists to do this. They're sort of— and it's getting farther and farther away from what the architect's and the design team's responsibility, which is the owner's design intent. That's really the purpose of it. I think that Until we can create a way, and by the way, I don't think design-build is all that great either because unfortunately the way that design-build has come to be, this is completely, what I'm about to say is a completely made-up figure. I don't really know exactly, but this is just an educated guess on my part, but I would suspect that most of the design-build—

Companies.

Companies are driven by the general contractor where the architect is contracted to the GC and essentially works for the GC. And the problem with that, and this is why there's some advantages to the old, you know, the traditional system where there's a kind of arm's-length relationship between the architect and the general contractor because they're supposed to sort of— keep each other in check. It's a little bit of like a check and balance, you know, architects by certifying the payments, making sure the work is done, materials on the site, etc. That's one way that that's a check for the owner to making sure that they're getting what they're paid for. And for the contractor, if there's a way that he can do something and achieve the same design intent but do it more efficiently or cheaper for himself, you know, he puts that up for review, and a lot of times that's the way it goes. And I think that's what you want. You want that Sort of more of that and more of it from the beginning. That's the other problem, unfortunately, the old system does. It tends to break things up into smaller pieces. And what you really want, the best projects I've worked on is where the owner understands that they're looking at not just building a project, but they're building a community of including thousands of people, especially if it's a large, say, you know, skyscraper in New York City, that they want, you know, just to reiterate this, they— what they really want is people to have ownership of that process. So, right.

And you've worked on quite a few projects, big and small. So, and you kind of answered it, but what I was gonna, gonna ask is, you know, when you're looking at all these factors, how is sustainability goals and LEED certification, how is that, is that Do you feel like that's part of the change in how things, you know, the kind of the old, older system to now, is that impacting it? And I guess a follow-up to that would be kind of how, how could we go about making this more efficient where we can? What's the blend in your mind of, of old system, new system to make it actually good for, actually good for everyone?

Well, I'm a big believer in technology. I mean, so I wish that Our industry wasn't dominated as much as it is by just a few players. It really, I think, hurts innovation. It has to. I think Autodesk is way too monopolistic. So, you know, apart from that, it's not to say that they don't innovate. It's just that I think that if you had— and fortunately there are other players, and increasingly so, and I think that's going to change a lot. I mean, I think Ultimately, frankly, AI is gonna change everything. I'm not saying that lightly. I'm somebody who's, who has sort of been at the forefront of using technology and certainly in architecture all my career. And I do use AI and I understand it and I understand what its use is. And I think that architecture is gonna be something that AI is gonna do very well. You know, because already we're seeing generative AI programs and platforms like TestFit, for example, where, you know, you can take your particular lot and it has the zoning information essentially built in and you can quickly go through, you know, here's my parking count, how I want to lay that out. Once you have your parking count, you know, you can figure out where you're going to put your tower, your residential tower, because it usually is driven by the parking anyway. And so, and then it's like, oh, I want this mix, I want that mix, you know, and you can do that All essentially a matter of an hour, maybe less if you know what you're doing. And then you can essentially create your whatever parameters you want and just go. So I think what we're gonna get to is that we'll be able to do that with relatively quickly. It'll be able to sort of take those generative drawings, take it to the next scale, create, either put it into Revit, if that's the sort of ecosystem everybody's working in, or— some other, you know, where at least it can start to become a real digital twin of the building. Because that's the whole point, is that we had to get to something, you know, I don't think BIM does that, but, you know.

I was at a design conference, industrial design conference. They were actually talking about, they were doing some work with presenting using VR and things like that because they were working with I forget which college. I think it was in the Midwest somewhere, but they basically were like, hey, we want to redesign this intersection because there's a lot of small accidents, heavy foot traffic right next to the college campus. It hadn't changed for 40 years. And so they used that and they were talking about the digital twin and using VR and that kind of technology to let people experience the change, walk through an intersection without the risk of cars and shutting it down for a day for somebody to walk through, right? And it was interesting, and you mentioned the digital twin, it's happening. I feel like there's a lot of steps between where we are now and an actual digital twin. And there's companies, and I'd love your thoughts on this, there's companies that are working on smart city and trying to really fully upgrade our city infrastructure. And I feel like that's a great— that's something I want to work on more is how to do that. But I feel like there's a lot of steps still between being able to redo the entire infrastructure of a city and really bring it to this century and where we are now with what we are attempting as digital twins.

Well, you know, I started another company. It's a development company. that specializes in ultra-luxury wilderness hotels. And it's built around a completely different model than people are used to seeing when they think of, let's say, eco-hotels, and actually hearkens back to something even older. And it's a different service model. And what's interesting about it, it's also a laboratory for technology. So it's kind of a both, it's sort of a think tank slash—

A laboratory.

You know, resort.

Can't relate.

But in really cool sort of extreme locations. So, and anyway, so the point of that is that the methodology of how you put these things together is something that I think about a lot, not just in terms of logistics because that's all sort of solvable, but really more in terms of organizing people. You know, having been through many of these, you know, I know who has to sit around the table, who needs to be there at different times of this in order to ensure success. And sometimes it can be a little bit of a slog, but you're talking about huge investments of money and people want as fast a return as possible. It's still real estate and still real estate development. But, you know, everything in my experience is that everything is how you start. If you don't have the right people there at the beginning, or at least even if it's just a few hours of their time, and they're while some of this is being conceived, so you're not only designing, you know, building, but you're designing the way in which you're going to design that building and the way in which you're going to build that building, and those all come together, hopefully, you know, you're not facing change orders. You've figured it all out from the beginning. That's the idea, and that's the best way to build. And it turns out to be the safest way to build too. So stuff is going to happen, and you need to have both a way in which you handle problems and how you track those problems, and particularly, you know, focus on the critical path. You know, what are our obstacles here? Why is this an obstacle? Can this be— Yeah, essentially. That's all important. And what you want to do is be able to create that into one whole system where you can monitor all of this. And it's data, obviously, you know, but it's also the effectiveness of your team. Anyways, this is what I do right now. And this is what I think about it. And, you know, I've done a few projects where I've just been essentially brought in As an advisor to a client to help them through some challenges on the job site. So that's something I actually do very well because, you know, a lot of times that the communication is broken down, everything is broken down, all of the workflows that are important to keep a project going because it only ends up— unfortunately, the way in which Real estate and building and architecture all work is that it's, it's cheaper upfront, and then the more you get into the project, it gets more and more expensive.

Right.

You know, so people really feel the weight of it at the end, but you want them— that to be tempered with satisfaction that the process wasn't as bad as they thought it, it could have been, and there was transparency involved and That the thing was managed well and you kept your eye on the ball. Your eye on the ball for doing anything involving this much effort is schedule. The schedule is everything. You win or lose on this with the schedule. The slightest hint that it's going off schedule, you should jump all over it and get your team around it because It's usually a death by a thousand cuts. It's, oh, it's a little bit here and it's a little bit here and—

Hey, and you lose a day a week, it adds up.

Yeah, it adds up. You get a $5,000 change order here and then maybe it's, uh, you know, $17,000 and then it's, you know— I mean, that's, that's obviously a kind of silly way of, of doing it, but it— but, you know, for a lot of people that's relatable. I still complain or monitor Even though I don't do as much driving living in New York, but I still drive. And I guess I habitually always look at the price of gasoline.

Just looking at that yesterday.

Yeah.

I was like, oh, this is up.

Yeah, exactly. It just is a dumb barometer. Oh yeah, so the price of gas is up. And that tends to be like checking the temperature outside, right? And so, and that's a common way in which we all sort of gauge The health of our respective economies. Anyway, so the point of all this is just that I think there's an opportunity now, and with AI, that we're gonna be able to completely change the way in which we work. You know, I used to be a huge believer that everybody needs to be in the studio all the time. I need to be able to watch everybody. But the reality is, you know, I found I got the best work out of people, or I get the best work out of people, when I give them You know, meet with them just for a few minutes, talk about what they're doing and then just let them go and do it. And then, you know, either at the end of the day or the next morning or whatever, see the results and go through the results with them and then make changes and, you know, what have you.

Yeah.

But it wasn't always this way. You know, I started out when we first started changing, working more with computers and we were drawing less and especially if it was 3-dimensional, You had to be kind of either sitting down on the person's desk and essentially manipulating the program yourself, or you had to sort of be next to them while they did that. I quickly learned that people didn't like, you know, having somebody next to them while—

No.

While observing what they're doing. That made them feel very uncomfortable, rightfully so. And, you know, me sitting down and going through the material was sometimes better but at the same time, it was harder to communicate. So, anyway, so the point of all this is that you use lots of different ways to do that, lots of different methods, different programs, different print, you know, prints to just pure digital markups to what have you, to sketches. But we can do all of that exactly the way you and I are working right now. You know, we can put up drawings, we can do that, we can mark them up, we can print them out at home, I can scan them and send them back and, you know, put notes in there. It's really— we're at the point where we can create and this is something which I'm really very interested in doing is that the same model that Real estate developers here in New York, for example, when they do a building, they'll create their own LLC around the building that they're doing. So, you know, if it's, I don't know, 20 Spring Street or something, they'll— And 20 Spring Street is— they're going to tear down what's there and they're going to build a new 60-unit tower or something, and they'll form a 20 Spring Street LLC that's just there to build that building and once they build it and they sell it, they turn it over to the condo board and they're out of there. That's the sort of developer model, the kind of 5-year horizon start to finish with that sort of exit. So the point I'm making is that it seems like you're— I'm very interested in exploring project-based companies, you know, where you basically form projects around each company and And it's its own structure and people that are essentially all shareholders in that company so that you get buy-in. When I talk about just the guy who's driving nails too.

Hey, it's Ian here. So glad you're enjoying this episode of Conscious Design. If you want the full scoop on Conscious Design, what it is, how we do it, how you can do it, then check out our book. We wrote it so creative entrepreneurs like you can code social and environmental responsibility right into your brand's DNA. You can download the first chapter for free. Link is in the description. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. We don't really do that on the products side. No, but I think it's an interesting way to go about, because it is, you know, like, like you were saying before, it's kind of— it can be hard actually to get enough buy-in. From people. If you don't own it, right, how much do you really care? Well, that—

see, now that's an— that's also very interesting. The thing I found is, like, I did a— I designed and developed a building here in Tribeca. It's a little bit like this. It was, uh, originally— it was the original American Express building in New York City. American Express was founded in Hartford, and American Express was like the Pony Express. It basically was People riding around horses delivering things.

Right.

And so this building is in Tribeca, and it was like a lot of buildings in Tribeca originally, manufacturing buildings. And so this building is in the— was the old manufacturing building, zoned manufacturing. It had become— it had gone through different incarnations, but it had become the artist Alexander Calder, the guy who did all the sculptures and the mobiles, and it was his studio. So that's where he, you know, one of the places he created all these crazy art novels. He's a great, you know, mid-century modern artist and also beloved by architects. His work is always in all of those buildings. And then it became a nightclub called Area, which was kind of a very hip nightclub for about 6 years. And then it just went— it was in complete, you know, disuse. And we sort of put a syndicate together and designed it so that all of the people in the syndicate had little— their area more or less corresponded to the amount of money they put into the project. And then it was subdivided and each unit was completely different. They didn't stack. And it was this great old building. But, you know, if you saw the original image of it, it was completely covered in graffiti. Whitewashed over. It was a complete disperse bear. And so anyway, we brought the building, you know, back to life. Then we added 3 stories of glass apartments to the top, you know, especially the penthouse apartment, which is kind of like a little glass house with 5,000 square feet of deck all the way around it. It's a pretty amazing place. But that's the, the thing is that— and that was all company that we created. To do that project. And in a way, it's a little bit of a model of an idea for this. But so that's kind of what I've been trying to see is that doing these kind of projects, we not only look at doing them more sustainably, et cetera, but also how do we do them in a way where we're really tackling the ecosystem itself, you know, and changing the way in which— We build, it's a different model, I think. And, uh, we'll see.

I think it's a great thing that we're talking about this, right? Sustainability is important. And if you want to be able to do that more and you want to have successful projects and you want to open up possibly how you do this, you have to think about, right, the approach. How do you go about that? How do you accomplish this in a way that gets everybody on board and make sure that you, everybody supports it, not just at the beginning when everybody feels good, but All the way through to the end.

All the way through, yeah.

Actually finishing it. Because there's— I feel like the product side especially, I think the number is like 93% or something like that, projects fail. They just don't ever make it. And it's wasted effort, wasted time, lost resources. Right.

But you know that it's never a wasted effort. Everything, you know—

You can get something out of it.

To me, I admire cultures that embrace failure. As part of their process. I mean, as a scientist, fail, you know, probably at a much higher percentage. I would say probably closer to 98%. But that doesn't stop them from doing what they're doing or trying because each step they understand, you know, is that, okay, we sort of fail. What did we learn? Okay. And adjust. So I say that's one thing. Now the other part of this is that I can only rely on my own experience to know that what I'm talking about is fundamental. There is better ways to do it. And when I have practiced it in better ways, the results have been phenomenal. So obviously you have to get some kind of buy-in. And I think that's good. And I think the point here is, let's put it this way. You wouldn't go out today and say a product, right? You wouldn't go out and say, hey, you know, I think that what people are gonna need in the, you know, next whatever, 2 years is a way to detach themselves from their cell phone, right? I don't know what that is, but there's a product, let's say, that does that.

Right.

And you can say, I've designed this amazing product. You're not really gonna go out and test it on people. And the way in which you do that is your product is actually an unpleasant experience for most people. There's like 35% of the people become violently ill or something as a result of whatever this product— I'm just being extreme. I don't know what the product is. But the point is, it's not to know, 'cause it's not relevant to the point that I'm making. The issue is the efficacy of what it is you do has to be driven by what people need.

Yeah.

If people don't need it, or at least feel they need it, or even if it's just the most ephemeral feel, I'm gonna miss out if I don't get it. Or put it on the positive side, or, you know, just this thing is so amazing and it's gonna make me feel even better. Those are all kind of strong drivers that have to do a sort of more visceral sustainability, which is just survival, 'cause they come from that same place. And I think that architecture also comes from that same place too. I do think it's people experiencing It viscerally. I don't know if you saw The Brutalist yet, if you've seen the film, but I think that's one of the reasons people like the movie is that it's— the images of architecture are so kind of— they hearken back to a kind of almost a sort of '30s, almost Depression-era type of sublime grandeur and simplicity, but very emotional. Combining film and architecture in that way, I think, is very profound.

And this has come up in some conversations with other people is, you know, we don't— the average person doesn't necessarily walk into a building or, you know, even their home and think about like, what's the emotional reaction? What's the emotional state? What's, what's the change when you walk through a doorway? And it's funny, it was just reading some, some studies on it, and there's— I forget the exact term on it, but there's a term for it— is when you walk through a doorway, your nervous system changes depending on, you know, because you're, you're changing environment. Your mind, even though you're not like, oh, I'm walking through a doorway, consciously thinking about it, your mind is going, oh, we just changed into a new space. Because you are, right? You can take one room next to another and the doorway between, and they can be 2 totally different experiences emotionally, right? It's 2 different states of mind that you can be in. And it's something that, you know, I, I don't know how much— I don't think we think about that as much necessarily as, you know, relative to how much it impacts us, right? I think it's a huge impact. And we, if we were to apply a little more kind of thinking through that, that could really make an impact into how do you experience a building.

Well, you know, think of, you know, you look at all the stuff One of the things that exploded really started in the pandemic and then sort of became a big deal is this sort of, all these sort of immersive environments that people have created. And by immersive, I mean specifically digital environments, but that surround you, right? You know, so it's a kind of more of a sensory experience. And I think that for a lot of people is a sort of heightened version of what you're talking about.

Yeah.

You know, but there's also something about going into Spaces that are just so serene, so quiet, so empty in some way, that are actually also profound. And I don't mean just, you know, spiritual places, but there are places that could be from anywhere. And it's so much of— even your memories are probably framed by architecture. They're not just— when we remember people, I think we usually remember them in some sort of context as well. And so I think even if the context is no longer there, it's a lost place in time, still, I don't believe when I have dreams or even when I have sort of memories of past events, I don't put people in sort of a void in that, at least in my mind. They're always in some sort of a place. So I think that's the thing is that I don't think they realize How much of architecture influences their unconscious and subconscious. And it goes to the same sort of very sort of liminal places, which is obviously there's, you know, you know what it's like to walk through your home, your threshold, and the feelings involved in that. It's not just purely sentimental, but it's a feeling of safety and belonging and, you know, all kinds of things. And maybe sometimes it's A conflicted feeling. It's not so great. But the house itself tends to carry a kind of— it's a repository of memory. For me, when you start to think about memory as being fundamental to culture, and I can't really think of architecture as being meaningful without it being fundamentally a cultural artifact. It's a product of culture.

Yeah, I don't think you can pull those two apart.

Yeah, and so it's not just building. I mean, we, we've had building for a long time, but, you know, I think to me, one of my other endeavors— I actually inherited that same program, the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, and I've been the director of that for about 26 years, and it's changed over time. We basically, when I took it over, we were just doing the education department. There was other things that the Institute did and it was quite famous for, especially publications and other events. But we just wanted to focus on education and we did. It was very— it's a great program. We graduated a lot of people and coincidentally, just in terms of the Brutalist, one of our graduates, Griffin Frazin, was the architecture advisor on the Brutalist. So, and you can see in it a lot of his work. He's a very talented young up-and-coming designer. So I'm putting a plug in for Griffin, but I like that and I like helping younger firms and because I've also worked with many people in real life and, um, so part of what I, I'd love to do is bring together the right people and let them do their thing. It's, it's more like you're bringing together All the best musicians to create this symphony. The symphony itself is, you know, built around your project and it's designed to get the very best music from it. I do think, you know, someone said it at some point, you know, architecture is frozen music, and I think that's really true. I think it has the same capabilities of invoking a lot of the feelings that you can get from Music, it has that sort of connection to memory, you know? So if you hear a tune of something, you know, you'll remember sometimes like, oh yeah, I was with so-and-so and that was a great moment. And I do think the same thing happens. So anyway.

Yeah, I like that analogy. Music and architecture, you can create. And I think that, I guess, deep down, everybody that— designers for the most part, architects, product, we talk about it, it's in there like, oh, you know, think about the emotions of the user and things like that. And it's there, but we don't always sit and have a deeper conversation like we're just having now of going, okay, well, yeah, that's— I'm glad you're aware of it now, but how do we then cultivate that? How do you—

Yeah, you're working under a deadline, you've got, you know, you have to get Like, I don't know, you know, however many variations on an idea that you might have to produce and help the client through the selection process and— or at least try to hone exactly what they're looking for. And sometimes that can be a tedious process and sometimes it can be a lot of fun. It does, in my experience, depend a lot on the people involved in it. The whole process just makes them incredibly nervous. Because I'm plunking down all this money and I got nothing, you know?

Right.

And it takes a long time. Did I make the right bet or was this a mistake?

Right.

And so you get a lot of second-guessing. Sometimes it's a lot of tension around that. This is particularly true of, say, private clients. But regardless, the whole point of it is That if you can engender trust and collaboration and figure out a way, you know, to wrap a project up from a liability perspective to really limit everyone's liability on the project. And so I don't know, my sense of it is you would get a better project at the end. It might cost a little more upfront, but you're buying that extra cost to me is insurance. Another thing I do, I'm on expert witness cases and stuff. And so, you know, I see it from the other side. And, and I just think that when the adversarial system goes haywire and everybody ends up suing everybody at the end of the project, or even the middle of the project, I've seen that, and nobody wins except the lawyers. That's it.

Oh yeah, they walk out with all the money.

Yeah. I mean, I realize that, you know, sometimes that's what you have to do. And, you know, I've been involved in billion-dollar projects that have gone completely bust in the middle of the job and the fallout from that. And, you know, how do you try to pick up the pieces? And to me, I so admire people who've got the time and the patience in it. And, you know, if you're really good at what you do, I find that people are actually more interested in working collaboratively. I guess, you know, challenged by it. This doesn't— they're secure in their knowledge and their status and, you know, what they, what they want to be. So they're happy to be more engaging, you know. So you want them to be there. You want their interest too.

Well, amazing. This has been a great conversation. We've bounced all over the place, which is great. I love doing that. There's— I think we keep talking forever, but, you know, just To wrap things up here, for— I always love to ask for anybody that wants to learn more about your work, what you've done, reach out to you. I know you have a lot of projects, but you kind of have an umbrella as well. I guess, what's— share what the best place to find you and reach out.

Yeah, the easiest place to find me is just go to www. KDCIA.com. That's Kilo Delta Charlie Alpha India Alpha dot com. All my contact information is there. That's, that's my website.

Amazing. Well, Kevin, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for taking the time to sit and have this chat, and thanks for being on.

Yeah, yeah. And, um, my dog wants to thank everybody too.

Perfect.

He says Time to go out. Anyway, all right, Ian, thanks so much. And I appreciate all your listeners listening in today. Hope they enjoyed this. I enjoyed it.

Absolutely. And for everyone listening, there will be links in the show notes. And that wraps up another episode of the Conscious Design Podcast. If today's episode inspired you to bring your product idea to life and turn it into a sustainable 7-figure business, visit petermanfirm.com or click the link below Your ideas have the power to change the world, and we're here to help make that happen. Thank you for joining us, and I'll see you on the next episode.