127 - Coffee Speak? Archi Sketch!

0:33

Hi everybody. This is Kurt. Neiswender to, introduce, that we. had the pleasure of. Co recording a podcast with our good friends at Archispeak. and this is. Episode 300 on Archispeak. And this then becomes episode 127. For the coffee sketch podcast, So we've got a little catching up to do. I would also like to. put a call out to all of our. Listeners. to send an email to. info@urbancolab.design. That's. You are beat. A N C O L a B. Dot design. send, testimonials or let me know, or let us know if you have heard. anything on the podcast that has helped you along your journey to. Work in the profession of architecture. So without further ado, I will send it over to the recording

Cormac: 1:36

oh, just to let you guys know, Kurt did promise to send us some coffee that I don't believe, I'm double checking here, just got to us in time.

Jamie: 1:53

Well, I will say, like, I haven't even gotten my coffee yet either.

Kurt: 1:59

I just got it.

Jamie: 2:00

It's late. I think we need to postpone this recording. Yeah, geez. All right. It's a dud.

Cormac: 2:08

Clearly, he's not professional. It's available

Kurt: 2:12

for purchase.

Cormac: 2:14

Now it's

Jamie: 2:15

purchase. There's a

Kurt: 2:17

link. I could send you.

Evan: 2:20

Hey, Jamie, you know that healthy needs on that historic preservation thing? You're going to have to pay for that. Yeah, I

Jamie: 2:25

think so. Yeah, I think so. I think so. If you

Evan: 2:32

could help him and pay for it, that would be fantastic.

Jamie: 2:35

And wear pants. And I got to wear pants to do it all too.

Evan: 2:40

Please bring pants. Jorts

Cormac: 2:43

are pants, right?

Kurt: 2:47

Maybe, St. Clair's Shores,

Cormac: 2:49

Tucky. I

Jamie: 2:49

don't speak any other language. Oh, sorry, there's too

Cormac: 2:51

many

Kurt: 2:53

St. Clair's Shores, gross points, all the points.

Cormac: 3:02

We're

Evan: 3:02

snobbier. Well, what do you guys want to talk about today?

Jamie: 3:05

I mean, clearly it's

Cormac: 3:07

not coffee, so we get to scratch out the name of their podcast from this because

Jamie: 3:16

some people... Jesus. Jesus. Ha, ha,

Cormac: 3:19

ha.

Kurt: 3:20

The, climate change sketch podcast. Oh. Let's talk about climate change. I, I

Jamie: 3:25

was going to suggest, like, it's 300, so, like, is this like a, like a Sparta thing? Like, are you bringing us as tributes? Like, is this, is this what you guys do? Like,

Cormac: 3:39

oh. Yeah. Yeah, I'll, I'll say that guess who's going over first. This guy. Yes,

Evan: 3:46

exactly. Everybody just point in a different direction because we can't tell, everybody's layout is different. So,

Cormac: 3:54

Kurt, Kurt's over there. Jamie's right there, and Evan's right there,

Evan: 4:01

not on my screen. We'll just keep moving

Cormac: 4:06

around. These two here, one of them was responsible for coffee delivery

Jamie: 4:15

that never happened.

Kurt: 4:18

Ask Jamie how prompt I am with anything.

Jamie: 4:22

Oh yeah, well, like, I don't know, we bet on the Super Bowl, and there was like a coffee bet. You guys know when the Super Bowl was, right?

Cormac: 4:31

Yeah, it was around my birthday. Yeah, I

Kurt: 4:33

was like, I lost a few

Cormac: 4:35

months ago, Kurt lost

Evan: 4:37

that bet. I thought what you were going to say was, you know, that we had a Super Bowl bet and you bet and you, he didn't even know when the Super Bowl was, so it was easy to pick the winner.

Jamie: 4:49

Maybe that too. That's maybe it too. Yeah.

Kurt: 4:53

I'm trying as hard as I can over here. How are you? I'm really trying. That's good. That's all you can do. That's all you can do. I'll take August.

Cormac: 5:02

I will say this, that at least Kurt and I's sun will go down at the same time. Yeah, I

Evan: 5:08

was going to say that we're in three different time zones here and it will get dark in the two screens. It's plenty of light out here, but you wouldn't know it because I have my architect's background up right now. Except

Cormac: 5:21

for that old school. Whatever chair thing that is.

Jamie: 5:26

That's

Evan: 5:26

my mid century modern chair. Yeah. Well, we made it to 300. I don't know how, but, here we are. That that's, that's it. Oh, Kurt, Kurt's gone. He's out. I'm back.

Jamie: 5:40

That was the show. There's your tribute. There's your tribute. That's all he doesn't

Cormac: 5:44

even.

Kurt: 5:45

Oh. I was trying to blur my background like Cormac's got mine's

Cormac: 5:50

the most busy Cormac's just got a really expensive camera hooked up

Jamie: 5:54

I was I was remarking that that you know, there's some really good stuff going on here tech tech wise So,

Cormac: 6:01

oh, you

Kurt: 6:01

know, we're only at 123 gonna sell

Cormac: 6:03

more

Jamie: 6:03

coffee. Geez

Evan: 6:05

Yeah, yeah, you podcast. We've

Cormac: 6:08

we've got to invite more guests on promise them free coffee And then send them a link to

Jamie: 6:12

buy it

Evan: 6:18

That's how it works around here. Free, free with purchase. This is more of a happy hour than a, than a podcast recording.

Kurt: 6:27

here.

Cormac: 6:30

I was going to ask if it's a bag of shame, but yes, it is.

Kurt: 6:35

I'll start waving, waving the better. Just, just how many, how many trophies?

Cormac: 6:42

Trophies, participation trophies. Does that go for talk

Kurt: 6:45

about already? Welcome to architecture.

Cormac: 6:48

Did you already say that we're the forgotten one in the post? Anytime something, the, what is it, the pat on the back crew comes out for either a ribbon cutting or groundbreaking or whatever, where is the one who's actually doing all of the work?

Evan: 7:05

Alright, you guys ready to kick this off? Maybe you

Jamie: 7:07

thought we already did. No, this is, we're, we're used to the warmups, so.

Evan: 7:12

This is the warmup banter, yeah. The banter. We've got, we have two guests on this show. We'll probably post this as a crossover episode. You guys want to post this too? You can, if you want, it's up for grabs. Good content for everybody. Oh, he's like,

Jamie: 7:27

I'm done. He's

Evan: 7:30

guess we're going to start over again.

Jamie: 7:34

That was fun.

Cormac: 7:38

You know, I had this feeling today.

Kurt: 7:42

Oh, this is, you, you got an email.

Cormac: 7:44

Yeah, I got an E I got an email from Xfinity today that said that they would be going to doing services and upgrades to your service so that we can provide you with better internet. And yet.

Evan: 7:56

We'll see what happens. I am. We'll see what happens

Kurt: 7:58

here. Mine was, mine was a week ago. Yeah.

Jamie: 8:01

We're just adding this to our, like our, our continual laugh track that we just always referenced that we just never, never share with anybody. So it exists. Yeah. Oh, I know it exists. There's like, there's a whole, like, like real of hundreds of hours, hundreds of hours of us just losing, losing it. Yep. We,

Cormac: 8:20

we used to keep that. Or at least I know that my old Mac has like. What seems like hundreds of hours of cutting room floor stuff. But we stopped, especially Cause you know, no promises. No, probably You should've just

Evan: 8:39

been like, yeah, but, but

Jamie: 8:41

whatever.

Cormac: 8:43

Pretty much,

Kurt: 8:43

yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to get, I'm trying to not get to that point, but it, it does piles on. Yeah,

Cormac: 8:50

that's, well you asking, what you could do is you could edit it for the, your Patreon. Just

Evan: 8:56

give that stuff to the people

Kurt: 8:57

who pay. Will those people pay for coffee?

Cormac: 9:02

I

Kurt: 9:03

need to know. I got an invoice. I got to cover this invoice.

Cormac: 9:08

Okay. So I don't know if we're actually starting yet or not, but I do have one question.

Evan: 9:14

That was it. That was the intro. There you go.

Cormac: 9:16

So, as, a podcast that has coffee in the title and is by two architects who drink coffee.

Jamie: 9:26

Do you ever,

Cormac: 9:28

and you do have a lot of guests on your show, do you ever encounter guests that have

Jamie: 9:33

a lack

Cormac: 9:35

of affinity for coffee, a. k. a. doesn't drink it, and

Jamie: 9:39

do you immediately hang up on them?

Kurt: 9:43

Jamie, you want to go ahead

Cormac: 9:44

and

Jamie: 9:44

take that one? I'd say, that has not been an issue in the past. we have had one guest, you know, who, you know, gets into our banter when we're talking about what's in our coffee mug and our, you know, affinity for things and we do the intro and then realize that they don't drink coffee and it's just like, Oh wow, that's, that was a new one. and that was Evelyn, Evelyn, Evelyn got on and Evelyn's like, yeah, yeah, I really don't do coffee. And it was just like, we, we couldn't hang up on, yeah, we couldn't, yeah, yeah, we

Cormac: 10:20

could, but we could,

Jamie: 10:22

but she's a friend, so,

Cormac: 10:25

yeah, I mean, we, we all have those friends.

Jamie: 10:29

Yeah. That was non, non caffeinated friends. Yes.

Kurt: 10:32

So far, so far. Yeah. If there had to be just the, it's, it's good that it was Evelyn, but yeah.

Cormac: 10:39

Yeah. I guess you, yeah, you're right. You can't really hang up on her, but. But still, it, I don't know. If it was you, they would. No, of course. I'm drinking water, and why am I drinking water? Because somebody promised to send us some coffee.

Evan: 10:56

Coffee. Same got my water here cuz I don't mm-hmm.

Kurt: 10:59

didn't get any coffee, man.

Evan: 11:01

You know, we were expect didn't even, didn't even ask my address, so I wasn't expecting it to show up. So

Cormac: 11:06

I'm a short drive down the road. But it,

Kurt: 11:08

well, I guess for Michigan standards,

Jamie: 11:10

yes. But guys, it does have really good notes of ha hazelnut and my, and milk chocolate. so who does it? Yeah, I, I, well, we don't, I've heard

Cormac: 11:18

her either. I've heard myself.

Kurt: 11:20

Let me, I haven't,

Evan: 11:22

I haven't drank any, I'm gonna do some tasting. I'm gonna do some tasting notes right here. No, no, no.

Cormac: 11:26

My water tastes like filter and

Evan: 11:30

hints of garden hose.

Kurt: 11:32

There you go. Cormac, does your air smell like burning plastic? Because of these, the Canadian fires, everything smells like burnt pasta. Don't blame it on

Jamie: 11:42

Canada, please.

Cormac: 11:44

Well, I have to. This particular town, Jamie, we have

Evan: 11:48

to. You can't blame California.

Cormac: 11:50

We can't actually see it rolling across the lake. But we're

Jamie: 11:54

already sorry, so it's okay. Is it sorry or sorry? Wow. I don't know, which one did it sound like to you? Did I sound American? Did I sound American? No, no. Did it sound Canadian? Just checking. You can turn it on and off, the H in the, the, you know, H, like don't make me spell house or mouse.

Cormac: 12:15

What do you put on, what do you, what do you season with? Salt? Oh, really? You're going to try to avoid that?

Kurt: 12:24

What's, what's that? I missed that one.

Cormac: 12:27

Herb or herb, herb

Jamie: 12:29

or herb, herbs, herbs. Yes. I mean, the H, I mean, like, like the H or the H, right? Like which is it? So, come on, Z or Zed, I don't do, I don't do the Zed thing, I never did the Zed thing. I

Cormac: 12:45

will say this. Yeah. Oh my gosh. So we, the project that I'm working on right now, we've got eight buildings and we had started to divide it in all sorts of different ways and people were like, you know, Oh, it's, you know, so crazy. So. We basically said zone one through eight. Well, it was then abbreviated down to Z1 through Z8. And of course, everybody on our project team, it's Zed. And every once in a great while we'll break like a Brit or, you know, a Saudi down and they'll say Z1 or something like that. And we're like, ha ha, we won, you know, it's like this, you know, I'm not going to say controversy. I'm not going to say aluminium. I joke with him. I was like, you invented the language. Why can't you use it? Right.

Jamie: 13:36

Yeah.

Kurt: 13:38

Is that going to make it to the episode?

Cormac: 13:42

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Kurt: 13:44

I don't,

Evan: 13:45

yeah. I don't know. Carmichael will decide. So let's, let's do some introductions here. We've got Jamie and Kurt. Why don't you guys introduce yourselves? Who's going to, who's going to be the, the, the spokesperson for the Coffee Sketch podcast? Me? Are you pointing at yourself? Are you pointing at Kurt? I couldn't tell. Right?

Cormac: 14:03

He was, he was

Jamie: 14:04

pointing at me. He was pointing elsewhere. It was all his idea. It was totally his idea. So I'm going to, I'm going to give him the mic. So, and then I just, then I interrupt him. So like, that's, that's our, that's our shtick. Oh,

Evan: 14:14

perfect. So. That's

Kurt: 14:16

how it works. Just keep me from offering free coffee to everybody who listens. It's not going to happen. I'm going to go poor, or I'll be rich. So, you would like. Yeah, do an intro,

Evan: 14:29

the intro for me, introduce yourselves and podcast, because, this is a crossover episode and it's our 300th episode. We're just celebrating. We're hanging out with you guys. We hung out with you at AIA conference in San Francisco, and we thought we would continue that in the virtual format here and, and just have a little fun tonight. Oh, thanks.

Kurt: 14:49

my name is Kurt Neiswender. I co host the Coffee Sketch Podcast with Jamie Crawley, who's down on the other end of the screen, although you guys do audio only. No, that's not true. You're videotaped. Anyway, so we've been doing the Coffee Sketch podcast five years now. So it's still, a very fledgling podcast in comparison to Arky Speak

Evan: 15:15

podcast. It's an emerging podcast. If you're in the architecture industry, you've still got like 15 years to go and then maybe then you won't be emerging anymore.

Jamie: 15:22

Yeah. That's right. And, and, and we'll battle over the title of that for a little bit too, just to, just to make it feel awkward.

Kurt: 15:29

Podcast. Totally. So Jamie and I met, originally on the, the AIA young architects forum, and we became good friends through that work. And it was actually the, well, five years ago. So it would have been the New York conference, I think. Well, actually it was probably, so that was a little bit before the five year mark, but it was at the New York conference that on a brainstorm, I suggested, Hey, we should. Take this idea of Jamie's daily sketches that he posts on Instagram, and he uses the hashtag coffee sketch on, on pretty much all of them as a sort of mechanism to explain that it's a very short time frame of a sketch, you know, within drinking a cup of coffee. And I thought, Hey, let's turn it into a podcast. So let's take this very visual subject matter and turn it into an audio podcast. Which we've since turned, into a video, format as well. But, ever since then, we've been doing this remotely. Heat, Jamie's in Texas, I'm in Flint. and so Flint, Michigan and Austin, Texas. And we are now at where we're at 123 episodes, I think is going to come out. And so we're quite caught up to you guys. And, I mean, we're having fun. We, we talked about coffee, we talked about sketches. Yeah, I speak it for, for both of us, but, Oh yeah. So I don't know if Jamie wants to add, I'm sure he wants to add plenty. Well, real quick.

Cormac: 17:06

So Jamie brings the coffee sketches and you bring coffee.

Jamie: 17:18

That was like slow rolling the setup right there. I mean, it was just like, Curt, like, do you see the big pit? Like over here, like episode 300, there's a big pit and you're, you're getting ever so much closer to it. I think there's like, I,

Cormac: 17:32

I, I

Kurt: 17:34

only see really the back of the bus. As it,

Jamie: 17:37

there was no buses in Sparta. There was no buses in Sparta. Frank Miller didn't draw on these buses in the graphic novel either, so yeah. Yeah. I will

Kurt: 17:46

say on occasion I do actually sketch things. So sometimes analog, sometimes digitally. But as far as a consistent subject matter, it's, it's primarily focused around the sketches that Jamie produces. And then, but together, we have a very fun conversation about either the subject matter or the techniques employed in the sketches. And then we also talk about coffee, and occasionally we talk about gifting coffee to people. Do you? Some people, some people might not make the

Cormac: 18:26

list. Does sometimes those people, you know, like forget to send coffee to other people before they appear on their podcast?

Kurt: 18:37

Often, oftentimes. I will not, I'll be the first to admit that I am not perfect and often lack a little follow through. Kurt has

Jamie: 18:48

asked me what my address is more than once.

Evan: 18:53

So, and plus one,

Cormac: 18:55

did, did he ask you your address for the winning C still owes you for the super?

Jamie: 19:02

I mean, you know, there was, there was a whole prize pack, like all set up for that. I mean, there was like, you know, we were, we were talking like rootless rootless is, is our coffee that you guys will be getting. and they've been really good to us. Kurt's worked with them. Local roaster in Flint, and they have a couple of collaborations that they do, with, nonprofits, sort of other brands. I think we're sort of the first kind of podcast, kind of artist architect thing. so that's kind of fun. They, they have, I think, a band they work with as well.

Cormac: 19:36

So they have a,

Kurt: 19:36

they have a pro wrestler and

Cormac: 19:38

they have a pro wrestler, so I could give him

Kurt: 19:40

your address. Yeah.

Evan: 19:45

Kermit, you're about to get a half Nelson.

Jamie: 19:50

But I think

Evan: 19:51

like, do you have anything to add to, to Kurt's intro to, to the Coffee Sketch

Jamie: 19:56

Podcast? Well, I don't want to diminish like anything that Kurt, like he did it, I mean the genesis of the idea absolutely was Kurt's, and I was not necessarily reluctant. To, to join it, I thought it was an oddly brilliant kind of idea. Like, we're going to talk about sketches that no one can see at this time and have a really kind of lively conversation. And I knew that our banter was, was there for sure, which you guys, you know, you guys know that kind of, you know, feeling as well, but it's. I think the thing that we learned, at least in that first couple episodes, and then it's really kind of gotten fun since then, is Kurt really, you know, finds a, I, I refer to it as curating. it's so that, because I. Because I'm generating so many sketches, I kind of forget what I've sketched sometimes. and so Kurt, Kurt kind of looks at them and, and with a completely fresh set of eyes. And, you know, some of them have some themes to them. And so he kind of knows where I'm headed, and knows where a story might, might lie. But, I think that's, that's been kind of the fun part of the conversation. and, and for me. It, it also allows me to kind of reenter that process kind of post process. which is kind of fun too. I mean, some of our stuff is a little bit more deliberate than that, but, you know, generally speaking, that's been sort of, an unexpected fun aspect of the podcast. is, is kind of the two different roles,

Cormac: 21:21

that way. Yeah. One of the things that I find interesting is just. The fact that here you are creating something, I mean, it's a variety of things. And if nobody's checked out Jamie's stuff on Instagram, we'll put a link in the show notes and absolutely do because they're pretty damned amazing. If I do say so myself, cause I just did. Well, I mean,

Jamie: 21:44

I mean, but, and I was going to say before, like. That's how I know you is through your sketches, you know, I mean, and, and that's, that's the, you know, so thank you. I really appreciate that. Boo. What I

Cormac: 22:00

really like about it is the conversation that comes out of an observer and a creator. And that's really where I think the strength of the conversation really is. You've made the creation, you know, you've had that kind of like, you know, gut feeling of this is what you created at the time. You've sort of put it away. You forgot about it. You've moved on to the next creation and the next creation. And then Kurt comes along and says, you know, Hey, let's, let's have a conversation about this. And, you know, he's coming to it from a completely different aspect of, you know, the creation of his appreciation of it and his interpretation of it. That you either might remember or might have forgotten. And then, you know, the conversation ensues around that, which I think is discovery and rediscovery.

Jamie: 22:56

Hmm. Well, and, and also sort of a, it, it's, that's, I mean, that's a great explanation of it cuz that's, that's a lot of what we do. and I'm not, I mean, there has been moments where I was reluctant to talk about a particular sketch, and then, yeah. You know, whether it was not necessarily the subject matter, it was like, man, that was a crummy sketch. or, you know, whatever it was, or I'm thinking back to when I did it and what was kind of going on, whether it was project related or life related or something. But it's through the experience of doing it now for several years is that it's, it's made me feel more vulnerable in a good way as an artist and an architect. and as a designer, and I think that's elicited some really great conversations between the two of us, as professionals, you know, as just sort of creatives, where we're, we're talking about, you know, the, the mishaps or the, you know, the missed projects or, you know, the. The idea that you, you know, you got to save in the sketchbook cause it didn't really work out that particular time. How

Cormac: 23:59

easy was it for you to basically post all of your stuff? I know that when I started, I was so reluctant. You know, I mean, if you look at the timeline, like, and I've got, you know, what feels like thousands of posts on Instagram, but if you look at the timeline, it was photograph, photograph, photograph, Hey, you know what, I've been doing these little post it note sketches. Let me just go ahead and start throwing them on there as an exercise to kind of force me into one, kind of just putting it out there because I never really ever did. To then it's just like, all right, you know, whatever, you know, whatever somebody else sees and feels, you know, let's have a conversation about that because. I know what I felt like sometimes it was under pressure of just trying to get something done, you know, in the timeline of a coffee, you know, right. Is, you know, it's

Jamie: 24:50

the artificial deadlines that we put on ourselves in that sort of posting and exercise that, you know, you, I mean, and that was the thing, it was like the on ramp for me. And, and I've shared this on, on our podcast a little bit in segments, not, not fully formed or fleshed out, but, When I was sort of trained, I mean, I've drawn all the, you know, I mean, like all of y'all guys, I mean, it's like, you know, it, the sketching and all that stuff, it's, it's just part of, part of who I am. I mean, I, I got to architecture, you know, as, you know, from the art side of things for sure. and, you know, I'm the first in my family to go to college, you know, so, you know, knowing who an architect was, was not a, you know, as, or even as a career was not necessarily a thing. But given that is that the, the sketchbooks, when I started, I switched kind of jobs and started my own studio, and had some, some backing from a, from an engineering company. So it was kind of a unique situation, but the architecture part was all me and it was going to be, you know, it was going to be built on me and my skills and how I saw the studio moving forward. And so a lot of that, and I was very. In my mind, principled, I wasn't going to go poach work from my former employers or something like that. I was going to really kind of set out with, with all new work. and, you know, and had some people I was working with, but the creative process, it's kind of creating a studio was really, really important to me. And, but part of that was also making sure that I was still a creative. And so the sketching was something that, that was my exercise. you know, my opportunity to do that and had a friend who had his own studio in a different city in Texas. I'd gone to college with him and was asking him advice about starting a firm and kind of what that looked like. As we're having these kinds of conversations about business development, he said, you know, well, you know, have you been sketching today? And I was like, yeah, I was sketching this morning with coffee. And he's like, you know, you need to post those to Instagram. And I was like, ah, yeah, maybe. I mean, I'm, I'm looking at it and I'm thinking about it and I like the idea of it. but if I did it, I'd want to be really deliberate about it. And, you know, and, and continue to do it sort of like what you're talking about. And, and, you know, I did, so I, that, that's what sort of started this kind of hashtag coffee sketch kind of idea of in talking with him, my friend, Matt, you know, it was this idea of. Like, you know, you have a person who like helps you go to the gym, right? Like if you don't go, you know, they kind of, how are you doing? Did you, you know, kind of, you know, sort of checking in on you. And so he was sort of checking in on me as, as I developed the studio. And so I thought, well, what if there's this, I know there is this group of architects out there that I admire and would be inspired by their work. Can I connect with that community of people? I don't necessarily know yet. and can I do it through my work? Can I do it through the thing that, that I'm most passionate about? And so it has, it's fostered some interesting connections with people. you know, and that's, that's more meaningful as an exercise than I thought it was going to be. And then it turned into a podcast. I mean, it, it, it got Kurt thinking about it differently and put his kind of creative bent to it. So, yeah, it's, I'm a long winded dancer, but I think that that's. That's the, it's not, and we talk about this on the, on the podcast, it's not easy to draw every day. And, and, you know, and, and some days you're like, this is like a crappy sketch. but, but you, at the same time, I remind myself, it's like, Oh, well, I'm just going to do it for a little bit and then I'll move on, you know, and kind of, you know, and then there's tomorrow. and I might still have other work to do that I have to do some other work, you know, on, so. I wanted

Evan: 28:39

to, I wanted to cut you two out and let me and Kurt talk for a little bit now. I'm just kidding. The, the idea of doing it every day and like building that muscle, I think is, is interesting. And I'm thinking about myself and I'm thinking about what you guys are doing with the podcast. Like what you're doing with sketching is what Cormac and I have been doing with the podcast. At least that, this is my thing is putting podcasts out there. And you know, this isn't the only podcast I do, but it is the one I have done the most of by far. And it is, this is the same thing and what was connecting the dots in my brain when you were talking, Jamie, and I would be curious to hear your guys perspective on this as well, is this podcast has done what your sketching did when you talked about creating connections and relationships and opportunities, and I think it's kind of interesting now because I look at what kids are doing and they're really on social media a lot, the younger generations. And I don't know that they're really posting a lot or if they're consuming, I think everybody probably consumes more than they post. I would say that is

Jamie: 29:41

probably a general statement that most of us

Evan: 29:43

could find true in, in, in some way. But the idea of, of actually creating something and putting it out there without

Jamie: 29:51

like a real intention of, getting work from it or getting something out of it,

Evan: 29:57

but those things do happen anyway. I think that's interesting. I would love to hear more from you both on that because like that's, those are the, like I said, those are the dots that are connecting in my brain when I, when I think about something that I do often enough, cause I

Jamie: 30:11

don't sketch every day.

Evan: 30:13

and, and I don't have a discipline. I drink coffee every day, if that counts, but, But there's, I don't have this creative act that I do every single

Jamie: 30:20

day, but I do this

Evan: 30:22

enough that I consider this that thing that I've put out

Kurt: 30:25

there. Well, I would... Probably start by saying, since we just came out of the AI conference and I hadn't been since the Las Vegas, so that's what, four, three or four

Evan: 30:41

years. It was four years because we didn't have the conference for like two years. And so it was three years that we didn't even see each other before, you know, during that.

Kurt: 30:49

And I didn't go last year to Chicago. And Jamie and I, you know, we were walking around expo floor and I just, it's going to sound a little sentimental, but I, I stopped and I just wanted to thank him for the fact that the podcast itself does not feel like work at all. I mean, it, it doesn't pay bills, but it's for fun, right? We started this on a, on a mission and a premise to just stay in touch with each other and have fun with it and kind of see where it went. Like there was really no, I mean. There was no roadmap, and it was like, hey, let's see if we could pull this thing off, and now it's five years later, and I just wanted to say thanks to Jamie as a partner in this, I mean, it's, it's not about who's, well, it's all Jamie's, 99% Jamie's sketches, maybe 1% sometimes Kurt sneaks someone in, so, but it's, it's more about the, this collaborative, this collective activity that we do together, And from my perspective, I guess it's, it's, it's just about kind of seeing where, where it goes and, and not knowing what was going to come out of it. And, and now I I'm losing a little bit of your question in my mind, but I at least wanted to say that because that's, it's always been about like enjoying the process.

Jamie: 32:15

Well, and also sharing the process. I mean, that's, that's the other thing that I think both of us have gotten better at is sort of. you know, for like, I think sort of as you guys were asking us about my sketches and sort of sharing them, putting them up there and, and then curating them and asking kind of questions and sort of engaging with them, and what that process looks like. And we've gotten better at sort of analyzing my work almost separate from me doing it. And finding ways to relate that to other things that are going on, you know, in, in either our work lives or just sort of lives in general. But I think that, that, that dialogue almost becomes the creative act, you know, for, for both of us as well. And, and I think it's helped us sort of think through some of the things, I mean, both of us teach or I've taught. So there's, there's aspects of that, that we're both very interested in. and this, this is a different avenue of that, but I think, you know, you know, Evan, when you're sort of saying, talking about, you know, creatives and sort of being a creative, yeah, I think that's the one thing that when we've talked to folks who've listened to the podcast, who've known us for a while, they're just amazed at how long we've been doing it. And, and sort of that deliberateness of trying to create, you know, it, you know, just in terms of the podcast, but also the sketches too, is that there's a, the act of creating is almost, you know, the, the, the result that we're both sort of looking for, sort of searching for, I guess.

Kurt: 33:48

And well, it's just add to that, Jamie touched on the educational or the fact that we've gotten to teach a little more, Jamie has. taught the past in architecture programs. And the way I look at this is that I, I, and I think the two of you would agree is, is about sharing the information, right? Whether it's. Ultra polished or not, I mean, in our case, it definitely has a lot of rough edges, but it's about getting the information out there and, and just talking about it without trying to be too, we, we also try to avoid, I mean, sometimes it's very difficult, but we try and avoid utilizing or using those jargony words of architecture.

Evan: 34:37

Good, good catch right there. Yeah, say you, you, you, you try to avoid ARCA speak.

Kurt: 34:43

The ar, which, and, and fenestration and juxtaposition. You know, the great

Cormac: 34:53

thing about honestly, though, all words, the great thing about it is, and, and you know, I'd say that for, for both of our, you know, endeavors and Evans thousands other endeavors, it's, it really is, you know, It's, it's the conversation, it's the, it's the dialogue about the process, about, you know, just the shared love, the shared, you know, kind of like passion for what we do. And, and, and honestly, I think that's probably as much, if not more of an educational tool is just, you know, having honest conversations about the reality of creating, of the profession, of all of these things that really kind of just, you know, when people listen to them. I guarantee you people are like shaking their head. Yeah. Yep. I, you know, feel the same way or, or, you know, I've experienced that or something because there's a kinship in this profession, no matter, you know, how many years you've had in or, or who you are, whatever, there's a kinship that. These conversations really kind of like hearken to when we're, you know, when we put these episodes together, I mean, I think all of us can agree. We don't really do it for the money because there is no, you know, it's, it's, it's more about, you know, just relaying that passion and, you know, that, that's why you guys all taught. That's why I, you know, I'm kind of involved with like the ACE program. I mean, you know, in one way, shape or form, you know, it's all about like sharing the passion for the profession that we want other people to get into.

Evan: 36:29

I hear the term a lot about giving back and not in this context, but I, I think people could probably relate it that way or understand it in that way, but I don't look at it like that at all. I don't look at it as a. As a giving back, I look at kind of a, this is more of a pay it forward kind of a thing, I think for me, and it's not a

Jamie: 36:48

polished thing at

Evan: 36:50

all. And it, in that way, I think it's, it's because it's not polished because it hasn't been wordsmith because the level of lack of research ahead of time is, is. palpable. Like this, I, I hope it's obvious because a lot, it is top of mind. It is a lot of times we will come, we will show up and say, what are we talking about today without preparation? I think just to, it puts us in a more vulnerable state. And I hope people realize that because it's not, Well planned ahead of time and I, and, and because the important thing is the conversation and it's a real conversation, it is not a planned talking points agendized conversation. And because you lose that vulnerability or the possibility of it going anywhere and going deeper and the, the depth that does happen, I mean it, maybe it happens a lot, maybe it happens rarely, I don't even know, like it, it all blurs together, like you, you talked about you can't remember your sketches, Jamie, I can't remember the podcast conversations because I have podcasting amnesia, right, because there's a lot of them. And so, of course, we say the same things again, sometimes we change, we, we actually change our viewpoint, and people could track that over time. And I've had somebody say that, Oh, you don't think the way that you used to, well, I hope not, right? I hope that, that, that is happening over, over 10 years. and so to me, it, it really is about just having these conversations in public and hoping. I'm my hope is that that, like I said, pays it forward for the future generations of the profession. Number one. So they know what's actually going on. A lot of times academia is. disconnected from the practice, right? And that we get a lot of people who write into the show and say, thanks for telling us what it's actually like to work in the practice of architecture because our professors don't know. Of course, that's not always the case, but it is for a lot

Cormac: 38:48

of schools, right? And so, or they have a

Evan: 38:51

warped view of, of what it's actually like to practice or they send people down the wrong path. And like, and I think not that we have a ton of experience, we have our experience, but our goal is to share our experience. So that there's not as many landmines out there, right? And, and that to me is, is valuable just in that sense. And I'm not trying to make it more than it is because you can opt in to listen to this and you can just as easily opt out listening to it. It's, it's, it's not like a Library of Congress kind of a thing, I don't think. But. My goal with this is really just to have these conversations in the open, and that has created interesting connections and opportunities, like with the two of you, I think we all, at least my, my experience is we met in Vegas, like that was, like Kurt said, four, five, it was four years ago, right? So in person for the first time, I was standing in line for a tour and I saw Jamie, right? And it was like the connection. And then I saw Kurt shortly after that. It was that, that kind of thing on, it would have never happened if it weren't for social media and podcasts and just to create something and going back to this idea that you brought up, Jamie, of just making the act of making something and putting it out there, it's a small percentage of people in the profession who are doing this. intentionally to this very big potential audience that, you know, maybe people will see it. Maybe they won't, but, but that has created some really interesting stuff that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Well, and, and

Jamie: 40:24

along those lines, I think it's, it's. I mean, you know, he, like I talked about, like myself as, as, you know, not really knowing what architecture was or whether I wanted to be an architect and all those things, but once I sort of, you know, realized there was an art component to it and that there was a creative act to it and then a collaboration part to it, I mean, it's sort of like peeling off the layers. I saw all these other kind of ways for me to kind of get engaged with it. And, and part of it too, was also just sort of this sense of discovery of, You know, looking at other people's work and trying to understand how did they get there from here? you know, because, you know, architects are really, you know, even with magazines and publications or monographs or whatever, they don't really talk about, kind of, the creative act itself. And that's always sort of fascinated me, just, just in general. you know, from an art perspective, you know, going to museums and looking at artwork or whatever, and trying to understand that from other people's viewpoints kind of helps me look at it from my own and kind of how I'm working through things and sort of, you know, thinking through them and, and why there's. You know, I mean, like I'm a mimic, I can mimic other people's sketches. that's how I sort of taught myself how to draw, but I, you know, but I, but I have, but I have also developed my own style, which I'm very aware of. And so that sort of creative act is very intriguing to me. I don't completely understand it. Probably couldn't speak. Well, to it, you know, when you, when you think of architects that you, you know, you look, you, you know, trying to gobble up all their, their work as it was being produced and you were kind of reading about it as a student or even as a professional and then wanting to go visit it like we did, you know, in San Francisco a little bit too. It's it, that kind of connection to someone else's creative act is, is sort of the part that kind of keeps pulling me back to kind of what we're doing, and kind of why we listen to other people talk about it or. you know, follow other people's work and get influenced by it and stuff like that. So that's, you know, that's the excitement that I hope I bring to these kinds of conversations. cause it's not just about my work. It's like, I want to go, like, I'm like constantly influenced by other people's work. Well, I mean,

Cormac: 42:39

if you think about it, you know, the way that you were teaching yourself how to draw, I, you know, very similar process of mimicking others, you know, working, you know, drawing in their style, drawing in. You know, as many different styles of just understanding the art or like, you know, the art behind the craft, the craft behind the art, maybe it's, that's the better order. I do the same thing in architecture. It's, I, you know, I gather a Rolodex of all of these different cool ideas and I, you know, just things that other people have done, you know, does it mean that I'm going to do it that way? Maybe if it worked, you know, in others, I'm going to, you know, say, okay, I'm just going to do a variation of a theme, you know, here's, here's an idea and here's the way that I'm going to interpret it, but it's always trying to find, you know, discovery of my own kind of voice of whether it's details or overall building, you know, approach by the way other people have, you know, gone about doing it because we don't, you know, none of us really reinvent the wheel when we're, you know, creating something. Okay. But we try to invent it our way, we, we try to, you know, change it up a little or, or do like at least our twist so that, you know, somebody says, Oh yeah, that's an Evan, you know, work or that's a Kurt or a Jamie work, you know, versus. You know, Oh, that's Jamie trying to be like Corb or something like that

Jamie: 44:12

or Carlos

Evan: 44:13

Scarpa.

Kurt: 44:14

Yeah No, I'm just teasing. Yeah, I would I would say too as much as we Focused on a lot of the drawings that Jamie has produced. I also fall in the same camp of when I got into architecture Kind of tried to mimic comic book covers when I was a teen And then I also, I know, I've learned it over the time, over the years, this is very common to a lot of people is I was a big fan of like this old house and like how behind the scenes, like what happened behind the drywall. so a couple of that with some, some level of ability to, to draw something or, you know, you know, use a pencil and, you know, hand eye coordination coupled with like an interest behind the sort of. The nuts and bolts of things. Honestly, I, I mostly enjoy construction administration before the drywall and there's these phases of construction where, okay, you have the slab, not much to see there. You start putting up some walls. The building looks. A lot bigger than you designed it, at least to me. Every time, yeah. And then when the drywall goes on, it then becomes a lot smaller than you designed it. Oh yeah. And then, and then, and then when it finishes, you know, it kind of somewhere falls in between of like too big, too small. Okay, I think I did all right. Compared to like dollars per square foot, whatever your client is like saying in your ear. But, I don't know, at least for me, that's, that's kind of what encouraged my interest in going in architecture, in case you were concerned, you know, curious about my, my,

Evan: 46:01

I was concerned, not, yeah, Cormac was curious. The idea of what's inside the walls is really interesting. And I, I totally relate to that. And I think, you know, I've been going through some remodeling projects here lately, and it's the same kind of thing. Like I want to map it all out so that. Because, because there's no undo button, right? You can't just like remove the drywall and figure out where the things were. you have to kind of like photograph everything, but I love that part of like what is underneath the final product. And I, I wonder, Jamie, with, with the sketching, have you ever thought about producing, you know, showing the process or how have you done that, just showing the process? And because I think one thing, a superpower that a lot of architects have, maybe they don't think of it this way, but when a. You, you can see it in other people's eyes when they watch somebody's sketch. It's like magic. Oh yeah. Somebody who doesn't sketch watches somebody who does. It's like, how do you do that? And it just becomes a communication method at another level. It just becomes, as soon as you're talking and sketching at the same time, it transports, it's a time machine. It transports somebody somewhere else and they're, they're thinking about it in a completely different way. I'm, I'm interested if you've ever.

Jamie: 47:14

Yeah, no, and, and I think even just what you sort of alluded to there about talking and sketching at the same time. I think that's, that's like another level of the superpower, that I didn't realize at first. And I think it was something I even had to evolve myself into. I mean, because sketching and art and design was always sort of a, like I wanted to collaborate with people, but at the same time, a lot of the activity was very solo. and so sharing the work, you know, that's, that's one big hurdle for a lot of folks. you know, sort of, you know, sharing it, showing it, demonstrating in front of folks. That's a whole nother, that's like you say, that's a whole nother thing. but it is something when you have a client or. You know, colleague, friend, you know, parent, you know, relative, you know, whoever, person on the street, which Kurt and I experienced in San Francisco. you know, who's like sees you sketching a building, like they immediately equate it with architecture, first of all, which is sort of interesting. Like I never would have done that maybe. But it's from the podcast point of view, what we've tried to do and it just sort of, we've had experiments in it and it's something that we've, we're trying to be more intentional about. Sort of to close out the year and we've talked about some strategies about how to do that, but early on when we were just completely no video, you know, or anything like that, I would do a series of sketches and I timed myself. And I do, I do that from time to time anyways, is I, I set a stopwatch, and try and force myself into a two minute sketch, a five minute sketch, a ten minute sketch, and I've taken photos of it at those points and shown kind of what it looks like. You know, no matter what, and because I'm not trying to, you know, hide anything, I, I mean, I don't, there's no practice, like, I'll, I'll do the two minute sketch, take the picture, five minute sketch, take the picture, you know, and so on, and then Kurt is great, you know, as a partner in crime in this to, to talk through that and sort of, and let me see it through his eyes. and let him describe what he's seeing, and it sort of jogs thoughts about what I was doing in those moments, which is, I, really has helped me. I mean, it's helped me now. To talk about the work as I'm doing it. so I've done some sketch courses, some sketch tours here in Texas. and you know, I'll, I'll be able to walk and talk and sort of draw, you know, two people and things like that. and, and break down what I'm doing while I'm drawing it. depending on the audience. So if it's a bunch of architects, it's like. you know, here's some thoughts about what we're seeing, here's how I'm going to approach it and I start talking about it and I'll do it like a 30 second sketch just to explain it because I don't want to bore anybody. They all can sketch too, but you know, that's, that's a different skill. and it's, it, it is about sort of sharing that, you know, so that others do it too. And I'm hoping others do it so that I can learn from what they're doing. I mean, kind of selfishly, selfishly.

Kurt: 50:17

Add to that too, the, the. Over the past five years, there's been a few episodes where, like Jamie explained, he had a few posts on Instagram that were at, let's say, like, 2, 5, 10, 20 minutes of one sketch, and then we used that as the subject matter of one episode to talk about the exact, you know, what did it appear like in those different phases of the process. And when we started the podcast, it's primarily was about finished products, or at least sketches that were posted online. We can debate about finished or not, right? All day long. But, and then since then, you know, we every once in a while, we'll do something that's something that was fun, which will probably come back at some point was like a lightning round. We took like 10 sketches. And forced ourselves, I think it's probably a symptom of early podcaster experience, trying to, to be more brief about, and so we forced ourselves to take 10 sketches and only talk about each one for two minutes. they were all finished in that case, but then lately, which Jamie was kind of getting to, but to make it more concrete is that. You know, with the advent of the technology that we have, like phones and, and being able to post this stuff is Jamie is starting to dabble in, video recording while sketching at the same time. And so it's really exciting that the capability is a lot more, at our fingertips, I guess, for a lack of a better term, the idea of the showcasing the process, or some would say like, you know, how the sausage is made, right? And so Jamie's, some, some, some of that start starting to come out and, and we're working on trying to figure out how to showcase more of that and then be, be able to talk about

Cormac: 52:19

it. well, cause I mean, they are

Jamie: 52:20

fast. They are fast sketches. You know, anyways, I mean, that's what I try and do is I try and do them fast to begin with. So what Kurt's describing sort of, we, it took us, it took us like about four years to figure out that that was probably something we should, you know, put on the podcast, but yeah, it's, sort of seeing it a little bit sped up, but they're still really short segments. Like, you can just sort of see my hand kind of moving around the page and I, I know what I'm doing now that I'm sort of, you know, psychoanalyzing it more. but it's, it's, it's intended to, like you say, sort of demystify that superpower a bit, but at the same time engage at a different level too, so that it, it, it's fun. I mean, and it should be fun for other folks too.

Cormac: 53:10

I wonder if, you know, because, so I follow probably more artists than architects, you know, and Twitter, Instagram, whatever. And it's all because I enjoy watching the art of making, or at least the products of making. And so when I follow an artist who, you know, they do, you know, kind of like either a live sketching event or they just. You know, post there's, the process online and they're doing like, you know, maybe a 10 minute sketch or something like that. And I'll watch the whole thing because it's not, you know, like in, you know, it's, it's always interesting, to watch them and listen to the way that they narrate it. They narrate it through the mistakes. They narrate it through the, you know, successes. They like, you know, they narrate it through the, what the hell was I thinking when I did this kind of thing? And, you know, the thing about it is I think it got to a point where the more and more they did it, the more and more they felt comfortable with presenting it in its rawest of forms with all of the mistakes involved, because you would see people post, you know, like a few little, like, you know, increments here and there, but they really didn't want to show the mistakes, and every sketch is a mistake. You know, it's just like laden with all sorts of different mistakes, you know, and that mistake turns into something else or, you know, like, I rarely draw architecture in the more traditional sense. I do, you know, this little fantastical sketches here and there kind of thing. But it's, it's, you know, in most of that is like, I start sketching and I'm like, Oh, that's not going to turn out the way I wanted it to. So I'm going to do something else. And then it's just like, wait, here's some random line or something. Okay. Now that random line is a branch that's puncturing through some, you know, dilapidated shack or something. And it would just, it always keeps like teaching me and I was like, what's the next step, what's the next step, what's the next step. And you know, I, I think it would be pretty interesting to have you do the behind the sketch kind of process of just like, oh, well this is what it is, this is what you get, you know, kind of thing. It's like, mistake or not, this is what it is, because that's sort of what sketches art. Right. You know? Well, it's an exploration of am I to, it's, it's like

Jamie: 55:44

those are the, the words of encouragement that I need because it's like, For me, it's sort of that imposter moment of not, not the work, not the work itself or the process or what we're doing or anything like that. But I think the, like the teaching aspect of it that those, those, those creators are doing. I don't, cause I, I can't really, I mean, Kurt and I've talked about this is I'm like, I really never had like a part teacher. and so like, you know, you have a couple people every once in a while. I told Curtis funny story about when I was like nine years old and like went, you know, to impart adult, adult art class that my mom had signed me up for in the summer. You know, thinking it was an art class for her son who drew all the time. and then we got there and it was a bunch of, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60 somethings. And I'm the only kid, I think that that's sort of, it's a hang up for me and I know it. I'm working through it, but it's, it's something certainly that I want to do. I mean, it's, it's, I, I, you know, I've had, I've had several people sort of encourage me in that, in that vein and incurred included. I mean, it's like, like, let's take some episodes to do that in a little bit more. Deliberate fashion. cause I'm not afraid to talk about the, the mess ups like you talk about with the sketch or something like that, but it's usually sort of after the fact. It's not in the, in the moment. And I think that that's more genuine. I want to get there.

Kurt: 57:11

Well, I think too, what Cormac is getting at is the. Our, I mean, I'll, I'll speak in the, I'm not going to speak for our profession, but in a, in a way, in you talked about how you talk, you look to more artists that are posting things is that our profession isn't, and I, you two have probably talked about this multiple times on your, your podcasts, like our profession is very, not very good showcasing the process, more of the finished product. And, and I wonder if we were more comfortable in a, in the profession of architecture and just showing, like, like you said, the mistakes, right? Like if we're drawing, drawing through the process. Of development building or something like that and showcasing how, like, okay, I'm in walls, things like that. And then it doesn't work, show it right. And, and maybe we would attract a little more attention from people that understand that it's not always a finished or perfect product.

Cormac: 58:15

Well, but even, but even more so, you know, think about how much we struggle at explaining our value, you know, people see. It's like, Oh, you know, how long did that take you, you know, and they just, you know, don't really understand the process behind it and to kind of demystify that, you know, the creative process, the, you know, the detailing process, the construction documentation process, all of these processes that it takes to get to that, Oh, how long did it take you to do that moment is, you know, is the stuff that where we bring most of the value. But for some reason, because we never show it, never showcase it, we never. Show people how long, you know, it really takes to do what we do. People always question how hard can it really be?

Evan: 59:10

Well, there's that side of it. It's a double edged sword though, right? Because it's like, what do you mean you make mistakes? What do you mean you go through iterations? What do you mean you don't have the right answer the first time? And I think. That's where this imposter syndrome thing also creeps up, right? Which is a lot of architects feel like they have to have the answers all the time. And, and we have a really hard time as a profession saying, I don't know. Those three little words, right? That I'll go, I'll let me take that and come back to you later is a really hard thing for a lot of people to say. I think it's, it isn't, it is a catch 22 kind of a situation. It is because we don't talk about it or show it, but it's also we're afraid of what happens if we do, right? So I think all of that it plays into the psychology and what something that's changed in my brain in the last couple of years is like there is no such thing as mistakes like that. We were talking about this like there's problems with this process. They're not at all like they're. I don't know what word is going to come out of my mouth next. I actually don't know. Do you know? You don't know either. You don't know what word's going to come out of your own mouth next. Like, you don't know what thought's going to come into your head next. You can't control what you hear. You hear everything as it happens, right? And like, The same thing happens with the design process, with the sketching process. You don't know what's coming next. And there is a fear involved in showing that to somebody that is an, a very vulnerable position. And the, and

Jamie: 1:00:37

the blending of the blending of what you both are talking about is I think something that Kurt and I started to talk about a little bit is this sort of generational divide of. You know, people who are entering even our practice right now, you know, there's a, it's for, and this is, you know, and I hate to be sort of, you know, generalizing, but I'm going to, is that it's there, what you just were saying, Evan, is like, there's this immediacy of like, I can't get it wrong. Like I have to have the right answer. I cannot fail. I can't fail, you know, and because, you know, time, you know, time is all sped up on us now. And so the fact that. I'm comfortable making mistakes, sketching and talking about it with my colleagues in the office. and kind of working through ideas that are just sort of coming up, like you said, not knowing what the next thought is and kind of getting stuff down on the page just to kind of have the conversation with people, like that whole process for my team for a long time, they were like, what the hell are you doing? And then once they realized what I was doing and that they could engage in it and their engagement was Critical to it, then it's gotten really rich, you know, but it's it, for me, I've, you know, not to point at the generational thing, but it's, it certainly feels that way a little bit. And so it's that kind of push pull is, is something that, I think is an interesting thing to kind of

Cormac: 1:02:05

talk about and tackle. Well, think about how we've presented, how we present architecture when we're sitting down with a client, you know, and we, we come to them and we may have. You know, few iterations and then kind of like, you know, here's what we settled on. And what's interesting about all of that is we never, you know, again, so it goes back to this whole, you know, not really showing the value in the process. We know that the three, the four, the one, you know, idea that we came to present to them has got at least 50, a hundred, 150 babies laying on the floor or somewhere. You know, that were all sorts of different ideas that we had gone through and said, Oh, what about this? Or, Oh, what about that? And never really showing all of these. And then when they're just like, well, did you think about this? And you're thinking back to what's laying out on the floor and you're like, yeah, I did. And then I thought about this and I thought about this and I thought about this in, you know, and so, so going back to, you know, kind of something that you had said about, you know, generational. Is, I started to see as we were creeping further and further away from, and I'm holding a pencil for some reason, but, you know, further and further away from the pencil and when we, you know, are just, we would sit in front of a, a client and we would have this conversation with them about, you know, their ideas and everything else. And, and let's just say back in the day we would sit there and we would sketch it out with them and talk through it and just. You know, kind of like, you know, maybe not necessarily come up with the idea, but come up with, you know, at least a visual of a seed. And we got further and further away from that where they're like, okay, well, you know, here's what I'm thinking, you know, like, okay, I'm going to like write a bunch of notes and all of this other stuff, put a little bullet points. I'll circle a few things that they, you know, really, really like we're focused in on. And then we say. We'll give us a week, we're going to go back to the office, we're going to whip it up in CAD, we're going to do a couple of like renderings and stuff and we'll bring, you know, come back to you. Probably one of the most successful meetings that I've ever had was that I was sitting in, this wasn't that long ago to be quite honest with you. I was sitting in the conference room at Washington University in St. Louis. And I was talking to them about this late minute ad because they. We were going to demo this pedestrian bridge all the way to the existing building. And then they decided, Hey, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to build the first half of the bridge and, but we're going to connect it to the old part of the bridge. But for that year that we have that, we want to, we want to shroud the, the connection to make it look finished and polished because we've got a lot of dignitaries coming through here. We've got a lot of, you know, we've got the graduating class. We've got all these people who come here. We don't want to look at, you know, this construction. Okay. So I'm sitting there and as we're talking about it, I'm, I'm sketching ideas. I'm, I'm facing them and I'm sketching ideas and, you know, we're talking and I'm continuing to sketch and kind of continuing to refine it and, you know, the guy who to, you know, he was an architect and he also ran, And I'm blanking on, the famous architects that he ran their office for them, husband and wife team, postmodernists, come on, can somebody help me out? Scott Brown. Yes. He ran that office. And, you know, so like, you know, he, he does what we do, but I'm sitting there and I'm sketching. He's like, yeah, yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking. And then he stopped and was like, wait, did you just draw all of that upside down towards me? And I'm like, well, yeah, I'm not the one looking at it. You're the one that was supposed to be looking at it. So I drew everything towards you. And I had this whole conversation, you know, that sort of derailed about, you know, me drawing upside down, which I do often, but it was just, you know, this, but, but it was a successful meeting because I was able to like, listen and draw at the same time about, you know, like what it was that they were talking about and we don't, we seem to lose that, like just immediacy connection. With the idea and the thought, and when we like take it, we take all of the ideas or the impressions of we think we understand what they, you know, mean, and then go back and like, you know, say, Oh, well, I think that they meant this, you know, and then you draw it rather than having the conversation with them in hand, you know, like doing the work right in front of them, just at least to the point where they're like, yeah, yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking, or no, you're way off base. You know, instead of, you know, going back and spinning our wheels and

Kurt: 1:07:10

I'm in that state I'm in that boat right now. I have, I have this house in the upper peninsula, the U P of Michigan, facing, Lake Michigan. I've been working on it for Since the pandemic and, you know, we, we all know that the pandemic has cost or created a lot of cost escalations and things like, so now I'm like redesigning, trying to take all the same program, but squish it into a smaller footprint as we are always asked to do. And, and now I'm like, I, I try and create designs and, and, and sacrifice. You know, some things have to go right. Or some, some priorities have to get lower ranking. And, I kind of, I've gone back and forth for the past couple of months, since the client kind of picked it back up again. And I, I just kind of almost not quite started from scratch, but I kind of threw everything I had out the window and, and, and tried to rethink this whole thing. And, I have a new concept. I mean, I, I, I thought I was. Into design development, but I'm more like back into conceptual side face. And so anyway, long story short, like, the fear that I have now is like, okay, well, I have to present this thing again, start over the client. And see if they like where it's even heading, you know, and, and see if it, it sort of ticks the

Cormac: 1:08:40

boxes that they had in mind and well, and,

Jamie: 1:08:42

and like keeps that magic that Evan was talking about kind of, you know, that that's why people want to work with

Cormac: 1:08:50

architects, hopefully.

Kurt: 1:08:51

Oh, yeah, that, well, that, yeah, that too. So what I've created is not a very polished thing. It's a SketchUp model that has forms and. You know, rooms and things like that. And so I'm hoping, yeah, that like, I'm going to tell them, I'm going to keep this in order for not charge you per hour to like tighten this thing up. Like let's, let's approve this sort of rough, in my sense, a sketch before we move on to, you know, something a little more detailed. That's

Evan: 1:09:24

hard with digital models and digital media is like the, the, how fast you get to something that looks done right in the famous podcasting air quotes. It's like. What do you mean? It's like, you don't have all that figured out. It looks figured out to me and, and, and then you're thinking, well, and you might be farther ahead than you're even showing them. Oftentimes that happens, right? You're three steps ahead, but you dial it back because. You want to talk about this, you don't want to talk about that yet. And I, I, I think that the whole, as you were speaking, Kurt, I was thinking about study models. I was thinking about when we were in school and

Cormac: 1:09:59

you would shred a

Evan: 1:10:02

wall off of the chipboard model because it wasn't precious. And there's something really interesting about the design process not being precious, even as Cormac was talking about having all the baby shrapnel on the ground, right? That has been, you know, design ideas that you have gone through over time that you have discarded. They didn't make the final cut and and putting all that on display. Cormac and I have talked about it on several episodes. About how, when you work in a larger office and a big wig clients coming through and you clean up the office. And as a designer, we were always like, why the hell would you do that? Like, why do you want to present a different version of who we actually are to the client and it's because of, there's this perception out there that. This is a clean process and that is very linear and that these loops don't happen and that there aren't layers of trace on the floor and they absolutely are. We're not even honest with ourselves about the process that we engage in and communicate to others. And it's funny because when we're trained in school, we're so ingrained in the design studio and what we all know what a design studio looks like. It looks like hell, right? And we're cool with that. Like we're totally cool with that because that's. That's what it is. Like the design studio is a tool itself, like the, it is a workshop and it's a mad scientist workshop at that. Right. And you don't know what pieces are going to come together to make this magic project happen. And that's happening with every single desk in the whole studio. Right. And so it looks like a bomb went off on purpose. And, and I, it's so interesting to me to then go into like a corporate culture where it's like, we're going to clean up and only present, only going to have final renderings on the wall. We're never going to have process. And when I was in school, we were encouraged to put process diagrams and imagery on the boards that we presented to show how we got from here to there. And I get like, that's part of school. And maybe people see that as different than.

Jamie: 1:12:04

Real project delivery. I don't, it's not different, but that, I mean, it isn't, I

Evan: 1:12:08

don't think it should be. It shouldn't be. I don't think it should be. Like, the process isn't different. Right. But the outcomes are the output sometimes. Well,

Jamie: 1:12:14

and I mean, did you guys, I mean, as you sort of said, study models and I thought about what Kurt was describing, cuz I know the project he's talking about. and we, we've talked about it before, like in the first version. did you guys scribble on study models? No. Like, yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, oh yeah. That sacredness of that whole process is not there and it's like, you know, I mean, and, and to me, like, that's like the SketchUp renderings and, you know, and you know, the, the model renderings that come off, you know, it's like nothing is like, unless this thing's going in a frame on the wall, like it's not sacred. it's, and like, like, you know, I mean, I, I catch myself now. It's like, can I draw on this? But, you know, just to be polite to folks, but I mean, I'm already like the pen's like already like, you know, it's, it's, it's about at the page. So

Cormac: 1:13:08

I don't know if we still go through that same effort of the study model the way we did then. Where I would have, you know, hot glue gun and just a stack of chipboard ready to like, just rip it up and glue it together and just say, Oh, no, that doesn't work and rip it off and glue something else on there. And nope, that doesn't work. And they do whatever, you know, and just like iterate right then and there and have that conversation either in 3d or in sketch or draw or say, Oh, you know, I'm going to like color over the roof and say, you know, this is the, the material that I meant it to be. You know, and those kinds of things, and, you know, we don't mean, I would say that even though we do seem to have some, you know, like kind of concept of the concept, we don't really go to it the same way because the tools seem to be different that gives us a different level of output. You know, in a different level of like immediacy, I mean, I see most people who like sit there and they'll, you know, like work and like say sketch up or, or whatever other, like, you know, kind of like blob shaping tool that they have. But we only end up getting to see the finished product. We don't get to see, and, you know, funny enough, I'm, you know, on another screen, I have, some site planning that I've been doing for a new project that we have. And I have, you know, I'm not gonna say the name of the project, but, you know, blah, blah, blah, 1, 2 3, 2 A, two B of course three, three A, you know, and so on and so forth. So, like, I mean, I've at least kept as a memorial, all of those iterations of the different thing, because there is something from all of the other ones that I recognize that, you know, oh, this might be a value, like, you know, to the, the next iteration. Or copy over the next iteration and the next iteration is something completely different. And it's just like, and then when somebody says, you know, Hey, did you think about that? I'm like, yeah, hold on. Click, click, you know, instead of like, you know, shuffle, shuffle, it's now click, click.

Evan: 1:15:20

It's a mindset thing though, right? Like we, we all, as we transformed into the digital age, we all learned the keyboard command for save as right. And we all had this, we all had the incremental file saves and the rule was how much work are you willing to lose? Because computers actually crashed back then, right? A lot, apps crashed a lot. And so you would be working. Long hours and you would save as, save as, and it, and it was exactly what you were just explaining for me. It was 1, and the numbers just kept going. And nowadays when things are syncing to the cloud, like there is no version. It's just the current version. That's all there is. And it doesn't work like that in every program, but it works like that in the programs that we use the most and it's, it's, you know, in SketchUp or in Rhino or, or whatever, you will actually have copies of models all over. But in Revit and Archicad, like in any tool that you're using for construction documents, you have one, you have the one model of the building. And like, as soon as you, you can't really copy the whole thing over and you'd have to make a whole new file and then you have to send out a memo and. You'd have to do all kinds of things. That would be crazy talk. And, and, and so like the tools now don't even really allow for the kind of iterative, you know,

Jamie: 1:16:39

messy design. And you bring up like ArchiCAD and it reminds me, it's like I worked at a firm, in Dallas and the, one of the partners, we were, we were transitioning between software packages and ArchiCAD in a very early version of ArchiCAD. they were trying to sell us on it and it seemed like it was the direction that the firm needed to go. The partner kind of pulled three or four of us over and said, okay, here's your team, you know, this group, this ad hoc group, you need to go break this software. Like, you know, and we're like, what do you mean break something? Like, aren't we going to be buying this software? And he's like, no, no, no. Like we have a process. We have a way we work in this office way we design, I don't want this software to, to, you know, his biggest fear was, I don't want this software to tell us how we should design a building. And so his, his, the way he processed that in his brain was take this software, you guys go over here, go break it, figure out all the holes in this software. That don't allow us to be who we are. And I was like, that, that has stuck with me as a concept, like for every other, you know, jump in technology that I've ever encountered. And then just even just as a studio, I mean, like how, how you want to work. It's like, you know, it's, it's who your team is, you know, what's your DNA is. It's not this other stuff that's, you know, yes, those are influences, but it's sort of who you assemble as your group. And, and that just sort of stuck with me as a concept. I mean, it was, it was a, it was a strange thing for him to say at the time when I was a much younger, you know, designer, but, you know, I think I've definitely matured into kind of understanding, I think, what he was

Cormac: 1:18:25

getting at. Having you found though that what, what his fear was, and now he was coming from a completely different... Let's call it the dark ages where it really was, you know, pen to paper and now it's, you know, click to screen type, you know, approach of things that, you know, a lot of people are really in, in this is, you know, we're, we're facing this conversation with AI and things now is that, you know, it's, it's the tools, you know, it's just like, how did these tools best, you know, it's, it's not. You know, is this going to mess up our process? It's how did these fit into our process? Where do they fit? What do they do for us to help enhance or at least alleviate some of our process? Some of the process might be so incredibly tedious that we want it to do something for us. And, you know, I've always, cause I have been around long enough in, you know, all of us that now all have gray hairs. we've been through the process and we've been through all of these different changes from hand drafting to, you know, CAD to BIM to, you know, now the next, you know, next thing on the horizon in, you know, it's, it, it, it usually falls into two camps. It's the, the people who embrace the new technology as a way to just. You know, alleviate them from some of the things that they don't want to do, or maybe it might help them out or, you know, maybe it like alleviates a step like, you know, modeling. Now we don't have to do, you know, kind of like three different programs to a 3D model. We can do a 3D model and our plans and all of this stuff all in one thing. And so, you know, it's, it's just this, this kind of like weird kind of shy, either acceptance or shying away from. You know, technology as the way to kind of like support your workflow. And is

Kurt: 1:20:25

it, is it time, is it time that I, that I, that I get to say that the famous Evan Troxell quote that

Cormac: 1:20:33

architects

Kurt: 1:20:34

hate two things, right? Was it, we don't like the way things are and change. Right. Yeah. What I, what I think that's where the conversation is kind of circled, but it's a natural progression.

Evan: 1:20:47

I think when I think of what Jamie was talking about, and I think about what you're talking about, Cormac, because I've been on both sides of that for sure. And I see this as a, this is a, I want to go back to my, there's nothing needs to be perfect. Like it's all, it is perfect. There's no one way or the other. It's like, yes, and we have to do all of these things in some firms have to, everybody gets to choose for themselves. But the, the idea that popped into my mind when Jamie was talking was like, they know who they are. That firm knew who they were, and they didn't want that to get screwed up. And the reason they need to protect that is because they know who they are and that is their value. And I think a lot of firms out there don't know who they are. I think they want to be everything to everybody. And, and a lot, some firms are somewhere in the middle, right? And so.

Jamie: 1:21:39

well, and Evan, which is interesting to me to think about is, is knowing and then knowing who you are as a creative, like that was, that was the sort of takeaway for me was who am I like, like now that I'm, I've left that firm, like, you know, like who am

Evan: 1:21:53

I? Cause there's arm wrestling going on every single day about standards and who, who should use what tool for what, and, firms are spending a ton of money on this stuff and they have to train people how to use it and there's. There are all these struggles and they are, they're real. And then there's, there's like the art. Of the process and who you are and your identity and what value you bring in those, those are in kind of competing against each other. A lot of times. And it's like, who's got the bigger hammer here? Is it the accounting department in the IT department or is it the design department? Right. And, and who makes the money in the firm? There that this is a constant arm wrestling. Like who, who brings in? Like what, why do we exist is a question that doesn't get talked about enough, right? Is mm-hmm. what are we here for? And, and because I think a lot of times it is for all the things, right? And, and therefore we have no priorities because we have all the priorities and, and, and this, this is the kind of thing that a lot of firms struggle with for sure.

Kurt: 1:22:51

I do find it interesting. We can go on, but I do find it interesting. As we've talked, as we've been talking through, as I'm listening to everybody else, is there, there are certain aspects of the process that have faded away, at least for me, moved from a bigger firm, say in the California side of my life to, to Michigan, to small, smaller firms, and now that's a practice of one, but, where I don't have anybody to answer to, but myself or blame or blame, I suppose some of the, the advancements in software that don't get talked about as much are the things that have eliminated the aspects that used to drive us crazy. But the fact that they've sort of worked those kinks out in the background. And now I don't even think, I can't, I can't even describe like one or two, but now I don't really worry about certain things except for the, I mean, you brought up the fact of the versioning, which like I tell my students, I mean, you know, like the, the university that I'm at gives them laptops and so there's, there's hardware to work with. It's like, just save a copy, like don't change the one you have, like if I see you two or three times a week. Don't delete that model, like save, save as, and, and, you know, make an edit over here. Like you're not losing any, you know, you're not going to get penalized for using up hard drive or something like that. but, so anyway, I mean, I, I kind of diverged from, from where I was

Evan: 1:24:45

heading, but. Nice, nice work derailing us there, Kurt. Jeez.

Cormac: 1:24:49

Well, but I mean, you know, to, to kind of rerail you, that's a thing. It's put it back on the tracks. Is, you know, if you think about like all of the different software that we had, all of these different tools, I mean, think about, I mean, I'm blanking exactly what you call it, but you know, when we were trying to do like the sun path diagrams and we would build the physical model and we'd go in and we would, you know, put it in, thank you. Heliodon, we had this big mess of heliodon in our, In, in our school and you think about all of that and now it's a software, now it's a tool that's even built in, you know, that we can have as an add on into Revit that basically, you know, helps us kind of do all of the same analysis, you know, a lot of different ways. But now we can iterate a lot quicker and there's a lot of things, I mean, sure it's there, there's some kind of, I don't know, maybe it's, you know, a romantic feeling that I have of like, you know. Doing more things hands on than, you know, in the computer, but, you know, it's still this, this opportunity for us to be able to iterate faster, to be able to say, okay, you know, our windows in, you know, on this side of the, building. I think about some of the classes that, you know, some juries that I sat through, you know, of yours, Kurt, you know, and I'm thinking about like all of these people who are, you know, these kids who are like shying away from putting. The windows on the Southern, you know, exposure. So they like bricked up an entire wall and I'm like, Whoa, like you're missing some, you know, amazing design opportunities just by, you know, and then there was others that would like, you know, present and they would show like, you know, their studies and stuff and say, well, here's how I've, you know, chosen to, mitigate that problem, but here's the design that I could come up with, you know, and you just say, you know, okay, yeah, these, these they're, they're getting it and they understand it. And that's the thing is like, you know, all of the. At least the technology that we do have is sort of taking the romantic, you know, like, let me build a little physical model and let me go to the Heliodon and like set it up and then go through the process of all of these things. And then, you know, take photographs. Cause I would do that. I would take photographs of each. You know, of, as the pathway goes through of all the different sets and then I would go and take that because, you know, I would do it all in, you know, black and white. And then I would go and develop that film and go into the dark room and I would do all of these things. And so like the romantic, you know, the romantic nature of like that whole process, you know, was lost, but it's lost in a way that if you think about it, that was like maybe a week's worth of time where you can do it in. You know, just a few hours or, you know, a few minutes in some cases to, to iterate and do all of that, and then go back to, as you know, another quote of Evan is, you know, technology's here to kind of support. Us to do the things that we really want to do and help take, you know, like eliminate some of the things that we don't really want to do.

Jamie: 1:27:56

Well, I mean, if it, if it, if it, if it informs the decision making and doesn't take, and I think that's what that partner was talking about too, is as long as the decision making isn't. Being taken away, like to iterate and sort of just, you know, like what you're sort of about the Heliodon and sort of the study model and, you know, SolarPad. I've sat in plenty of juries of students where they've got all the tech and they're running all this stuff, but they don't know what they're seeing either. And, and they're not, or they know what they're seeing, but they don't know how to take that thing and synthesize it into a decision making process. That has an art and an art to it and, and, and that's, that's the, that's losing who they are, you know, as a, as a designer, they're assuming that the program is going to figure it out, like run the numbers and the program is going to figure it out and tell me where to put the windows. I don't want the program to tell me where to put the windows. I want, I want it to maybe either confirm my suspicions or. Or suggest something I hadn't thought of and, and, and then kind of see where that takes me, you know, where there's still a decision point after all that, but that's, that's who I am. I mean, and I think that's sort of what you're describing, you know, it's like that week that week gets compressed to a day and. You know, you're still involved in those decisions on that day, but I'm not sure that we're educating all the people we work with to those activities.

Cormac: 1:29:35

So, so let's do a hypothetical here. So let's say the kid in Kurt's class. That decided because it was south facing and they did a solar study that said that they didn't want to have any light come in there and they basically bricked up the entire wall. If they then went to the client and said, you know, Hey, I want to, you know, because of all of the data that I've got, this is what I want to do. And the client says, okay, well, you know, if that makes sense, you know, then let's do it. But then, you know, not realize that what they've done is they've denied. You know, one of probably the most major aspect of the site and the sighting of the building was, is that there was just this, these amazing views that they now don't get to take advantage of because of that now, you know, this is, this is just them doing, you know, pure, you know, analytical data analysis and not really. Looking at the design aspect of things where, you know, part of the conversation, especially, you know, when Kurt kind of like steps in and talks about that, you know, he talks about, okay, you know, here's the data that you, you did, but however, here is, you know, what you could have really informed, you know, and, and those were the good things about it is that, you know, I'm not going to go off on another tangent about like some of the stuff that, you know, I, I really appreciate about what's going on at, at, LTU where he's teaching, but. You know, it really, you know, it, it gives, it starts to integrate them into understanding all of the different tools in their toolbox, but then to, you know, what do all of those tools mean? What does all of the data mean? What, how can I achieve good design through all of these tools? And really, you know, have a sound judgment of the design based off of the tools that I have. And I think that's where, you know, kind of like the, you know, rambling earlier about technology was, is that, you know, it's, it's really just kind of keeping the, the hands on mindset, this, you know, this, this sketch mindset and understanding how all of those tools, you know, like the, the mindset of the, of the sketch artist is, is really kind of a creator, right? So now we have more and more tools, but we don't want to lose, and I think this goes back to what your boss was, you know, your old boss was saying is we don't want to lose that creativity. We don't want to lose, you know, sight of, you know, as Evan said, you know, our identity of who we are. We know who we are. We know what we do. Now, you know, how do we do it better?

Evan: 1:32:12

Something that's come up a couple of times on, on Twitter, I think was the, the main place that this came across my radar, which was. Like, what, what is a sketch like in Jamie's case, it's a literal sketch, right? But for somebody coming through architecture school now, it could be code. It could be 3d modeling. It could, it could be different things. And that is a sketch to them. It could be the phone in your camera or the other way around the camera in your phone. Right. It's like. There's so many ways now that you can, use a tool to support your creative process and it doesn't have to be this one. And it's not for me to say which one you should use. And I've been on the other side of that argument too, right? Which is like, no, you have to use these tools to do this now because firm and politics and standards and all that kind of stuff. Right. And so. it's a tough nut to crack for sure, but it is interesting to me to think about it in that way and say, like, what is it? How do you sketch? Because it might not be like with this writing implement on this flat plane. It could be a completely different thing. And now there's VR and there's, you know, there's so many different ways in which people can express creativity. And it doesn't just have to be that one way anymore. And the whole idea of what, what is a sketch is, is kind of an interesting topic in

Cormac: 1:33:35

itself. Yeah.

Jamie: 1:33:38

So I have a question for you, for you both. And I'm going to ask her if he agrees with me. So Evan, like your background. Like, just makes me believe that there's multiple Evans in multiple universes, all having like simultaneous podcast recordings. And it's just, it's a beat. It's just like, it just hit me like the more we've been talking that this isn't the only conversation that's going on with

Cormac: 1:34:08

you right now. Which version? Do you, do you, do you

Jamie: 1:34:12

have that? Do you have that moment every once in a while when you're just like, which Evan am I talking

Cormac: 1:34:17

to? Oh yeah, yeah. It's just like, wait, am I recording ARCA speak or is he recording troxel or are we on, are we on people verse here? Or you know, like

Evan: 1:34:30

four of us. It's not multiverse. Yeah, this

Kurt: 1:34:32

is the multi, this is people verse Yeah,

Cormac: 1:34:33

exactly. But, but yeah, no, it, it's, it's kind, but, but actually what I find interesting and kind of enriching about the conversations that we have, Is because in his multiverse of other podcasts and stuff, he really does talk with a lot of people that connect him back to kind of like, so, you know, I'm sure you guys know that, you know, he started off as a designer, but then, you know, because he was. You know, always tinkering with, you know, how it works, how it goes together and all that other stuff kind of got to the point where he was more or less the, you know, kind of go to guy for tech. And then it became more and more that he was like a tech oriented side. And then, you know, ultimately before he ended up leaving to go to a company called Tekt, he, you know, was basically the one who was the official title. that you had?

Evan: 1:35:31

I was Director of Digital Practice. Is, am I on Candid camera right now? Is this, is that, is that

Cormac: 1:35:36

camera on? Yes. Yeah. No, that camera's on. Oh, okay. But so he is always kind of kept a foot in the design world, but how is the design, how do you make that sketch or that design or that whatever, you know better through the tools that we have in. What's interesting about it is, is like, you know, being able to like have these conversations with him after he's had like a conversation with like, you know, I'm not going to start dropping names of all the different people that he talks to, but you know, all the different people that he talks to about, you know, that are, you know, technology influencers in what we do on a daily basis. it's, it's really interesting to kind of hear it from a perspective that is coming from a like minded designer that sees like all of these different like opportunities out there. You know, the unfortunate thing is, is that, you know, one of the things that he points out often is, is how architects are letting that opportunity slip past by us to have somebody else do it for us. Because back to the whole, you know, you know, afraid of change. And not change, you know, kind of like, you know, the things, the way things are, and you know, not changing aspect is, is that we, we don't, we want to do something better. We want to do, you know, we want to, you know, things to be easier for us, but do we want to do them for ourselves? Nah, we want somebody else to do it for us, go out and find a better tool for us, you know, cause I'm sitting here now and I'm looking at like my desk and I'm like, so I've got the pencil that I've been talking about, you know, the good old, you know, Palomino black wing, you know, one of the best pencils on the planet. And then the stylus, multiple stylus, styli, whatever we want to call them. I mean, you know, and, and then, you know, the other tool, the other like clicky clicky tool. And what's interesting about it is, is that, you know, I've been sketching a lot recently, but it is not been with the pencil. It is either been with the stylus or it has been with, you know, the mouse and doing a lot of, I mean. So many times I've drawn, redrawn and redrawn, in just, because I just want to do a simple 2d line work of a, you know, big master plan, right? So I pull out, you know, I, I went to the old school, you know, technology of CAD, started drawing everything out and it's like, Oh, what size do I want my streets? What size do I want my, you know, alleyways? What do I want this? What do I want to do that? And then I think I came up with like, hold on 15 different site plans. you know, of different variations of sketches and they were literally just sketches and they took those sketches and, and yes, you can, you know, lambast me all you want to Mr Troxell about my, my workflow process here of like then taking it in a sketch up and then starting to basically draw and extrude from there. But it's still another form of sketching, another form of like, just, you know. Iterating things and so then I have, you know, multiple different, like, you know, okay, I have single family, single family attached, single family, you know, like multifamily apartment blocks, you know, business sections, all these different things of like all this different stuff that I'm doing. And all of that is a sketch process, but it's a sketch process used in our new tools, not our old tools. Three of those

Kurt: 1:39:04

site plans were created during the recording of

Cormac: 1:39:07

this podcast. No, just, just two, just two of, two of the houses.

Jamie: 1:39:13

And, and Kurt, he's also just redesigned your house in the UP too, so it's, it's, it's

Cormac: 1:39:18

all taken care of. Go for it. Yeah. South side UP.

Evan: 1:39:22

Well guys, this has been a fun conversation. I don't want to force us to close here, but I feel like we're kind of wrapping up. I appreciate you taking the time to hang out with us on our, our, on our big number episode. I don't think episode numbers really matter, but it, it was a big number, so it was a good excuse to, to reach out and hang out. So we're, I'm happy that we did that. It's been a fun conversation and it's gone longer than our normal conversations, which I think is a good thing. But that's what podcasts are for, man. They're there for the long form conversation. If anybody's made it to this point in the conversation who's listening, you're awesome. You all get free

Cormac: 1:39:53

coffee. You might get some coffee.

Kurt: 1:39:55

Well, there needs to be a, a, a, what do you call it? A proof, proof. existence. So like, you know, yeah, if you have made it this far, you have to find a way to get in touch with me and I will send you a bag

Cormac: 1:40:10

of coffee. He might write down your address.

Evan: 1:40:12

How do you like that? Yeah, that was, I mean, that's going in the recording. I mean, there's proof of life right there. Your statements are contractual at this point. Well, thanks.

Kurt: 1:40:23

I appreciate the invite. It was exciting to bump into you all again at the conference and, It's an honor to join you on the ARCISpeak podcast is the first architecture podcast that I started listening to, which probably planted the seed of me thinking that maybe I could do this too. And I don't think, Jamie and I have a lot of fun. I don't think we're doing quite as well as you two have been doing it for so many years. I appreciate

Cormac: 1:40:56

it. Well, you know, it's interesting. That was in the

Evan: 1:40:59

contract. He had to say that. That was, yeah, that was in the pre.

Cormac: 1:41:03

But I will say as somebody who's listened over the past five years of yours, even if you go back and listen to ours, you know, I love how. The evolution of finding your footing happens in all of these different ones. I mean, every podcast that I've listened to has gone through some interesting evolution of just like finding it's like, okay, here's the rhythm. Here's, here's what, here's who we are. You know, it's, it's Jamie. It's, it's like, you know, going back to learning how to sketch by like copying other people and then, you know, getting to that point where you find your own design. You know, your, your own kind of like, you know, hand at things. And, and I think, you know, what's really interesting is to kind of like, listen to the evolution and now watch the evolution of y'all's podcast to like really kind of, you know, because everybody has a good story. Everybody has a story and you know, it's, it's always, you know, kind of like fun and refreshing to listen to other people. And just, you know, kind of like also sort of like watch them kind of like grow up in a weird sort of way. I like how

Evan: 1:42:13

you walked that back, Cormac. Everyone has a good story. Everyone has a story. Let's just, let's just Let's just be friends. And then he

Cormac: 1:42:21

Wait, I I think he told us to grow up too, but that's okay. Yeah. Like, I'm only referring to Kurt, sorry. Well, no, thanks guys, because this was something we

Jamie: 1:42:35

were looking forward to. So this was,

Cormac: 1:42:36

this was fun. Just, you know, I mean, next time, if, you know, you promise somebody coffee and they're like really like looking forward to it and they don't get it. I'm just, Oh, well. Oh, I'm driving through a tunnel,

Evan: 1:42:57

Broadcast

Jamie: 1:42:57

ends,

Kurt: 1:43:01

I'll be collecting addresses.

Cormac: 1:43:03

All right, guys. We appreciate you. No, thanks

Jamie: 1:43:06

guys.