132 - Drawn Out! with Stephen Parker, AIA

Kurt Neiswender: 0:32

Hey Jamie. Hey, Steven. Welcome.

Jamie: 0:37

Hey Kurt. Good to see you.

Kurt Neiswender: 0:39

Good to see you. Yeah. Good to see you.

Jamie: 0:42

It's been a long time. Yeah. Well,

Kurt Neiswender: 0:48

I say yes to too many things. And maybe I don't say no very

Stephen: 0:57

much. The art of saying no.

Kurt Neiswender: 1:00

Yeah, I'm working on that.

Jamie: 1:04

Somebody ask me a question. Hey, I got a podcast. Hey, I got a podcast. Yeah. Yeah. So, Steven, yes, welcome. And I apologize for my, my... Non sequitur banter there for the Kurt, but I had, I had to rip him a little bit because this is episode 132 everybody and hopefully one, 131 gets out in the real world before

Kurt Neiswender: 1:31

then it exists because

Jamie: 1:34

it exists. It's in the can. It's in the, it's in the can.

Kurt Neiswender: 1:38

We, you know, we want Steven. I don't know if you ever listened to the past episodes, but there was one that. Did get lost.

Jamie: 1:45

Yes, there was one. And honestly there was, there was a text exchange this week where I almost invoked that.'cause I was like, do I wanna ask? Like, is that why Kurt's been sort of ghosting me a little bit? Like, did he lose it like machine, machine place Because 1 31 was, it was a rough, it was a rough episode. I mean, there was, there was a lot of rough parts in that one. So, well,

Stephen: 2:09

well, we got past it. You know, I'm,

Jamie: 2:10

I'm happy for you both. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for thank you for indulging me for that moment. So I appreciate it, you know

Kurt Neiswender: 2:18

before should we do the introduction for Stephen before we talk about coffee a little bit and just yeah, just so I won't really I don't even want to try because Stephen. Does a lot of things that I probably don't even know about, but I do know one thing that he's an architect that we know based out of DC area. If I got that right. I mean, your, your email says Arlington, but that's like the DC. Outpost for the old

Stephen: 2:53

stand tech. Is that how I live in Arlington, Virginia, and I work in the DC area. We have multiple offices in the Washington DC area. So, oh,

Jamie: 3:02

wow.

Kurt Neiswender: 3:02

Let's see already, already, already missing the window on that one. But we, Jamie and I know Steven from our days on the young architects forum for AI national, and we've been dying to get him on the podcast. And I want Steven to then add a little bit more about what he does because. It's going to lead into the sketches that we talk about, which is really exciting. So, Stephen, please flesh out, flesh out this generous presentation that I've already opened up.

Jamie: 3:35

And I'm going to, and before you flesh it out, I'm, I am going to go back to what we did do in the green room. Hopefully it makes the technical cut. Can't trust it these days, so I'm doing it again. So Carmen Sandiego, so where in the world are you today?

Stephen: 3:51

I am in Chicago, Illinois, for a behavioral health business conference called INVEST to accept an award and meet some people.

Jamie: 4:00

Awesome. Yeah, because I know that I know that you do travel a lot. And I know your family gets to travel with you as well at times too. So that's, that's awesome. But yes, please as Kurt said, you know, kind of give us a little bit of who Steven is and, and and what you're doing with your, I mean, you know, what sort of brings you, you know, to the podcast in a sense, because you've got some interesting takes on sketches and in your own work.

Kurt Neiswender: 4:25

And where are your trophies go from these? Yeah. Yeah.

Jamie: 4:28

They're mom's house now.

Stephen: 4:32

Yeah. So Steven Parker I am an architect and behavioral health planner. So oriented around the planning and design of mental health and behavioral health facilities across North America and beyond. So that's anything from acute inpatient psychiatric hospitals to addiction treatment and autism spectrum disorder clinics. From the Canadian Arctic to Australasia. And I get to do that with Stantec as part of their behavioral health practice. And I get to have a lot of fun doing it. Helping a lot of communities in crisis and individuals in recovery. And design for humanity. It's the most vulnerable. And I wear a couple of different hats. A couple of different organizations, if you would like to know them. I am the design chair for the DC Building Industry Association. So it's a association in DC do their community improvement day. It's pro bono project every year. I sit as an associate director for the design of mental health network headquartered in the UK. So it's a network of designers, facility operators, and those with web experience and vendors oriented around promoting design and mental health environments. I'm a founding member of the Center for Healthcare Design's Behavioral Mental Health Environment Network, and I sit on, as a U. S. representative appointed by the AIA to the International Unit of Architects Public Health Group, and I think that It's in terms

Jamie: 5:55

of

Kurt Neiswender: 5:55

official roles. See, I'm glad you did that because yeah, I, I did not do enough homework on your resume to, to pull that off. No, it's great.

Stephen: 6:05

I honestly shouldn't either. So

Kurt Neiswender: 6:08

the, the one thing I was thinking about given our Jamie and I know you well, see you on social media in different countries, different cities. I figured out how you do all these things, is that you don't use any hours of the day to sleep. Unless, unless you're probably captive on an airplane, you might be sleeping then, if you're, if you can possibly pull it off.

Jamie: 6:34

But I don't know. You are officially our target audience, like you, caffeine, coffee. So, so what is the coffee of choice for, for Steven these

Stephen: 6:44

days? So, after doing some pro bono projects in India and Kenya, I got really into chai more so, and they have slightly different ways of going about it in those 2 countries that you might consider more of a chai latte kind of thing, like the addition of milk. So there

Jamie: 7:06

was a second, but I think it's just your hand. It's the talking with the hands. I do it too. Yeah. Well,

Kurt Neiswender: 7:11

that's okay. And then don't worry about technical. I think it gets fixed once the, the audio comes through. So anyway.

Stephen: 7:20

Yeah. So working on these pro bono projects in India and China, I get more into chai. And in India, that seems to be a chai with cardamom and milk and, but in, in Kenya, when I was there master planning and mission hospital it's much more milk and much less tea and it's more about the sweetness of the milk. And so if you pay your farmer well, and they feed the cow really well. Then you get sweeter milk and they rate the influence of the hospital department based on how good your chai is.

Kurt Neiswender: 7:53

I like that metric. That's a interesting data, data point there. is there

Jamie: 7:58

graphic for that? Because that just sounds really important.

Stephen: 8:01

I would say that if your chai room is well stocked with good biscuits, which is cookies and the sweeter chai'cause that's the sweeter milk and like the good sort of mix. That's kind of how they, you know, yeah, I was born,

Jamie: 8:15

I was born in the Commonwealth. So yeah, I know the biscuit. Yep. Gotcha.

Kurt Neiswender: 8:21

It's good to, it's good to know how to, how to name a name, a cookie in different parts of the world, you know, you don't want to wind up with

Jamie: 8:29

I think it was colonialism, but it's all right. We're talking about biscuits.

Stephen: 8:35

It's all just tea and crepence.

Kurt Neiswender: 8:40

Well, that's, you know so chai itself is actually tea, right? Yes, it's tea.

Stephen: 8:45

Chai means tea. But the milk sort of infusion, and there's different cultural and regional, like, differences for it. You know, it's got a little bit more spice to it depending on like how it's configured in the same way that if you were to go back home in South Carolina, where I'm from, your sweet tea, which is, is different family and family. So some has viscosity given that sugar content in my home, it's mint. That we put in our sweet tea in the summer because it makes it a little bit more fresh and a little bit less sugar, which makes my wife happy. The same thing in like different households that had chai. It's like they were really proud about how sweet the milk was, was like the big differentiator.

Jamie: 9:30

Oh, that's What about yourself

Kurt Neiswender: 9:33

there, buddy? I am moved into an old standby from our friends at rootless coffee. And we're not people like bright. No, it's, it's, they're dark. It's called dark or dark roast. It's got a Raven on it. It's, it's, it cannot be confused for anything but a dark roast coffee. And so it's it's a good one. You know, I haven't actually had it in a while, so it's, it's, it's a good one. The light bright is gone

Jamie: 10:06

no longer.

Kurt Neiswender: 10:07

So that was the flavor du jour of the last

Stephen: 10:11

episode. So it sounds light and bright.

Kurt Neiswender: 10:16

It is good. It's also very good. You'll have to, well, once that episode posts. You'll find out as, as before I get harassed by Jamie some more. But what about you, Jamie? What's in your Coffee Sketch podcast

Jamie: 10:30

mug? I am in my Coffee Sketch podcast mug also enjoying Coffee Sketch podcast coffee. So here's to that.

Kurt Neiswender: 10:40

Shameless plug down below. If you're watching the video.

Stephen: 10:42

Is that on brand?

Jamie: 10:46

Yeah, I'm totally on brand tonight. Yeah, it's the, the end of the pot. So, you know, but I have to say that I was, you know, it has most, most times when you see like a, like a. for like a coffee or something like that. They'll always talk about like the dark chocolates has dark chocolate notes or like hazelnut chalk, you know, or something like this one, like went right to the milk chocolate. So I'm sure. If I had ever had one that sort of was on the milk chocolate, like, you know, like, and I really like it. It's it's a, it's a, it is a medium roast. But it, it really, you know, it's really good and smooth. It's a, it's just a really smooth blend. And I'm, I'm. I'm a fan you know, not just because it's ours, but it's like, I was like, I was skeptical when Kurt was like reading and sniffing the bag and stuff and before I had tasted it. And

Stephen: 11:46

well, there are just times in your life you really want chocolate, like, and only chocolate will suffice.

Jamie: 11:51

Right. Right. So

Kurt Neiswender: 11:54

yeah, couldn't have said it better myself. Right, Jamie. So that is you know, well, I was going to say, but I have to put an asterisk on Is

Jamie: 12:10

this where you go into your feud?

Kurt Neiswender: 12:16

A family feud? No, the... He

Jamie: 12:18

doesn't even know, Steven. So I'm gonna like, like, Kurt, take a listen to this, Megan. Like, you can just like, take a pause. I know it's been a, it's been a rough couple weeks. So, Steven, Kurt, inadvertently, maybe? Like, got himself into a feud with another podcast. And... It's a friendly feud.

Stephen: 12:39

It's, it's, it's a

Jamie: 12:40

friendly one, you know. Okay. He kind of walked himself into it. And, and it's all about coffee. It's all about our coffee, in fact. Okay. Something's been

Stephen: 12:50

brewing between you two? No,

Jamie: 12:52

not

Kurt Neiswender: 12:52

me! I'm not, I'm not part of this feud. I, I got us into a a tip. Us. There's no US

Stephen: 13:02

I need backup. It's like, don't give, don't put,

Kurt Neiswender: 13:04

let me into this. I backup. Well what yeah, it's our friends at Archie Speak podcast Cormick Cormick. Phalen is. He's been, he's been shooting, shooting across the bow over here on, on a, on a gift bag. He doesn't, you know, he lives in Michigan now and he doesn't even want it. I've been trying to give him coffee. I told you this guy is so. belligerent. He won't even take it. I, I invite him to my crits in my studio. This guy.

Jamie: 13:45

So, okay. So, Steven, like this is, if you have, and now you have listened to it, but there are moments in our podcast where we will definitely go into the pop culture references. And so there was a moment with. So ArcaSpeak has been around for 10 years, 10 plus years now, as a podcast. They're like the OGs and, and Cormac, like, is an incredible sketcher. So we were out in, in San Francisco, which I know we're going to talk about with you in a moment. But we were having dinner one night and they're like, you know, guys, we got like a 300th episode kind of coming up on the horizon. They're like, wouldn't it be fun if we just had you guys on? And we're just like, what? That's awesome. Yeah, great. Yeah. So anyhow, we did that and then we made a big deal about our coffee with them And Kurt was like, oh, yeah, I'll bring you over some and duh duh duh duh, and he's never bought Cormac coffee So my pop culture reference for all this is there's gonna be like a say anything moment Where, like, Kurt shows up at Cormac's house with a big bag of coffee over his head. And I just hope there's someone there to capture it. So, that's

Stephen: 15:04

just... Okay. Yeah, that sounds like a very, like, photo worthy moment that needs to occur sometime. Yep. It needs to be a ridiculously sized bag of coffee. Yes. Yes. Like, it needs to be difficult to lift. It has to have some extravagance to the gesture, I feel like.

Jamie: 15:22

Well, and the best part is, not only is there a say anything reference in all this, but Cormac lives in gross point. So there's a gross point blank connection to all this too.

Kurt Neiswender: 15:35

John Cusack, degrees of how many degrees of separation? I mean,

Jamie: 15:40

and there's an actor strike right now. So you probably could get John Cusack to do this for you.

Kurt Neiswender: 15:47

Well, as long as he doesn't have to read a script.

Jamie: 15:51

No, no, we don't have a script. There's no script.

Stephen: 15:55

Just a soundtrack. Yeah.

Kurt Neiswender: 15:59

Cheers. Oh, man, that's, that's a good one. Well, anyway, you, if you you know, it's, it's friendly fire, you know, we're just having poking fun you know, and we'll see how long this goes. Cause you know, like I said, I, I've tried to try, tried to deliver it's now

Stephen: 16:18

being refused for reference for a movie that came out the year I was bored. So you know.

Kurt Neiswender: 16:25

Oh yeah, that's true. Stephen is a little bit younger than, than both of us. Right, so.

Jamie: 16:32

But quite the sketcher.

Kurt Neiswender: 16:35

That's yeah, we don't hold we're not ages over here. So we don't hold that. As long as we're all sketchy,

Jamie: 16:40

right?

Stephen: 16:41

That's right.

Kurt Neiswender: 16:43

Yeah. So you want to, should we turn them on? Turn on the screen and take a look at some sketches. Steven's got an interesting story. I think of some of these and we'll see, I'll zoom in and out as we need to. I wanted to park the your, your logo that you have. Developed for your presentations, right?

Stephen: 17:04

Yeah. So happy to break it down. Drawn out is our mental health sketch workshop. So we, we, and by we, I say Shahad Sadek and Emily Schickner and usually another collaborator either another behavioral health planner or a clinician or someone local that I think can kind of add to the conversation that we have in that workshop. Thank you. So drawn out and the idea about drawn out in the, in the title there is that you're drawing out a very difficult subject and you're using the medium of sketch, sketching to do it around mental health. Since that's the focus of my practice, you know, and I like to pose that we have a practice of purpose drawn out is. It's intended to defy stigma by design. So this workshop is based around a panel discussion with Shahad who as an architectural designer was admitted for professional burnout. To facility in Texas, actually, and as part of her process, she sketched the psychiatric facility. She was admitted to and her story. And the kind of stories we have for us on the panel becomes a foiled talk about mental health design strategies that any practitioner, no matter what type of design you do with health care, mental health schools, housing, anything. How you can translate mental health design concepts into those spaces to improve mental well being. And part of that exercise is have that panel discussion, go back and forth and talk about it, use precedents and case studies and evidence based design sort of research to talk about it and unpack her experience or story. And we relate our own as well. Having had a father admitted to a psychiatric facility twice second time in the week my son was born, and using it to defy stigma through that process. And that story, we go through an empathy exercise, so we give a patient persona someone else who's not you or me or Shahad or someone to overcome and kind of identify bias and put them in the framework of someone going through this experience and then pairing people off together in this workshop. Because we feel that it's a good to have a sounding board between you and someone else to have a conversation when you go through that empathy exercise. And then together you sketch a visitation suite, which is the only place the public gets to see a mental health facility if you're not a patient or provider and We asked them through that empathy exercise, what does this person feel, see, hear, and how can this space foster a social connection and for an individual in crisis and a family member who's trying to, like, build on that relationship to help them through that. And it's a great way to we have kind of 3 pillars to that. So 1 is to elevate the conversation around mental health design. The other is to educate designers on mental health well, being in the design process and then is to advocate. By design using medium of sketching to really tackle this difficult subject, but also hopefully they can advocate in their practices when they use those skill sets and that knowledge they hopefully gain from the experience, but also in their communities. When no health issues come up, they can be an advocate for policy and change. And however, that may manifest

Jamie: 20:27

so. With, with this workshop that you've done in, in a variety of different settings now are, is primarily the audience, other architects and, and sort of design professionals, or is it, or is it a little bit more of a broad base and some of the other. Conferences that you doing this. So we've

Stephen: 20:47

been primarily focused on architects and designers for the time being. We've had 3 iterations so far and we'll do our 4th 1 coming up in November at engage in Colorado Keystone. We just did this workshop at aspire in Nashville. And then before that at 823 in San Francisco, and the 1st time at architecture exchange East enrichment we've been primarily focused there because that's just kind of the comfort level of. You know, individuals with the sketching capability and trying to educate those folks on mental health design considerations. But we've had other members of the public interested in, in hosting us both mental health professionals, healthcare professionals civic organizations, social organizations. We're still exploring that. The idea is that these sketches that these individuals do, we collect them and scan them. We post them on social media, with the hashtag mentalhealthsketch, and but then we're collecting all of these for a future exhibit. The idea that then you'll see this crosscut of sketches that a number of individuals from a wide variety. Design backgrounds and practice types and parts of the country and with different lived experiences So that's the term they use in the UK and other places with an individual that has been admitted to a facility and has had a lived experience with a mental health issue perhaps and then they can kind of see the creativity they have in addressing these specific issues and Which is really great for someone like me because I do this every day for my job And individuals that have no background in designing these facilities, but they might have a very personal connection with a family member or a friend or even themselves and see their creativity and creating design solutions that are just so far beyond what you might see in practice is that a really. Energizes me, right? Creatively speaking. And then I think a lot of people get a lot out of the experience because it gives them agency around a really difficult topic because sketching for designers might be a very familiar processes and tasks. And then to use that medium to kind of tackle this issue, explore ideas talk about stigma their personal experiences, things like that at, through this medium of sketching and that process. Has been really rewarding for me and for them.

Jamie: 23:02

So, I was just going to say, I asked that question selfishly, is that you know, part of where I am in my career right now is that. I'm in an office with, for instance, with no other architects. So, you know, my practice day to day is me as an architect, I have some other, you know, I have some other people in my office who are, you know, they're working towards their license and all that. But, you know, but by and large, it's, it's a lot of other professionals who are sort of working within, within a development and kind of community organizing aspect of, of, of work. And, and we attend a lot of conferences. And we also produce a lot of educational material, you know, for those groups and settings, but it's not architect talking to other architects or architect talking to other design professionals. I mean, we do do that to some degree, but it's actually a very small percentage of our work. And so it just sort of fascinated me was that, you know, and I hadn't thought about this with yours. I had a very, very different angle to talk to you about with, with your work, but and the, and these sketches in particular, but it's, which I'll hopefully get to, but I think that there's something there that I would entirely encourage you guys to lean into, because I think that there's something special about. Our superpower, I mean, for lack of a better term, I mean, that's the way people think about architects and designers is that we have, and I don't think it's a superpower so much as it's that we're, we're just comfortable trying to do it. You know, and, you know, that, that comfort is sort of like there's a scale, it's a sliding scale of comfort, but we recognize that the, the power of it in our own work and in the power of communicating via that sketch with someone else, it increases that dialogue and to hear you describe it in terms of people who either are kind of in the medical architecture kind of field or healthcare architecture kind of field As well as those who aren't, but maybe have some connection to it and they're trying to kind of access it through the sketch, you know, that that is the message kind of thing, you know, really, you know, becomes really special. And, and I would be really excited to hear when you guys do this for a group of, you know, non design professionals. And, and, and not just what the sketches are, but also sort of how that, what the takeaways end up being for you as well, you know, doing a workshop like that.

Stephen: 25:43

No, that's, that's a, it's a great point. And when we began this process, we didn't know it would become a evolutionary, it's serial sort of process. We saw that there was such a great positive reaction to it and we had created. Or gathered all this material that people were very willing to give us right? They were willing to take the time, hour, hour and a half, two hours, whatever it was to do the workshop, do the sketches. And the collective, collaborative nature of that was just very powerful and other people were like, oh, we should do this someplace else. Like, and then we just get invites. And so we've kind of been more of the organic, where do people sort of invite us, ask us that kind of thing. The other groups that have sort of reached out to us, we're still in a very embryonic phase of, of doing this and we rely on a, the what's this? It's our time. So Emily and Shahad and the others that participate you know, that it is their onus to go there, travel, pay to travel spend the time doing it. So it is a labor of love. My practice affords me to do that because it's, it's very well aligned with our sort of value set, if you will. And for me, it's a, it's a very much a passion project and I would be fascinated to see when we do get to that setting where it's non designers. Because we have lots of different designers, right, so I've had facility staff, I've had vendors, I've had folks that are kind of on the periphery of the design industry, or designers themselves, for example, who are represented in these sketches, as well as folks that are like, they only do residential, or they only do K 12, and they bring very interesting nuances, like, if you do affordable housing, and they talk about the trauma of an individual who formerly experienced helplessness, And like the revelation and release they have on getting a home and then how they translate in the space, they bring that experience to these sketching episodes like this, or those that do K 12 and a child that is trying to deal with, you know social anxieties and how that, you know, can we be reacted to in space and how the environment can help them through that. I have these wonderful conversations in these workshops. From these different designers doing nowhere near health care, nowhere near mental health and they bring that sort of different experiences here and layer into it. So I would be fascinated when we do get to those settings and it's either health care professionals or folks interested in kind of like social equity. Or other sort of interest organizations to see what perspective they bring to it and the creativity that we find might be completely untapped in this setting that we kind of give them just the basic tools, the basic medium, the framework to kind of fill in because all of these sketches, you know, when I, when we participate in this, I don't, we don't label our sketches. No one puts their name on them or shouldn't. And the idea is that it's that kind of collective, collaborative nature of it. So even mine in here are unlabeled. So and I, I would really put that to the testament and the willingness to share of all the participants. Because there's a lot of vulnerability that also goes into the workshop. It's a very difficult introduction actually. When Shahad tells her story, when I unpack my family story it does, it's a very difficult subject to hear. It, it definitely sets a tone for the room. And then we start picking people up with like, this is how we can do better. This is how we can do better together. These are case studies. These are precedents. These are presentations. These are facilities that have strived to do better and how design can impact you positively in the environment and the design decisions you make and foster positive engagement, foster socialization foster, you know, the, the ability to take charge of your space when you don't really have any agency to do so. In a very critical time in your life and they start sort of, I would necessarily say clawing their way towards gripping around this really difficult subject, but the sketches sort of started to manifest and like bring out these creative juices and these solutions. And they really changed the tempo of the conversation to a much more hopeful and engaging discourse.

Kurt Neiswender: 29:57

Well, I think it's, it's, it's, it's sort of Well, how do I so many things that I've been? Yeah, I know there's so many things I've been thinking about but yeah, I really appreciate And I mean, Jamie and I both agree, you know, that the use or use of the tool of the sketch can can have so much impact. And and we've, we've come across this in, you know, in 131 or 2 episodes now in various various ways, mostly between, say, Jamie and I, and a lot of Jamie's sketches over those years, and Thank you for joining us this afternoon. And then with special guests, we talk about certain other facets and, and avenues of how the sketch moves into different arenas and and what you, what the work of you and, and Shahad and was it Emily are doing with this, with this project in this well, I guess this, This sort of focus area in practice yeah, you know, the, yeah, collective work together is, is fantastic. And, and one, the one, the sort of technical question I had. Is, is how you know, you've talked about how the, the visitation center is kind of like the, the focus of the sketch process, because that's the majority of the space that say, like, the general public has access to. So, in comparison, because you are an architect in health care. So are these sketches that drastically different than how facilities are designed now, and how are they changing the way these facilities are being designed? Because I would assume that the way they have been designed probably don't meet all of the criteria or, or all of these. Concepts that are coming out in the sketches, and that's not necessarily the fault of the architect, but it's just it's a process, right? Everything evolves and has a way to adapt and understand and reassess. So we don't wind up continuing down the wrong path and finding the right way to design something. So how's that? Manifesting, I guess, or

Stephen: 32:20

yeah, I mean, every project that we design and build is an experiment in itself, right? We take the information we have and the constraints and considerations of that snapshot in time. And then it may evolve some in that time period of design and construction, and then it's built right? And then you look back at it. Hopefully you do a post occupancy evaluation or something with more sort of structure metrics to it. to understand, in this case, like, what are the patient outcomes, things of that nature. I find that for these sketches that A, there's a variety of settings that these might be more appropriate than others. So, in the same way that we have a, an acuity is a spectrum, right? So if you have a serious mental illness, everything from a forensic psychiatric facility, which is highest acuity, like individuals that cannot be in the, in the public realm due to threats of harm to others or to self versus a outpatient setting or a low acuity residential setting where someone is like, you know, living there for a certain period of time, they, right. Are not allowed to leave. So you lose a lot of freedom in those settings. So we manage risk and design for risk, but we have to harmonize that with creating a therapeutic non institutional healing environment. And so I find that these sketches, though, if I were to take this 1 in particular in front of me has got. A fireplace and a carpet, or some sort of rug or whatnot, some things that would be obvious risk for a very specific acuity might not be for a lower 1 or for a different sort of context. Let's say let's say the sort of underground courtyard party that section you got there. That's actually not a bad way to go about creating a courtyard. The building is the barrier. The building is not trying to, you're not trying to put walls around things. You're trying to use the building to foster this outdoor space. That's safe. It's like safe as we say sometimes. I may not put trees in that thing at that height because that's a great way to park or your way out of said courtyard. And if said individual is not supposed to elope as we call it, and elopement is not. Just a shotgun wedding but is just leaving the premises. You know, that that to me is a very compelling way because you're using site and you're used to building in the environment to kind of create a safe space that also has really beautiful attributes to it and or creating this the seating arrangement that's kind of shown in perspective here around this circular setting. That's actually might be a really a beautiful way of creating. Thank you. of a variety of social settings. So you have choice of where to sit. So for example when you're in an environment like this where you don't have a lot of say, what you do day to day, what spaces you're in, your day might be very programmed, but you can choose to be with individuals. You can socialize one on one, or small groups, or larger groups, or self reflect. But the idea is that you have voice and choice in where to socialize in space. Or even to seek out different sensory environments. A lot of times you can learn tools about how to self regulate through your environment. You can seek out specific stimuli, or seek to avoid specific stimuli, or all stimuli. So the one with the kind of curving meandering walls out there in the courtyard, you can imagine a variety of tactility there. Smooth and rough and... Things of that nature that, you know, for a child on the spectrum, that could be really soothing and they could find a way to use their environment to self soothe and self regulate. It's a fabulous

Jamie: 35:58

sketch. I mean, I like, I mean it, you know, the energy of it and the, the qual like you said, the kind of qualities that you're describing, you know, you could pin, you could pin this up on a screen. And, and I think folks could really, they could imagine that story themselves of that environment and, and place some of those qualifiers on it, you know, you know, quite easily without any description. I mean, there's no, the sketch we're looking at has, you know, has no you know, no words to it. You know, it, it does have scale figures, which I also love. They look animated but, but in a way that, you know, they, they also sort of feel safe in that environment. And I, I, there's, you know, those are the types of things that as you're describing them, you know, I'm looking at the sketches trying to kind of, you know, ascertain, you know, okay, how would, you know, what's the story this person is trying to convey? And then as a designer, like, you know, what are the things can I take, you know, use as takeaways for, you know, the work that I might be able to do. And, and I, I relate this to a very simple experience when, when I was in college my the chair of my master's committee was also the director of our Center for Health Services in, in the College of Architecture at A& M and so she had a PhD, was also a licensed architect was a woman you know, who was very, very passionate about, Health systems, post occupancy evaluations sketching maverick architects. I mean, thinking about the process very, very differently. And how that research could really, you know, impact practice. And so what she did was she, she had brought and I had her as my master share, but. I was introduced to her as a junior and took her as a an undergraduate design course. And her first exercise that she gave all of her students was an LDRP room. And it was like, you know, you've got, you know, 20, 21 year olds, you know, in architecture school designing one room for the labor delivery recovery and postpartum process. And it was, you know, and for us to, and we weren't, we were all kind of trained as generalists and so it wasn't, we weren't doing a, like a health certificate or anything like that, but it was that exposure to concepts. And so, and I think that, and, and having. You know, dialogue amongst our studio in that, in that kind of a way, it makes me kind of, you know, get excited about what you guys are trying to do with these workshops because I can imagine, you know, not only the stories that sound like, you know, really are impactful in sort of setting the tone for things, but then also the energy that gets generated by this exercise.

Stephen: 39:02

And I think that is 1 reason why we keep wanting to do it is that it, the energy that this kind of environment fosters when you sort of put all those elements together and it's a short amount of time, right? It's, it's, it's not a ton of time. And there's a gratification of of the sketch sort of accomplishing that kind of key idea or drivers. Like, the feeling of being cloistered in this little space right here in this garden because the walls sort of hug you, right? And that's one way that it was described, for example. But also, if you can imagine the playfulness if this is in a pediatric setting of playing peek a boo with the little, like, holes in the wall. Or curling up in one of the bigger sort of seeding niches or something within it. And that there's a playfulness that starts to really change that tone, too, because you see that it isn't just about creating a safe environment or looking to mitigate risk or any one individual story. You start to see this kind of collective riffing off of each other, too, because they have this partnership between the 2 folks that are sketching. Sometimes they sketch separately. Sometimes they sketch together. And then when we kind of do a credit, we all sort of present you definitely see people pick up language and excitement around the story. They're crafting with the sketch and they're like, oh, I, I, I love this idea. I want to incorporate it here. You can see them like their brain start churning. For what they want to take this experience, this knowledge because we, we don't give we only have so much time to really kind of talk about projects and case studies that are trying to convey a concept. I love the idea. They sort of make it their own and can riff on it and their own practices. And I love seeing their, like, they leave the room. With just a very different energy and vibe that's very infectious. And you're like, Oh, when's the next time we can do one of these workshops? Because it's really energizing to me. And I get these whole new raft of sketches and I'm like, Oh man, there's so much potential out there. And, and for us to do better together.

Jamie: 41:08

The,

Kurt Neiswender: 41:09

the, the, you know, I forgot that part and I'm glad you restated it. The, the idea of like. The, the, you pair people up intentionally and that they work together and, and separate, you know, the sort of brainstorming. But then the activity shared you know, there's a lot more energy and intensity that, that can be generated with that, that, that sort of guided or, you know, shared experience. And I, I keep in the back, in the background, I've been continually thinking about in, in school. When I'm teaching in studio and how to sort of generate a similar sense of energy with the students in, in, in studio these days, right? Because they really don't, and I'm not knocking this generation, but they don't sketch like we did and, and what you're showing us here. They do a little bit, but I'm, it's, it's, it's causing me to think that like, while your focus area is in this mental health and healthcare arena, this kind of activity, I think could generate any kind of project type, a much richer project type. Of, of any

Jamie: 42:25

kind. Yeah. Well, and I like if you did this sort of exercise and along the lines of what you're saying, Kurt, you know, and it's not, I think it's not sort of an ageist or generation discussion. I don't wanna get into that. But it's I think that what's unique about what Steven and his and his collaborators have been doing is that they're pairing people up mm-hmm. to do this exercise. And so in that pairing, there's a, there's a innate vulnerability. That, that everybody has to kind of, you know, reconcile. And and because of the time, and because of the time frame, just like our, just like the coffee sketches that I do, I mean, I'm purposely trying to do them quickly. Some are way better than others you know, in my opinion, like for me personally, you know, and, and in others, you know, I'm surprised sometimes when the ones that I do super fast that I'm not too crazy about people really like, yeah. Okay. You know, what's, what's, what's in that, that I'm not seeing personally? What, what, you know, what's, what's going on in my brain? But, but I like the idea that you're, you're, you're sort of setting up this collaboration between two people. And, and I think that that may be something, Kurt, for you with your students would be kind of a unique exercise to pull. Because even with colleagues of mine, That I have in sort of my studio in a sense It's the iterative process. It's not, it's not the sketching so much. It's like, I don't care if it's a good sketch, or a bad sketch, or an ugly ske I don't, I'm not, I'm not interested in that. I'm not worried about that. I'm, I'm interested in like, are we getting the ideas out there? You know, and are, and are we working through multiple ones? You know, are we getting to what you're really trying to say, you know, and I'm, and I'm imagining these conversations that people are having where they're, they're getting at the heart of the story and, and they're doing it with a sketch, which is, that's super powerful at the end of the day. There,

Stephen: 44:26

there's a lot of layers to it, but because we start off with Shahad's story and kind of our perspectives and our one degree of separation. There's vulnerability in that, right? There's a trust in the audience and a trust in ourselves to share this really vulnerable moments in our lives and the moments of our loved ones and reciprocating or getting that trust reciprocated in this process, if you will because you're, you're sharing and you're hoping that others will share in the process. And that together we can kind of take what is the stigma of us preventing us from sharing from being vulnerable and overcoming that. Right? And that builds the trust and trust is a 2 way street. And so starting with that vulnerability, and then you can start to iterate because you built on that trust. Right? And that the idea that you have and someone else's idea that you have, you respect where you came from with it. And then you build on it together, hopefully and riff on it together, hopefully. And that's where the iteration and the sketching, and so some of these sketches might be, you might see multiple iterations on a page, you might just see one after they sort of deliberated about it. You might see two sketches from that pair, because they each kind of have their own style. And that, that's really wonderful to me because we only give them enough guide rails, like this is the paper size. You know, here's your pens. We give them colored markers, things of that nature. Is it a

Jamie: 45:51

pilot pen? Are you into the pilot pens too?

Stephen: 45:55

Oh, so my, my pens, I tend to ask for two or three different line weight styles. I always, I always rubber band mine together because nursing staff will take away your pens if you don't keep the cap.

Jamie: 46:07

Gotcha. Yeah.

Stephen: 46:08

So, I have a sign pen. It's my thick, my thick guy. Typically. Oh,

Jamie: 46:14

I like a

Stephen: 46:14

sign pen. I like a sign pen. A flair pen. This is my medium weight I will vacillate between a B6, B5 and a pilot razor point just depending on what they, because when we asked to set these things up, we were like, I like three different weights for folks who show up without anything. And that's usually the options I get. Those are my personal ones. Obviously people show up with their own and and then like literally just the Crayol thin pens and thin markers we like best instead of the thick markers because you get more colors to work with. I've seen people sketching all green and all purple and all just monochromatic. And then others who were just using the complete kaleidoscope of colors. And just kind of depend because we, the patient persona, we kind of give them. is a woman named Maria who has postpartum depression and having designed a postpartum or worked on postpartum psychiatric units a lot of what you're trying to get to is about relationships. So, we talk about our relationships like Shahad and her relationship to the environment, my relationship to family we set up this empathy exercise to talk about the relationship of the patient, this other person, Maria, she obviously had a child has a partner, a husband, or someone else in that process with them, and so you talk about all these different relationships, and how does the space help foster certain relationship dynamics help create a shared experience. How does this foster empathy for someone that in crisis that you don't really know their exact perspective because their grip on reality might be very different than you or I as well? That could be true of someone with developmental disorders as well as someone who's going through psychosis or withdrawal. And so each person sort of brings those kind of unique viewpoints to it. And that's really awesome to see. Thank you.

Jamie: 48:05

Oh, I imagine. Yeah.

Kurt Neiswender: 48:08

Yeah, I mean it's, I just, I think we'll have to have you back on as you build up this catalog you know, at some point again in the future, the

Jamie: 48:20

Well, and the other thing too is that I think Steven needs to use his AIA like shway, like shway, shway,

Kurt Neiswender: 48:27

shway, shway. Shway sounds good. Okay.

Jamie: 48:30

I don't know. I don't know where that came from. So like clearly like. I'm not fellow material. Kurt might be fellow material. You, Stephen, might be fellow material. But Texas, you know, Texas is weird. But, but, but, I will say, from a scheduling point of view, it is a damn shame, damn shame, that the urban sketching is at the exact same time at the national conference as your session about... You know, design and health, because I'll, I would have signed up for both, you know, I would have brought Kurt, Kurt and I could have, Kurt and I could have done, like, we could have been partners and done a lot of sharing. Fascinating.

Stephen: 49:14

Yes, it does. And hey, it doesn't stop you. From doing it yourselves, I can't recreate

Jamie: 49:20

that could be an episode. Do you want to be the facilitator for that episode

Stephen: 49:23

for us? That'd be great. Happy to help. Well, that's another thing about it is we, we kind of create this environment in this kind of moment in time, this event that people can kind of come together and do it. It doesn't mean you can't replicate in your own way. Like, we would love to see it be evolutionary. I don't, I don't, we don't own any IP for this stuff. You know, anyone can kind of use the, the concept to kind of riff on their own. I would love to see anyone evolve it and just get something out of it that helps them either on their practice or in general life experience even. And I've had clinicians say the same thing, like they, they, they go to a lot of conferences to learn and keep themselves fresh on only this medical techniques. But, I mean, it's, it's a great way to take yourself out of your, you know, normal processes and hopefully use something that you're familiar with or have fun with and produce something that kind of makes you think a little bit differently.

Jamie: 50:17

Well, I love that and I love the way you just said that for yours, because in. Hearing about it, I was hoping that's exactly the approach that you were taking. I assumed it. I don't know your collaborators. I assume that's the direction you're going. Like for me, when I've, when I've pitched my coffee sketch workshop that I've done twice, three times now here in Texas a lot of folks, you know, sort of. initially are like, really, do you want to do like, you know, sketching? And like, how's that? I was like, no, no, no, it's everybody can sketch. A lot of people were all trained to do it to some degree. A lot of us aren't doing it day to day anymore. I'll be damn sure if, like, the people that I've had come to my sketching sessions, some of them are super serious about their sketching. You know, they don't want to hear any, like, tips or anything from me. They're just like, they're there to kind of show off a little bit, honestly. Honestly, probably. Or feel like they're in a collective of people who sketch just like them. Which is fine. But, but, but the thing is, is that it's the energy of being in a group like that. And, and giving yourself, you know, kind of giving yourself the gift of you're at a conference. I'm going to give myself three hours to go sketch with a bunch of people that I may or may not know. And explore a little bit and think about things and maybe be exposed to new ideas, new concepts, new techniques, new whatever. And the way, in a very dissimilar way to the way you've described it, but kind of the same idea, trying to get people immediately in that first five minutes to know, this is going to be a little different, and that's okay, is, I say, okay, everybody's got their favorite implements, that's awesome, I'm glad you brought them, great, but, for the first ten minutes, I'm going to make you draw with, like, charcoal. And here's your charcoal.

Stephen: 52:23

And so,

Jamie: 52:24

yeah, like immediately they're like, well, even the ones who were like the pro, they're like, like, like the circuits, you can just see them just like, no, no, no, do I have to take that pencil out of your hand? You know,

Stephen: 52:38

yeah, I absolutely because it, the setting, we create the kind of atmosphere you're, you're fostering community, hopefully, right? The shared sense of spree decor and camaraderie because you're. You're sharing because we, the beginning story and intro to this is, is a downer. I'm not gonna lie. It's, it's, it's not going to be rainbows and sunshines and that kind of stuff. It's a difficult topic. It automatically gets people out of most of their comfort zones and then we start to sort of bring them back on a journey. Hopefully. And not to say we don't learn from this and you have hopefully gotten better for each iteration. But the end of it, everyone sort of feels hopefully that sense of community around the sketching and what we're hoping to accomplish individually and collectively and, putting yourself out there and being vulnerable and using this medium to kind of get agency around a difficult topic, all of that, getting out of your comfort zone and then getting yourself into a new space mentally into a new comfort zone. Hopefully you're stretching yourself to something beyond where you

Jamie: 53:44

started with.

Kurt Neiswender: 53:45

Yeah. I think, and then, yeah, that generates the energy. Or, or a creativity, the stretch, I think the stretch and

Stephen: 53:54

the friction, right? And the tension, that's where the energy sort of like comes from in a way. Well, I mean, the friction between the individuals, I mean,

Jamie: 54:02

there should be no gatekeeping on creativity. You know, I mean, that's one thing that Kurt and I, you know, really try and like highlight for the way we both approach it. You know, we bring different energy, obviously, to, you know, but our banter is, is, you know, balancing each other. But what you guys are doing, you know, I'm... I applaud. It's just it just sounds fantastic. I I'm sorry. We weren't able to do it in San Francisco with you. We went around the city and sketch with a bunch of people randomly in the cold. It was fun.

Stephen: 54:34

It was a little bit colder than I was expecting. It was. And I guess, but no, I mean, we applied again. We'll see how it goes. Like I said, we, we get invited and as we have time and wherever it falls to do it, we, we try to. Do it when we can and, you know, we're definitely looking forward to the next 1 and in Colorado. And I, like I said, I do many types of workshops is 1 of my favorites. I'm doing, like I mentioned earlier, a mental health mockup workshop at healthcare design conference. Right? That's leveraging like, hands on analog mockups with to imagine, you know better mental health environments. So, thank you. No matter your medium, whether it's the two dimensional or three dimensional or the digital or the charcoal there's ways to sort of a structure of creativity and kind of address really big issues. Along the way.

Kurt Neiswender: 55:27

Yeah, thanks. I think we'll let you go with that one. And we're, we're, we're excited to follow up on the, that upcoming conference through your social media. So I hope to see some, some sketches from Colorado. I need

Stephen: 55:46

to release, I need to release some from Aspire already, actually. So it's a good, it's a good push

Kurt Neiswender: 55:51

in the pants. Trust, trust me. There's no, no judgment on getting things out on a timely from this guy. So

Jamie: 56:00

podcaster,

Stephen: 56:00

that sounds about right.

Kurt Neiswender: 56:05

All right. All right. Thanks.

Jamie: 56:07

Thanks, Steven.

Stephen: 56:08

Thank you. Take care.