141 - Finishing the Year Strong with Completed Projects

Kurt Neiswender: 0:32

Oh, nice move there. See, for those that are watching, Jamie gave me the old, like, Will Ferrell

Jamie: 0:40

Playing

Kurt Neiswender: 0:42

who was the guy from inside the actor's studio was anyway. Okay. So welcome, welcome to the show. 1

Jamie: 0:54

41, 1 41. How

Kurt Neiswender: 0:56

are you doing, buddy? I'm I'm great. You know, it's there's so many, so many positive feelings that I can't even. I can't even express the, it's the solstice, it's the solstice. Well, there's that. Yeah. I, you know, it is honestly my favorite day of the year. It's not Christmas, not new year's, not my birthday, but the solstice, the December solstice is my favorite tip because the days started getting longer again after the solstice. I'm not a big fan of the days getting shorter. And so I do look forward to. When they start to get

Jamie: 1:40

longer again. So, so you were, you're, so that meme that goes around about like people crying because it's still dark outside and then all that kind of stuff, that's made for you? You're the target audience for that? Is that what you're trying to explain?

Kurt Neiswender: 1:58

I mean, I'm not going to cry. So much, you know, but you know, like when I go drive to Lawrence

Jamie: 2:06

tech to go teach. So that's a yes is basically what you're saying.

Kurt Neiswender: 2:11

Yes. You

Jamie: 2:13

got, see folks. I just saved you from Kurt's driving anecdote where he tells us about the bad coffee that he has to stop and get on the side of the road because it's so dark outside as he's driving to the Lawrence tech to go

Kurt Neiswender: 2:29

teach his classes. Well, well, but then it's like you, you go there in the dark. And then I go home in the dark.

Jamie: 2:38

That's a lot of gas station

Kurt Neiswender: 2:40

coffee. Well, you know, I found a spot that they have Dunkin Donuts,

Jamie: 2:48

the Dunkie. You know, Dunkin Donuts is really big in Boston.

Kurt Neiswender: 2:54

It's East coast. It's, it's primarily, I mean, that's how I, I, there's not very many of them around here in, in Michigan. I don't know about where you are.

Jamie: 3:04

Yeah, not very many. It's Texas. It's a very big East Coast thing. But we are gonna get a Tim Hortons. Oh. We are getting Timmies.

Kurt Neiswender: 3:13

We got a Chick fil A in Flint Township. I'm not, I don't know if I've even Eatin Chick fil

Jamie: 3:21

A. Don't. Pass. I'll pass. Yeah, just pass. So, it's a pass. Yeah, there's, there's a lot of reasons to pass, and we'll

Kurt Neiswender: 3:29

just leave it at that. Right, yeah, and this is not, not necessarily going to become the, uh, food blog.

Jamie: 3:36

No, or political. We, we've usually shied away from both, and they tend to cover both bases.

Kurt Neiswender: 3:44

So, well, so should we talk about coffee?

Jamie: 3:48

You were talking about, you tell me about your gas station to get finished that story. I totally

Kurt Neiswender: 3:53

interrupted you. Oh, yeah. Well, any, I mean, I get, I get the Dunkin Donuts, you know, and sometimes I go to Speedway, you know, get, get some, I mean, I don't know if you probably don't have Speedway gas stations. You have Speedway down there? We also have Buc ee's. Oh, I think you've got to go to Ohio for a Buc

Jamie: 4:18

ee's. Yeah, and I've sent you the picture of the Gigantor Buc ee's. It's like Godzilla of gas stations.

Kurt Neiswender: 4:28

You know, I'm a fan and a friend of the City of Flint Building Inspector. But he

Jamie: 4:36

has a hat for Bucky's. Are you trying to tell me you'd like some Bucky's merch? Cause I will say that I will say, I will say that there was at our, our holiday gift exchange at the office. One of the early, one of the early gifts was. Like sort of a Bucky's grab bag. There was no hat, but there was a Bucky's grab bag. And there was a Bucky's tumbler, which was kind of nice. And so a lot of folks were eyeing it. Like for that steal option, it's like, yeah, you know, yeah,

Kurt Neiswender: 5:17

you open one and you can either keep it or somebody could steal it or open something, right? Those are fun. Yeah, so it's fine. If, if all participants are in the spirit, right? Yes, they got to change hands. Yeah, well,

Jamie: 5:35

you're looking at the guy who started the

Kurt Neiswender: 5:38

stealing. So I'm not, I'm not, how am I not surprised?

Jamie: 5:42

Yeah. Oh, gotcha. Thank you. That's the emotion of starting. Yeah, I know. I know. We, we talked about that in the green room. We're

Kurt Neiswender: 5:53

not going to throw it in this episode. That's why, you know, yeah. Yeah. We'll, we'll leave it there for those that watch the, the recorded YouTube, YouTube sessions, but the,

Jamie: 6:03

or just the live stream and going, what the hell are they talking about?

Kurt Neiswender: 6:07

Well, I might make a clip. I might make it a clip.

Jamie: 6:11

Yeah. I think I

Kurt Neiswender: 6:12

figure out how to do the bleeps.

Jamie: 6:16

That would be fun.

Kurt Neiswender: 6:17

Yeah. Remember that now I'm going to go off topic, but that's why I'm so great gratitude for all things this year is, Arrested development. They did an episode where they bleeped random words. Like, they weren't even cuss words. Did you ever watch Arrested Development? Oh, oh, wow. There's a lot of points. Points lost.

Jamie: 6:48

Points lost. I can see, I could see, I could see the pain on your face as I prepare

Kurt Neiswender: 6:55

to answer. Like, I mean, I'm, I'm always disappointing Jamie by something. But you know, this time are you taking notes? He owns the discipline. Are you taking

Jamie: 7:05

notes?

Kurt Neiswender: 7:06

Are you writing notes down? Oh, I feel like the scoreboard is probably, yeah.

Jamie: 7:12

Deduction,

Kurt Neiswender: 7:13

yeah. You know, tipped in my direction. But anyway. We can't talk about it if you haven't seen it. Because it won't be funny. Listeners that are aware. But anyway, we just gotta move on. I don't even know where to go. Hopefully, hopefully we can redeem this episode. Yeah,

Jamie: 7:35

I think we have, we have, we have time. It's early. It's early in the episode. Yeah. All right. So, so aside from your Dunkin Donuts or your Speedway coffee, what's the coffee of the day today?

Kurt Neiswender: 7:48

Well, I still have a nice, I overfilled this bag that I got last week or this, this week, last weekend of The sort of the bulk, the bulk by so I, I got even more than a pound of it's called birds of paradise, as I mentioned in the

Jamie: 8:09

last episode. So when, when you say it's the bulk buying and you, you overfilled it, like, are you saying that you. like

Kurt Neiswender: 8:19

cheated them? No, no, they still put it on

Jamie: 8:22

the screen. Oh, okay. Okay. I wasn't trying to like, I wasn't, you know, ouches sort of like robbery suspect or something like that. It just was like the way you kept saying it. I was like, are you

Kurt Neiswender: 8:36

trying to tell me something? They're good. They're going to hang a screenshot of the podcast in the Dale, the

Jamie: 8:42

Dale's Whole Foods. Look, he's got it in his hand.

Kurt Neiswender: 8:46

Don't, don't sell anyone. Don't kick him out. We

Jamie: 8:51

make him right on the back, too.

Kurt Neiswender: 8:53

Yeah. You know, it's a fun, a fun No, you know, you ever buy anything in bulk where they have like the bins with the handle? Sure. You pull the handle and it starts filling, you know, and then I luckily, I didn't dump, I thought I was going to spill some beans there, but you know. But anyway, so.

Jamie: 9:13

I feel like we need the CCTV video footage of Kurt Filming his coffee

Kurt Neiswender: 9:20

bag like that. I love that too. I have a GoPro now So maybe I can hang the GoPro up in the I'm gonna do that. You

Jamie: 9:29

totally I like You didn't even need to tell me you had a GoPro. I just I would have just known that Like I just and I think listeners if listeners have gotten to like we found out this week That there is somebody who's just found our podcast and they gave us a beautiful, very generous shout out. And, and yeah. And, and I was like, that's awesome. You know, we're, you know, we're about to drop a new episode. And they were like, hold on, I'm starting from the beginning. And I'm like, sweet, good, brave,

Kurt Neiswender: 10:10

brave. That's where the gold was in the beginning.

Jamie: 10:14

But he will absolutely know by probably episode five or six that Kurt would absolutely be the person to have a GoPro and take it to go fill his coffee. I'm going to do

Kurt Neiswender: 10:25

it. And that's

Jamie: 10:27

going to become Oh, is that going to be the new intro? Outro? Ooh! Ooh! I am just We are coming up with so much good stuff in this last episode.

Kurt Neiswender: 10:40

Yeah. I This is Well, I'm taking notes. This Well, we haven't even decided this. This is going to be the last one of the year, but No. But we're getting close, folks. We're close. We're close. Yeah. We've We've We got We have ambitions for other Well anyways, so what about your coffee?'cause we got all off,

Jamie: 11:00

all off topic. Well, you CTV close. Yeah, no, no. So like I, I, I mentioned in our last episode yeah, I am, I've gone to the, the little city, you know, out of Austin, Texas. And it's a micro lot. And I described the notes last time, but I'm gonna try and I'm gonna try and do the name. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to try and do my pronunciation skills. It's a Brazil sitio dos cedros. That's pretty good for Jamie. Not too bad, but yeah, so it's, it's caramel orange, sweet corn and jasmine. The jasmine really does like it really, that. But I I will say that it is it is one that I would I might gift, I might, might consider gifting to somebody. It's that time of year.

Kurt Neiswender: 11:51

Yeah, we actually had the Christmas green room music in the earlier. We couldn't tolerate any more of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Gifts. Gifts are a thing people do around these, these, this time of year heading into the Christmas

Jamie: 12:11

solstice solstice

Kurt Neiswender: 12:13

solstice solstice tomorrow.

Jamie: 12:16

Yeah, it's got to do with the sun. It's in the name.

Kurt Neiswender: 12:22

Oh my God. All right. Let me, I'm going to flip the, we're going to move into some, some, some. Content of the podcast, I can't get teased, but the solstice any longer, but we had, I wanted to just touch on a couple of things. Last week we had the final reviews for, for the I. D. 5, what we call I. D. 5, which is the fall semester of 4th year students that the studio that I was teaching, which was a group group based studio. So all of the. Students were in teams for the whole semester and and the project was actually with my client communities. 1st here in flint with a site that they have control over in flint to design some affordable housing and. Supportive mixed use functions. So something that would be akin to what they do. You know, here in real life, right? And and so the students got to interact with the client group, different staff, people in the community in the city of flint, and, you know, throughout the semester, and then develop their own design. For about a 50 unit building with mixed uses, and I gave them a little leeway on how they chose to mix units. And program the non residential spaces, but up top, you know, we, because we don't I don't want to focus. We can talk about more of the school stuff, like, maybe in another episode, because today we have some other things we wanted to get to, but. yOu know, familiar face over here, our friend Cormac, who is now a Michigander is was able to join us or our reviews on Thursday last week for

Jamie: 14:28

and the coffee feud is.

Kurt Neiswender: 14:31

We have settled the coffee feud because would not let him leave without a bag of the coffee sketch podcast coffee. Excellent. So, so there it is. Although I'm glad he's looking, I think he's looking at the Dean or something.

Jamie: 14:48

Yeah, he's, he's like, do you see what this guy finally gave me? He's like looking off to all of our listeners who've listened to this. If you just go on for episode after episode. And I will say that there was a little shade from, from him early on. And then I think he even forgot that there was a feud, even though we were holding onto it. Or at least I was holding onto it as a casual observer.

Kurt Neiswender: 15:13

Well, I will say that the man is quite busy at the moment with his client work. And

Jamie: 15:21

he has ghosts in his house too. Have you heard about that? He's got ghosts in his house,

Kurt Neiswender: 15:25

so, Oh, I don't want, I mean, we're in Michigan, a lot of old buildings. I, you know, yeah, I will point out, however. You know, this, this here using

Jamie: 15:39

the telestrator. Oh, we're going to, Oh, we're, we're debuting the telestrator folks. We started at the beginning of the season. Now we're going to the second, you didn't get the logo. Is that the

Kurt Neiswender: 15:50

logo of the school? Oh yeah. Yeah. That was a good, good catch. But the, the, the, the thing I'm trying to point out here is, is as they do in sports, right, if they're telestrator. Is that there's a missed connection right here that you know, I was putting the hand out to break the feud with a shake Oh, and

Jamie: 16:14

and and

Kurt Neiswender: 16:16

something happened in in trend lost in translation The shake wasn't made, the coffee was delivered,

Jamie: 16:27

so

Kurt Neiswender: 16:30

could it be the feud is broken?

Jamie: 16:35

I don't know, I, I, just, yeah, it's like

Kurt Neiswender: 16:39

Or the feud

Jamie: 16:39

continues? Like, shoulder shrug, question mark, tilt head. So

Kurt Neiswender: 16:50

Anyway, we'll, we'll, we'll leave it at that. You know, I know he's behind on episodes, so he, you know, as he

Jamie: 16:56

catches up. Yeah. As he catches up, he'll find about the feud in like February. So it's

Kurt Neiswender: 17:00

fine. So then I just wanted to show I, I got, I got to bring up an old friend. This is Dwayne Macklemore at Mississippi state. And we were classmates at USC.

Jamie: 17:14

And did he wear that T shirt to the design reviews? He

Kurt Neiswender: 17:18

did. He did killer. Yeah. You'd like Dwayne. We're going to have, we're going to have Dwayne on for the podcast because he's, he's still sketches as we were taught. Always have a sketchbook and so he's passing that on to his own students at at Mississippi

Jamie: 17:37

state. And I see some nice red wings gear in the background there. So I'm just like, you know, you guys were having fun. That's good.

Kurt Neiswender: 17:44

Yeah, we hopped over to a local pizza. Pizza joint in by school and had some pizza after the reviews and maybe a beer, but, you know, just, you know, got to celebrate and and actually with with a couple of other faculty who are not in the photo, but it was so, you know, this is my little brief show and tell, um, you know, this, this, this team, man, they crushed it with renderings down at the bottom. I mean, I don't have a great close up photo. But they did this sort of day to night sort of shift along the bottom of their boards, which, which I thought came out really

Jamie: 18:29

well. Yeah, I'm like, like you say, it's sort of like, you know, we're looking at a photo of their presentation in progress. And you know, that is really conveyed really well from even from this distance in effect. And that, and I think that that's the whole thing sometimes too, is as you bring that up. And I'm glad that you sort of share this one is, you know, in our last episode, we were talking about sort of techniques that you can employ in a particular drawing and sort of a a mode of thought analog or digital or whatever. But then I think the other part of it, though, is it's the overall presentation of things. It's, you know. What happens when this thing gets up on the wall or, you know, knowing your audience, knowing who you're presenting to. And is there an added effect that you can render by, you know, staging the presentation a particular way. And it's very clear that. What you're, what you're, you're talking about here with their work is, is super evident to that.

Kurt Neiswender: 19:38

Yeah, they, they, they, they really nailed it and put a lot of time, you know, you could, and they had a really good review um, because you could tell that they were really in. Invested in, in the process and even their model, you know, they built this giant model and it was a little rough around the edges, but, you know, there, there's still lots of, I mean, it was the biggest model that anybody took on and, and, so anyway, yeah, we were, we were very happy and they were our closer on first day one.

Jamie: 20:15

So,

Kurt Neiswender: 20:18

so that's, that's the the brief show and show and tell

Jamie: 20:22

show until the end of the year. We talked about the gift exchange both from me as well as for you with your coffee feud and, and then got the, the work and school update, which is awesome. But there's more work updates from Kurt.

Kurt Neiswender: 20:40

Oh, yeah. Please

Jamie: 20:44

dive into this because I've been, I've been waiting for this to happen for a while. And I'm glad that you

Kurt Neiswender: 20:49

get the opportunity to share it. Yeah, I know. I have talked about this, this building. I've been working on for, well, it's been in construction for. Over a little over a year and finally finished and we had a ribbon cutting today this morning and I got to dress up a little bit. And so there's me. Oh, you want to I gotta I gotta do more. Hold on. Give me a sec. More tell us straighter. Just in case there's there's Kurt.

Jamie: 21:20

Yeah. Yeah.

Kurt Neiswender: 21:23

Let's let's do this.

Jamie: 21:25

There's me in his camel trench coat. Got it. Yeah. It's

Kurt Neiswender: 21:29

it's a, it's a, it's a, a banana Republic.

Jamie: 21:34

Yeah. It's camel, camel, but the camel color. Yeah.

Kurt Neiswender: 21:39

And this is the client not

Jamie: 21:41

made out of a camel. Like I'm

Kurt Neiswender: 21:44

talking about the color. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I get it. I get it. And this is for those that are not familiar, that's Dan Kildee, our U S. Congressman, uh, but Flint, Flint native. So that's that's esteemed guest and then there's John cherry, who's our state senator who also lives 2 doors over from me. So that's pretty cool. But anyway, so we had a ribbon cutting and so the paper that the newspaper was out to take some pictures. They spelled my name right, which is always a win. I got to talk about the process of the building. and I got a few minutes and then that's sort of what the room looked like, which it was interesting, all these cameras and microphones and things like that. So, uh, kind of new to me, not something that happens every

Jamie: 22:44

day. And then this, yeah, I mean, you're even rocking the

Kurt Neiswender: 22:47

vest. Yeah, well, I thought it, I thought it tied the outfit together with my, you know, green flannel. And thanks. Thanks for noticing. And and this is the sort of the, the corner, the main corner intersection. And I, I think it came, came together really well. It's exciting that it's finished. I think, you know, we've got, they've got people moving in already. And it's, it's 48 units of a new addition to the city of

Jamie: 23:20

Flint. So that's, that's super exciting. Congratulations. I know that you've worked really hard on it. And I know that the. You know, construction can be very tiring. You know, for for anybody in the design industry, because it's, it's the part where there's oftentimes the most clarifications needed, you know, a lot of prayers. And, uh, and a lot of patience but at the same time, getting to celebrate at the end is, is pretty special. So, congratulations.

Kurt Neiswender: 23:51

Yeah, thanks. It's it's, I guess it's, it's nice, right? Yeah. Again, we're approaching the end of the year and lots of things to be happy for grateful for. So, but Jamie was also in the newspaper. Look at us just clogging up the, the news

Jamie: 24:07

cycle. Yeah, it's. Admittedly, that's an old paper, but, but for, I brought it back out for a recent Instagram post because a project finally got completed. So this was, this is one of those newspaper articles which rarely, rarely, rarely. Did I say rarely? Happens for an architect is, you know, it's, this is at the beginning of the project, right? This is before the magic happens. This is before you've drawn anything. And, you know, I would say that in, in, yeah, Kurt's doing excellent telestrator work here, folks. But yeah, I think, yeah. In, in this particular case, it's one where in my work, a lot of times it's in rehab and preserving buildings and adaptive reuse. And so, you know, the, the headline for this is, what are they doing? Literally, front page of this small town and the headline is, what are they doing? And, you know, that just is sort of priceless. I, I couldn't have expected or hoped for, for better because, and then, and at that point, you're like, wow, now we really got to deliver. So we'll, we'll, we'll talk about that project

Kurt Neiswender: 25:29

a little bit, but well, that's the new cycle that people forget. Yeah, pretty, pretty

Jamie: 25:35

quickly. That too. Yeah, there is, there's that

Kurt Neiswender: 25:38

benefit. Right. But, you know, cheers to you too. You know, like, thank you. You, you're, you've made it into the paper, I think more than once this year maybe even three times. Right? Yeah. A couple of times. So you know, congrats to you too.

Jamie: 25:54

That's, it's a big state. It's a big state. There's plenty of opportunities to, to, to weasel your way into that. So,

Kurt Neiswender: 26:02

Nah, that makes it even harder with the, the, the, the large largeness of the state. So, congrats. And so in, in that vein, I think the sketches for today are kind of related to uh, some of the work that you've done. I mean, we, we can bounce back to, to the building. I did. I mean, that's all new construction. Your, you know, your main street work is, is oftentimes, uh, renovation work of, of existing structures and spaces. You know, urban urban areas or downtown's main streets and things like that. And so you actually did a fun, a fun little before and after or concept and reality which in in all these cases, right? You know, correct me if I'm wrong are not yet completed. Projects so, so these are all potential projects and your sketches are sort of referential suggestions,

Jamie: 27:04

right? So, yeah, so we're when we're brought into a main street district a property owner is interested in renovating their building or. Trying to get ideas to imagine the possibilities of their space. And so each of the ones that I've done here very, very recently are us providing design consulting. So, you know, the sketch that you're seeing on the left is is literally, you know, trying to give them good advice about their building. anD then seeing it as you said go from concept to reality is You know within a year's time frame as well is pretty exciting. So, um, yeah, we've got the festoon lights in this sketch so this particular project is in South Texas and the property owner bought 3 properties all 3 that are pictured here. And wanted to renovate all 3, the 1 on the on the left of the image only the front facade remained the building had a fire. And so the remains of the building weren't there. And so what we they had the idea. They had the idea of wanting to activate that space, but not necessarily knowing. What was possible what the extent of things would be you know what your considerations i had to do and so we provided some some design guidance and some sketches for that i'm the building in the middle i think we had the most drastic transformation even though the one you know didn't have a you didn't have a building and only had a facade i would say the one in the middle probably had the most drastic transformation because it had. A complete slip cover over the over the whole facade. So the windows that you see in the sketch as well as those exposed upstairs in, in reality, we're always there. They were just hidden behind a really poorly applied stucco facade. That really covered up all of that and that's oftentimes what you'll see in a lot of these historic downtowns is someone comes in to modernize, quote unquote, modernize the building, change the facade, change the storefront at the bottom cover up or blank out the spaces up upstairs. Sometimes in some cases, just to create storage out of that upper floor kind of reduce the amount of use, um, And this property owner was like, I've got this whole second floor. It's amazing. There's all this stuff up there. We're not sure what to do. What do you think we should do? And I'm like, well, first things first is let's get that stucco facade off of there, um, and, and reveal those beautiful wood windows that are underneath that are as you can sort of see in the sketch, but also in the photo, the scale of them is amazing. Yeah. You know probably floor to ceiling height in that upper floor is probably 1416 feet and and the windows themselves are probably you know nine or ten feet you know it's it's it's pretty amazing it was it was it was a historic pharmacy on the lower level and then there was office space doctors offices and things upstairs.

Kurt Neiswender: 30:27

Yeah i mean those are quite striking and the the the this terrace is that accessible from

Jamie: 30:36

the neighbor. No, it's, it's from the back. You can see in the sketch. Yeah, sketch on the, yeah, the sketch on the right. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We had kinda shown them where the, the terrace wouldn't be quite as large as they made it. They ended up making it. But I think the activation overall is, is, is pretty impressive.

Kurt Neiswender: 30:58

Yeah. It's, this is cool sketch too. If, if sort of like the over under. Dealing with sort of level change. It's kind of cool. Did that part come, did they build it quite this in this way, or, or not quite?

Jamie: 31:16

It's, it's, like I said, it's a little bit bigger than we anticipated. Ah. But yes they, it's sort of a steel substructure steel staircase. SpAce in the back for 2 food trucks, so there's power and all the connections off those little concrete pads.

Kurt Neiswender: 31:41

I think that's that's really just a neat a neat, you know, getting a little elevated view, uh, or. Space, you know, up off the sidewalk is a nice, a nice element. Nice feature.

Jamie: 31:55

Well, it's, you know, a lot of our downtown folks are very interested in roof decks. And so 1 of the things that we tried to talk about with them was you know, preserving the front facade as much as we could, um, but then any work that we were proposing for this upper deck. And this sort of, you know, insert of of our design move was going to be pulled away from that. So that the 2 things were noticeably distinct. And, you know, again, the, the railing isn't exactly detailed the way that we would have. Maybe suggested it on the front, um, but a lot of the other details are absolutely picked up the way we were, you know, hoping that they would try and do it. We were hoping it would be a little bit more transparent. it's hard to pull off. But I think, you know, by and large, this is a super successful project and their downtown has been in and the folks in town are really, are really appreciative of it.

Kurt Neiswender: 33:02

I think the best part. Is when the reaction right from occupants, residents, neighbors and that's, that's kind of the the warm fuzzy part.

Jamie: 33:14

No, for sure.

Kurt Neiswender: 33:16

And yeah, I see what you're saying, you know, pushing the railing back so that it doesn't interfere with the historic portion of the facade. And, you know, that's a, it's a subtle move. But if it was sort of right on top or right up against, you know, the cornice or the parapet of the facade, it would conflict. A little bit more or not a little bit, but too much more. And then, so, yeah, those are, those are the kinds of, you know, historic preservation suggestions that, that are helpful which sometimes in my, my neighborhood, it's hard to explain that to, to clients you know, the, the subtle.

Jamie: 34:04

Well, and I think it's, that's the whole thing is it's, it's you know, there's an ability to draw stuff. There's ability to design it. There's a, you know, a way to kind of move it forward. And, and explaining it is part of the process, but then also sort of helping folks really appreciate. You know, the, the subtleties of those little moves one thing my team and I try and stress is that when we are trying to, when we see something like that we really try and stress it. It's, it's not something that you're, you know, you're putting the big red arrow on and, and, and trying to, you know, highlight for somebody, but. We're hoping that in some of those cases that they really appreciate our concern over some of those details you know, when, when there isn't a regulatory review of some of these things, and you're only dealing kind of in that sort of gray area of trying to use the secretary of interior standards as sort of best practice for some of these communities and there isn't necessarily a strong ordinance in place You really want them to do the best thing for their buildings. And so you're hoping to convince them and, and, and do it in a way that you bring them along in the process. And I, and I, and sort of respect that, you know, that, you know, ultimately in a lot, in, in, in all of these cases, they're the ones who have to live with the building.

Kurt Neiswender: 35:32

Yeah. So, well, I'm going to try and, I'm going to try and use that next time I have those kinds of conversations that, you know, bring them along. And sort of it's the marathon, not the sprint sort of approach for sure for sure. Yeah. So there's a couple more, uh, that we just couldn't help ourselves from adding in here. Normally, we don't talk about so many sketches. So, um,

Jamie: 36:02

you know, and these, I think we just want to highlight sort of quickly because it's sort of the, you know, the, the sketch and then the, um, the after. But I think it really kind of captures. At least partially the nature of my work, but also just like you were just alluding to, it's, it's that power of convincing folks that you've got something here. You've got it. You've got a neat building. You know, let's lean into it a little bit.

Kurt Neiswender: 36:30

Yeah. And just, and this is kind of like a overlay sketch, right? Like over top of

Jamie: 36:37

a photo. Yeah. So I, I, I did some really kind of creative old school. Sketch over photo, but also did it with watercolor. And I really kind of liked the way it turned out. You know, both as a drawing, but also as a communication tool this was a particularly difficult project and a client that had some really like strong opinions about how they imagined the space working. And a lot of it had to do in this particular case with them both. Repairing and restoring some windows, but also having to replace some, but in replacing them, making sure that they maintain the proportions and the very unique details of the upper windows, both the transom and then the second floor, you can see they all have crazy patterns. They really make the building. All, all of those patterns were existing. Though some of the windows have been replaced. Actually, the majority of the windows ended up being, you know, most of them got replaced as opposed to repaired in this case. But, um, the proportion and style of the window and details were all maintained, which was really super important. anD then the area below the canopy that whole area basically had to be rebuilt. Because it was drastically modernized in like the 1960s and really drastically altered at the point that it didn't resemble anything of the original. And, and so part of the, the reality was they had this new function that was going to come out to the street face. And which provided some level of flexibility. And so then it was, how do you work a new storefront that provided access to an upstairs residence, as well as access to a commercial space. And in this particular case, convince the client that no, it's a commercial space, but the door doesn't need to be in the middle of the facade. The door needs to be, you know, using the geometry and proportion of the building. Doors need to be both on either edge. And so that was, yeah. That was the first big move. And then they also wanted some indoor outdoor this ends up being a cigar bar. So that center, um, storefront panel actually in their case, um, they did it as sort of three different pieces of glazing. But it, it all moves as one piece. It could have been one large piece of glass that moved as one piece, which is the way it was originally sketched for whatever reason they opted to go with the smaller muttons in there. And that's fine. That's about the only change.

Kurt Neiswender: 39:41

Yeah. Yeah. From sketch to reality. I was going to say, you know. They, we, we, as as, as a people did some interesting things in the sixties. We have, we have a lot of the same symptoms here in Flint and in Michigan, you know, strange sixties things that should be a whole other episode topic. But so you want to jump just last, last two last pairing.

Jamie: 40:12

Yeah, and just the last thing I'll say is this is one of those where it's sort of one of those dream projects where you get to take that old gas station, old service station and help a couple you know, turn into that restaurant of their dreams. So this is that newspaper article. Come to life and my team and I were visiting a couple other projects in the area and we're able to have lunch here. So that was super special for us to end the year, you know, literally enjoying one of our projects. And so that was, you know I think a beautiful way for us to kind of close 2023 from a design

Kurt Neiswender: 40:53

perspective, that's that is it's question answered. Right? Great question was. What are

Jamie: 41:04

they doing? Burger joint, excellent.

Kurt Neiswender: 41:09

Burger joint. Oh yeah. That's cool. We could say, oops, where's my let me just you know, put

Jamie: 41:18

the old

Kurt Neiswender: 41:23

icing on the cake. There it is. The answer The answer is have a burger. But I like the, the striking red canopy top, you know, the, the roof parapet. And well, it, it is fun. It's a good, good wrap up as far as, where we started and how we, how we finished and and, and I don't know, I can't, I can't close it out any better than that. But thanks, Jamie, the some fun work. And I think what was the other other thing to remember is. We will have to talk about what significant significance the 60s architecture

Jamie: 42:10

add that to the show lists for 2024.

Kurt Neiswender: 42:14

And yeah, so I guess I'll let you go. I think the dog is the dog's getting a little antsy.

Jamie: 42:22

Yeah. Two episodes is probably too much.

Kurt Neiswender: 42:25

So, well, we, we have to push, push the boundaries every now and then, or in a good way. All right. Thanks.