Coffee Sketch Podcast

096 - Spidey Senses Tingling!

February 05, 2022 Kurt Neiswender/Jamie Crawley Season 4 Episode 96
Coffee Sketch Podcast
096 - Spidey Senses Tingling!
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Show Notes Transcript

Thank you for listening. We both hope that you enjoyed this episode of Coffee Sketch Podcast. Our Theme music is provided by my brother who goes by @c_0ldfashioned on Instagram and Twitter. Our podcast is hosted at coffeesketchpodcast.com find more show notes and information from this episode. And finally, if you liked this episode please rate us on iTunes and share us with your friends! Thank you!


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Kurt’s Practice - https://www.instagram.com/urbancolabarchitecture/

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Kurt Neiswender:

And good morning to Jamie.

Jamie Crawley:

How are you doing top of the morning, top of the morning.

Kurt Neiswender:

I, I re as we edited the last one, right. I did a, I threw a curve ball at you and I said, what's cracking. And, and I think it turned out well,

Jamie Crawley:

were you hoping for like some kind of cracking, like, not like cracking an egg, but like crack in the correct. And then you'd like, that's like my trigger word and I just start going off and talking about like, yeah, well form following fiction and my predisposition to art projects.

Kurt Neiswender:

That's right. But it didn't, it didn't quite, but that's all right. I didn't, I didn't pick up on the queue. We can come back. We could do that one that we can give that another try. I threw the curve ball. Anyway, how you doing? I I'm glad we're, we're talking about. I got a nice tumbler. See in Michigan and Michigan winters. I honestly can't. I can't use mugs too often in the house, in the house. Cause I don't like to chug coffee. I like to have, I like to have it hot. I like it black, but I like to sip on the coffee and write in a Michigan winter in an old house. My coffee mug gets cold before I hit the bottom of a mug. So therefore I still continue to use this tumbler.

Jamie Crawley:

So if it is, is it, is it the temperature or is it, is it the distraction? Do you, is it sort of a like, oh, squirrel kind of thing? You mean like

Kurt Neiswender:

I'm doing something while drinking coffee? Well, I actually, I have a new habit. I've been trying to read on a use my phone.

Jamie Crawley:

It's a new habit. I'm trying to.

Kurt Neiswender:

I didn't say learning to read, I was trying to read more, but I,

Jamie Crawley:

it's a new year, so

Kurt Neiswender:

yeah, there is, there is exactly, exactly. And I, so I, and I told you, I watched, did I tell you I watched the documentary on Kurt Vonnegut? No. And, I was like, I'm going to watch, I'm going to grab some of his books and get back into some Kurt Vonnegut. No, no. So I'll re I have, I've got some from my library that I downloaded to my, my, my phone and I can, I saw I sit on the couch in the morning when it's, and I should probably say, it's not like I'm a heat miser or anything, but when I wake up, I live in the old house with the radio boiler system, steam boiler system. And at the hour that I'm. Typically, it's just getting warmed up for the day. So that's also, and I teach, teach energy right. In, in the university and your living. I talk about heat loss all the time. Right. Thermodynamics. Right. So,

Jamie Crawley:

so, so you're saying that your students might've heard this anecdote once or twice about you in coffee mugs.

Kurt Neiswender:

Yeah. Coffee is a common, common subject, but, yeah. Anyway, long story short, I, what do you call it? Commandeering the airwaves, just to talk about how, how and why I've, I've been drinking coffee out of this AIA tumbler.

Jamie Crawley:

It's that product placement kind of got to lean into that, our

Kurt Neiswender:

friends at the AIA. so otherwise that is. That's kind of what's going on. I've still got some Guatemala and beans from my Oliver. T's, grocer. But, the second, so if I'm not drinking rootless, it's going to be an Oliver. T's

Jamie Crawley:

well, and, and you've been spend your, you were talking about rootless with me recently. You had some realists updates about like you've actually helped them out on something recently at that. Well, now I guess, I mean,

Kurt Neiswender:

now, now I can say it because they actually signed the contract. they are, upgrading some equipment. And so a contractor, a local contractor here in Flint, John Mason, I don't know if he I'm sh I'm going to drop lots of names and shout out

Jamie Crawley:

apparently the current lean in episode. And

Kurt Neiswender:

so, yeah, yeah. I got a referral from a, from a friend who's actually done some work on my house and then some other projects I'm working on and, they need to upgrade their roaster or they're upgrading a roasting machine, which is pretty exciting. And, which actually has greater capacity then, I was told. And so it's, it's a gas fired unit, so we have to do a little, it's minor work. Well, I wouldn't say minor. I mean, it's, anything in the city, Flint's a little bit of a dance, the building department.

Jamie Crawley:

Yeah. One might think it probably is everywhere, but w but I can imagine that they've had, quite, quite a few different, parameters thrown at them of late.

Kurt Neiswender:

Yeah. yeah, so I'm excited the, excited to be working with a local business and help them get this piece of equipment kind of up and running and through the building department and, and so on. So, and actually, I did then reach out to those guys as like, Hey, could we get a little coffee, sketch podcast collaboration going? And, so yeah, there's some stuff that we're working on.

Jamie Crawley:

Yeah, no, that's great. Well, and, and, and that's, and that's the thing, as I clear my throat, always good for the podcast. But no, I mean, I think that what you're just sort of describing, I was sort of curious how it, how it all sort of went down. You'd kind of teased it to me. but I know, I know that you have that systems expertise and you're sort of doing that, collegiately and sort of, teaching in the academy on, on that kind of stuff with your students. And, but I mean, what we do as architects is problem solve things like that. and it's, it's it, we don't have to overthink it or make it more complicated than it is, but there's also, I've always sort of leaned into the idea that, lean is my word for this episode. Apparently I keep using it over and over and over again. limited number of vocabulary words today. I, or any more coffee. but, yeah, I should read more too. Thanks. we'll have an episode on literacy. later, later this season, But no, I, I it's, it made me, made me think is that, part of what we do problem solving wise is, is explain how some of those business decisions that people are making, do affect the architecture, do affect the, the environment that they're in and it's not to make it where it's prohibitive, but it's just that there some certain things that we have to potentially solve. And, and like you say, walk people through the building. I think that's, the service aspect of the problem solving, and not making it more complicated than it needs to be or frustrating, construction can be frustrating for anybody, very experienced to the least experienced. So that's great. I'm glad that you're able to help them out. I mean, and it it's, those, those types of projects are fun. I got to, I got to do one, a few years ago, for a different roaster here in Austin. And, part of it was, that first meeting was going to see their op their current operation, and seeing all the equipment and, and how they were, bringing in things and who was doing what, fascinating. So,

Kurt Neiswender:

yeah, I got to see behind the scenes. Yeah.

Jamie Crawley:

So, so what you, you, you are, still in, into your, your alternate roaster, I I, on the other hand, decided after our last episode where I was like, Hmm, coffee to actually like go back to my little city, and got some grackle. Cool. so because of the blends that they have, they have all these sort of, Austin kind of concepts, and then they have the occasional, international roast where they've, they've partnered up with with somebody, the grackle, I always, there's a part of me that always thinks of it as like, if Austin had a supervillain, it would be a grackle. So,

Kurt Neiswender:

well, we will be talking about super Villiam villains and superheroes in a second here. And so. Yeah, a grackle. Is that it's a good name. It's definitely a good name for bad guy. Yeah.

Jamie Crawley:

I mean, does, does it sort of strike fear into your heart? I mean,

Kurt Neiswender:

maybe it strikes something. I mean, you had, you had to teach me what, what a grackle, what,

Jamie Crawley:

right. Yeah. They're annoying. They're really annoying bird. So, and they're omnipresent, awful. Awful.

Kurt Neiswender:

Is it, is it related to,

Jamie Crawley:

a CRO kind of like a Crow or Raven kind of, but not like the Crow, that movie, which is, that's a, that's a good film. but no, but it's

Kurt Neiswender:

a, is

Jamie Crawley:

it Blackbird? It is. Yeah. Oh

Kurt Neiswender:

yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, well, we will, we will dissect that in a second. So should we, should we jump to our sketch? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. And what do you call it? not belabor the point hope, of the day and, and torture, torture

Jamie Crawley:

the listeners of the villainous crackled. Yes. It's quite good coffee. Quite

Kurt Neiswender:

good coffee though. Yeah. Well, I, I, I was, you gave me some a while back. I believe of Greco. I think I've had now three flavors of a little city, so expanding my palette. So, so, if, so now we've got Spiderman and, and the, spider verse and so potentially Spiderman could be attacking, And one of the multi-verse versions of Spider-Man, right. You're gonna have to, you're gonna have to take the lead on, on the multi-verse stuff a little bit, because I'm a little behind, I've been reading, I've been reading, I haven't been watching, Marvel movies and stuff.

Jamie Crawley:

So, and I did, I did share with you, a little video that could really kind of maybe quickly catch you up. Yeah.

Kurt Neiswender:

I, I did, we, we like to do our homework right on this show and, and sound like we're on the same page. And so I couldn't, I unfortunately could not get to watch, the latest, Spider-Man or the cartoon, animated version. That you were suggesting. Cause my streaming services did wanted me to pay a little extra money. It just, wasn't wasn't in the cards for, for last night. I couldn't get, I had to make dinner to, all the, all the, all the excuses. But so as a, as a little, a little pick me up, I guess you, you sent me this Saturday night, live sketch, about Joe Biden intro talking about, the primary reason I'm a Cron is upon us. Right?

Jamie Crawley:

Is that, I mean, he ain't coming. It was, it was an important press conference, I think. it solved a lot of

Kurt Neiswender:

riddles, some questions in my

Jamie Crawley:

mind. Right. And explain the concept of the multi-verse team or at least it expanded on it. So I

Kurt Neiswender:

do get it though. I mean, there is, there is the possibility. Of up to three distinct universes simultaneously existing,

Jamie Crawley:

right. At least three that's right. Yeah. So, so this, so the sketches though, so this one in particular, you, you had some questions, and you had seen that I had done a couple Spiderman sketches kind of in a row. and, and part of that was that literally, back in December, had

Kurt Neiswender:

not in a row, sorry. I had not in a row in a row. Yeah. no, there was somewhere, oh my God. There's bad girl. This is my apologies.

Jamie Crawley:

I don't know where all of a

Kurt Neiswender:

sudden technical, well, I wanted to just jump to the we've got Spider-Man.

Jamie Crawley:

Yeah. So I did two, we've got strong 3, 3, 8,

Kurt Neiswender:

Which is fine. We will come back to that, the main one for today, which, sorry, I'll just stay here, please continue.

Jamie Crawley:

No, no. So yeah, it was just that, the last time and the first time in a long time, like in like, it felt like two years. and then probably you're going to be a while, been in a movie theater, decided to go and see the new Spider-Man movie. and so went and saw it on the opening weekend and, and then the Omicron surge after that. So, yeah.

Kurt Neiswender:

And, and as I learned from Joe Biden, I mean, that is, that is why we have a crime is people can't stop seeing the new Spider-Man movie. Right. So, so yeah. Being being that I was trying to catch up, I was, asking you about this sketch because, I, I wa I'm not unfamiliar to Marvel comics and Marvel movies and, and, and how they're starting to like, kind of weave them together, the different characters and you kind of have to top the last movie, every movie. And then, so my being, since I hadn't seen the movie, I thought, oh, did they, are there three versions of Spider-Man and the same movie? And, and I, in one being female, right. We have, right down in lower right here. And so you have like the classic Spiderman up top with, as far as the outfit is concerned than the dark outfit Spider-Man and then the hooded female spider.

Jamie Crawley:

And so, and yeah, and so I sort of suggested to Kurt that, the, the movie that just came out, sort of brings up this whole concept of the multi-verse, that there are multiple realities, all living parallel to one another with just slight differences. and the, the actors who've portrayed Spiderman, there's effectively been three on screen, and in the live action version. And then there's also been into the spider verse, the animated movie, that introduced a whole new Spider-Man. and, and then leaned into this whole idea of that. There are multiple universes with multiple ways that people become Spiderman and different kinds of characters who do. And so that's where you get the spider Gwen character. and then as I was describing kind of the movie kind of tie into this, is that when the, sort of the reaction for, not just a casual fan, but I think everybody else was, wow. We're actually getting, the three actors who played Spiderman all at the same time. That's not a spoiler. I think everybody knows that they're all in a movie now.

Kurt Neiswender:

either know that because they saw the movie and have, a crime

Jamie Crawley:

and they have OMA crime. They're there. They're recovering from COVID. I do not. thankfully, yeah, exactly. every day feels like you're playing with the probabilities of that, but, it definitely don't go to the movie theater. that's that's my, that's my public service announcement. but, but I think that it was interesting because it also sort of tied back in. to the animated movie, which was really amazing if you haven't seen it. just from a movie standpoint, I mean, love of film and then anime, and then sort of this whole Spider-Man narrative. the story was really well-written, the actors who portrayed the characters were fantastic. and then the artwork was just amazing. it just, it really spun a really captivating, tale and, and it wa and it introduced this, this concept of all these different characters sort of colliding from different universes. and, and one that I thought was sort of an interesting wrinkle that people had a reaction to the new movie, was when Andrew Garfield, the second Spider-Man, more of a Broadway actor and sort of serious actor, that people were initially kind of. I'm not sure if they would like him in the Spiderman role. And then when I saw him, they're like, wow, he really, he's bringing this whole other dimension, this whole other kind of emotion to, the character. he played across from Emma Stone. And so Emma Stone played the Gwen Stacy character, from the comics, the blonde, familiar kind of blonde, love interest, pseudo love, love interest of, Peter Parker. and in that, in that movie with Andrew Garfield, she, she dies, kind of tragically and, but in the animated movie, you get this introduction of this female. Spider character and she's introduced to spider Glen, and it's when Stacy becomes Spider-Man. and, or, the, yeah, basically, it's probably a woman. and so, so people are thinking, wow, if, if we can play with all these characters who, and these actors who have had previous incarnations in this multi-verse, wouldn't it be great if Emma Stone comes back in a future film to the franchise, as spider, Gwen, cause she's a fantastic actress. I mean, and I think it would be something that people would really enjoy.

Kurt Neiswender:

Yeah.

Jamie Crawley:

So for me it was, kind of exciting to kind of sketch some of that. And then, like I was saying in the spider verse itself, was it introduced this character? That's in the comics, miles Morales, who's a young teenager sort of very similar to way, Peter Parker was, very young when he first became Spider-Man. but he's black. And so it, it kind of takes that, narrative sort of that origin story of, of his journey. and, and then overlaps it with these other characters, from other universities it's pretty fantastic. And it was a SQL coming out, or they just announced. so it's you got to get caught up, buddy.

Kurt Neiswender:

Yeah. Yeah. And it reminds me of, when I was, when I was a young, before architecture school, one of the, one of my favorite things to do was to sort of redraw comic book covers, in Spider-Man was one of my favorites to, to use as a, as a, as a source. Learn how to make those shapes, because Spider-Man was always like, like in your sketches here, in these very extreme positions, right. It's it's for a contorted kind of acrobatic positions. And though, so it was a lot of fun to try and draw that when I was young, because it, well, the, the comic book artists that created and worked on Spiderman the various different, over the years, what we, would really accentuate like the musculature and the acrobatic nature. And so how would the body sort of respond to the, the sort of the acrobatic maneuvering? and so these, these sort of sketches here, remind me of, of those, those kinds of. Dynamic, frozen in a sketch, but like a very dynamic posture. so it's, it's fun to think about. And, and, and when you brought it up with the animated version of the movie and how well the artwork was done, it makes me want to go back and definitely see it for,

Jamie Crawley:

so that part, well, I mean, and I think you'll enjoy it because it, it also sort of explode, explores some of the stylistic stuff that you're talking about, and then even expounds on it. and sort of challenges it, I mean, for me, similar to you is, I think my introduction to drawing, was a lot of, superheroes as a kid. and really self-taught, didn't really take a lot of hard classes per se. I've I've, I've mentioned that before. And, and so it was something that. you try and emulate, try and mimic, try and understand, try and figure out how to do, what, what these artists are doing on these covers of, of comic books. And, and it, it, it really, for me, was sort of a way to, when you're trying to figure out how to draw something and you get frustrated because you want it to be perfect and you've got this, this thing sort of sitting next to you as an artist. And you're like, oh, well, this person could do it. And it looks great. And why can't mine look like that? And you get frustrated. for me, it was trying to take it to the next step, of, okay, well, how did, how did big build up these forms? and so it was kind of understanding anatomy and understanding sort of the figure drawing kind of aspects of things without knowing that was a thing initially. and then, and then at the same time, I've talked about it as sort of blocking in the forms. and so here it was. That's what this sketch was sort of my own child. I hadn't done one like this in a while where I have multiple people in the same sketch, and in different positions that have a lot of activity to them and wanted to sort of layer it so that even the sketch itself has some, some layer of space and, and it to do that, it was how can you sort of break down the geometries, and blocking the forms so that what you're building on. And that was, that it becomes sort of an, a drawing challenge for myself, which was fun. And then wanting to render it, knowing it's all going to be ink. It's not gonna, it's not going to have the benefit of a colorist coming in and sort of, touching up things or anything like that. Still trying to do a relatively quick. how, how do you use just, one line weight, one pen, to, to generate that much depth and, and in a variety, I mean, cause all of these are when you see them on the screen or on the page, there's a vibrance of color and which sort of makes the mood and and these are just black and white. So there's that, that in of itself is a fun challenge. and, and in good practice.

Kurt Neiswender:

yeah, no, that's cool. I think your idea on blocking it out, is something that resonates because that was one of those things early on is trying to figure it out. Make sure you're matching proportion. It may not be a one-to-one copy, but you have to still like the leg is this long compared to the arm and in the torso and stuff like that. Those were the sticking. Those are the parts that had, used to get me when I was young. But so yeah, this cool. I, hopefully I will not be so cheap and I will rent that movie instead of going to the theater.

Jamie Crawley:

I think, I think he died. I think you'll enjoy it.

Kurt Neiswender:

So yeah. Spiderman is one of the, one of the phase. all right. One other, we wanted to talk about one other thing, right.

Jamie Crawley:

And we have, a more recent sketch. so these were sort of at, at the holidays, and, and related to the film or me going to the theater, all masked up and taking that risk, taking the risk of going to the Alamo and, and,

Kurt Neiswender:

was the, so they're actually in speaking of risk or challenges, I think our segue to the next sketch is the Nailbiter of the 49ers game. Right. Which is, which is, we, we were, we were kind of teasing a little bit about, Jamie lives in Texas, but he is a 49ers fan because he does have some roots in, the bay area. Yeah, that gives him his pass. Yeah. So I love that Dallas co

Jamie Crawley:

yeah, no, I, I like to think that, one of the first places we lived in the U S was in, in the bay area, in San Jose. And, so they, the first football team that I had an affinity for was the 49ers. I mean, when you're in elementary school and middle school, and you're playing with football on the street with kids, in the neighborhood and you're throwing it around and, everybody's like, everybody's a 49ers fan. cause that's what you can, everybody's like, everybody's going to be like Joe Montana or Steve young or Jerry Rice or Roger Craig and all these different. Players of the time. And so, and then I remember like my first football game, I remember going like dad, had some buddy at work who was like, Hey, your son, why don't you, why don't you guys? We've got some extra tickets. Like, why don't we, and my dad played football in high school and, and love sports and, I love sports, which I've clearly shown and shared many times. but, yeah, it was. Yeah, 49ers skin, candlestick park, in the heyday of Joe Montana and, Dwight Clark and, Renaldo Nehemiah, and, it was, some great stuff. and so yeah, this, this latest run, I mean, Colin Kaepernick was, a fave when, he was with the Niners. and, and now, we've got Jimmy G trying to hold down the ship as the quarterback and, everybody's not sure, but you want to root for the guy. and but are, they're marching their way through the playoffs and they won again last night. So they're going to be a NFC championship game.

Kurt Neiswender:

They picked off a green bay. I mean, that's no slouch in green bay. As, as I mentioned, it is 19 degrees here in Michigan. I think it's probably close to. And in green bay.

Jamie Crawley:

Yeah. And it was a night and it was a night game too. So it was like night game, second, half definite snowflake reaction, team from California, underrated, a definite grudge match. and, and it was, it was fun to watch. So,

Kurt Neiswender:

yeah, yeah. Go Niners,

Jamie Crawley:

go Niners.

Kurt Neiswender:

So, so with the Niners, I mean, we have a drawing of, the 49ers. No, not the,

Jamie Crawley:

this is still their headquarters.

Kurt Neiswender:

This is a, a, federal building, done by MorphoSys architects in San Francisco, which I think. It's a, like a federal, federal office facility, not, an embassy or anything like that, but just, commercial office building that is, was commissioned by the federal government, and Morphosis had to, or happen to win, win the bid. And, this is actually one of their, I, early, early buildings, I'll do the quick history, being a super fan of Morphosis, but, also, in my free time,

Jamie Crawley:

all like super fans of MorphoSys like if we're of a certain age, I mean, predilection for deconstruction and drawing and,

Kurt Neiswender:

well, it is funny because I, my students. I aren't as aware of MorphoSys as, as I would like them to be so generally generationally you're right. It is finding, I'm finding that a little strange. So I recently, YouTube figured out I'm an architect and started populating my stream with some, or my suggested videos with some, architecture stuff. And then a couple of Tom main things came up and, so this, the San Francisco federal building was one of more, more architects, first big buildings that was actually completed. it's not the first, but it was one of the early, building projects that they, Completed that was taller, a tall building and a, of a, of a substantial square footage. And, one of the, so I watched this video, a lecture basically of Tom made, which I, I'd seen I've, I've seen him in person many times, but this was an older lecture. So it started with a lot of his early. I mean even unbuilt stuff, right. Stuff,

Jamie Crawley:

the stuff they needed with Michael Rotondi and, and,

Kurt Neiswender:

Jamie had, well, you, you, you, you spent some time with Michael teaching, right?

Jamie Crawley:

I did a, yeah. Which was fun. I mean, he's, he's quite a character and quite talented. but yeah, he was not part of this project. go, yeah, this is, yeah. They, they definitely had different firms by then. So after that,

Kurt Neiswender:

yeah. And so the one thing, I guess the one aspect that I wanted to touch on, which I find well personally relatable is he made this comment while presenting this project and, and, and also, some of his China work. Right. So he's done working in Shanghai. And, a couple other, decent, well, now, now there's even more. But at the time, like with this lecture, he was sort of segwaying into the design of this building, the giant campus in Shanghai, which was only in design. And he mentioned, and then he, but he was talking about this project and then previous to this was Caltrans, the Los Angeles, California transit authority headquarters, which was equally big, not quite the size of the federal building, but another step right in this brand and this sort of municipal structure where you had to go through municipal process of getting the project anyway. So his, the point that he made, which, it's kind of funny before you even mentioned that also is at first when watching this old lecture, I thought I wasn't gonna get much. Because I had seen him in person a few times over the years and also, very familiar with lots of his projects. I actually learned a lot of things or thought of things very differently having revisited this

Jamie Crawley:

and because of your own experiences now.

Kurt Neiswender:

Yeah. After, after working now working for myself and, and spending some time yeah. In the profession, there are certain aspects, so sort of a new appreciation and another level. But, so now, so, so about this idea of the public process. So w without getting into the weeds about training, teach everybody about qualification based selections and all that stuff. Tom made Tom mean made a pretty succinct point about it. He said with his China relative to his China work. When asked or if asked, he was almost using this as a recommendation to the students that he was lecturing to. If you are in a position where you're, potentially going to be hired in China for a project, and they asked the question, have you ever done this kind of project before the answer should be no. And that this would be the first time this project has ever been designed. And it's specifically for you, the client, and that's the correct answer in a China situation or a, let's say

Jamie Crawley:

overseas, internationally

Kurt Neiswender:

international relationship building and so on. And then in comparison, which if most, if any, or I don't know what the stats are, but I'm sure a lot of our listeners are in the United States. he made a mention of how projects. especially municipal projects and governmental, like this federal building or one in the United States. So ask the same question on, on state side, have you ever done this project before? The answer is, yes, we've done this a thousand times. This will be the 15th time. We're designing it for you. And so it should be a no brainer. And so the, the, the, the stark polar opposites is, is what really struck me. And I don't think I ever heard him mention that in a lecture that I've been to in person. but yeah, I mean, in a nutshell, it's just something about, Process that we decide to we've, we've decided as a country to hire and, and acquire architecture services, needing to have like this long list of, previous versions of a similar building

Jamie Crawley:

it, well, I think it's a, a little bit of an indictment of both. The practice of architecture and as a profession. but also, there is it's as much as it's maybe an indictment of, of, of us as a practice and a profession, it's also, like you say, it's, it's the procurement process, and sort of the, the outside perception, the public perception or the, the client perception of, well, if I'm going to need a widget, I'm going to, I need you to design me a widget. I want to know that you've designed this widget before mine's going to be different and mind's gonna be better, but I gotta know that you've done this a couple of times before. And whereas the, the, the counter-argument is like you say, I'm a, I'm a designer, I'm an architect. I have skills I have, and that I'm going to bring to the table for you in your particular project, in your projects needs, whether I've done it 10 times before or not. may or may not influence your decision, but should it in my, my, my way of my take on it is should that be the, the, the litmus test, should that be the one, the top line question, because the minute you have that as the top line question, you immediately cut out like a whole segment of our profession. And then you can also layer into that. If you, if you think about it, for about half a second, when people talk about systemic racism in, in professional settings or in when you're layering it into sort of professional practice, especially in architecture, it's like, yeah, of course, like that's whole same notion, is very, is not. because it's, if you've got a practice that you've just started, you've just opened up your doors. you might have worked for a firm for quite a long time, but when you're, when you're submitting for that project and you're saying, okay, I've just, they're like, oh, okay, well, your, your firm's been in existence for about a minute, half a minute. and okay. Yeah, I see that you've been an architect for 10 years. and you worked for these firms and you do these projects, but how many, how many is your firm done? It's like, it's, it's sort of like, well, that you, you already know that my firm just opened its doors. Like how, how can I have 10 widgets yet? And, and so there's sort of this discounting of your experience as well as your intellect and your ability. And I think that, Sorta Tom Maine, kind of suggesting about how to reframe that question, without saying that's, what he's trying to do is, is pretty shrewd. cause I think it's, I think it applies to a lot of different situations. I mean, and I know that you've been, you've experienced it in your practice, both in firms and then, on your own and, and myself included, to a, to a certain degree. And I was sharing with you is that I've, I've been on the other side of the table to where, part of that decision making process, where you're kind of advising your client on procurement methods. And it's sort of, if you've got a matrix with numbers and you're assigning numbers, you're, you're probably going to exclude some people, just by having that as your process

Kurt Neiswender:

points. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it's, it's, it's sort of like this, we could go on and on about all the little ins and outs and, and such, but I think just touching on it, and the sketch, brought that, brought that to, to the front of my mind. it's, it's a sort of like risk averseness of, of, the, the country. And, I don't want to open up a Pandora's box of political, side taking, but, it, it, it is what's one way to approach it. And China has, in certain aspects, another way to approach it or many other, sort of, countries have. Different, approaches, even like Europe. Right? I've heard that, like he even made, I think he even brought it up too. It's like, European architecture, projects, big, big projects, right. massive museum or something like that could, could be won by a 30 year old, recent graduate, within the, those, the European continent, cause that's just the way they think they're looking for kind of, there's no, like, that's a sort of blind, a blind survey, right. They, they accept submissions and they don't look at like, who's the one submitting it, but what is the product being submitted

Jamie Crawley:

or, or, or, or it's just sort of this idea of if, if there's a, almost a, a duality that's, it's very hard to kind of understand on state side, We appreciate that narrative, that story of innovation, and that needle in a haystack and, wow, look at this person who's accomplished this. We, we, we, as w as a society, I mean, I think as human beings, I think we, we we'd love that, that story of somebody overcoming odds and, and, and coming up with this great idea and like, wow, look at them, look what they've done, think of like, the mile in narrative of, this 18 year old winning the competition for the Vietnam veterans Memorial. So it, and there's that, and, and we'd like that sort of hero narrative, but then in practice, it doesn't sort of translate. And, and what I think that's sort of unique about some of these other systems that you're referring to, is that in those environments, How to eat. There's a, there's a realization that, to have true innovation, to actually bring along a whole new generation of thought leaders and professionals and giving them a chance, giving them the opportunity to succeed. it shouldn't just be private sector, people taking a chance on somebody, it shouldn't be just, somebody saying, yeah, I think, I think your qualifications in your experience, might not be as much as this other person, but I think that you resonate with me and, and I'm going to give you that shot, that shouldn't just only happen in sort of private sector situations. there, there, that spirit of that, there's no reason why that can't exist across a larger. because at the end of the day, we're still licensed professionals. I mean, these people have gone through an educational practice. They've gone through some experience. They might not have as much experience as somebody else, but they might have some innovation and passion and ideas that no one else has thought about yet, because they're doing it for the first time and that's maybe not a bad thing. Yeah.

Kurt Neiswender:

Yeah, exactly. And, yeah, so, I mean, I think we can look at park it, there is a good stopping point. because at the beginning of this, we were just stoked that the Niners beat the Packers.

Jamie Crawley:

I mean, yeah. And when you mentioned, your, Tom Maine anecdote, I thought, yeah, this is a, this is a great way to, to talk a little bit of the technical aspects of things.

Kurt Neiswender:

yeah. Without, yeah. We'll try and keep doing that, in future episodes as well. touch, touch on touch on those kinds of things. All right. Thanks again. And I'll talk to you soon.

Jamie Crawley:

Thanks.