The core theme is the architectural design process, emphasizing the importance of narrative, client collaboration, and iterative sketching, from initial concept to final design, particularly highlighting the use of SketchUp as a tool to facilitate this process.
Mind Map
คลิกเพื่อขยาย
คลิกเพื่อสำรวจ Mind Map แบบอินเตอร์แอคทีฟฉบับเต็ม
but i have a friend who watched one of
my recent videos he's like you know
architecture might as well be like the
dark arts he's like i have no idea
how it comes into being rather than just
the end product the glossy photos
um it's so much more interesting to me
to to learn about
growing up you know i think that is like
where my love of maybe design began
and it started probably with drawing i
remember walking to main street
in zanesville to the public library
finding a book
and the book was called you know tree
houses that you can build
the drawings in the book are amazing and
it just captured
when i see your sketches that they make
me want to be
a better architect they make me want to
draw they they draw me in
in a way probably not dissimilar to the
way that the sort of treehouse book drew
you in
but i see that and i'm like yeah that's
why i did this because
i want to be able to draw like that and
i look at my sketches and i say
my sketches don't measure up to this for
people who look at your sketches in the
same way that i do
and and find them inspiring is it
literally just
finding inspiration somewhere and trying
to copy or do you
do what are resources that people can
use if they're interested
in kind of replicating your style like
how would someone do that you know what
i i tell
our staff members and i tell my daughter
and you know
architecture students i've run into is
just don't stop drawing
i i feel like you will draw as well
as you drew when you stopped drawing
so you could be 50 if you stopped
drawing when you were eight
you'd still draw like an eight-year-old so
so
you know just keep drawing just don't
stop and
as much as it it's like daunting to look
at the blank piece of paper
be loose about it sure and you know use
a fat marker
and have fun if you want to do good design
design
and and you can be fasted at the same
time you don't have to like
explain it to anybody you know i worked
at a 50 person firm out of school
and it was not as design driven as we
are now
so if you wanted to do design you had to
be quick
otherwise you had people saying hey
you're spending too much time there i
worked for 150 person firm right out of
school and i had the very same
experience i started modeling the stuff
in 3d and then hand sketching over it
because it's the hand sketches that sold
it to
all the partners and then once you do
that then you then you get in a little
designer box and they bring you into
the office with all the other partners
and you get to sketch with them
instead of doing the bathroom details
upstairs i'm i'm a big
fan of sketchup there are times where i
can be drawn into
putting too much detail on sketchup but
i want to do enough detail
or enough modeling that i can then take
the pen
and trace yeah and you know explore
uh from that messaging model but what's
great about sketchup is you don't have
to construct the perspective
it's there the proportions you know you
can play with proportions with your pen
but you can you know at least get it
close yeah you know
in a model you can move around it i do
similar things in fact
i'll even model like material sizes so
if i'm checking out board sizes or some
certain kind of detail i'll just copy
that across the face of something
and it ends up being a quick way to test
ideas then of course you're you're
sketching over the top of it right
using it as a base layer it is a good
hack and you can be fast
now i do think there are this was you
know early 2000s when i got into
sketchup so
i think you know nowadays there are
programs that have caught up with it
and you know are you know probably just
as good but for me
i i know it so well it works for me
and it's also the kind of thing that i
find is super intuitive for
people to use and interact with so like
sketchup models you can easily send to clients
clients
for them to spin around and you know
interact with and you can
sort of have a viewer on your ipad and i
just always found that the learning
curve for that i mean it's free
number one right fast free and easy to manipulate
manipulate
intuitive i mean this is just so much
more accessible so yeah i think it's
still pretty relevant actually
what's nice about it i find is and we
use archicad for our construction
documents we're a mac based office okay
purely a mac-based office
and you know we archicad is a monster
and it's super expensive yeah um but if
if you want to do a conceptual
design you know and start with a blank
piece of paper an archicad
it's tough because in comparison to
sketchup you know in archicad if i want
to make a window opening
you know it starts asking archicad
starts asking me a bunch of questions
about the window
you know that i don't want to answer how
thick is the glass
what's the jam thickness you know what's
your sash size
i don't want to go there yet um and
sketchup affords you that opportunity to just
just
cut an opening just um be better and
move that wall
yeah so that's why i fell in love with it
it
what's a typical workflow for you guys
someone comes to the office and they're
interested in hiring you
walk us through what that process is
like i mean do they have do you guys
have an interview process and i realize
during covid it's probably a little
different but you know do you have a
waiting list like how does it
how does that work you know it starts
out with a video conferencing tool
called go to meeting
we're getting to know our clients as
best we can
you know with that tool um our clients
and their their site
our first you know step is okay
let's walk the property with you usually
our clients are absolutely in love with
their property
and and that's actually a cue for us
like it's a part of what can make a good
good client is an appreciation for what
they have
we try to ask a ton of questions and
then and really that's probably what
we're doing more often than
anything else is teasing out right yeah like
like
being open so don't don't show up there
on site with
a solution all right i know what we're
doing here
you know i you know what's funny though
i sometimes i feel like people
have that expectation that as an architect
architect
you have this special set of eyes that
when you arrive in a place
you immediately know what the right
solution is and so for me it's
oftentimes it's about educating the
client beforehand
about that process that it is this kind
of incremental
iterative process that we learn a little
bit you know
every time we meet together i learn more
about the client i also learn more about
the site by spending time out there or
you know we have to sort of pick and
choose the the sort of overlay of
restrictions that are going to guide the
design process right because you're
you're talking about the site right but
the site has all these this huge set of
restrictions then of course you have your
your
your clients tastes and then you have
budgets and you have
like laws and regulations and what you
can and can't do and yeah
so it's it's interesting um to hear you
guys kind of
you guys really zone in on the site as
your sort of first
play in the design process is that right
you're sort of gathering a bunch of lines
lines
and it sounds simplified the first few
marks that you make on paper
you're going to start making some lines
and you start out with thousands of lines
lines
and they're all are informed by what you
learned about the person
that you're working for and their site
and so
you know some of those lines might be
you know the solar orientation
you know the wind patterns you know some
of those lines might be
regulatory and what you've learned from
the survey some of those lines might be
bearing points on a particular island view
view
or lots of different lines just add up
to this
massive puzzle yeah and
and what your goal of an architect to do
is gather all those lines together
and you know start making those marks on
the blank piece of paper
and then you're slowly pulling out the
ones you don't need anymore until
eventually there's a design revealed
sometimes it's the it's the lines that
you don't draw the information you don't
put in there
that the client then interprets in a
certain way that's the thing that that
moves the design
process forward and i i see so much of
that in your sketches but i also think
this is guy who walks on site and like
that's in his head
like i think that and and i know and i
know better as an architect i really
want to get into that
okay we've we've started gathering all
this information and then at a certain point
point
you have to you have to start making the
marks on the paper like i really want to know
know
what that process looks like right can
we use englishman bay retreat
as an example how did it come to be what
what did what preconceptions did they come
come
to you with if any and how did that
process go
our client at englishman bay i designed
a home for his cousin
and it was you know two miles north of
the site and so
he just out of the blue called us one
day and
he was describing something um that
you know for me uh personally was
exciting and it was because i think
because he was talking about it like
the images that were going through my
head were like swiss family robinson
treehouse you know based on our tree
house discussion earlier you can tell i
was like i was all in
yeah tell me more yeah i came to learn
this later
but he had lost a a daughter
in life um which had to be a tremendous
blow to him
well he had two other you know two
daughters still
in his life and you know obviously his
wife as well and this
place and spending time with them here
in maine on the coast with their family
was super special and you know he didn't
say that in the first conversation what
he talked about was
all these cool things he wanted to do
with his daughters you know
and you know one of the things he
mentioned was sitting under the stars
and looking up at the sky
with a telescope you know and he
described you know opening
opening a hatch on a sailboat
and climbing up to the top deck and
you know being under the stars and a
sleeping bag intent
come on what client says this in the
first phone call
of course i want this project when do we
start yeah
yeah when do we start exactly so you
know the site itself
um has been in his family for a long
time and he sort of grew up
running around in these woods the entire
understory in the in the woods there is
covered with sphagnum moss
and so you're walking around on kind of
the spongy
you know i'm sure you've you've seen it
before it's everywhere yeah yeah
um it is everywhere there and you know
he described
really loving that his parents own
uh cabin in the next property over
and that that's where he had you know as
a kid sort of spent time
they would traverse across the property
that the retreat is on now
to a pebble beach and over time they had
basically worn a path
across this property as i'm thinking
about marks the first marks that you're
making on a page like that pathway
becomes one of those marks right and you
don't know
what that's going to lead to you don't
know what that means here's an edge
yeah you know how do you think of a
puzzle i got to find the edges of the
puzzle totally
yeah yeah um and so that was one edge i
found there's also a very tall
rocky outcrop just as high as the first
floor level
is you know in the house right now which
the house sits up on
steel columns i mean that's a very
conscious decision right
in itself i'd be interested to hear how
that yeah how that happened part of it
was that rocky outcrop
you know influenced that because that
rocky outcrop when you're standing next
to it
you feel kind of in a bit of a
depression for where the house wants to
want it to go sure and so your ability
to sort of
experience the coastline and the water
were you know affected by that
and i would say also it was influenced
by our client in that first conversation
we had about
a tree house yeah essentially it feels
like a bit of a tree house
yeah so you're out on site assimilating
all this information that's coming in
from the client and
you are you have some understanding of
what the program is
i'm assuming at this point right what
spaces are you actually going to be
designing the rough square footage
what does that first kind of conceptual
like are you doing
three concepts are you doing just just sketching
sketching
are you sketching out there are you like
how does that what what are the nuts and
bolts of that process what does that
look like is it three schemes is it
tell me about that it was you know two schemes
schemes
you know the other scheme i essentially separated
separated
the living space completely separated
the living space
from the bedroom space and they were
sort of two bars if you will
you know connected by a bridge this the
resulting scheme that they sort of fell
in love with
was more of you know still the living
and the bedroom wings were absolutely
separated but it has more of a sort of
courtyard like feel to it yeah um and
it wraps in a use u-shape which
the way i described it to him is that
the u-shape was a
continuation if you will of the trail
along the water that they had worn into
the woods
and i wanted to bring that path or trail
into the house
so that uh you know as you sort of
traverse the circulation of that hue
you are inwardly looking at the rest of
the house and the activity that's going
on in there
and at the same time the trees branches
are brushing against the windows
and you're sort of traversing that you
know coming up with that story
and that narrative is just as important
as the marks you make on paper
so one of the things that i love most
about residential architecture is there
you know rather than the 150 or 50
person firm experience that we had there
where it's all about
slam slam slam get it right this you
have some room
to think and you know conceptualize
and actually put together a story that
someone can really buy into and it
sounds like your client came to you with
sort of uh maybe a kernel of an idea
and it was you who started sort of
writing the plot and infilling the
details and really
coloring the characters in it the
narrative quality of architecture is
what separates it from being just
you know anyone can design a house i
mean we've all lived in homes we all
know what they feel like and we
probably would design one very similar
to what our childhood experience was
because that's home that feels
comfortable but
you know the job of the architect is to
really as you say synthesize
all of this disparate information and
and hang it around a story you know
what makes this place so unique and so
cool and that that i think is a
particular gift of yours to
to be able to look at tho all that
information but then build that story
that resonates with that client so
is the presentation then all hand
sketches is it
like do you like before you know as i'm
looking at some of those sketches that project
project
you have like a site analysis that
you're doing like is that literally the
starting point and then you start
developing the floor plans from there and
and
elevations or how does it actually come
into being well
just as much as you have to tell a story
and and
come up with a narrative for the design
you don't want to
be so far ahead of your client that they
aren't a part of the process
that's that's what i think uh drawing
has the ability to do
better than a computer can when you are
sketching and drawing
it allows the viewer to fill in the
pieces that aren't
photorealistic with you know their interpretation
interpretation
of what they're seeing and you know they
become a part
of iterative process that you're sort of undertaking
undertaking
much more so than if you show up and say
hey here's your house it's done
we don't show them everything at the
beginning we got to start with
you know hey here's here's your site here's
here's
all of the lines that we've sort of
gathered from the survey
from our site visit uh from google earth
when we were on site we noticed there's
this beautiful moss covered boulder
that you know is special and here it is
you know on our drawing
sort of identifying all these things
because what you want to do is you want
them to
kind of be there looking over this with
you and saying oh yeah that's special
that's important
because if you're able to do that then
moving forward they're
they're in the they're in the boat with
you totally you know you don't you don't
want them in the other boat
you know sort of not understanding what
what's happening you want them to be a
part of what's happening
but the other scheme that you had i
presume you you presented both schemes
yeah yeah so what's what's why they get
in one boat and not the other what's the
was it all story or was it the visuals i
mean what's your
what do you think pushed them i i always
i always feel like you almost
have to have uh two or three schemes
to sort of show your client that you have
have
proved this out and you may have one
that you want to
sort of guide them to yeah but you can't
get there if you only show them one
i think it would be almost impossible
because they will always be wondering
well was there another solution that we
should have looked at or not yeah
so you've got to show them at least two
or three schemes and the way i look at it
it
is you you want to sort of show them
what they're expecting
to see or you perceive they're expecting
but also show them something that um
they weren't expecting it's that one was
two schemes and they pretty
quickly like they just gravitated toward
the the one that you ended up with or
was there was there a back and forth
because sometimes i show them things and
they're like well i definitely don't
like that and that helps to kind of
point you in the right direction too
what happened was on that particular
site okay the rocky outcrop
sits in the sort of middle of
two completely different views okay one
one is wide open ocean where it is
expansive uh windy
noisy waves crashing that rocky outcrop
divided in that wide open somewhat scary
southeast view from the calm
cove much more intimate more
wooded side of you know the other side
of the rocky outcrop
and it was just a sort of natural fit
when i described it to the client
at the first presentation you know the
the scheme that we ended up with
fit that divide much better than the
previous one
sure yeah yeah and you know being able
to say that's where the bedrooms belong
the quiet side and this is where the
living space belongs
big view side noisy side that sold it
you know i think for them
i'm looking at this sort of um
presentation and i don't know if this is
your presentation board but it has
a site plan with the sort of maybe some
of these marks that you're talking about
it's got
prevailing winds it's got the solar
aspect it's got views and things like
that and then you have sort of three
perspective views of the house is that
something you presented to like was that
the presentation
uh yeah i think it was um i think you
know what what ended up happening
in this particular presentation is i
actually flew out to boulder colorado
where they live because at that time we were
were
working at such a distance from them and
they could not travel to maine for the presentation
