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.
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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
presentation
i felt like i needed to show up with as
much as possible
in order to sort of somewhat be
efficient normally we probably would not
show the perspective in the first
presentation because
if you start start showing their
perspectives um
sometimes they're not totally on board
and not ready for that
so you want them to buy into the
the site diagram and the plan first so
it's a site diagram really because
i mean that's where i start too i mean i
would start with a site plan just
knowing conceptually like you said okay
this is where the living spaces are
sleeping spaces are here this is
generally how you're gonna arrive to the site
site
but then i mean there there has to be a
massing component to it too
right you have to be thinking about this
thing in three dimensions i mean
naturally as you're sketching
i imagine this idea evolved
the idea of a treehouse obviously is
it's up lifted above the ground can you
talk about like
how does the three-dimensional component
like where does that start for you
and i would be blown away if i was a
client and i saw these
conceptual drawings because they are
they are i see them as conceptual not
everything's figured out and but also as
an architect i think wow i mean
that's a lot to invest in like one of say
say
maybe three schemes um so talk about
that process and how it evolves like
do you see this as you're sketching
you're like oh yeah this is definitely
lifted up
and this is a tower piece over here or
how does that come to be
you know people outside the
architectural world think that you start
in one
one end of the sort of blank piece of
paper and end up in the other corner and
you're done
you know and it just doesn't happen that
way it's it's a collection of lines and
i i think the same thing applies to the 3d
3d
aspect of this you know while i'm sort
of diagramming
on the site and and i want to sort of
emphasize this because i i've learned this
this
drawing at sort of 1 to 20 scale for me
is important because i'm able to sort of
you know look at the big picture i think
it's easy
for a young architect and i did this
when i was
younger it's easy to you know jump into the
the
detail and start drawing that quarter
inch scale well what happens is you
forget about sort of all those
lines that are coming in from further
away and so i've i've forced myself to
come up with a floor plan at 1-20 scale
it's tiny yeah right but what what
happens is
you know i'm thinking 30 000 foot view
and remembering okay that's the big open
ocean view
that's the quiet cove side my approach
is from
you know this side of the house what
does that mean
um you know to the internal spaces you
know i learned this from
a guy by the name of jim leggett i
showed up at a aia convention in chicago
one year and he was given a presentation
he talked about draw as small
as you possibly can he would draw these
you know very small perspectives and sketches
sketches
and then he would take him over to a
copier blow them up
you know and then you know and it would
just develop over time and get more and
more detailed
with a larger scale i love it i always
found it really intimidating to start a
project at a larger scale because
i felt like the plans felt open and undeveloped
undeveloped
in a way because there's like you said
there's like so much you don't know
about the building so just starting at
that small scale is a great hack for really
really
they're conden these condensed pieces
and it forces you to think in in
just a larger scale like approach and i
presume you were thinking
about these masses and volumes as being
like okay well this is lifted in the air
and this is a tower and i mean do those
elements all start as kind of
geometry like square geometries like
orthogonal pieces
or are they are you do you say well
that's a view so i want this to be a
shed roof or how does that work
speaking specifically to the the
englishman bay retreat
um you know those two sides that i
mentioned earlier
of that rocky outcrap turned into two
wings of the house
and i always sort of try to think in
terms of
you know less complex when it comes to 3d
3d
the less complex the better especially
here in maine i feel like in order to
sort of
shed snow and rain as simply as possible
so those two wings in my mind at the
time i knew i
you know wanted to shed water you know
in a certain direction
the plan has to work first and it's a
part of
training my mind to not sort of like try
to figure it all out
all at the same time yeah which you know
would lead to
you know the inability to put a mark
down right
yeah it's paralyzing right yeah exactly
yeah so
uh or get writer's cramp whatever it
might be you know you just can't do it yeah
yeah
so those two wings i knew you know where
those were headed and then i also
knew you know in in speaking with a client
client
and you know working this through with
him and him wanting
this amazing sort of rooftop deck that
he could spend
time under the stars with his daughters
yeah you know that was another sort of
guiding principle and it turned into the tower
tower
you know when you were up there and the
evening is it feels like the edge of the earth
earth
it's just an amazing spot so i knew i
had this sort of vertical element
and i i knew i had these two wings and
in plan
i i knew i wanted to keep it simple i
mean just budget ever when does budget
come up
i mean we all know it's a big part of
this thing right um but
it's something that i think a lot of
architects don't really talk about is
that a first phone call kind of thing
for you it has to be a part of the
conversation it has to be otherwise i
feel like
you're setting yourself up for failure
we don't want to
be inefficient in our process and you know
know
draw all the way to the end and realize oh
oh
this isn't going to work this is way out
of my budget so we have the conversation
from the beginning and we will be very
candid with them
you know based on what we're working on
and we've got
10 to 12 projects going on at a time and
we're seeing these budgets come in
we're able to say hey here's what we're
seeing you know yeah
um and you know let that inform
our process okay and i would say also we
have an incredible respect for the build
community here in
in maine yeah and there are some
incredible builders
and you know we tell our clients we want
that person that's going to be building
your home
on this team as soon as possible i want
our contractor to have some ownership
you know to just be handed a set of
instructions and say okay build this
right you know without ever having input
on it
i i wouldn't be able to do that as a
builder i'd much rather you know
hey you guys thought about this what
about that and let them be a
as i look behind you i see a wall full
of books and like
you know my instinct is to go grab some
of those because i see a bunch that i
don't have
what do you have favorite books or
resources i mean you you must be someone
who references these books all the time
the um what what are some favorite
resources that you have
they're maybe not beautiful picture
books which i love those as well i love
picking up the you know tom cundig and
um looking through you know beautiful
architecture and drawings
i love that but there are other books
that i also appreciate just
reading sort of the methodology behind
coming to the narrative yeah um so
there's a book
uh called the good house contrast as a
design tool
and it's like it's a read it's about
using contrast
you know in out up down dark
light and how that applies to architecture
architecture
being able to develop a narrative off of
those principles and those methodologies
can make it feel so much less abstract
to a client finding the the edge between
light and dark if you think about you
know everybody wants to sit in the
window at the restaurant
right because it's at the edge of dark
and light and
it's a beautiful spot the book is about that
that
and you know all of those contrasts that can
can
you know inform your design i love it um
it's interesting because when i hear you
talk about walking this
site you know and and talking through
these ideas with your clients
and hearing you talk about this idea of
contrast just reminds me that
i think one of the things that
architects bring to the design
process whether that's a house or a
commercial building or a school
is this ability to see things which
you may sense and feel but aren't
immediately obvious because when you
were talking about that site i think
about you know not only the light
contrast of light and dark but
also this idea about sound and you know
changing of seasons and what it smells
like and how it feels
underfoot like all of those senses
bringing those to bear on the story of design
design
is um it's so relatable to the client
and like you say you know that's the
thing that invests them in the design
process and makes it
a richer project and i you know i just
want to commend you
for your work i really admire your
design work and
i admire your ability to talk about your process
process
in a real down-to-earth way i think that
is what makes you successful
in in realizing these really beautiful
projects and
thanks for taking all this time this is
so much time you've given me and
for as someone who is also a principal
and a firm i know how valuable that is
so really appreciate it
hey i love this it's fine i'll talk to
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