The kitchen is rarely about the kitchen. It is the room a family actually lives in. Nick and Paul sit down with Tyler Swartzmiller and Amy Fix of Haus Studio, the Columbus design-build studio behind the cabinetry in Nick's own kitchen, for a warm, lively conversation about designing the room at the center of a home.

They get into the 90/10 rule (design for the ninety percent of life that is just your family, not the ten percent that is entertaining), what a designer is actually doing in the first meeting, storage as programming rather than volume, why appliances are disappearing behind panels, the shift back toward natural stone and the worker-safety story driving it, and why "invest" beats "budget" when a home is the largest asset most people own.

Guests: Tyler Swartzmiller, Principal Designer and Founder, and Amy Fix, Senior Designer, of Haus Studio. See their work at hausstudiodesigns.com or @hausstudiocolumbus.

More conversations on design, building, and Central Ohio at arcfluence.com/podcast.

Nick and Paul are back from the 2026 AIA National Conference in San Diego with a full debrief. They start with the keynotes that stood out: a celebrated culinary host on design as a curated experience, Charlene Li on winning with AI as a leadership and culture challenge rather than a magic button, and the World Bank's Sameh Wahba on designing for a changing climate - building for the next century, not just the next code cycle. From there they get into the Small Firm Exchange and what accessible technology means for smaller practices, the expo floor and an unexpected Columbus connection, and a Kent State alumni reception. Two building tours anchor the back half: Treehouse, a thoughtful multifamily project, and Snapdragon Stadium, a study in designing tiered experiences. They close on what they're taking home - embracing new tools, educating clients on resilience and long-term value, and the wide-open opportunity facing a profession that needs its next generation to step up.

Charlene Li is a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and strategist who has spent decades helping leaders navigate disruptive technology and organizational change. In this episode, the Arcfluence Team sits down with Charlene for a grounded conversation about AI, architecture, and what it takes for firms to adapt with clarity instead of fear.

Charlene frames AI not as a magic solution or a replacement for human expertise, but as a leadership, culture, and decision-making challenge. The conversation explores how architecture and design firms can use AI to reduce friction, improve client communication, rethink workflows, support talent development, and create new value in the earliest stages of a project.

Rather than chasing every new tool, Charlene argues that firms should start with the problems they need to solve, build AI fluency across their teams, and create governance that helps people move faster without losing control. The result is a practical discussion about experimentation, judgment, adaptability, and the human expertise that still sits at the center of good design.

Central Ohio reads as a single metro on a map. On the ground it doesn’t behave like one. German Village and Dublin are fifteen miles apart and may as well be different states for how buyers think about them. Grandview is its own city. So is Bexley. So is Upper Arlington. Worthington was founded by New Englanders and still feels like Vermont. Powell has two distinct halves separated by a few minutes’ drive. Short North used to be downtown and now insists it’s its own neighborhood.

For this episode we asked Isabelle Trepkoski - Columbus native, agent with Styer Real Estate Professionals, and someone who’s lived in a meaningful share of these neighborhoods herself - to walk through them with us, one at a time. What follows is what you actually need to know.

Seventy episodes in, the hosts step out of the host seats. Danny Porter from behind the scenes dives in with Nick Karakaian and Paul Fatkins about how Arcfluence was built, where new technologies fit in a working architecture practice, what the next stretch of the firm looks like, and the studio they're about to move into.

Conversations along the way: why podcasts work in 2026, what Bill Griffith and Brunelleschi can still teach an architect, Nick's frame of designing around himself in real time, Paul's twenty-year vantage on the change in the tools and what they actually give you (time), Danny's frame of AI as a cartographer rather than an oracle, the complementary strengths that make the team work, and the question Danny puts to both founders at the close: what would you tell a twenty-year-old considering this field in 2026?

Hear more at arcfluence.com/podcast.

In this episode of The Arcfluence Podcast, Nick and Paul sit down with Kathy Binner, founder of Kathy Binner International Academy, to trace three decades of building in Columbus - from salon ownership and commercial real estate to education, authorship, mentorship, and community leadership.

Kathy shares how buying her first building forced her to learn the realities of change-of-use, life-safety requirements, and the discipline behind commercial ownership. The conversation also explores her transition from operator to educator, her work with Happy House Hunters and now the Central Ohio Investor Network (COIN), the creation of the Stephanie Milo Jenkins Initiative, and the philosophy that has guided her career: treat the work in front of you like your name is already on the door.

This is a conversation about entrepreneurship as posture, real estate as education, and the quiet, long-term work of helping shape a city from inside its rooms.

Omar ElhagMusa, Executive Vice President at Spring Garden Lending, joins the Arcfluence Podcast to discuss Columbus’s first zoning rewrite in seventy years—Zone In Phase 1. He serves on the City’s Zoning Advisory Committee and brings a background spanning lending, policy, and small-scale residential investment.

The conversation focuses on how the new code actually functions: corridor-based upzoning tied to bus rapid transit, the removal of parking minimums, and the constraints created by Columbus’s predominantly R-1 zoning. It also covers single-stair construction, the impact of entitlement risk on project feasibility, and the role of by-right development in reducing pre-development uncertainty.

The episode closes on small-scale density—particularly duplexes—and the interdependence between transit and land use. Omar’s perspective reflects the overlap between financing, policy, and design, and how those systems shape what ultimately gets built.

Podcast for entertainment purposes only. Not financial advice.

Steven Rhodes is a mechanical engineer and Certified Passive House Consultant (Phius CPHC) who built Central Ohio's first certified passive house in Clintonville. In this episode, he breaks down what passive house certification actually means in practical terms - envelope performance, air quality, energy independence, and the real numbers behind it.

Steven walks through what his family pays to heat and cool their home ($41/month), how the Phius Revive program is making passive house retrofits accessible to existing homeowners, and why Ohio's building code is about to change in ways that push the entire industry toward higher-performance construction.

If you design, build, invest in, or own a home in Ohio, the code changes Steven describes will affect you.

Tabi Mund from Swoon House Studio is back for Part 2. This time we get into the operational side of running a design practice in Columbus. Tabi talks about growing her practice, what it took to build a real team, and why she leans into vintage sourcing and handmade pieces over mass production. We walk through the new Arcfluence office together, talk about the Westerville house collaboration, and get honest about what construction feels like from the client side. Plus her take on sustainability, community building, and where both of our firms are headed.

Blake Souls from Summit Building and Roofing Company joins Nick and Paul to talk about what 16 years and 300+ kitchens have taught his team about craftsmanship, relationships, and doing the work right. From high-end kitchen renovations with Amish-made cabinetry to converting a single-family home into an assisted living facility, this episode covers the real side of construction in Columbus. Blake also shares his outlook on the 2026 market: interest rates are coming down, homeowners are tapping into equity, and the projects are picking up.

The Arcfluence Podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice.