Practice Disrupted by Practice of Architecture

With enhanced dependency on technology, what is an architecture firm’s responsibility in educating staff on various digital skills?

Jeames Hanley and Christina Diego join us from Gray Puksand to discuss how their growing team of 140+ is scaling their technology strategy. As the National Design Technology Manager at Gray Puksand, Jeames works across multiple locations, including Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, and Sydney to ensure his team can deliver the best possible outcomes for their clients and projects alike.

Through this discussion, we’ll learn best practices for bridging conversations on technology, mentorship, and project delivery in support of a people-first culture. We'll do our best to address how to effectively design and support the technology demands of a busy architecture firm.

Guests:

As a Digital technologist and strategist in the AEC industry, Jeames Hanley leads digital transformation and champions cultural change within architectural practices in the face of a technological shift. He converts strategy into front-line behavior by supporting people first in an ever-changing technology-centric environment. 

Implementing workflows centered around automation, algorithm-based design, and data literacy Jeames also educates designers that these technologies and a tech-first mindset present huge opportunities and not threats to the design industry.

Graduating in the middle of COVID, Christina Diego is a recent graduate of Billy Blue College of Design, where she earned her Bachelor of Interior Design. Christina joined the interior design team of Gray Puksand in October 2021 and has since been part of commercial, workplace, and education projects. She has a real interest in learning the technical side of design but also learning about the ever evolving side of design and sustainability.

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Gray Puksand

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How do you find time to implement the latest technology tools in your practice while still providing your clients with an amazing experience?

No matter what size firm you are running, unless you have an in-house technology department (and sometimes even when you do), staying ahead of the technology curve becomes increasingly tricky. That’s where /slantis comes in as a partner to help your firm with everything from Architecture & Production Coordination, BIM Consulting, High-end Visualisation, and even bigger innovations, including workflow automation and architecture for the metaverse. They create offerings unique to your firm that support all project delivery phases.

We sit down /slantis’ two incredibly passionate female founders, Andy Robert and Mercedes Carriquiry, to talk about their backgrounds in architecture, what drives them as entrepreneurs, and why Uruguay is not an unusual place to build out a technology-forward company. 

Guests:

Andy Robert is a professional architect from ORT University in Uruguay. She lived in Germany and studied architecture in Dessau, where the former Bauhaus was located. Today she is CEO of /slantis, co-founded in 2016 with her life-long friend Mercedes Carriquiry.

Very energetic, curious, and entrepreneurial, she is actively involved in events that advocate for women as leaders. She became an expert in management, marketing, and sales. Andy is also vegan and Beltran and Jaime's mum.

Mercedes Carriquiry is a licensed Architect and entrepreneur specializing in innovation and technology. She holds a degree from the Faculty of Architecture UDELAR, Uruguay; and studied in the ENSAG of Grenoble, France. She also graduated in digital fabrication from MIT Fabacademy.

After working at Jean Nouvel's studio in Paris and leading multiple developments in Montevideo, she co-founded /slantis in 2016 with her life-long friend Andy.

Outside the rat race, she’s into art, skating, and above all spending time with her family.

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/slantis 

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How do you attract and retain the best talent?

We bring back leaders from the Future Forum to talk about tactics they are sharing with executives from organizations of all sizes and industries to win the battle for talent by building a future of work that is flexible, inclusive, and connected. 

The Future Forum is a consortium focused on building new ways of working that are flexible, inclusive, and connected. They research and convene executives to design a people-centered and digital-first workplace. In June 2020, Future Forum began surveying thousands of workers and managers globally quarterly, asking them questions about productivity, sense of belonging, and preferred ways of working.

The Forum's new book, How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to Do the Best Work of Their Lives, is a Wall Street Journal Bestseller and provides readers with a blueprint for empowering teams with the flexibility and choice they need to do their best work. 

Guest:

Helen Kupp is Senior Director and co-founder of Future Forum. She has led many of Slack's largest cross-functional and growth initiatives, and is the creator of many of Future Forum's playbooks, tapping Future Forum's research and networks along with her experiences at Slack, Bain & Company, startups, and her MBA from Harvard Business School. She is also co-author of How The Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to Do the Best Work of Their Lives. Helen is the lucky mom of two wonderful children.

Chrissie Arnold is the Director of Advisory Services for the Future Forum, where she is focused on designing and leading executive workshops about the Future of Work. Chrissie provides Fortune 100 company executives with a blueprint to build high-functioning, engaged teams in the digital-first era. Prior to this role, Chrissie spent seven years at Slack in roles across Customer Experience, Customer Success, and Product, with a common thread of helping customers get more value out of Slack by driving transformation in their organizations. Before Slack, Chrissie worked in non-profit leadership and academia. Her work included women's legal advocacy, human rights education and transitional justice in post-war environments, and leading recreational therapy programs for children with cancer and HIV around the world. Chrissie has a BA in Human Geography and an MA in Educational Studies, both from the University of British Columbia. She's a Mom to a couple of feisty toddlers who keep her humble, and loves any excuse to get out in the mountains!

📍 Show Links: 

Future Forum

Twitter: @FutureForum

YouTube: Future Forum by Slack

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How the Future Works

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Who are the leaders behind Madame Architect?

In our season 4 finale, we invited senior editor Amy Stone to join us in an interview. This week we invite Amy back to learn more about her career, her MBA studies, and her work at Madame Architect.

While the seeming lack of women in architecture has been well-documented, women are, and have been, making waves in all levels of the field. Madame Architect is an online magazine celebrating the extraordinary women that shape our world, a magazine designed to break the architect’s mold and show young women entering the industry the myriad choices they have in crafting a dynamic, meaningful, and interesting career.

Guest:

Amy Stone is an architect, a mom of three, and is currently pursuing an MBA at Georgia Tech's Scheller College of Business. Amy is a design manager at Gensler and is dedicated to creating sustainable and equitable environments. Her professional work experience includes a variety of building types, including housing, mixed-use, adaptive-reuse, offices, higher education, and deep-green sustainable projects including the largest Living Building in the Southeast.

Amy is a contributing interviewer and editor and is dedicated to elevating the voice and visibility of women in architecture and design. She studied architecture for her Bachelors's and Masters's at Georgia Tech. She is based in Atlanta.

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Follow Amy at @_amystone

📚 Continue Learning:

Madame Architect

Follow us at @madamearchitect

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Episode 089: Entrepreneurship in Practice: Taking Risks to Create Value

What does it take to launch, build, and grow an architecture firm?

This week we interview the founding principal of brick. Rob Zirkle and the managing director of business management, Lynn Chock. Founded in 2010, brick. has been on a trajectory of growth since its inception. A nimble team grounded in the belief that design, technology, and service are indelibly linked, we discuss the company’s growth from launch to the present day.  

“Friendly, unconventional, can-do architects”, Bricksters are guided by their mission to: 

• outsmart convention. 
• create value. 
• design like you mean it. 

Learn more about how they are redesigning the business model of architecture.

Guests:

Rob Zirkle founding principal at brick brings a strong record of successful and recognized design excellence to a wide variety of project types in both architecture, interiors, and urban design. Rob brings a sensitivity to the details of design that make memorable architecture transcend the everyday, but he is also laser focused on creating value for clients, the cities where he works and for the many stakeholders whose experiences are shaped by the firm’s designs.

As managing director of business management, Lynn Chock knows that quality + efficiency + happiness = an awesome bottom line. She leverages her extensive experience in HR, accounting, and business management to help brick and its talented staff thrive. For Lynn, a successful firm maximizes value for its clients and the people who live, work, and learn in the buildings they design. Over the last nine years Lynn has worked with brick behind the scenes, constantly improving financial performance and business workflows; finding ways to increase overall productivity and boost the happiness quotient for brick’s most valuable asset: its people.

📍 Show Links: 

brick.

👉 Follow brick. on social:

IG: @brick.inc

LinkedIn: brick.

Twitter: @brick_arch

📚 Continue Learning:

PD 069: A Case Study on Leadership: Expanding Established Design Practices to New Locations

brick: Redesigning The Studio Through Communication (w/ Lynn Chock, Je'Nen Chastain)

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Episode 088: Latina Voices in Practice

“Why is it that the largest community of color within the US still makes up such a small percentage of the profession?” ~ACSA Hispanic & Latinx in Architecture

Four leaders in the profession share their diverse perspectives on race, equity, and architecture.

Practice Disrupted is committed to elevating conversations on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion to teach, empower, and build greater awareness across the industry. Building from prior diversity conversations, this week we learn about Hispanic & Latinx in Architecture.

Guest:

Venesa Alicea-Chuqui, AIA, NOMA, LEED AP BD+C, WELL AP, an Architect, Educator and Advocate, is Founding Principal of NYVARCH Architecture, a NYC based collaborative Architectural Practice focused on building community and equity through design.  With over 15 years of experience designing multi-family sustainable affordable, and supportive housing developments and civic projects, she is committed to working with local communities to develop good design, both sustainable and socially conscious. She’s the Vice Chair of Outreach to the AIA Small Firm Exchange and President of the Architecture Alumni Group of the Alumni Association of the City College of New York, her alma mater (B.Arch ‘05), where she has also taught the Coop Internship and Professional Practice classes. Committed to design justice in the built environment, she’s an active contributor to Dark Matter University, Design as Protest, and a former co-chair to the AIANY Diversity & Inclusion and Emerging New York Architects committees. She is past chair of the AIANY Puerto Rico Resiliency task force, an active member of the AIANY Planning and Urban Design Committee, and a 2019 Fellow of the Association for Community Design.

Siboney Diaz-Sánchez is an affordable housing advocate and the community engagement administrator for the City of San Antonio's Neighborhood and Housing Services Department. She serves as a NOMA Empowerment Committee Co-Chair, organizes with Design As Protest Planning and Policy Committee, and is proud to teach Community Practice at The Boston Architectural College. In 2021 she joined the Association for Community Design board of directors.  Prior to returning to San Antonio Siboney was an Enterprise Rose Fellow and project/design manager at Opportunities Communities in the Boston area working for two non-profit community development corporations, The Neighborhood Developers and Nuestra Comunidad.  While in Boston she developed design standards for affordable housing, helped secure funding for a low income housing tax credit housing development, led a community engagement process for a public arts park and served on the Boston Society of Architects board of directors. Siboney insists creative fields are viable vehicles for social change and believes in just redistribution of systemic power through design. She is committed to prioritizing community voices in design processes.

She is a licensed architect in the state of Texas and holds her Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University.  

Vanessa Smith Torres is a Puerto Rican born Architect based in Miami, FL. Vanessa received a Bachelors from Northeastern University and a Master of Architecture from Tulane University.  She has worked on award winning projects in various market sectors - from Hospitality to Education. Vanessa is a Project Architect at Perkins&Will and Adjunct Instructor at Florida Atlantic University. Committed to building a more equitable profession, Vanessa has served on the National Organization of Minority Architects Chapter boards in South Florida (SoFloNOMA) and Louisiana (NOMALA). She is the Immediate Past President of SoFloNOMA and currently serves as Chapter Director of AIA Miami and co-chair of the Women in Architecture Committee.

Alicia Ponce is the Founder and Principal of APMonarch, a Chicago based Female and Latina owned Architecture firm.

Under Alicia’s direction, the firm provides architectural services, community engagement and sustainability consulting for projects throughout the Midwest and Mexico. Her expertise and passion to design healthy buildings and equitable communities support many clients in creating architecture that is ambitious, thoughtful and healthy. APMonarch provides these services to a diverse group of sectors that includes Commercial, Higher-Education, Civic, Healthcare, and Non-Profits.

Alicia refers to APMonarch as the pollinator of the built environment designing healthy environments that look good, feel good and perform great. The firm’s promise is to build zero carbon architecture. Demonstrating that promise is Alicia’s recent architecture commission to design Centro Amazing, a civic youth center located in Aguascalientes, Mexico which is to be constructed from rammed earth.

A registered architect in Illinois and Wisconsin, Alicia has over 20 years of architecture and sustainability experience. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and studied at the Ecole d’Architecture in Versailles, France.

Alicia currently serves on the Chicago Landmarks Commission and the United Way Metro Chicago Executive Board. Creator of the award-winning book Latinas in Architecture – raising the 1% one Latina a time, she is the founder and chair of Arquitina, a national non-profit organization with a mission to raise the number of licensed Latina architects in the U.S.

📍 Show Links:

AIA Miami

AIA New York Diversity and Inclusion

AIA New York Emerging Architects

AIA Small Firm Exchange

APMonarch

Arquitina

Association for Community Design

Boston Society of Architects

Chicago Landmarks Commission

City College of New York

Cornell AAP

Dark Matter University

Design as Protest

Florida Atlantic University

The Neighborhood Developers

NOMA

NOMA Louisiana

NOMA South Florida

Northeastern University

Nuestra Comunidad

NYARCH Architecture

Opportunities Communities

Perkins&Will

Tulane University

United Way Metro Chicago

📚 Continue Learning:

Latinas in Architecture: Stories of raising the 1% one Latina at a time

Where are my People? Hispanic & Latinx in Architecture

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If you launched an architecture firm with the goal of designing workplace policies above and beyond the baseline, what would those policies look like?

This week we discover how the desire to lead with better policies informed the creation of Saam Architecture, a mid-size practice based in Boston. President and CEO Diana Nicklaus has led with the goal of reimagining what is possible. The proof is in the numbers. Her practice is a place women want to work because the policies in place support their needs. 

The Saam studio is a place where collaboration is celebrated. Whether it is sitting together in their Boston office or working remotely, they maintain a high level of communication and trust, empowering their team to operate in spaces and places that improve the quality of service to their clients and the quality of their team’s lives. They are cyclists, sailors, runners, gardeners, singers, kayakers, hikers, yogis, and musicians. But above all, they are a team dedicated to a common goal: to enjoy delivering value to their clients.

Guest:

With over 20 years of experience, Diana Nicklaus has practiced architecture in both the United States and Italy, with projects throughout the continental U.S. and Europe. Her portfolio includes high-profile, large-scale institutional projects, including those in the higher education, healthcare, cultural arts, and K-12 education sectors.

As an advocate for women’s leadership and equitable practice, she has shared Saam’s strategies in numerous presentations and interviews, including Equity by Design and the AIA Women’s Leadership Summit. Diana was a founding co-chair of the Massachusetts Building Congress Women’s Network, the Founding President of Boston Professional Women in Construction, and is currently serving as the Secretary of the Board for the Boston Society of Architecture.

📍 Show Links: 

Saam Architecture

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Episode 086: A Large Firm Perspective on Innovation & Transformation: CannonDesign

How do large firms think about innovation and transformation within the industry, and where are they investing next?

 Within the last four years, CannonDesign:

• grew their consulting practice through the strategic acquisition of Blue Cottage Consulting
• brought new software tools to market, and 
• launched a pre-fab design and fabrication facility in the middle of a pandemic

In turn, growing their market share and the value they continue to deliver to their clients.

 In this episode, we sit down with CEO Bradley A Lukanic, AIA, to talk about the evolution of architecture practice, where he believes architects need to be focused, and the opportunities that technology and innovation are playing in decisions that Cannon is making about the growth of their operations and business.

 Guest:

With a never-ending drive and passion for design and built experiences, Bradley A. Lukanic, AIA, LEED AP embraces situational change disrupters that transform the industry’s future – and he’s leading CannonDesign’s charge to get there. As CEO, Brad seeks partners that are curious to accelerate, command and propel design’s influences on environments with goals resolving cross-disciplinary thinking and engagement. He leads CannonDesign with a sincere approach of listening to employee and client challenges to guide a discovery of “what if” opportunities, instead of progressing in a silo. Parallel to his practical design experience, Brad’s thought leadership is shared within and beyond architecture audiences.

📍 Show Links: 

CannonDesign

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Episode 085: A Case Study for Practice: Latent Design

How do you build an architecture practice that reaches beyond projects to further impact policy, culture, and community?

Latent Design is a progressive Chicago-based architecture firm working at the intersection of design and community development to create social, economic and environmental impact. They define the context surrounding a project before they design the content of architecture. They offer innovative design solutions to those in resource and budget limited environments through a participatory approach that leverages local assets to directly generate project opportunities. Their collaborations range from small-scale tactical interventions, new construction community buildings, adaptive reuse, neighborhood master plans, and design speculations.

In this episode, we’ll learn from architect, founder, and entrepreneur Katherine Darnstadt. Darnstadt has been building her business from the ground up since 2010. In celebration of 12+ years of growth, she’s expanded her work to help launch the Design Trust Chicago.

Guest:

Katherine Darnstadt, AIA, NOMA, LEED AP is the founder of Latent Design, a progressive architecture and urbanism firm leveraging civic innovation and social impact to design more equitable spaces and systems. Since founding her practice in 2010, Katherine and her firm have prototyped new urban design systems to advance urban agriculture with Fresh Moves, support small business through Boombox, created spaces for youth makers, and developed public space frameworks through Design Trust Chicago.  She and the firm have been published, exhibited, and featured widely, most notably at the International Venice Architecture Biennial, Architizer A+ Awards, Chicago Ideas Week, NPR, American Institute of Architects Young Architects Honor Award winner and Crain’s Chicago 40 Under 40. She previously taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Northwestern University.

📍 Show Links: 

Latent Design

Design Trust Chicago

📚 Continue Learning:

Mapped!

Boombox Chicago Innovation Award video

Boombox SXSW Place by Design Award video

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Episode 084: Understanding the Architecture Labor Movement

Who is the Architectural Workers United? 

The Architectural Workers United is organizing towards making architecture more equitable, the profession more just, and our built environment more resilient. Join us as we interview Andrew Daley and Jess Myers to learn more about the architectural labor movement, unions, and the history of labor practices in architecture. What are the biggest misconceptions? What is the benefit? What are the most common questions people ask? We’ll discover all of this and more as we discuss why there is a growing group of advocates standing behind AWU.

Guests:

Andrew Daley is an organizer, activist, and licensed architect living and working in Brooklyn. He is currently working with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) on organizing efforts within the architecture industry. He has 12 years of experience working for a number of offices in multiple states, most recently for 7 years at SHoP Architects as a Project Director working on US embassies worldwide.

Jess Myers is an assistant professor in Rhode Island School for Design’s architecture department. Her podcast Here There Be Dragons offers an in-depth look into the intersection of identity politics and security policy in public space through the eyes of New Yorkers, Parisians and Stockholmers. Her work can be found in The Architect’s Newspaper, The Funambulist Magazine, Failed Architecture, Dwell and l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui. (Read more about Jess on Madame Architect.)

📍 Show Links:  

AWU Website

AWU FAQ Page

AWU How to Unionize

AWU Instagram

AWU Twitter

AWU Contact: [email protected]

📚 Continue Learning:

Labor Resources

DPE Data Sheet

EPI Productivity-Pay Gap

EPI Union Density-Top 10% Income

DOL Employee Rights

NLRB Website

National Labor Relations Act

NYC Central Labor Council

Architecture Labor Resources

The Architecture Lobby Union Pamphlet (downloadable pamphlet)

Architecture and Anti-Trust Article

Why Don’t Architects Have Unions? (by Jess Myers)

Architecture and Labor (review of book by Peggy Deamer)

NCARB Demographics

AIA Bias Report

FAECT Article (by Mardges Bacon)

Press about AWU (selected)

New York Times Article

Curbed Article

New York Review of Architecture Article

Architectural Record Article

Architect’s Newspaper Article

Press about Overwork/Burnout/Stress

Harvard Business Review Article (about long hours)

Salon Article (about 40 hour work week)

Gallup Union Support Poll

CNBC Article (about long hours)

Wall Street Journal Article (about overtime)

World Economic Forum (about employees leaving)

National Bureau of Economic Research (union job satisfaction study)

Recent Professional Unions (Non-Exhaustive, there are 6,000,000 professional union members)

VICE Media Union (est. 2017) - WGA East

VOX Media Union (est. 2018) - WGA East

The New Yorker Union (est. 2018) - News Guild

New York Magazine Union (est. 2018) - News Guild

Wirecutter Union - (est. 2019) - News Guild

New Museum Union - (est. 2019) - UAW

Whitney Museum Union - (est. 2020) - UAW

Guggenheim Union - (est. 2021) - UAW

ACLU Lawyers - (est. 2021) - IFTPE

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