In the first episode of the ArchHive Podcast, I talk with University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Architecture graduate student Josh Puppe about learning outside of studio, participating in competitions, and incorporating creative outlets into architecture.

​In part two of our interview with Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski, founders of WAI Architecture Think Tank, we discuss the definition of 'icon', the impact of utopian/dystopian thinking, their experience at Taliesin West, the implications of an alternative approach, and architectural discourse as a profession. To learn more about Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski visit their websites: waithinktank.com, garciafrankowski.com, and intelligentsiagallery.com. 

​How do your views of utopia and dystopia impact your research?

CG: That is something that is also important, not only the idea of utopia or dystopia but the idea that we can imagine and we should imagine a better world. People say you shouldn't be utopian, but I don't think you could accomplish anything if you didn't have utopian goal at the end. Even the constitution of the US with its aim for a ‘more perfect union’ or the declaration of Independence are utopian documents. You have to be utopian to write "every man is created equal," at a time when you own slaves. They were thinking about the future. They were thinking we should be equal; we're not right now. The reason why we have the internet and other mediums that impact our lives significantly is because big dreams bring you small changes. That is something that is really interesting for us, good and bad. On one hand you have beautiful things that have been achieved and then you have horrible things. The Nazis were also utopian. They wanted an Aryan world full of big ugly domes and classical architecture. So it is really important for us in the sense of understanding the background and evolution of these big ideas. Again, those are tools we can use to communicate ideas and educate. It is also important for our practice because we are dreamers too, we are thinking about the future all the time.

NF: People are often overcritical about Utopias because they tend to focus on their limitations rather than understanding the potential of them as tools for critical thinking. Utopias should be understood for what they are- ideas to intellectually provoke, spark questioning, arise doubts, or offer new perspectives, but they shouldn’t be considered as perfect solutions to be applied foolishly, because they are not. There’s nothing wrong with hoping for better future, better societies, better life, and equal system for all of us, and one powerful tool to try to make people conscious about our societal drifts or vices is the constructions of utopias/dystopias in the fictional sense. There’s always a wrong correlation between utopian being naive. If one doesn’t try to address the question of the future, the question of possible changes, possible scenarios or pushing the discussion to an absurd point for the argument sake, how can we all move forward? We cannot remain fatalistic and passive. We need at least to be willing to engage in the discussion, utopias/dystopias being one of the tool to do so. Of course, as Cruz mentioned, the ideals of one are not necessarily the ideals of others, but there’s a lot of basic consensus we should all share for all and each other. 

CG: You can't move forward if there is no higher goal. The reason we aim to improve is that we think we can do much better.

NF: That’s how I understand the role of Utopias/Dystopias, by excessively magnifying a storyline, the arguments are made obvious, therefore becoming visible and consequently debatable. That’s one of the reason why we incorporate the use of Utopia/Dystopia in our work and in our teaching. There’s a very educative component to them as their blatant criticism offer a rich ground for discussion. It’s difficult to remain neutral. In the second-half of the semester of our narrative architecture studio, we asked our students to develop alternative scenarios challenging our way of living for a future where technology has replaced work as we know it. Through architectural projects, drawings, collages, model making and movie making, each student imagined very compelling and complex narratives, which very successfully generated a lot of new questions and debates that may not be all answerable yet but that certainly provoke deep personal considerations upon the topics raised. 

What I also find really interesting about Utopia/Dystopia, in a more anthropological point of view, is that they usually strongly reflect the preoccupations of a society in the moment they were written in. We can learn from them, not only as commentaries about our past but also as interesting avant-garde attempts to test ideas to their limits, and sometimes what they have written about years ago end up prophetically reflecting some aspects of our contemporary societies. In that regard, the more contemporary the discourse the more it can inform us about our present too. 

CG: Optimism is like the fuel that makes you work. When you asked: "what sustained you through the work?" It's the optimism, the utopian goal. People mock utopia and disregard it like you're not interested in reality. I am interested , that’s  why I am utopian. I'm thinking about how things can be improved.

NF: As an educational tool it can be used not only to think about what the future can be, but to think about what the present is. It's because you understand everything addressed in the utopia of the future that you can reflect about the present or any short-term period.

CG: We’re not only interested in the concept of Utopia, but also on its evolution, on its effect on the ways we see, think about, and represent the world.

Could you describe your experience as Teaching Fellows at Taliesin West and how that role may have influenced you and your future work?
 
NF: We first met Aaron Betsky during the Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture that he curated in Shenzhen, where we were taking part together in discussion panel about megacities and the future of urbanism. He introduced to us the School of Architecture at Taliesin (at that time still called The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture) and later on he invited us to consider the visiting teaching fellowship position. As the new dean, he shared with us his vision for the school and at an educational level, we felt very enthusiastic about the potential of such an environment and teaching opportunity.

​We moved to Taliesin in August 2016 from China and taught there two semesters, a first year and a second year (Master Program) experimental studio, as well as an advanced architectural theory and representation class and a pre-thesis class. Taliesin is a very immersive environment, living in community with the students and other faculty, fellows, and school members, allows to develop a pedagogy that doesn't limit itself to the classroom. Because of the nature of it, the exchange is more dialectical which is something sometimes lacking in other more traditional settings. 
 
Just like our current position here at the College of Architecture at UNL, we were given the opportunity to teach more experimental classes that aim to encompass the different components of what we believe make architectural education complete, bringing theory, history, representation through design but also opening the discussion to more contemporary references.
 
When teaching the first year studio, we were approached a real request for a potential project to transform a discarded primary school from the early 20th century into a social condenser with housing for teachers and community programs. It was an interesting premise that implied the challenge of teaching to first year master students without previous studies on architecture the fundamentals of design, working processes and representation, history and theory of seminal housing projects and social condensers while still delivering a comprehensive project to the client (the school district) and the community of Miami, Arizona. This implied an extremely comprehensive educational approach that simultaneously could target the project’s real expectations.
 
We were also involved in different events, set-up exhibitions with student works, small film festivals, publications and collaborated with the students in the creation of WASH Magazine, and ongoing critical architectural publication with contributors from architects, thinkers, authors, urbanists, artists from all around the world. The magazine was an invitation to engage with history and theory in a proactive way, gathering and creating intelligence by confronting the subjects as opposed to the traditional method of just reading history  or theory as something stagnant or still.  
 
The experience at the school of Architecture at Taliesin reinforced our interest in questioning what architectural education should be. Because of its nature as a community, Taliesin enabled us to exchange much more at a one to one level with each student and directly see on a daily basis their progress or notice the difficulties that they would encounter. Therefore, being very interested in thinking and testing different teaching methodologies, the experience helped us to have a better understanding of it from the perspective of the students, especially for first years students that are confronted with a lot of to apprehend in a short period of time. Then it’s our role as educators to provide them with strong foundations that will give them the necessary set of tools to move forward in their explorations and also help them to start shaping personal interests. 
 
A school of architecture should be an open platform allowing students not only to learn the fundaments, but also exchange around more contemporary topics linked to our profession, be exposed to different ways to practice or think about architecture and the urban environment, create different opportunities where the students can engage discussions within the school but also with a bigger context, take initiatives beyond the class requirements, open an early dialogue about how one can practice, think about architecture and encourage an environment where one can assert his or her own interests.

​In that regard, Aaron has successfully managed to open the school of Taliesin to more contemporary discourses exposing the students to multiple ongoing events taking place at the school, bringing in interesting faculty, creating distinguished lecture series, seminars, where the students can exchange personally with the architects, thinkers, authors invited. 
Education is the moment to experiment, discover, try and push out of your comfort zone. You may not realize it when still at school, but what you will explore during your studies will strongly influence how you will or want to practice as an architect.

CG: It was our first full-time teaching experience in the U.S. The school was in a transition period. Taliesin is an old institution that started first as a Frank Lloyd Wright home, studio, then it became an apprenticeship, and then eventually it evolved into a school. They had a challenge of how to deal with the history of the place without falling into the trap of the style. I think that's the biggest challenge. A lot of people that went there ended up replicating the work of Frank Lloyd Wright with a few exceptions like Paolo Soleri. The new dean Aaron Betsky, who is now the president of the school, thought that we could bring something that was different and kind of critical of the environment. So we liked the idea that we could think about updating the curriculum and dealing with the history of the school in a contemporary way. It made us think a lot about its contemporary potential and it was kind of a big challenge to engage with because you have to deal with a lot of expectations that people have about the place and at the same time devise projects that are going to help the students to be more critical and develop certain skills.

Teaching will be a much more powerful tool if it's related to something you dominate and understand, or at least if it addresses similar questions to the ones you are interested in asking. Our students didn't have an architectural background. They came from different undergraduate studies, meanwhile we had to deal with very complex architecture and conceptual projects.  We ended up working on a proposal to transform a discarded primary school in the town of Miami, Arizona into housing for teachers and a social condenser for the community. We had to teach the students about plans, sections, mechanical systems, and scale while also teaching how to use drawings, collage, models and representation as ways to explore ideas, not necessarily as just a way to present the project to a client. They had to design while unearthing a history of social condensers in the 20th century. Our students were learning how to draw while learning how to develop conceptual projects, while also dealing with real issues of real communities, so you have to learn how to be idealistic and pragmatic at the same time. So there was learning about the Narkomfin and the Unite d'Habitation while learning how to draw and make collages.

We also lived in Taliesin and Taliesin West as visiting Teaching Fellows. Our neighbors were the students, the dean and other members of the community, including Taliesin fellows that have lived there for decades. You're there 24/7 so you really get to know the limitations, challenges, and potential of the students and of the environment. You also learn how to develop pedagogical strategies that can help you to reach students in a different way in order to maximize their potential. It is not that you're looking at their portfolios, but instead you get to really know how they work because you're there with them all the time. So we could really tell you about each one of them. We had to develop alternative ways of teaching too. Everything became a pedagogical experiment, even having lunch is a potential platform to develop discourse and discuss ideas. It also was important to be a role model for them, so they don't only see you as a teacher but as somebody they can emulate as a practitioner or thinker. We tried to bring as many platforms as we could. We were literally giving everything we knew, bringing in our publications, showing projects, and discussing philosophy, politics, and culture. We organized with our students the creation of a publication that instead of dealing with Frank Lloyd Wright as the usual subject, looked at architecture as a global phenomenon. We thought that because the students have enough exposure with the legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright, and being such a small academic institution, they could find ways to engage with architectural discourse from a more diverse perspective. They could learn about the process of creating a publication, while taking advantage of the great lecture series that Aaron Betsky was organizing by doing interviews and engaging with the speakers while documenting and publishing these exchanges. The students were invited to find works of photographers, artists, philosophers, and architects from all around the world to include in the magazine. So, WASH Magazine was created and the first issue was about Utopia, coinciding with the five hundred year anniversary of Thomas More’s eponymous book.

One of the seminars we offered there was about representation, and we told our students that in order to understand contemporary architecture, they could participate with it, and instead of just looking at books, they could view the work first hand, through interviews or by exploring interesting projects.

We created events, and found ways to engage with the history and the community. Being in Taliesin was a really important experiment about living and teaching, and being with architecture. After living in China for seven years we just got summoned to travel half a world and live at Taliesin, so suddenly we had to deal with the legacy of being in this place and dealing with the people that were there before us. You're getting all this history but at the same time you're trying to make new history that is not the same as before.

We had the opportunity to return to Taliesin West with our UNL students in a studio trip on the weekend of November 3. They stayed in the shelters where the students live. It was our first time being back and it felt like home. You can somehow see your contribution in the development of the students. We see texts by Wittgenstein and Sloterdijk laying on the tables, and we see the development of the second issue of WASH.

I think the current level of discourse is so much higher than at other institutions, considering it’s a school with around just twelve students, because the experience is so intense. I feel our former students are going to be much more critical and better prepared to engage with architecture as a discipline rather than just an act of building.

Around that same time, Architect Magazine published an article that described your migration from Taliesin, Wisconsin to Taliesin West in Arizona. Much of the article focused on your reactions to the American landscape. How did your exposure to this landscape, both natural and man-made, impact your outlook on architecture?

CG: In recent years we started contemplating on the idea of architecture without qualities. Borrowing the concept from Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities, an architecture without qualities would be indifferent to the changing values of buildings. What does it mean to have architecture that doesn't fulfill the characteristics of what the collective subjectivity expects in a building? Capitalism wants buildings to be a certain way, for example. It prefers skyscrapers as sign of accumulation of wealth, with glass facades and the look of transparency in order to make the transactions appear less shady. I think there is something very appealing about architecture that transcends and doesn't really respond to that imperative. What we saw in the open landscapes is that the most interesting architecture was the one that was harmonious and at the same time indifferent. It was just ‘there’ and dealt with the landscape in a brutally honest way. It was an unromantic architecture, offering no views to the landscape, presenting no material allegories to its surroundings.

Travelling through these landscapes we could spot utilitarian architectures although we really didn't know what purpose they served. It became a utopian way of dreaming about architecture freed from banal responses to external economic or cultural forces. People think of American architecture, Asian architecture, and there is architecture that goes beyond those simplistic classifications. Architecture that is just ‘there’ in the landscape. Because of its immensity, these landscapes reveal when architecture doesn’t fit. It makes ‘designed’ architecture, with its intended vocabulary look out of place.

I think going on that trip was quite revealing because it really showed that it's a really big country with a big territory and that the most powerful architecture is the one that people aren't even looking at. It tells you about the ‘qualities’ of society. There are things we usually overlook and don't think are important because we're looking at signs and symbols to identify with but they mean nothing. Then you have objects that have reached a sense of autonomy, serving their purpose in the landscape. We developed a series of photographs that were also in the article that we want to make into a book. You frame those objects and they become so powerful and you don't even know what they are. They are just so much more interesting than 99.9% of architecture around.

NF: Before our experience at Taliesin, I had spent a couple of days in New-York and in Chicago, but hadn’t had the opportunity to really be confronted to any other types of landscapes other than those particular iconic ones. In that regard, our first night at Taliesin in Wisconsin was a preamble to what we would experience next. We had just arrived from Beijing where we had spent the previous seven years in an apartment in the center of the city in a very vivid neighborhood, surrounded by twenty-four hour open restaurants, small stores, flashing neon lights and people in the streets at every time of the day. Our last evening there was at the image of the life in that city that really never sleeps, we had had a couple of different friends passing by at various hours in the night, a mixture of late night conversations and last strolls in the city streets. And a few hours later, we found ourselves in the middle of the Wisconsin country-side, in a small red barn Frank Lloyd Wright had built for his uncle, in the middle of the fields, in pitch-black darkness, with no sight of any kind of light pollution, with no sight of anything else other than thick fog surrounding us. It was a mesmerizing yet at the moment surreal scenery. From then on, because of the very disparate nature of those two settings, our fascination for the American landscapes grew and became an important theme not only in our personal research but also part of our studio’s syllabus.
 
As much as I find urban settings cinematographic, the ‘Great American Landscapes’ inspired a lot of our compositions, but also grounded new narratives, incited new research themes, sparked new affinities with the unbuilt territory. As narrated in his article published in Architect Magazine, Aaron Betsky invited us to join him on the traditional migration from Taliesin to Taliesin West. During the journey, we must have taken hundreds of pictures every day. We passed through six different states, and each day we were exposed to very different sceneries. From the rolling colorful hills of Wisconsin, to plain continuous yellow fields, to the Teton’s mountain range, to the vivid red canyons of Utah and Arizona, every landscape was a call for contemplation and collection of imagery. Something very ‘architectural’ was emanating from it. And coming from Europe, I was genuinely overwhelmed by the size of the country, because of my unfamiliarity with this type of scale to begin with I couldn’t grasp what I was confronted with. We would be driving hours through infinite like landscapes, continuous plains rolling in front of our eyes, without witnessing almost any kind of human trace, and always feeling the distinct yet at that moment overpowering presence of the sky. The extensive nature of some of the American landscapes makes you aware of a particular relationship between the sky, the horizon and the land. The Ed Ruschaesque compositional experience of these sceneries can be quite disturbing at first. Suddenly you lose all point of reference, the vastness of the natural elements seem to isolate you, and you find yourself unable to relate anymore to anything surrounding you.
 
While being disconcerting at first, it also creates a strong sense of fascination you can only experience with those types of landscapes. Another element that really intrigued us what we call the ‘architecture without qualities’, constructions, isolated structures, architectures, we found in the middle of those sceneries. We documented some along the way. It could be agricultural or industrial structures, silos, water tanks, small storage constructions, and so on. We called them ‘without qualities’ referring to a concept of Robert Musil in his unfinished book The Man Without Qualities, where what is without quality is actually what escapes from being categorized under a simplified bigger picture where all becomes object of consumption and speculation. We see that as an ultimate quality, it defines a new avant-garde. The value of these structures lies in their sculptural characteristics and in their relationship with the landscapes surrounding them. That is why we called our fifth and six year studio here at UNL, ‘Landscapes without qualities’, we were interested in identifying different possible archetypes and re-appropriate them through new narratives and new functions in order to explore their full potentiality as architecture.
 
The migration from Taliesin to Taliesin West was definitely a seminal journey for us, though we had previously experienced different types of landscapes through our travels, or look a lot at artists, writers, photographers working the theme of the Great American Landscapes through our work or teaching, to be able to be physically confronted with them is incomparable. 
 
That’s also why we decided to organize our studio’s trip this year around this theme. We travelled four days by road from El Paso, to White Sands, Marfa, Taliesin West, Cosanti and Arcosanti. We wanted the students to also fully experience the sites we were visiting and understand how they consciously relate with their surroundings. Living and working in such settings as Taliesin and Taliesin West, recalling the origins of why they were initiated in the first place makes you more sensitive and respectful somehow to the natural habitat.​

Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia, founders of WAI Architecture Think Tank, have a unique approach to their practice that spans a variety of media including teaching, exhibitions, art, and literature. After completing their Visiting Teaching Fellowship at the School of Architecture at Taliesin, Frankowski and Garcia are currently teaching as the Hyde Chairs of Excellence at the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In this two part interview we discuss the role of advancing architectural discourse, the tools of an alternative approach, and the significance of literature and narrative. To learn more about Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski check out their work at waithinktank.com, garciafrankowski.com, or intelligentsiagallery.com.
​

In the second part of our interview with Clint! Runge, co-founder of creative agency Archrival, we discuss challenges in starting a business, developing client relationships, and the entrepreneurial hustle. To learn more about Archrival and their work visit archrival.com.

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in the beginning and how did you overcome them?

C!: Age and experience are definitely the first ones. People don't want to give you money if they don't trust you, and if you're young and inexperienced, it's hard to trust you. That was one of the first challenges we had. So we had to go prove ourselves. I went from small business to small business and just tried to sell myself by saying, "Whatever you're doing now," if say the budget was $500, "I will find a way for you to get a better return out of that $500." Not everyone did that, but there were a few people who said, "Ok, here you go." [Laughs] I got paid in burritos, bottles of water from the gas station... there are a lot of good stories that came out of that. It was less expensive for them. I was willing to do that. It was after I had some wins, I had to prove that I could do this at the highest level. That meant I had to start entering award competitions to see how it compared to other big agencies. First year, we got one little award. Ten years later, we were winning them all. That was a process of checking ourselves and seeing where the level of excellence is. Now I don't enter award competitions at all. While it was good for us early on, to prove our credibility and to use as a benchmark to keep driving, at some point it becomes ego-driven and self-centered. As soon as I realized we had won everything at a high level, we were done. We don't need to do it anymore because now it's just self-serving.


Archrival has offices not only in Lincoln, but in Portland and Los Angeles as well. Could you talk about the factors that made it possible for Archrival to expand in these areas?

C!: It's not like we're pros at opening other studios; we don't know what we're doing. It's like anything- try your best and figure it out. We opened up a shop in Portland for two reasons. First off, Adidas is based there. We saw a great opportunity with them. I knew where they were and where we were, and knew we could build a relationship with these guys. We had a few projects with them, I saw the groundwork happening, so if you're going to build the relationship you have to be there. The second reason was talent. The first part of Archrival's history was us becoming more talented through our experiences and challenges. We ended up getting pretty high up, but the brands were starting to work with were getting even higher. Our talent level was matching the brands and companies we were working with, but then we were high up working with Red Bull and Adidas. It's hard for someone in the Lincoln market to come in and immediately execute on things because the talent pool isn't here. There are fewer people. In Portland there are a lot more agencies and people that have worked with really big brands and really big budgets and know how to tackle those problems. We felt like we had maximized what we had here. Of course, we are still bringing people through the pipeline and growing them up, but we needed more people to come in and start effectively doing the work right away. Another reason that grew out of that is that people get restless in Lincoln. For some young adults, if you've never traveled or gone other places, you eventually want to move somewhere else. People have really been enjoying their career with Archrival but at some point wanted to leave Lincoln. Now it gives them a place to go. So we've had five or six people just move. They stayed with Archrival and just moved from Lincoln to Portland. It's a win-win. They experience something new but we still retain them as a teammate. As for Los Angeles, that is where Red Bull is based- they're in Santa Monica. We probably should've done it years ago. Seeing the success we've had in Portland, we decided we need to start this in LA. as well. In Portland we have a physical studio, we're actually moving into a new one in April. In LA, we’re just in a coworking space until we can figure out the dynamic there. LA is so different because it is difficult to travel if you live there. So, if you have people live in different parts of LA, where do you want to build the studio? What would really work is everyone lived in the same area. But, for right now we use a coworking studio.

Archrival has developed relationships with some big names such as Adidas, Red Bull, Intel, and more. With this experience under your belt can you recall what it was like approaching bigger clients early on and how it compares to the way you interact with larger clients today?

C!: I've always been confident that I could help people, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't intimidated early on in my career. I didn't have that wealth of experience. I'd say that I faked until I could make it, and now that I've made it, I feel that I can walk into anywhere and feel that I have something of value to offer. Before, it didn't feel quite that way. Before, I felt more like a vendor asking, "What do you need me to do?" Now, I walk in as a business partner saying, "Tell me about your problems and I'll tell you what I can do." So that's how it's shifted over time. Here's the irony in all of this: before, I told you didn't want to go into architecture because I didn't want to wait to get through the hierarchy. The truth is, I did the same thing. It still took fifteen years to be able to do something. I just took a different path. I didn't want to wait, I was naive and wanted to do it then. Well, yes and no; I was doing it in a way, but really it still took fifteen years. [Laughs] I find a lot of value in trial and error, forging your own path, and the entrepreneur game. It's been fun and a lot of lessons have come through it, but I always look back to the way I thought. It still happened, it still took time, and it's because you need that experience. I was kind of naive, but at the same time if I wasn't naive I wouldn't have had the ambition to go do it.


Advertising and architecture have some obvious differences, but both professions employee creativity and design. From a creative standpoint, in terms of process, how would you compare the two professions?

C!: Well, I don't want to speak for architects, but my observation is that there are a lot more boundaries and limitations. I feel that I can go pitch something that on the outset looks crazy but it's grounded in a lot of meat. There are lot of reasons why this would work. I get the sense that architects are working with different boundaries. For example, budget constraints seem to be tying them down in some ways. I feel that architects are capable of so much, but because of limitations and the realities of certain situations they always feel like frustrated creatives to me. [Laughs] I don't want Archrival to be full of frustrated creatives. I want people to have the ability to fully maximize their creative potential. That's not to say we don't end up with frustrating situations too. We have budgets and other things that hold us back, but I feel like we've been able to win more than we lose. Architecture is also in some ways very serious because you're dealing with such a high level of money; advertising is temporary, but architecture is permanent. There's a grounded seriousness around architecture. In advertising, not to say it isn't serious, but because this is temporary, even if they're spending a lot of money, it's going to go away in six months. We're running this campaign and then it's gone and we'll try something else. With a building, you kind of have your one shot to get it right the first time. I think that's where it starts to encroach on creative freedom earlier in the process than I would like.

Based on your experience, what is the most important piece of advice you would share with emerging professionals today?

C!: Hustle. There are a lot of things built into that word. When you hustle, you are engaged in whatever you are doing. You are really engaged. There are so many people in the world who have jobs and professions who don't hustle. If you care more, you're going to get more responsibility, you're going to earn the trust of people, and you're going to move further along faster. There are so many people who just phone it in; it shocks me. It shocks me, how many people act like, "I just have job." If you hustle, you will fall into something that you're passionate about. You care, you're developing skill sets, and you're working harder. For the young, entrepreneurial minded person, you will rise faster above the crop if you hustle.

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With a degree in architecture, Clint! Runge has taken an alternative approach to utilize his creative potential. This departure from the architectural path led to the founding of Archrival. In the first part of our interview we discuss Archrival's role as a creative agency, the significance of the creative process in problem solving, and the benefits of having an architectural education in an alternative career path. To learn more about Archrival visit archrival.com.

Could you introduce yourself and briefly describe what kind of work Archrival is involved in?

C!: My name is Clint! Runge, I am the managing director and co-founder of Archrival. Archrival, at it's heart, is a creative agency with an expertise in youth culture. As a creative agency our job is to solve problems. Every brand that we work with has a different problem and we creatively come up with an idea and then execute it. The expertise side is really narrow, so we don't solve problems for everybody, but we work particularly in areas we are good at. Generally that's with brands that are trying to reach young adults, from teens to twentysomethings. We have two different types of clients. We have these big clients like Red Bull and Adidas- brands that for the most part people know and love. Our job is to keep them relevant. So take Red Bull, who we have worked with for over twelve years; how do they stay cool? Trends change, tastes change, generations change, yet somehow Red Bull manages to stay cool. So that's what we help with. We understand the change in the landscape, develop strategies around it, provide new ideas to solve current problems, and then execute those ideas. The second type of clients, and sometimes they are still big clients, are primarily brands that have struggled to connect with young adults. Maybe it's because of historically bad marketing, maybe they missed out on certain products and services, maybe a younger and faster company has come up, whatever it is they need to connect to young adults. We help them wherever they are at today to make them relevant tomorrow. So, on one hand it's about keeping brands relevant and on the other hand it's about getting them there.

You have a unique education with bachelor’s degrees in both architecture and advertising. Could you explain a bit how the relationship between your two educational paths has influenced your work?

C!: I went through architecture school and as I was going through the program I found that I love design, I love the creative challenge, I love the work ethic, but when I looked forward in my career I saw that there is a real hierarchy in the industry. In other words, before you got to go design something meaningful you put in fifteen- twenty years. At that time, I was naive, but I felt compelled to do it right away. I wanted to design now and to have an impact now. I thought maybe in advertising it's different. So I went through the advertising program and got a degree in advertising as well. I looked forward in that industry and what I realized is that the process for coming out with great architecture and the process of coming out with great advertising is essentially the exact same process. When I thought about what I wanted to do with my life, I looked at the creative industry as a whole. What I realized is that it's completely fragmented. For example, let's say a business wants to sell more widgets. Depending on who you hire, you get a different answer. If I hire the advertising agency, they're going to tell me I need to advertise more. We need to build campaigns and get on billboards, tv, and in magazines. If I hire the architecture firm, it's all about the store. Layout the store in a new way, a new first impression, you'll get a lot more customers drawn in, the shopping experience will be a lot better, and that's how you will sell more widgets. Hire a branding agency, and they'll tell you it's all about your position in the market- your look, your personality, new name, new logo, and new identity. If you go hire a digital agency, they're going to tell you it's all about robust ecommerce platforms. You want to sell more widgets? You better be selling it online. A social media agency, they'll tell you it's all about being involved in things like instagram and snapchat. Everybody is taking the same problem and solving it in a fragmented way. So I thought, no one is actually solving the problem. All they're doing is selling the medium. With Archrival, I never wanted myself to be beholden. I don't want to be great at architecture or just great at advertising, I want to be great at the creative process. That will allow me to actually solve problems, because I am not beholden to sell advertising. “What is your problem?” I can go anywhere with that. It allows me to be a little bit of architecture, a little bit of advertising, a little bit digital, a little bit of your brand, or maybe it's something that hasn't been done before. I can go there. That's Archrival.


What made you decide to study architecture in the first place and how did that lead to advertising?

C!: Like many people, I wish it was more clever than it is, but one time I was playing with Legos or something and my grandfather said, "Oh, you should be an architect." I think I was maybe in fifth or sixth grade, and it just stuck. I had this idea that I want to be an architect. I don't even think I understood what it was, if I'm being honest. I thought you design spaces and buildings, but you don't really get it until you've gone through the process. When I got into architecture, as you know there is a lot of design-thinking and problem solving, but as it started to become more about engineering and as it started to become more about facilities and uses, I think I realized I wasn't as into architecture as much I was into problem solving. I love the challenge of the problem in the brief, the initial directions, and the big ideas. When it got to the actual development on a concrete, detailed level I was less interested. I think that's when I started to think, what is the business of big ideas? Where's that at? Too young to notice, I didn’t see that in architecture right away. It is there, but I saw it with limitations. That’s when I started to search for it in other industries.



What is something you learned, or a skill you developed, as a result of your architectural education that is still relevant to your work today?

C!: I credit my architecture background more than anything else I've ever done. I think that if you go through the architecture program, you are literally set up to be amazing at whatever it is you want to do or set your mind to. One reason is the work ethic. By comparison, I went through the advertising program. I was able to do that on the side and I didn't really try that hard, if I'm being honest. It's because of the work ethic, time management, and the level of excellence. That's another big one: the level of excellence- upholding a bar that is so high. You have the professors who are always a step above you, regardless of how high the bar is. I think that made me realize that this bar just keeps going. When I transitioned over to advertising, or as I look into other fields, that bar in architecture is set much higher than it is set anywhere else. Those are two things I've gained, and that's why I feel that anyone who goes through the program successfully is set up, even with just those two things. The third one I keep coming back to is the problem solving nature of architecture. That transfers to anything. Every industry needs critical thinkers who have great work ethic and a high level of excellence. Everyone needs that, and I think that's what I got out of the program.

When was the idea of Archrival conceived and how did you go about taking it from concept to reality?

C!: A classmate of mine, Charles Hull, and I had this big idea of Archrival, but the reality is that nobody in the market wants to hire a couple broke college students who have no experience. Who is hiring those guys? [Laughs] Luckily, when we were going through the architecture program we were the first class to be required to have laptops or computers. That's crazy to think about now, even as I'm saying it. With that said, it set us on a path to be ahead of where the industry of architecture was. When we graduated, and even during the process, we were showing our renderings, designs, and spatial thinking through visualization. The jury had no background in that. They had been doing it by hand their entire lives. This whole concept of visualization, all that stuff was brand new. It gave us a skill set that the market needed that no one else had. We were really on the first wave of that. So, the first couple years before we were formally Archrival was really about us being freelancers for architecture firms. We aided in visualization of designs and also helped improve designs through visualization. We had a skill set that people were willing to pay for and experiment with. That's how we started and how we first got paid for our work until we could transition into making something of our own design.

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In Part 2 of our interview with XCOOP co-founders Cristina Cassandra Murhpy and Andrea Bertassi we discuss challenges in starting a business, managing the office, and capitalizing on past experience. Visit ​xcoop.org to learn more about their informal business and the work they are involved in.

ARC: What were some of the biggest challenges in taking XCOOP from concept to reality? How did you overcome them?

AB: That’s a good question. We actually started off pretty radical and very idealistic in the way we thought. For example, with a financial crisis in the world we saw an opportunity to change things. It seems now that we were a bit too positive because at the end of the month we still need to eat. The biggest challenge is not really crisis, but to get to a solid method of selecting projects and getting projects. Sometimes we are able to select projects and other times we are not in the position of being selective; we need to take in work in order to keep the machine running. I think we are getting better and better. It’s been a process in dealing with certain things like indicating the amount of time for every single project without diving out of passion into things that are not really worth doing. For instance, we get really excited about pro bono projects, which are usually the most interesting, but then we don’t have enough time to dedicate to whatever is keeping the business running. We need to face the fact that XCOOP is also a business, and I think that’s the biggest challenge.

CCM: There are some offices that we are familiar with that, either in house or using institutions, focus on research. Just like those offices, we strongly believe in research before anything can be done in terms of design. Research can, of course, be long or short, depending on the budget. Usually for our firm, research is out of the question. It’s not even in the contracts. For some large companies the research incubator can be stretched one year- two years because the client is paying for that. A few of these companies use acclaimed architecture schools to assist with research. We came to the conclusion that we do like institutions; we like to change and to teach. We think that the young generation of students can offer so many ideas. We thought of shutting off the engine of XCOOP for a little bit and part-time teaching. For example, a project my studio is working on is pro bono, we’re not getting paid for it. The studio is not coming up with the one idea, but is definitely coming up with a lot of research.

ARC: Do either of you have a business background?

AB: I wish. [Laughs]

CCM: Andreas has a musical background and I have a physical background, in terms of exercise, but we don’t have much else. [Laughs]

AB: Besides playing clarinet and jumping off airplanes, we don’t have much background.


ARC: What steps did you take to learn how to manage and operate a XCOOP?

AB: I would say it’s just fun to run projects and learn by doing it. We really take the experience day by day, and sometimes we learn at the end of a project; maybe it was a real disaster from the point of management. Still, so far, so good. We are excited about what we do. We reject the idea of being a business that aims to generate as much money as we can.

CCM: I think working with the client and being very honest about our skillset and what we can deliver is key. We work with our clients, we learn from them, and certainly hope they can learn from us. Thanks to our backgrounds we got in touch with a bunch of PR people and project managers so we have this network of people that can support us. Then we keep our eyes open and see how other architectural business operate and we learn from what we see.

AB: We’ve been part of a survey a  few years back. The chamber of commerce in the Netherlands were trying to make a profile of all the offices in the Netherlands. They were looking at categories like big firms, research, and others. We were across the board. We didn’t fit into any category, which we were quite proud of. It’s kind of difficult for us to also frame ourselves.

CCM: We were grouping the firms in the Netherlands. We fell out of each of the groups and they were really surprised we still had business. [Laughs]


ARC: What were some of your professional experiences prior to starting XCOOP and how have they influenced you in your practice?

AB: I’ll talk for myself but we share some of the same background. The experience in a professional environment was fundamental because it was probably the best school we went to besides architecture school. That’s where we really learned the work. What we also learned was the practice of being very critical towards ourselves, towards our work, and towards anything proposed. So when you have a client with a brief, it’s not that you take the brief as the backbone of your work. You first question it and try to deeply understand the reasons behind the brief. Then you can actually do what good architects are supposed to do by providing extra value instead of simply addressing the defined problem.

CCM: To be a bit more general, the reason I moved to the Netherlands was not only because of the office we were at. I really liked the way things were starting to move in the Netherlands. I wanted to be part of it. There was a wave of experimentations that were not really applied to architecture, but they were tried. That type of trial is fundamental to the way I think. The way the Dutch do their business is an example to me, which I adopted. It’s pragmatic, it’s hands-on with everything, but always with that sparkle of curiosity and research. There is never a dull moment. The Dutch, they do care for crazy concepts and deep research that is not superficial, but at the same time there is the understanding of how to make it and how much it costs. Those are the ingredients that make good architecture.

ARC: What’s the next step for not XCOOP?

CCM: We are in a moment of thinking. There is an opportunity for a semester in Arizona. There may be opportunities in Nebraska; it’s an open door, it’s on the table. Right now we are really trying to discuss the opportunities in the midwest and the southwest.

AB: What we started doing, this nomadic experience of moving every semester or two, is to really get to understand different cultures. Even living with different architectural typologies, not just going on holiday for two weeks, but really living in different typologies is an interesting thing to be able to operate better in architecture.


ARC: Do you have any final thoughts you would like to share with emerging professionals?

CCM: I had a student come up to me and ask, “Should I start travelling or work abroad now, or work in my city then start travelling?” It is very subjective of course, from the situation this person is in. My tip would be not to be afraid of doing it. Whatever decision you make, you cannot be afraid of making it. Take it on sincerely and head on. If you work for a big office in your neighborhood, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are building your experience. My advice would be that it doesn’t matter the decision you make, as long as you make it.

AB: I agree. Really, don’t be afraid of following your instinct and what you believe. Don’t settle for anything less than what is very satisfying, otherwise it is just a waste of time.
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In this two-part interview we will be talking about XCOOP with co-founders Cristina Cassandra Murphy and Andrea Bertassi. In Part 1, we discuss patterns, globalization, and the advantages of an informal business. To learn more about their practice visit ​xcoop.org.

ARC: I’d like to start out pretty broad and ask first off, what is XCOOP? 

AB: Well, before being an architectural practice it was actually a lifestyle. One of our objectives is to keep working to define our views on the role of XCOOP. It is not primarily a business; the main function is to share a view of the world, further define that view, and brainstorm how to make this world a little bit better. XCOOP stands for an ‘x’ amount of people ‘cooperating.’ We deliberately decided to leave architecture out of the name of the company because we don’t feel that architecture as a we know it is broad enough for us to be comfortable with. We want to brainstorm and cross boundaries between architecture and many other functions, although we express our work and view on the world through architecture.

CCM: What we do is a continuous brainstorm, therefore we don’t have a business plan. We react as things happen around us and adjust accordingly. That is why it is probably not a business, per se. Additionally, when we work on projects we tend to create new teams as a project requires it. So Andrea and I are the core of XCOOP, and when we have projects going on we contact people we know that have the skillsets necessary to function within the group. We don’t have employees on payroll; we collaborate with people and freelance. It is risky of course, but because this has been going on since 2009, we have created a network that, in a sense, is very loyal. For instance right now we have a large project in the Netherlands and we are working with somebody on location. It is a huge project, but we simply trust this person because he knows how we work and how we think.

AB: We actually think that not having a formal business plan is keeping us more free and prompt to jump on new opportunities as they come. When we see an opportunity, we need to be very flexible and the strongest at that particular field at that particular time.

ARC: On your website you bring up the notion of “re-thinking situations and confronting prevailing realities.” I’m sure there is a lot of ground to cover within that statement, but what would you say are the most prominent of these prevailing realities that XCOOP seeks to address?

CCM: Depending on the subject... for instance right now we are designing the ground floor of a company in the Netherlands. We got the opportunity to redesign their facade and we decided not to focus on the facade itself as an object, but we focus on the circumstances around the facade. The facade faces a dead square- not because it is a dead end, but because it is not attracting anybody. Now we have the opportunity of activating that square through the design of the facade. So it is not an object-oriented study but it is more about the situation and dynamics of people in that square. Another example is that we understand as architects it is hard to dictate what defines the style of architecture in a particular area. We therefore observe how people are moving and thinking about their space and we adapt our design. So in many ways the egocentric part of architecture is deconstructed because we prefer building up architecture by observing what is happening around it and how people interact with it.

AB: And that applies to all scales. Often there is conversation of the world in general and then we try to go from the macro scale to the micro scale of the project. We try to think about the implications of things happening around the world and how they relate to the micro scale of our project.

ARC: I also remember the heading: “traditional patterns, in a globalized world.” Could you explain a bit further what that means to you and how it applies to your practice?

AB: That is linked to the method we’re building up- basically getting a universal method for a local design design. We are thirsty for learning about new things and new cultures; we are aware of the fact that you can’t land in a place and design contextually if you don’t know the place. So we like to learn a lot. What we noticed in doing this exercise is that there are things you can learn from different places that can be transformed and applied in a totally different context. The good thing about globalization is that we can finally share knowledge in a way that allows us to go past the model that traditionally defines leading countries and developing countries. We can now cross-pollinate many different ideas, therefore developing a global approach within a local design.

CCM: Practically speaking, you can imagine two situations. One is pragmatic and one is abstract. For the pragmatic situation, we are working in Haiti and observing construction. One thing we noticed is that they are not limited to the practices of the western part of the world. We can start thinking of how we can build our buildings with the same material. The idea that is a bit abstract is when we lived in Mumbai. We had the opportunity to work with the local architectural office and this office presented us with the possibility of designing housing for the middle class. So you think, “Ok, I’m part of the middle class. How difficult can it be to design for the middle class?” First off, we’re talking about India- one of the highest population densities in the world. It is very difficult and very different, so you have to start studying the social circumstances. On the other hand, however, we know how to design houses; we know it because it is also a western world topic. Housing is being discussed. How do people live in houses? The family is changing, people are investing more in their social lives and work, so the house pays the consequences. You don’t need a mansion anymore so you’re looking at smaller footprints. These are global issues that can easily be applied in India, although middle class India is not like the middle class western world. So we study local but apply rules that are universal.

ARC: XCOOP seems to have a broad spectrum of work including not only built projects, but installations, and an even an educational book. Because you are not working in just a single area, how do you decide what projects to take on?    

CCM: I’m sure that Andrea and I have two very different answers to this. [Laughs] When we started XCOOP, we were deciding what projects to take on. We started working in China and the middle east because it was profitable. We were doing what we knew; we had a strong architectural background in design and we applied it in those projects. So that was a big reason for us to embrace the eastern and middle eastern projects. Of course, at heart we had another passion which was to really understand people and build toward the people. That was always in the back of our mind. The large-scale projects you see on our website were due to our need to bring in resources necessary to study people. In terms of installations, we did two installations in Italy because we wanted to tackle that market and put our name on the map there. In the Netherlands, it was an obvious choice. We needed to operate in the Netherlands so any project that arrived, we were taking it. In competitions, it was mostly dependant on the subject at hand. If it was a subject related to crisis, people, or environment- we would embrace it.

AB: I would actually agree. I would only add that we are more and more aware that work is about the quality of time you spend on something. We really try to take advantage of the fact that we don’t have a business plan. We try to get projects we are happy with. We’re interested in projects that we think would be nice working on for the next few months because they are stimulating or helping us grow. I guess in that sense, we are lacking from the business point of view. So there is no quality check from the business point of view, but we check the quality of our time.

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Our first part of the interview with Jim Dennell, of BCDM, covered topics such as leadership, markets, and how BCDM was established. In this second part of the interview we discuss challenges faced in getting a firm of the ground, learning the business skills necessary to run a practice, and utilizing previous experience. To find out more about Jim and his practice, check out ​bcdm.net.

ARC: What were some of the biggest challenges that CDG and ZBM faced in merging to become BCDM?

JD: Well there's two things. One is that you start a firm and you grow a firm and usually it's human capital that grows it, from the founders usually. So you have to be everything and everywhere. You're always proving yourself, so it's tough to do everything. It starts off not being bad, a pretty easy thing, but all of a sudden one client turns into two, three, four, and they want it at the same time. How do you even go out and interview somebody when you have to design at two o'clock in the morning? You get out of that kind of studio size, which I think was in the fifteen to twenty range and you had to start having somebody to manage the business a little bit. So those dynamics are a challenge but one solution was to merge and the thought was that it could free up- or one could cover for the other, just sharing different resources so all that load isn't just on one individual, which was the ideal. The thing is, even if you're on the same page ethically and everything, there's a cultural dynamic that occurs. It's like two single parents coming together with kids. The parents can really have the chemistry and everything but you know the kids come up in different cultures with different traditions. In how you merge that, it really took a longer time than I thought it would. The people at CDG- I could just say, "we're going to Mars" and they would say, "Sure." And when we merged, it was like, "What does that mean?" There was a bit of suspicion, so the trust had to be earned and it was always second guessed on both sides. That slows some of the progress of the firm. Now, the opportunities are bigger because you are a bigger firm. So you trade one for another, you know. I had an idea for how projects should run, how you create career paths and opportunities for people, and that had to get switched around. I always felt that you wanted to have, in a smaller firm, a couple years between professionals in their ages just so that you're always mentoring another one and there's always a joint respect. But people get paired up at the same level and you have to work things out a little more. That took up until even a few years ago to get back on the track of developing what I call integrated practice- just integrating all the resources into a team and managing those as opposed to everybody reacting to what the architect says. Everything is shared better now, but before it wasn't. I just saw the integration wasn't there.

ARC: Speaking of strategy, do you or the founding partners have a business background or was it all self taught?

JD: Self taught. Most architects will have a person that manages the books. Usually they’re not strategic business thinkers, they just do what the rules say to do. You know, that's all architects primarily care for, "Keep me out of jail." [Laughs] Personally, I think that's where I fit and why I took over the main part, not that I really wanted to, but I thought it was a strength that was needed to be afforded to the whole. As I've looked back, I didn't know I had an entrepreneurial mind. I'm always thinking what's the situation? How do you make the best of it? How do you turn it into something? Many architects are not versed that way. They're very risk adverse and for the most part they are artisans who want to do what they want to do. I didn't know how to read a financial sheet and had to learn. I think business is pretty linear so you have to just bone up on it and understand it. It's like learning how to use a phone, once you know the protocol is it's pretty easy to do.

ARC: For being self taught did you use resources or have somebody train you?

JD: On the business side, unless you're a trust fund baby or something, you need a bank to bridge your cash flow. So when you join up with a bank they tend to be kind of like a business partner that teaches you some of the things because their interest is, especially if they've lent you money, they don't want to see you go upside down. So they'll want to make sure you've done certain things. But there are services and consultants specific to the architectural and engineering industry that you can hire.

ARC: How have your professional experiences prior to BCDM shaped how you run your practice now?

JD: I think I mentioned my experience at a big firm- it was so big and the projects were so big that you just couldn't touch everything so you got compartmentalized into certain areas. All the projects I worked on were in Saudi Arabia and I never got to see the product and that meant a lot to me. And I was out of the construction side of it; I had an interest to see it built. So that made me think maybe I want to be local and not so big. I went from that to a ten person firm and had the opportunity to touch and do everything. That formed my career to understand the business side of it and all other aspects. So that entrepreneurial side of me made me feel like I could do this on my own and I was ready to try it on my own. Understanding the whole dynamic of management, client relationships, the trades that go into building, and the local dynamic helped establish some of type of framework. Some of the clients I served, Omaha Public Schools and others, when I left they called me. That was a break. I was prepared to do other things to build my own clientele. One opportunity was a huge project and they said they selected me instead of another firm they usually work with and I said, "I'm not going to get in the middle of that." [Laughs] I don't know if it would happen today because it's a risk, but this individual stuck his neck out and recommended my name for the project.

ARC: In terms of size, are there plans for BCDM to expand or do you think the current size is right where it should be?

JD: I think it's right the size it is. We serve a market or niche that's good. I think we can become more specialized which means we wouldn't have all the production. We could be consulting outside of Omaha but we serve a market here and education projects don't get too big.


ARC: Do you have any final thoughts you would like to share with emerging professionals?

JD: As I see it, people come out and just want to practice. People may lack interpersonal skills or entrepreneurial skills, and strategic vision- this isn't a negative but it's not a strength. Those are key to becoming a leader, an owner, or partner to a firm. It isn't tenure, and a lot of people think that and it's like, "yeah, but you're doing the same things you did ten years ago- in the same way." [Laughs] I think there can be peer pressures or inner pressures that there's this succession and you have to be an owner and what does that mean- if it's not in your heart then don't worry about it. Sure you might be able to make more money, but that's going to just pay for more therapy. [Laughs] I think you need to be a holistic architect, you need to be able to take design all the way to the end. A person who can do that, to me, can go anywhere. But it's also management of people, relationships, and communication. We're not taught that. If I had a recommendation... one would be: whatever your outlet is- church, bars, or whatever- get out and meet people. Keep those relationships going, give back to the community. It's not a condition to have relationships but they help.

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In Part 1 of this interview with Jim Dennell, of BCDM, we discuss the type of work the office is involved in, finding a market, leadership roles, and the formation of BCDM. To learn more about Jim and his practice visit bcdm.net.

ARC: First off could you introduce yourself and describe your role at BCDM?

JD: I'm Jim Dennell and I'm the president of BCDM. I'm one of the majority owners so outside of practice I manage the whole firm. I'm kind of the "idea guy" and set the vision. I work on the strategic growth and direction of the firm. So I'm kind of the scout, if you will, that goes out through the woods and figures out the best track for clearing while everyone is building the roads behind.

ARC: What type of work is BCDM involved in?

JD: Well we nailed it down to being- well you know our passion is to create environments that form people. It took a while because for many years we were just trying to nail down what is it we do and why are we doing. So that's the least common denominator, if you will. So that really focuses on two areas: education and religious. I think those are really the epitome of forming people. It's not that we won't or don't do other things, it's just where our direction is so that we don't get spread out. We've found that being a generalist in everything, you just never perfect the profession. The majority of our work is the repeat of the same markets. We consider ourselves expert users. So what that means is not only do we understand the architecture of the facilities we're doing- you know, the brick and mortar- but we also understand their operation to a point where we feel we could actually be viable in the business. Whether it's schools or churches we understand it, the way they use it, almost as a user. That is very helpful to understand the dynamics and empathize with all the practice they do within the facilities and the economics of things. Some of our solutions are not just brick and mortar, but they are like understanding where you want to go and we understand as an organization. In particular one was a school and they had so many teachers and courses, so they were designing everything towards that. I think most architects would see that, take it, and run. "that's what you told me, you wanted this many." We looked at it and we knew because of our broad experience how those [courses] are really taught. It was a middle school and fifty percent of the time, the class or core class was not in the curriculum that was meant for that classroom. So we knew that and we said, "what if you alter your schedule so there are consecutive times where they're not in the classroom." We reduced 30% of the class additions that they needed to do. The solution was actually not building, it was changing the organizational structure of how they normally operate.

ARC: How did you come to this market suitable for you in the first place?

JD: Yeah, that's a good question. I think it's probably, personally, what I think most people here are interested in. So would that have been teaching? We chose architecture, but I think deep down working with kids, educating kids, making an impact on society was really the heart of what we wanted to do. Obviously too is religious. The ministry side of that is kind of within us. To that point, Bob Mabrey has started churches on his side. So it's blending the personal and spiritual and our profession. But to be honest with you, as a strategic thinker, I went into architecture and they said "why are you doing that?" This is like, from 1975 to 1979. They said there were no opportunities whatsoever. And they were right. In Nebraska, you were lucky to get a re-roof project. There was nothing, not a crane in the sky or anything around here due to the economy. But I don't think of the present, I think of the future. I got to thinking "great, but you'll always need buildings." And the economy is never staying in the same place, it ebbs and flows. I thought, well if everybody's getting out, somebody's got to stay and by the time I get experienced, everyone's starting to retire, there will be a lot of opportunities. That became in true in 1988-ish. Things started to pop. At the same time, we were not investing at all in education. You can't put off not housing kids in school. So it was a pent-up demand as opposed to a nicety. I was working with other districts doing grunt work, more maintenance work. It made me really understand what worked and what didn't work in the past practices. I could also start to see and hear the evolution of education and how that might be moving somewhere. They were doing what they could, but they had resources. Computers were starting to come into classrooms, and so the use of the classroom and some dynamics of the classroom were changing. Special Education was another thing that was just being introduced through mandates. They were starting to put in resource classrooms and a lot of other special programs. So they had to fit them somewhere. They were putting them everywhere, custodial closets, dividing classrooms. They would take two classrooms and make them three. Well, nobody wanted that work, but seeing that I knew everything would be changing. So when the money did come, it was just set out there that education is a priority and we have to do something. Up to that point, it seemed that nobody cared. So that fueling it, you know it's just like Kennedy saying we're going to the moon. We did it. So that popped a bubble, communities were starting to reinvest into education and renovating and restoring existing structures. If you think about it, these are the first structures that were schools. I also was part of a study that twenty percent of our schools were done before World War II. There were sixty or seventy percent done in the 50's or 60's. So I thought what's going to happen in the year 2000. I could see that vision and was very fortunate to be along with others. We were experts at a time when no one else wanted to put anything into education.

ARC: Could you introduce and describe the roles of other principals in the office?

JD: The way we have it, there's what we call Project Management, the practice. There's Business Administration, and within that there's finance, IT, marketing, and HR. So those are managed by a principal, John [Sullivan]. Not always does that happen, but in 2006 I took a hiatus from practice to build an infrastructure for all that business administration because it's very important to have an understanding of the practice and then integrate it into the business. Because a lot of times business administration won't have any idea- or appreciation of the practice. So there's usually headbutting and it can, I feel, really affect the practice. So I was able to pull out and for about five years build the infrastructure with these people in each of these divisions. Now we're just maintaining them and that's what John does. On the practice side, or PM side, Bob Mabrey is the principal of that. The welfare of the practice is all in his hands. Being accountable is very important to us so we have roles, responsibilities, and expectations that everybody has. We have those two roles and I'm, the strategist, if you will, in a sense the leader to manage everybody. Then we have Kevin Strehle, who is a senior project manager but he also has board and principal responsibilities. Primarily he's still working with projects and managing projects. Bob set's the vision for that. John sets the vision on his end, and I set the overall vision the puts the two together.

ARC: BCDM has an interesting origin story, could you talk a bit about how BCDM was formed?

JD: Well there were two firms. It was CDG and ZBM, two different firms. ZBM started around 1978 by Golden Zenon. He was an african-american architect, one of the only ones in practice around at the time. He was a great designer and focused on schools mainly, some religious. Myself and Dave Ciaccio, he was the sole proprietor of this landscape architecture practice, he and I got together, we had similar visions and so I started with him on the architectural practice side. It was established and the stuff you have to do to get established, from chairs, computers, to a place, and all that- you know it just takes a lot of time and capital. So I thought it was a good way to get in and go. Both firms had the same markets and we shared a lot of the same clients. I always respect ZBM as a high quality firm. I didn't really know too much about the core values. As I was evolving from my 30's to my 40's, spiritual things were happening for me and the core values were very important as much as money, practice, ego, and all that comes with architecture. We started doing some joint projects, particularly Mount Michael, and Dave Ciaccio had kids there and Dave Beringer [ZBM] also did. So they both were connected to Mount Michael and they were wanting to work on the Master Plan. So Dave Ciaccio did a lot of the site stuff and Dave Beringer did a lot of the building. Dave Ciaccio said one day when they were working that, "If this all comes through we would like to do more than just the landscape." Dave Beringer said, "If it happened today you'd have to do all the architecture, because we're so busy." We end up with these kind of peaks in our business and how do you recruit and grow while you're practicing? It's like changing tires while the car is moving. They were having that problem and we were having that problem. How do you get the same kind of people and quality? And we didn't know that because we were still pretty much a studio as opposed to more of a business. We got together once and said, "What if we share resources?" We did that on a few projects so it would get us over a few spikes. It worked pretty well. One day we got together for a lunch and I think both were thinking maybe this could be more than sharing separately- just one. The first question from ZBM, we just have to know about this shrine [Holy Family Shrine]. So we were able to tell the story that we were the founders and it was a personal mission, and of course the only way would get a church job is to be the owner. [Laughs] It had a real compelling story and that washed away any doubt individually. It was pretty much like getting married. All of the sudden you know when you connect, you just don't really care about the details and that's kind of where we were at. Each Dave said Jim and Bob would know how to put it all together.

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In Part 1 of our interview with Jeff Day we discussed the relationship between teaching and practice, office structure, and the founding of Min Day. In Part 2, we discuss the background and history of Min Day in further detail including: challenges faced when starting the firm, learning how to manage a business, and project types. In addition, we cover FACT (Fabrication And Construction Team) and Min Day's furniture company: MOD.

ARC: What were some of the primary challenges you faced in getting Min Day off the ground?

JD: I think the uncertainty in knowing, are we going to keep getting work and have Income? And obviously maintaining staff and making sure people are employed. I think an ongoing challenge is always the fact that I'm not one hundred percent involved in the practice because I teach so working around that- we've got a pretty good system now- but that's always something to keep track of. The challenges we face are the same that a lot of firms have: Do you have big enough office? How many staff do you need? What's the right number of staff to manage the practice? How do you grow is a big question we're asking right now. We basically want to be a more grown-up office, not a startup anymore, so how do we do that? We're going through a conversation right now about the kind of work we want to do. We all agree we want to do larger, more public types of projects, not just more of what we've been doing now, but more substantial projects. Then, we're questioning how big of a firm do we need to be to do that? And how big do we want to get to be? So we're studying a range of different offices to understand their growth trajectory- offices we respect obviously, not just any office- but looking at firms where we really like the work and think there is a consistency in the work and then trying to understand how they got to be to where they are. I would say, based on our most recent conversation and just thinking about it, I think we're best suited to be an office that might have twenty to twenty-five people on staff at some point. I don't think we're going to be like Bjarke Ingels Group and have four hundred people. It's just not the kind of work that we do, I don't think we have the temperament of that kind of operation, so we don't look at firms like that. Part of that, just to sum up that issue, is that my perception of firm size and what an architect does on a day-to-day basis. When you're the manager of that firm your role becomes very different as the firm gets bigger. Someone told me once that once a firm gets to be above the low twenties the founding partner ends up being much more of a business manager and marketer than a design architect because you just don't have time and you have to keep getting work. So you become a broker of talent. You facilitate and make things happen, you're the figurehead, but you're not really the designer. There are certain firms that manage this differently- I think Bjarke Ingels Group, Bjarke actually does work on projects. He doesn't like sit down and work in CAD but he does get to be involved. It takes a lot of work to make that happen because he's drawn in all sorts of different directions. It's generally true that the bigger the firm gets, the more the principal gets involved in things that are not actual design. Basically, the career path is taking you away from the reason why you became involved in that career in the first place.

ARC: Speaking of that trajectory, when starting Min Day did you or your partner have a background in business?

JD: No, we didn't and that's another thing we're talking about. At some point we just don't have the ability to manage a business of a certain size- it's not that we can't learn the skills. Personally, one of my faults is I tend to focus on design and forget that we actually have to get the job done around a fee. At some point we end up paying for the job ourselves because we're spending too much time on it. [laughs] There is a business side to architecture, so one of the conversations concerns the question, do we bring on a third partner or third principle whose job is really to manage the practice and business side of things? That's another subject of our case studies of architects, we are looking at firms that have done made that transition.

ARC: With the size you're at now, and maybe this goes back a bit to the beginning of Min Day, how did you learn the ropes of managing a business without that formal training?

JD: I think our experience working in different types of small practices taught us a lot of lessons, both things that are good to do and things that are not good to do. My experience is generally very positive in the firms that I've worked with, seeing firsthand how they manage things. My role at Fernau & Harman grew beyond just being an architect to actually managing other people. Understanding how to handle staff and schedule their time, that is something you learn through managing a project. Financial management, that's a whole different thing. We just started learning by experience and eventually hired a bookkeeper who then educated us about how we should manage our books and handle invoicing and so on. Also talking to mentors- we have various people, both myself and E.B., who we talk to just to bounce ideas off of and seek advice. I think that's a really important thing for someone who is starting up a small practice, you don't want to it do entirely on your own. Due to the fact that we don't have business experience we have to learn on the go and by talking to people we know.

ARC: You talked a bit about this earlier, the firm being set up between San Francisco and Omaha, how do you decide to divide work and responsibility between the two offices?

JD: It's a good question, and we don't have a particular system- it's always just a conversation. We have an office meeting once a week by Google Hangout or Skype. Everyone gets on and we just talk about who's doing what this week, what deadlines are coming up, which projects need more staff help, which ones are wrapping up and maybe need less attention, and just trying to make sure people are engaged so we don't end up in a situation where there's multiple deadlines all in the same week and not enough people to spread it around because everyone is busy. That goes back to the earlier comment about how do you know when you have to hire the next person? Obviously if you intend to hire someone you have to be concerned about- can you keep them busy. We don't like laying people off. We've only really done it once and it was not something we tend to pursue. We try to make long term decisions when we hire people. I think the management between the offices is critical. I'm very interested, and think my partner agrees, we don't want to become totally separate offices that share the same name but work on totally separate things. Some firms operate this way when they have multiple offices. They may occasionally collaborate between them but they're really operating as separate businesses. I always think of ours as a single office that has two locations. Now that said, for practical reasons certain projects are based in one office and don't involve people in the other office. Often that has to do with the pace of the project or the localized meetings. If we're doing, say, a tenant improvement project for a startup office in San Francisco those tend to be very fast paced projects from design through construction and it doesn't make sense for someone in Omaha to be managing that project or be the primary designer on it because you can't go to the meetings and you're just not there. We might in that case have someone in Omaha working on a certain part, a piece of furniture or carpet pattern, or something like that and plug into the project- they're just working on a piece of it. So that's often how that ends up happening. It used to be when we were younger as a practice we'd have less work at any one time that we would almost all work on the same thing. Now with more work, it tends to segregate a little bit more.

ARC: That kind of leads into the idea of specialization, in your profile you mention that Min Day is resistant to specialization so how has this resistance impacted the way that Min Day operates?

JD: I think resistance is a negative term. I think it's more about wanting to be flexible and to be able to work on a variety of different project types. We tend to think more about process and the way engage the project's unique challenges. That's more interesting to us than being the best healthcare architect in town, or something like that. Now certain types of projects, healthcare is an example, are hard to do unless you do specialize because they are very technically demanding and hard to pursue without the experience of having done it before. So you become known as a firm that does this certain area of work, you just keep doing that. I find that ideas tend to stagnate when we're doing the same thing over and over again. We have certain types of work that we have done- we've done a lot of residential projects, we've done a lot of tenant improvement projects, we've done a lot of small cultural projects for nonprofit art centers and so on. Some of those areas we would want to push and grow in and others maybe not. But we don't want to be a firm that is focused on just a particular building type. We'd rather be known for an approach and quality of work that spans a lot of different types.

ARC: So in addition to the roles you already mentioned, you also run FACT (Fabrication And Construction Team) at UNL. FACT has been described as a collaborative design lab, could you talk a little bit about the work FACT is involved in and how that relates to Min Day?

JD: FACT is the design-build program. It's sort of the non-official “program” at the university- I call it that for lack of a better term- that I started here right at the begin. It was nominally a design-build class and studio focused around my interest in the creative possibilities of the realization of the construction of projects and engaging students in this area. My goal in the design-build studio is for students to not necessarily understand how pour concrete for a foundation, but know how to talk with the person who pours the concrete and get exactly what you want. It's really about getting students to understand how you make something that might not be conventional and you have to figure out- how do I get this thing upholstered? How do I get that piece of steel bent? Who do I have to go and talk to about doing that? It's not that they have to do all the work with their own hands. Some design-build programs are all about the students getting their hands dirty in every aspect. I'm not interested in that. There are reasons why some people do it and that's fine, I respect it, It's just not what I want to do. FACT is very much about getting students engaged and realizing projects. As I mentioned earlier, I don't feel that the student needs to necessarily be the conceptual author of the project to be involved in its creative potential. What often happens with FACT projects is that they begin as pro bono Min Day projects. We're not getting fees but doing a schematic design or conceptual design for a project, bringing that to the students who then have to develop the project, understand materials, prototype things, make mock-ups, find vendors and fabricators, and figure out how to get the project built and maybe build some of it themselves. Almost all FACT projects are also Min Day jobs so they sometimes appear on both websites, sometimes not. There are a couple FACT projects that are entirely FACT. The one we worked on in 2015-2016 that wasn't built, a house for Neighborworks Lincoln, we did all the construction documents and it was ready to be built but there were issues with the client’s bank and it didn't go forward. It's on hold, but Min Day would be the architect of record on that in terms of stamping drawings and having someone officially as the architect. Since I'm the one teaching the course, it's me doing that. In that case, that project was almost entirely developed with students. It started with student teams competing, essentially, with each other to develop project scenarios and then we gradually went from seven projects in the studio, designed by two people each, down to three and then down to two. Then the two were pursued to a pretty high level of detail because the thought was that we would build one now and the other would be built in the future. In spring semester, all the students shifted to the one that was intended to be built to finish the CD's. That's a slightly different model than explored in previous years. For Min Day, FACT is a way for the office to engage a type of project that would be hard to do in a purely commission and fee-generated way.

ARC: Regarding FACT, there's a lot of interest it seems in integrating design and project, so what do you think this means for architects and designers in general?

JD: I think for architects to be involved in production- usually these days that means involving sort of computational design techniques that are integrated into fabrication. Engaging various digital fabrication technologies in order to increase quality or complexity of a project while controlling cost is a big reason for engaging advanced techniques. It's becoming the standard to be engaged in digital fabrication at some point in a lot of different types of projects, and many schools teach these techniques. So we're not necessarily innovative in that way, but this is a way of working. I think again, this goes back to the idea of being involved in the creative potential of the fabrication and making of architecture. Not simply doing the drawing and handing-off the drawing, which is the typical or traditional way of architecture. Since Alberti, architects have always been the producers of drawings, of design intent, not producers of building. We're interested in getting a foot into the production of buildings as well, or at least a really close understanding of how they are going to be produced when we design them.

ARC: In addition to FACT, Min Day also is associated with furniture design in the company MOD. How did MOD evolve from a piece within a project into its own entity?

JD: MOD is a furniture design company that we recently started and we're developing a new line of furniture. It was actually my partner's idea, but we've always been designing furniture off and on for various clients. We would get a commission to design a custom home and then we do all of the interiors and specify furniture like an interior designer and then often that leads to designing a few customs pieces for the house like a table, chair, things like that. At one point we realized, and my partner was the one to say this, we spend a lot of our time developing a one-off dining table that's built once, why not pursue that as product? So we looked at the work we've done and initiated three pieces that all had been built before for a particular client or show or some situation and then explored how to convert those into products that get manufactured multiple times. It's different because you could work on a custom table and just work with a furniture maker and it's a sort of craft process, but if you turn it into a product you have to think about how to control the construction cost because you have to put it into a production line operation. Or when multiple vendors are working on a piece so how do you deal with inventory? The movement from first prototype, one-off, to product usually involves some design change in construction or materials. We now have three pieces that are ready for sale, a fourth that is still in prototype phase, and a fifth one that we would love to build but we are trying to figure out how to build it at a reasonable cost- we've built several of them but they were all one-offs and we're trying how to figure out how to get that to the point where it's affordable. There are some other pieces we have designed for clients that we probably won't pursue as products because of their unique characteristics or complexity.

ARC: We’ve discussed quite a bit of work you’re involved in, so to tie it all together what would you say is your mission in the design field?

JD: This is probably the hardest thing for Min Day. [laughs] We really want to work on high quality projects with unique challenges where the project is not compromised by predetermined ideas about the final result. I think that's not something we can write very easily, it gets complex when you try to describe it. We want to work on a variety of interesting work. I think, as I mentioned before, we're now looking at how to expand the practice so that we can actually work on larger scale, more publicly engaged projects, that have a greater presence.

ARC: What is the most important piece of advice you would offer to professionals regarding the entrepreneurial path of architecture?

JD: I think it's understanding what you want to do. Where do you see yourself as a professional in five or ten years? The kind of work you want to do? Trying to figure that out may take some time; it may not be obvious when someone gets out of school. They might need some more experience or they might know. I think understanding that and, if it is about starting one's own practice, making the right connections with the people who are going to help you pursue that. I think it's really a matter of knowing what you want to do and going for it. Taking the risk and jumping in and doing it is also important.

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