Studio Culture

A I'm Evelyn Lee.

B And I'm Janine Chastain. We're collaborating on curated conversations to explore how the industry is changing.

A Together, we'll find ways to create new solutions to current challenges while elevating the value of architects.

B Welcome to Practice disrupted.

A Hello, listeners. Thank you for dropping in on another episode of Practice Disrupted. I'm really personally excited about this upcoming conversation probably just because it's been a while since I've been in the same room with our 2 guests.

B When we started planning for this season, we knew we wanted to talk about firm culture and the impact that has on the architecture studio environment and, more importantly, the employee experience as a result of the firm culture. In my consulting work, it occurred to me that There might be different mindsets about how firm culture should function in an office.

A What is really interesting to me is that there has been a growing notion of work how place culture in recent years. I don't think that's really translated to the architecture field directly. So especially where I am in Silicon Valley, HR is a term that you don't really hear that much anymore. It's been redefined as the people operations team, the people team, the employee experience team. And I think that that shift, at least how Out here in Northern California has been primarily because of the emphasis that is placed on the value how of creating an organizational culture that then becomes a way to recruit actually, right, the top talent into how the workplace. So studio culture from your perspective or from my per perspective was introduced to me In my undergraduate years at Drew University, through one of my friends who was doing work with AAIAS, otherwise known as American Institute of Architecture students. But back then, there was not a clear definition of studio culture when I was going through school. So, Janine, how would you define studio culture? How

B I wanna point back to an article written by Thomas Fisher, a former dean of the University of Minnesota College of Design, and the current director of the Minnesota Design Center. The article was published in 1991 and was referenced in the AIS report, The Redesign of Studio Culture. How Tom opens the article by saying, last semester, a student at an East Coast architecture school, who had been pulling in long hours to complete his final project, how drove home to change for the jury, lost control of his car, and was killed. One wants to say that such a senseless loss was an isolated incident, but for those of us who survive architecture school, 5 year fraternity hazing as one New York architect recently called it. How we know that abuses of the body and mind were legion, and that any one of us exposed to the same hazard near the end of the semester how could have suffered the fate of that student. He later goes on to say, at issue is not the value or even the necessity of hard work, commitment, or dedication. There has never been and probably never will be a lack of that among students and recent graduates who are serious about becoming architects. The question is, when do we cross the fine line between hard work and exploitation? The answer, I think, depends upon who is to gain from the extra effort.

B Ultimately, he argues that exploitation is institutionalized, and many firms depend upon overworked, underpaid staff to survive, and they resist even talking about the problem. He closes his article by saying, how once exploitation becomes part of the culture of a group, it tends to perpetuate itself. In 2002, who the American Institute of Architecture Students launched its work into the research of studio culture. This has included a decade of conversations engaging the National Architectural Accreditation Board, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, the American Institute of Architects, and the National Council of actual registration boards. The research is aimed to understand and design solutions to this challenge starting with a critique of studio culture.

A So in order to inform that discussion, we've invited Andrew Caruso and Anthony Venky to help us explore this conversation further as they have both worked heavily on a publication by the AIAS called Toward an Evolution of Studio Culture, Which was an iteration of the original studio culture research that one of my good friends was working on as an officer of the AIAS. How If you haven't figured it out, now you know when I went to school in undergrad at Drew University. I'm I met Andrew and Anthony when they were president and vice president of the American Institute of Architecture Students, and I was serving on a national board as the associate representative at the time. Andrew Caruso is an architect, economist, and international development executive designing multidisciplinary solutions for rapid urbanization across the world's cities. He currently works for Hatch, a A global engineering, development, and management consultancy. He is serving as director of strategy and operations of Urban Solutions and has Been deeply involved in creative strategy for signature projects and economic analysis, real estate development advisory, and master planning for public and private clients in Africa, Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific, and North American markets. So in tech terms, in APEC, how EMEA and North America. Early in his career, Andrew helped lead the global workforce strategy for Gensler.

A In this capacity, Andrew advised the firm's chief executives on emerging talent populations in the design industry. How He oversaw a global portfolio of programs that included early career student internships, scholarships, and global talent exchanges. In 2011, he was named an associate with the firm and later tapped by the firm's CEO to relocate to Asia, leading the specific development of talent strategy across offices in China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, India, how And the United Arab Emirates, which reminds me how big Gensler truly is. Janine, why don't you take Anthony's bio?

B Sure. Anthony Venky has taken an an entirely different approach from his days with AIS into a career through academia, and he landed at MIT where he pursued his master's degree in architecture and urbanism, went on to get his PhD in urban studies and planning, him and has since gone on to teach at MIT, Columbia, and is now at the University of Michigan. So while at IT. I wanna point out that Anthony was part of the founding team of MIT DesignX, which is an academic program in the MIT school of architecture and planning dedicated to design, innovation, and entrepreneurship. And as he joins Michigan This year, he will be teaching and researching technologies that will assist in planning, understanding, and imagining urban environments this part of the college's newly formed urban technology undergraduate program.

A Let's cut to the interview.

B Welcome to the show. We're really Glad to have you and Anthony here today and kind of a reunion of your own podcast days. So I wanted to give you a chance to share a little bit more about yourself and the company you're working for and some of the work that you're doing.

C Well, I guess I got to the current situation in a pretty circuitous way. So I remember standing in Asia, Working in a lot of cities across Asia and realizing that I really wanted to start working on big city problems. But I felt like, as an architect, it was really hard to have how type of impact that a lot of our cities currently need. So I ended up, doing a second degree in economics. And how Currently, I'm putting those 2 things together. So we're building a consulting team at Hatch, which is a large global engineering and consulting firm how that looks at how economics and architecture come together to create better cities.

B Great. And, Anthony, you also have a background in in architecture, and I was hoping you'd tell us a little bit more about how you ended up in, teaching position.

D It was never the original plan, but how But somehow, I I think other people thought that I was gonna end up in academia. But I'm actually in a moment of transition right now, how Stepping away from Columbia University and about to join the faculty at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. And at both institutions, my work has been to teach but also research different ways digital data allows us to understand Cities and its residents in different ways. So how do we leverage, quote, unquote, big data or create new tools or using sensors in unique ways how to address the problems that citizens, be it in Detroit, New York, or halfway around the world, experience as cities continue to develop. So very similar to Andrew's, actually, but in different takes.

B So what I hear from both of you is that you took your architectural education and, figured out a way to align that education towards work that you wanted to do maybe in a broader sense beyond just the built environment, which actually ties into a lot of what we're talking about on this 1st season with our series that we're calling Architecture Anne. So I think it's really interesting to hear both of your stories on how you were able to accomplish that. So I wanna come back to when I first met you, which was when I was coming out of school as an undergrad architecture student, and how you both were serving as national officers of the American Institute of Architecture Students. And it was around that time him that I started learning about this concept of studio culture, and that's what we're here to talk about today. I realized in practicing that There seemed to be a gap between those who had been exposed to this concept and those maybe in in generations ahead of us that that this concept really came out of school after they had already left. So I wanted to ask about the origins of studio culture and give you guys a chance to explain where it came from, what it's about, and we'll move into some other, questions as we go.

C It's actually really interesting, Janine. So it's hard to believe that it's been more than 10 years since that time we met and since Tony and I had the privilege of how Leading AIAS. I was really excited for this topic today because I think even 10 years on, The work that we were able to do on studio culture remains one of the things I'm most proud of at AIAS, how both during our time there and actually the time that preceded us. So studio culture as an idea started around the year 2000, and it came from an experience, a rather tragic experience, where a student in design studio spent much of the night working away, As many students do, and then decided to drive home, but was too tired to do so safely and tragically lost, their life in that in that trip. How So the community really came together to ask some hard questions about what is the culture of design education, What does a healthy studio culture look like? How do you pursue design rigorously, but in a way that is safe and healthy for everybody involved. So in the early 2000, AIAS convened that conversation, whether it was how The 1st task force that came together in 2000 or the, Studio Culture Summit that they put together with representatives from across the field in 2004. And it really all culminated in the inclusion of a studio culture criteria in the, I think it was 2003 NAB terms, conditions of accreditation. And that was really the first time that the community decided to instill the requirement how in the process of architectural accreditation for schools to outline a they called it studio culture, but it has how Since brought in to be more about an educational culture that represents their school and that is a really healthy learning environment.

C When Tony and I entered the scene in Mid 2000s, we realized it was the completion of the 1st accreditation cycle with that new condition in place, And nobody had yet stepped back, reflected, and studied with either some qualitative or quantitative rigor, the impact of the studio culture condition. And so a lot of the work that we did in that year was to help the community understand what how was working really well as a result of that initial effort and where there were some opportunities for growth.

D I would just add that, you know, for a lot of people listening, they may have not been educated during the period after The condition was established, for accreditation that the culture in studio is very varied To just be a little bit repetitive, at the turn of the millennium. Some schools prided themselves in a culture that was how Perhaps less healthy. I remember talking to, students as a perspective that they would mention culture of burning each other's models how Because there was such competition, people prided themselves in how many days it could stay awake. Even professors too. The culture of destroying models during review or physically tearing things down or how Egging on this toxic culture was prevalent. And I think one of the things that we have how seen as a result of this change is that schools have addressed those concerns, that we don't see These undermining of each other's work or the promotion of unhealthy habits as the norm, that those are in some ways the exception. So we've seen the the evolution, and, of course, this will continue to evolve as we move forward, both with revisiting the conditions, but also how As technology changes, how people interact in a studio.

B When this was first introduced, was there resistance how to its adoption and integration into the academic culture, and what did that look like, and how did how did the industry move past that? What actually got it through that resistance?

D I would love to say that everything was how Smooth and happy and that everyone adopted this, that because of the process of having everyone from the profession To act the academy students in the same room that everyone carried the banner and everything was happy. It was celebratory after the summit. These were conversations that needed to have happened. This was absolutely vital and everyone how stood the motivations. Everyone appreciated the impetus, and there were shared values amongst all the parties. Once that policy, that standard was established in accreditation and went to schools, things were a little bit less clear. How But, of course, you have the most motivated in the room. But that once it hit programs, there was confusion about what this was.

D There was a lot of entrenchment thinking that the tradition and the culture that we have at x institution is great. Why do we have to change it? To, oh, at y institution, we don't know what studio culture means. What is this enumeration of values or standards? So let us just put some words on a wall, how On a laminated piece of paper and call it a day, we met the check mark. So although the conception was universally appreciated. The adoption of this actually posed many challenges, questions, But also pose a lot of really interesting takes on what studio culture is. So the variability of what people were Thinking about was actually incredibly wide. Just because this was the first time the term how Studio culture or culture was being brought up and talked about and discussed and that programs had their feet held to the fire, which is not an easy task. A condition being added is actually very difficult for programs to think about, to conceive.

D And to do so, how In some cases, it was problematic because they were coming at it late or not maybe fulfilling the spirit of the policy.

C There are a couple of interesting takeaways that, you know, when I reflect on all those years that I take away from the student community in particular. So, First of all, if we're talking about culture, I think it's incredibly compelling. And in fact, one of the things that drew me to the AIAS community early on in my career was that I saw a bunch of my peers really passionate about an important issue, And they found a way to mobilize and to organize to the extent that they convened all of the stakeholders in the profession how and built consensus around an actionable, measurable outcome that really shifted the discourse in architectural education. And I think, particularly as a young student, witnessing the power of that kind of collective action really Made me understand the power we, we all have as early career professionals. It helped me understand the value of AIAS as a community. And it also made me really proud to be joining the profession because a community of practitioners who are willing to work with Rising talent in their industry to acknowledge an important issue and find a resolution sounded like a profession that I wanted to be part of, And that was really powerful. I think the other thing that was difficult about the studio culture journey was helping schools, and students and and all of the stakeholders really come to terms with how you codify culture. Trying to define, how Or even more so to regulate or manage cultures at institutions is difficult to do.

C And when we went through the process of the brief, the studio culture brief that we wrote toward an evolution of studio culture in 2007, I think one of the reflections from our task force group was that, number 1, it was originally called a studio culture policy, how And the word policy was well intended, but perhaps presumed what the outcomes might look like. And in fact, in that round of, reflections, we encourage the community to think about it more as a studio culture narrative. You know, how do you begin to think about culture from a a coordination and alignment perspective rather than from a regulation perspective. So the second really interesting outcome of that how Review process in 2007 was that most both students and administrators really felt that the policy itself at the end of the day was not how the most important outcome, what they truly valued, and where the cultural transformation really occurred Was in the process the group went through to arrive at a policy, structuring a way for those communities and stakeholders to come together and to debate how Really sensitive and complex issues about the way they interact and the way they create an environment for learning was actually the most valuable part of the exercise. The actual policy as a written document at the end of the day, although required by the accreditation process, was in fact not what they valued most how in the entire experience.

A I don't wanna throw this off course, and I wanted our listeners to know that during the second half of this, we're how gonna talk about how studio culture transitions to the workplace. It's really interesting to me, though. So I graduated in 2000 2 with my b arc. And I wasn't involved with the AIAS at that time, but I had a friend in my studio how That was. And I she she asked me to review and edit some of the work she was doing on the studio culture task force. How And what I realized, Anthony, when you were talking about the change in the evolution of studio culture is that I how Very much see that predicated today and how it played out in the difference between the internal competition that my Years graduated with versus the collective voice of the the the more current students and how how They wanna play nice together as opposed to being fearful of the competition and sharing knowledge and information.

D How I think that's hard for people younger people who have not gone through it to understand. And this wasn't out of malice, I would say. The term studio culture or an educational culture is intentional because how Faculty were participating in this because that was the norm. There was a professor that I looked up to in my education, and he is one of the greatest mentors. He's one of the sweetest individuals you could ever have. But I remember early in my education, He was one of those very aggressive professors who would destroy your model in a review. And it's it's contradictory In my mind, to think that he could be so cool in one situation but so kind in another, and it took many years for me to realize how That wasn't because of a deeper mouse. That was the culture that was promoted.

D That was the culture that he grew up in in architecture school. That that competition, that undermine was the norm, and that's pretty frightening for us to think about that as a professional culture. That was the norm, and it took a pivot. And, unfortunately, it did take the catalytic event of someone losing their life For the profession and for education to say, enough. This is not what we stand for. It is about, as you pointed out, Evelyn, The want, the need for collaboration, for mutual support to really move the the educational situation, then the profession into a different direction. And that has been bumpy. We have to think that this change.

D Architectural education is a 150 years old in universities, little over. Studio culture is barely 20, not even 20. The discussions happened 20 years ago, so the change itself is or the codification of these changes how is fairly young.

C Evelyn, your question makes me think about a time when I was early on in architecture school. And how One of the things I learned, not just obviously the the technical aspects of becoming an architect, but aspects of becoming a professional And of trying to navigate professional cultures, and how you either fit with some or become an agent of change in some. And I think, you know, there were some particular studios or experiences in my time in architectural education where We had faculty members who thought students should not be critiquing other students' work, that it's only the role of the faculty member to offer critique. And There were a number of us who really had trouble with that, particularly because we wanted to share thoughts and ideas with each other. And We wanted to build, kind of peer culture of helping each other refine their projects to be the best they could be. And interestingly, in complete contrast, later in my architectural education, the school as a, again, a matter of how kind of policy or culture decided that almost all projects should become group projects. And it was such a contrasting experience how Because in that case, we were automatically thrown into a situation where the only way to progress work was to critique each other's contributions, obviously, in a helpful and constructive way. How And it made me realize that part of what I was trying to do at school was understand the type of professional culture I wanted to be part of.

C And if a particular culture didn't fit me, or I felt could be improved, I was challenged to become an agent of change in that situation. And it took a while to learn how to do that, but I think that's one of the things that has translated most importantly from my architectural natural education experience into professional practice.

B I agree. I Andrew, I have the same experience, and I didn't even recognize it until I moved in to a professional setting and saw so many people that I would work with following a leader and not questioning things, and and for some reason, I just kept being the person that would say, hey. Isn't this weird? And even just the understanding that that a studio culture could be different than a heads down culture where people don't talk to each other seemed to be Shocking to me that there that there were people that just accepted that in in a workplace environment. So to continue our academic discussion, I just wanna come back how to maybe you could frame for our listeners, what are some examples of the guidelines and best practices that came forward? And did you see any policies that were introduced at schools that you could point to as examples that were successful?

C I think 2007, the the document that we created was a step change for studio culture because we decided to how a peer review to what we had created as a community. And so we actually took all 100%, I think there were 44 how culture policies that had been formally written and submitted to NAB up to that point, and we took all of them and introduced a multi stakeholder peer review of those policies. So we brought in stakeholders from academia, practice, regulation, accreditation, and the student perspective And had a multi stakeholder conversation about the themes that emerged from that review. I think as we talked about earlier, one of the challenges that we found in all of those policies how It's just that schools were really struggling with codifying something as ethereal as a culture. How I think they were also trying to approach it as a policy, meaning they were focused on rules and regulations rather than more performance based statements about the type of educational environment they wanted to create. So I think if I were to characterize The task force's recommendations. We really were encouraging schools to be more aspirational in the way that they talked about the studio culture environment that they wanted to create. And while we wanted them to be more aspirational about the goals, we also wanted them to be more rigorous about the process.

C So schools that really excelled at creating powerful studio culture, Documents, narratives, policies, whichever word you want to use to describe them, those were the schools that applied the rigor how to a process of bringing together stakeholders and through a series of conversations, Bringing alignment and consolidation to ideas about the type of environment they wanted. How The results of that may be very aspirational, and I think those are the policies that were successful. Policies that really struggled We're the ones that applied all the rigor to the document and were less structured about the process by which the community got to the document.

D As the AIS gave training to individuals that would be visiting programs, visiting schools to how evaluate this policy, this condition. One of the pieces of advice that we would give them was to look at whether the policy is lived. So is it something that the multiple communities understand? So do students understand it, Appreciate it. Do faculty understand, appreciate it, yada yada, down the whole line? And what did the process look like? Was it something that was Staple on the wall and forgotten about, or was it a process that people felt involved, shared their experiences how To cogenerate and codevelop this policy. And I think to Andrew's point, it was really the ladder that we found as successful because I I think that there's a cause and effect issue, that it's somewhat circular because Programs that had a strong culture of collaboration between these different groups felt it natural to move in that direction, To actually have this conversation together, to collect multiple voices, to do a 1,000 and 1 surveys, to have meetings, to have those difficult discussions, how to move towards something positive. I think the weaker ones that we saw were reflective of deeper issues of Needing to check the box of accreditation. And I think that's actually one of the big process evolutions from The 1st version to the 2nd version to discuss not just a studio culture policy. As Andrew had put it, a single document that is stapled against the wall and you check the box, but then towards a narrative or evidence of a larger culture, I think gave permission to schools to say, Alright.

D We can take a little bit more time. Actually, we should take more time on this. We should have a deeper conversation. And I think one of the failings that we had in reflection was maybe we didn't give enough room or we didn't push enough for schools to say, how This product could actually be of your own culture. Why does it have to be a bunch of bullet points on the wall? Why does it have to be bullet points on the Internet? Why is it not a living artifact? Could your studio culture, learning culture, quote, unquote, document be a video how or an installation or something. And I think that, you know, that's something that's hard to put into a policy to say, Kure, your your learning culture blank. We are hoping to see that, but I think now programs are starting to have fun with it. And I think Now after we've gone through another generation of evolution, we're starting to see this document actually taking life of its own And that students and faculty are both challenging each other and challenging administration to say, how What is this? Can we design this? Can we make it our own? I think now we're starting to get the point of really interesting products that reflect the personality of the pedagogies and cultures of those programs.

C Tony, I wanna pick up on your point. I think it's really important that how Studio culture is both lived and living. So, yes, it has to be lived. It has to be practiced by the community that create it. But simultaneously, I think we learned that studio culture is a living thing that evolves and changes over time. And It's not a process, a a linear process that should result in a single deliverable. Instead, it's a circular process. And As a community goes through the process of defining itself and the way it interacts with each other, new questions, new challenges emerge, and new strengths emerge as well.

C And it needs to be a continuously evolving, continuously improving, conversation.

A So I wanna follow-up with that notion. And, Anthony, this may be more for you than Andrew just because you're a lot how Closer to academia still. But in light of everything that's going on with COVID, with Black Lives Matter, With everything that's changing in the world, you know, where do you think the academic setting still needs the most work? And how can both practitioners and students and academics contribute to this ongoing necessary evolution that how just pointed to.

D Awareness is such an important part, and I think the initial discussions around culture Really just shown a spotlight on these issues. And I think with current events, we're seeing how much has to be done, And there are spotlights being shown on things that have been neglected and perhaps rotting under the skin that. In thinking about these questions and this conversation before coming on to this podcast, you know, I was reflecting on black lives matter. And my question to myself was studio culture for whom? That we took it for granted, that we didn't we didn't necessarily look at who was in the room. We didn't think about the voices. One of the big things that I was very passionate about parallel to this conversation Was the inclusion of global voices in the education of students. That For me, not only was it that we only showed architectural projects and precedent from western canons, But that even in the 2nd evolution, when I was looking at the narratives that these visiting teams gave, They would have a Mayan temple and the Forbidden City, and that would accomplish global traditions. For vernacular traditions, You know, you tokenize certain architects, show 1 project and call it a day, versus really thinking about the breadth and depth of the history of architecture, both within the context of the United States, I think very relevant to this conversation, but also globally.

D Why don't we study Mughal architecture? The Mughal empire was one of the largest empires exist on the planet. And I think for some listeners, maybe how Hearing Mughal empire is a new thing, but why yet? We talk ad nauseam Potentially about Frank Lloyd Wright. So I think as a cultural aspect, we have to evaluate how we're thinking about this, and it's not Easy. If you think about the hiring process in academia and the tenure process, you're looking at Dozens, hundreds of potentially strong candidates, but you've got a slot to fill. You don't have time to how necessarily evaluate whether they know everything about all global traditions. And then when they're now presented from the class, the teaching load might be huge. They might, you know, only have time for 1 slide because they have to cover so much. So there are a lot of systemic issues on the faculty how side, which then leads to systemic issues for the student side.

D And I think related to thinking about Black indigenous and and the cultures of people of color. We have to think about what that means, or do we keep architecture as a very elitist profession? This is a long conversation. This is I know that you're having other conversations about this. But within the architecture profession, this is not a new conversation of even thinking about how we're relevant to other communities, and that ties into the culture in the academy, in studio, in the classroom. And I think the related to COVID, perhaps the best thing, in my opinion, because and I'll talk about this a little bit more. The best thing we could do for studio culture was to take studio away. The fact that people had to work from home, people were no longer in this room Of collaboration, of sharing. But the fact that people could no longer be in that room, program how Students had to figure out how to recreate those environments of sharing and creating those artifacts that we never had.

D There are so many virtual pinup rooms popping up online that not just on Zoom, but actually archiving it. My alma mater, how Tulane created a virtual room where they put up all the the thesis projects as if you were there so you could explore it virtually. Michigan created CMYOK, which is a spin off of the nickname for the pinup walls, as a way of curating not just studio projects, how But what students were just doing, virtual studios, being privileged at Columbia to see these conversations, how People were experimenting on ways of having 24 hour rooms where people could pop in, share ideas, just hang out, And finding things on Slack and creating Slack channels are just random. I've seen from other programs how Slack channels that were dedicated to just memes, to dank memes. For the older folks, you can look up what a dank meme is later. How rated PG 13. But the fact that this is part of culture and that there was space given to it and that faculty were thinking about how do we Promote these conversations that students would be having, creating spaces for that. Saying it's okay to just go on wild random tangents.

D To use these resources to do that is important, and I think we're finally getting to the point of of seeing those artifacts, those narratives, that lived culture. And people trying to recreate what they appreciated but never thought about and took for granted now that we don't have that. As we move forward, I think these conversations will remain very relevant, especially with the uncertainty about returning to schools, hybrid education, Work from home, learn from home. There's a lot of question marks, but I think now we're finally seeing a lot of voices thinking about what learning culture is In a world where it's mediated by a screen.

B I think the 4 of us each understand the value of culture, and maybe that's why we're attracted to this topic. And I think that we have tried to bring that into the professional settings that we've each how worked and volunteered in. But it as an industry that we know is struggling with change has a long history of not looking at culture and valuing it. Just from each of your perspective, for someone who's struggling to understand the value of culture either in an academic or professional setting for architecture. What do you think is the value that an emphasis on culture brings to that type of design environment?

D I can say on a very minute level, it even translates to dollar and cents. That there's been a lot of studies in the innovation world Looking at the culture of Silicon Valley around technology. Why why is Silicon Valley impossible to take down as the world's leading tech hub And innovation hub while other cities are throwing a ton of money. It's because of culture. People see each other, how Share ideas, meet at the coffee shop, see each other in the parking lot, and want to share ideas, want to ask each other questions how Where other communities don't have. In the innovation world, there's a study that calls it collision density. But we can think about it as people wanting to share. How People are willing to actually see each other, talk, think, take a moment to to reflect, Which is huge.

D So for practice, on a very minute level, a positive culture can actually lead to increased productivity. How It could lead to increased revenue because people are working and wanting to work at those higher levels how and finding synergies between people that individually they would have not been able

C to come up with. Interesting, Anthony. How. The economics literature has, obviously, a corollary in the agglomeration economies vein. So, the power of proximity to Increasing productivity to attracting talent to increasing output. And I find it fascinating that how Those types of things are measurable quantitatively.

A Yeah. I mean, what's really been interesting for me on the tech side is to see how quickly tech firms change policies, really big policies how that affect our culture to remain competitive. So just to parallel off of the work that I'm doing right now, the reason why Slack how Has moved to a remote first, like, saying yes to working remote first was because they said the CEO said, we can't compete With other companies, if if there's similar office offers in front of a candidate, and 1 company is telling me I have to be in the office how 5 days out of the week, and the other company is giving me the flexibility to craft what my work schedule looks like. They are always gonna go how with option 2. So again, you know, Anthony, to your illustration of Silicon Valley, these companies are how even huge workplace policy changes to ensure and to protect a culture that means that they remain competitive in this space.

D I mean, I think it's interesting that WeWork, one of their big how Products that they offered was looking at how people utilize space in support of culture. Granted, these were architects that are leading some of these teams, But that they were thinking about the coffee bar or where you get your coffee and you know, or the water cooler if you're in warmer climates or something. But they evaluated how people met and talked around the coffee bar in different places where they had their offices how or their co working spaces that they offered as a product. And they actually would do adjustments to local cultures because people used a coffee bar differently. The universal across all of these was that they want to see greater interactions, that there was a want from their clients. Now granted, we were Probably stretch their expenses a little bit too too much, and their revenue was a little too thin. But I think it as a takeaway to look at culture And to evaluate it. Makes a lot of sense in academia.

D It makes sense in the physical workplace, and I think to your point, also to companies. Thinking back, and I might get some of the details wrong, but the the state of Minnesota during the economic downturn Had a lot of these questions. To save money, they moved to a hybrid work from home office protocol so that you had some flexibility, and they found that overall satisfaction went up. Yet people still wanted to go into the office, how Just not necessarily at 9 to 5 and 5 days a week that they may have had children so that they would want to work from home 1 or 2 days a week. For the state, they mandated that certain days were work from office so that they could have meetings. And, you know, I don't know what happened, but that In the immediate, in the downturn, in the recession, it was actually very successful that they found positive outcomes that they could reduce costs from the state, But that people were happier because they were given the flexibility. But to the culture, an expectation was set how that you would still come in and share your ideas, you would still have meetings, and that you would also appreciate it if someone decided to work from home that day. That's a big shift, especially for a bureaucracy like the public sector, you know, to find these spaces of innovation.

D And I think it's interesting that some Industries still are more reluctant than others to have these difficult conversations.

A Yeah. I mean, for me, it's even just the change, the Vocabulary from human resources to people operations and the employee experience.

D Or talent management that they how see you as a talented individual, and it's how do we best catalyze and valorize that asset.

B The next question really is what from our what we learned about studio culture translates into the modern design studio, and what lessons would we want to share with people to consider in their own company so that they can start having these conversations locally.

C So I I've had this idea kicking around my head during this conversation, and I'm not exactly sure what the sound bite is. But I think of studio culture, whether it's in the academic or the professional setting, as being, like, the rules of the game. And there's something in it for me about everyone wants to play the game, but they want to play the game that's right for them, and they need To play a game where the rules allow them to be successful. And I think a lot of conversations about culture Probably fall a foul when they start looking at the players rather than at the rules of the game, how- And trying to construct a game where everybody can bring their own special skill to it and be successful at that skill, and together, those things win the match. Far be it for me to make a sports metaphor, but I think the rules of the game are really important. And, you know, sometimes particularly in instances where how I've been helping to bring 2 different companies together. I mean, talk about issues of workplace culture and workplace culture collision. How A lot of junior members of staff who have not been through either a merger and an acquisition or, have not been through an economic downturn, etcetera, are really struggling with how to chart their own career when it seems like the rules of the game have completely changed.

C And my favorite metaphor for them is, again, not something I actually do, but it's a surfing metaphor. You know, I I really feel like your role as an employee at any level, frankly, is to choose the right surfboard, Choose how you want to position your body on that surfboard in order to get the best ride out of the wave that you can. And you can't change the way the wave crashes. You can't change the direction of the current, but you can choose how you interact with that wave to get a really good ride. And so somewhere in there, I think, is where you have to navigate your own personal fit, with the rules of the game that you're playing how and the collective fit with

D the rules of the game. To jump off of your metaphor, your your discussion about games, I think it's important for people to think about it as a game, that it's a process, that it's not just about the touchdown or the score, But it's about getting to that point. It's about the training. And what is training? It's with experts. It's with people who have different perspectives, helping you how Better your skills, your perception, your actually doing. And it's practice and playing. It's about doing it. It's about Having those conversations, failing, and I think appreciating what failure is and moving on from it.

D Because you know what you're looking for. You know what the end result is. It's intangible. But so many times, we focus on the intangible part. We don't put in the hard work to get there. I think that's the most important part. Like we were saying with studio culture, the discussions were what actually rose to the top. Programs who had conversations about these difficult topics thrive and for firms And teams to feel comfortable in discussing and airing their dirty laundry.

D And I think especially in the current climate around Voices that are not brought to the fore. These are difficult conversations, but to build that culture that we wanna see, to ride that wave, To to score that touchdown, we have to be able to put in the work and see the assets around us, catalyze them, bring them together, And actually start that process. And the hope is is that especially now with all that's going on, But this is a chance to do that, to to do better. We're gonna emerge on the other side of stay at home in different ways. It's we're gonna be different. People's voices are asking and demanding to be heard. And I think that we should see the opportunities of the moment to have these difficult conversations towards whatever culture means to you as a team or as a firm.

C I think one of the original questions was about how how Academic culture translates into professional culture. And I think that's a valid question. It's certainly something that happens as an end is important to think about. But I also feel like that question is too segmented. I can't think of a day when I go into my workplace, how even at this point in my career, and I'm not having to learn at the same time as produce. And so I think, actually, how Professional culture is learning culture with some additional layers on top. And so while there is a translation, I actually think they're more one and the same than how Sometimes we realize. And the idea is in order to really engage with culture as how workplace community or even as a academic community, you need some fundamental principles to do that.

C You need safe space. How You need an opportunity and a mechanism to find voice. You need to have a holistic view and a, empathy for how the diversity of perspectives that are coming to that same table. You need to understand how you're defining the word culture. How What is inbounds? What is out of bounds? And sometimes laying the fundamental groundwork for that conversation how is where the real work happens.

A What's been interesting to me as we transition this conversation from studio culture to workplace culture is that I think it was very much about what I, as the individual, as a new student, or as the younger generation how can do or will be expected of from my firm versus, Andrew, I think your last statement is how This is what I, as a partner in my firm, need to be aware of that in order to make changes in how Studio culture. I think what's most interesting to me is this moment in time is going to What I would recommend to all future graduates to become a measure of the firm culture is gonna it's gonna be a question that how People should be asking during their interviews. You know, how how did your firm manage through COVID? How Is there any affirmative change happening around Black Lives Matter? And and what is your firm's position on that? I think how is going to be a question that every hiring manager should expect coming out of this. So That being said, to continue where you left off, Andrew and Anthony, if you have any input into this, what are key takeaways how that principles or discussions or conversations that principles should be having now to set up their culture how for that evolution or that change or even highlight the good things that they are doing that they're just not how talking about or communicating about on a regular basis.

C I'm not a cultural anthropologist or a social scientist, but my initial thinking how is that, you know, we're in a society right now where whether it's mobile technology or social media or how Mass consumerism, all of these trends have placed exceptional focus on brand and personal brand. How And the brands that a person aligns their own personal brand with become really important. And so I you know, sometimes people ask, how why are early career professionals these days so focused on what companies are doing around some of these social, agendas or issues. And I think the reason is Because, a lot of us now are beginning to think about how we shape our own narrative and how we invest our time how in alignment with some of these core challenges that we see in the world around us. I don't know if technology is part of it. You know, the fact that Most of us spend much of our day on a phone. You know, I personally, I'm working with a global team, so I'm taking calls and doing emails at how nearly every hour of the day. And what that means to me is that those hours are precious and that my job to me is more than just a job.

C It is Part of how I define myself. And that's why the companies that I associate myself with or the, you know, organizations, volunteer activities, etcetera, That's why they're so important that they align with who I am as a person and and where I want the world to go because they have become how Far more integrated with my daily lived experience than perhaps they have in the past.

D I tell my students to think about When they're thinking about their next steps, what is it that they love doing, what will get them there, how And what ingredients need to be present to allow them to thrive. And every student will answer those questions differently. How Some will say, I just need a paycheck. I got huge student loans. Valid. But they're bringing those values how that are inside them to that next step. And I think for firms to think about if you really want to attract how Great young talent coming in. Not to say that you need to pivot to become a product that young how Talent wants to be at or wants to buy into.

D But do you have those components? Do you have a culture? Do you have a narrative how that you can share that inspires people to want to play as part of that team. So for leaders, I would ask, what's your North Star? I remember being in a meeting with firm leaders. And there was a debate between 2 firms because one of them and how I don't know tax law, but they did something that was really focused on their employees. The leader of the other firm laughed and said, oh, that's gonna increase your capital gains Taxes later on. And I thought at that moment, of those 2 firms, which one would I wanna be at? The bigger firm where the owner was very concerned about gains or the smaller firm that was actually thinking about their employees first and making decisions that were maybe not advantageous to the firm leaders' pocketbooks, but in support of the team because there might be long term return. I wanna be in the ladder. But that value set, a, has to come from the top. But it's also again, what is that north star? Where is it that you wanna go? How Where is it that you're aiming for? You may not be perfect.

D You may not even be, anywhere near that goal. But if you can establish a north star that people can believe in and that you could show that you want to work towards that north star how With the people that you're bringing in, I'm willing to bet on that team. I'm willing to give maybe 5% more, how 10% more, 15%, whatever it is, towards realizing that vision because as I think Andrew put it well, that's also part of me. That's also part of my brand. Because work, life, family are all blurring together. It's all work. We have to work at everything. You know? But we can find joy in all these aspects how too.

D And I think that's a generational shift that for some leaders to think about, that this line does get blurred. We don't just shut down as a younger generation. But that as a result, we're also demanding more from those firms' organizations that we wanna be at. And The tools to become entrepreneurs are so plentiful. The barriers to entry are increasingly getting lower that anyone with a great idea how actually try and start their own business. That's also what firms are now fighting against as well, large firms. So how do you think about celebrating that individual talent as part of the And those are conversations worth having, not just through how the quarterly return, but as longer term investments in your talent, your people for a generation, at least.

C How That point is really interesting about technology, and the platforms that they provide, allowing people and individuals specifically to how Scale ideas quickly, and therefore challenging the normative concept of what companies and firms are there to do, I think is huge.

D And I'll say that students are demanding it from schools. Students want to come out with their 1st start up, small business, whatever it is. So we're seeing this coming out of schools. And I think firms also have to be very prepared for a new way of thinking because they can dictate their own culture, Because they're not necessarily finding it in the marketplace.

C I don't know what the lived experience of previous generations was like, but I personally feel like how Moments of tragedy and existential crisis are happening faster and more frequently now than they did even when I was younger or earlier in my career. So whether we're talking about the Black Lives Matter movement, or we're talking about COVID nineteen, or we're talking about any one of a number of climate change realities, I think people today are challenged by their environment, built in natural To ask themselves the tough questions about, you know, what is your purpose? What do you want to contribute? And They're also challenged every day when they get up and make decisions about how they're gonna spend precious time, whether what they're doing is contributing how to the answers they want on those questions. And perhaps it's more it feels like it's more than ever before. I think in the workplace, Employers and companies are increasingly have having to prove to their employees how that being part of their enterprise helps them answer some of those existential questions.

B When Evelyn and I were setting up this conversation, it was really focused around this idea of employee experience. And what I've heard in this conversation is you guys Started to just touch on the team element being a really important part of how studio culture shows up into a professional studio environment. The easiest actionable task that I can think of for either a firm owner or even a how manager on a team is to consider a policy either for the firm or a at least to your point, Andrew, rules of engagement loosely defined for how the team might operate and bringing some type of transparency and conversation around. We are starting a new project. This is our team. This is the type of communication that I'm looking for out of these conversations, and we hope to achieve x, y, z. I'm wondering from your perspective, what strategies might you recommend to someone who's either managing a team or managing a firm that they could start to have these kinds of conversations in a meaningful way with employees to promote that employee experience and positive studio culture.

C How I think it relates a lot to what I was saying earlier about laying the groundwork in order to have the conversation about the rules of the game. How And laying that groundwork, I think elements of laying the groundwork include building trust and empathy with the people around you. And particularly for the leaders in that situation, you need to lead by example in that sense. How So you have to be able to be vulnerable about things that make you feel threatened or vulnerabilities that you feel you have. A firm I used to be part of used to call it aces and spaces, which I really liked. And it was all about, you know, if you're playing a game of poker, you gotta figure out what everyone's aces and spaces are so that together you can make a winning hand. Whether or not you like metaphor, I thought What I appreciated about being in that company was that that approach was very much part of the lived experience of teens. How And people were genuinely committed to approaching a challenge, whether it was a project or it was an internal collaboration issue how or whether it was even a performance issue that we were experiencing within a team, with that being one of the fundamental principles, how that we were all willing to be vulnerable and honest about what we felt our aces and spaces were.

C And because of that trust and that commitment to being transparent with how each other. We could trade cards until we found the right winning hand.

D I was also thinking there's a phrase that I perhaps how use a little bit too much, standards without standardization. And I wonder if, for firm leaders, if you're reflective in your own teams, how about that north star, talking about larger hopes for what your teams may look like in engaging with each other, with how Projects with challenges. Do you think your team will respond in an appropriate way that resolves how challenges and issues without you having to create a committee or a policy or an enumerated process. Do the employees and this, of course, varies how between very large firms and very small ones. But are people empowered enough to start those conversations how in a productive way to bring it forward. Do you think that the process that these teams and individuals will go through will look like the ones that you would hope that how broadly speaking. And I think if you can say yes, then you have standards that may be productive, maybe the ones that you wanna see. And if not, how maybe those are things that you wanna tweak.

D But if the answer is no and the response is to come up with that written text, you're falling how that you really need to enumerate something explicitly because that norm isn't there. But I think that's a hard line to walk, how Especially if you're a HR manager. How do you find the balance between the 2? I think that's the conversation that we're having. That the how policies or the firms that I think we want to work for, be it in Silicon Valley or in our own hometowns, are the ones that there are values that we can understand, appreciate, how jump right into and believe in that they guide us forward, that we can have these conversations. And, personally, I can say how I'm reluctant to go to a place where the first thing I'm presented with is a handbook of bullet pointed policies that guide how I should how and how I should live. And I've been at a firm like that. Not my most happy time in my life. But how I think that's something that we have to think about.

D Do you have a value set that people can understand, appreciate, and jump how and thrive, or do you really have to enumerate behaviors? And I think that's a fine

C how would occasionally walk out of her office and ring a bell, and the bell became a signal that how She had made a mistake and that there was a lesson to be learned. And what I found really interesting about that story was that how It was her own choice to be vulnerable with her team and to acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes and that the most, A valuable way of dealing with a mistake is to bring it to the surface and to allow not only yourself, but others to learn from it. How And I think it really for that particular studio, it it bred this culture. Again, Leadership by Example, it bred a culture where people were not afraid to ask for help how or to admit that something didn't go the way it it was planned, and either to share a lesson learned or to seek out lessons learned from each other. How And I think that kind of emulating that kind of behavior can be fundamental to laying the groundwork for how more nuanced conversations about or aspirational conversations about what you want your particular workplace or studio culture to be. One of the how Takeaways from my early career, I think, is really that people join people, they don't join organizations. And so this question of culture is really a simple question about people and community. And whether you're creating a family community, a neighborhood community, a workplace community, a school community, They're different environments, but the fundamentals of building a successful communal interaction and experience Are pretty straightforward.

C So it's just how do you manifest those things in whatever setting you're in.

B Well, I'm really excited we got to bring Anthony and Andrew on to the show. I just absolutely adore them. And as you can see, since its origin, studio culture has become such a larger conversation and policies are now required at architecture schools as part of their official US accreditation requirements. However, I don't think these conversations have expanded as widely into professional settings. Professional design studios still have many holdovers from the historic culture that has been inherited from our industry. While modern workplace trends challenge many of these ideas, it seems that there's still this right of passage mentality that's an underlying theme or, trend into the way that we practice.

A Yeah. It's It's interesting to me only because this episode actually made me feel so much older in a way. I feel like I'm part of the old folks how that went through the previous generation of, you know, the the pre studio culture group. So one of the biggest takeaways for me having graduated during the era when studio culture was just becoming a thing and not how ingrained in ingrained into the accreditation process when I was going through school is that the collaborative nature of students how who are graduating now is partially derived from this new culture that they have that I didn't personally experience. So for me, this is a new view on the experience and expectations of those that are recent grads as opposed to the reality of firm owners how individuals even as old as myself. And there's there's definitely people out there that would say I'm still young to the profession. I think there's how There's now at least 50% of the profession that say would say I fall on the older end. But it's just an interesting dichotomy that I never really thought about how And the differences that I had in school as opposed to what they what new graduates are having.

B Yeah. I definitely noticed that kind of knowledge gap when I was practicing in different architecture firms. And, you know, when I was coming out of school, we were learning how to write these policies. If you were involved that all with your accreditation process for your school or you were involved with the AIS chapter. You were helping the school write the policy usually. And, of course, that varies from school to school. But it really taught me this idea about looking internally within an organization and thinking about the culture. And for me, at UNC Charlotte, culture was a cornerstone of the program.

B Like, community was everything. And so The idea of writing about our culture wasn't too abstract to us. It was really inherent to what we were doing in the studio. But in a professional setting, to me, that translates back to that idea of the employee experience and thinking about how you evaluate your own firm culture and studio culture. Her.

A Right. And I think this is true of independent when you graduated from school that one of the things that I struggled with in my own experience working in firms and one of the things I how saw my peers struggle with a lot is that what the firm leaders thought about their own firm culture was not the same how as what was actually being experienced by the individual employee. So, you know, I would be interested, Janine, And your thoughts on how these 2 different groups, both the leadership and even the intern, can work together to co create an experience that is how than a shared reality by the entire firm.

B Sure. That's a good question. And I think it really centers around conversations and communication and having an openness to building those conversations. So the 5 tenets that came out of towards an evolution that point towards successful studio culture include, 1, promoting respect, optimism, sharing, innovation, and and engagement. Number 2, creating a culture of open dialogue rather than a siloed discussion. I think this is a big one. So any firm where there's not a lot of discussion happening in the studio environment, particularly team to team or employee to employee. That can be a really big red flag for me on, issues with studio culture.

B So the third how Tennant is about constructing clear a clear understanding of shared responsibilities that promote health and time management. I think this is a really important one. While we can always work as hard as we can to deliver a deliverable the next how to stay really thinking about project management and time management and incorporating the health of the individual into the planning process so that how you can plan to not have emergencies is a really big one in trying to take into consideration building a realistic project timeline that accommodates people really having the time to think through and design and respond to the deliverables that they're creating. This especially shows up when management decisions get made without considering the constraints of the technology. I've seen that so many times with Revit where something gets promised and it's not realistic in terms of what the team can actually produce. And so for me, that's, that's a larger conversation that really reflects that there's a lack of communication going on. And then the 5th tenet is his building a narrative. So this policy idea that reflects the voice of the studio environment.

B So everybody's really clear about what the values are across the environment. And to Anthony's point, taking the studio environment away because of COVID nineteen has really prompted a lot of firms and, you know, academic environment studios to assess what this new virtual studio culture is. So Evelyn, I was wondering if you could share any tips or ideas that you have having worked in such a highly flexible work environment that promotes digital work from home space. How do you how can firms who are trying to navigate that transition how to be successful. What tips do you have for them?

A Yeah. I mean, to be honest, in my own workplace at Slack, I think we're still navigating that. It's it's This is all new to everyone, but one of the things that we did very well from the beginning have always put our employee resource groups how in a Slack channel. If you're on Teams, you could do something similar by making a project for each of your employee resource groups. For smaller firms, or even for larger firms, have a channel or a project dedicated to water cooler chat, how have a channel or project dedicated to codes or even firm standards. So I know people are missing the opportunity to call out, like, over the over the walls, like, hey, has anybody worked through this detail before? We'll provide a space for that to happen even asynchronously, like, on these communication platforms and tag it in a way that, like, other people who are, You know, all all the technical people are always checking in on that project or that channel to see if anyone has any questions. I will probably be hanging out instead in our cooking channel or our boba channel, rather in the technical space. But that is just how Me and and probably why I left, traditional practice.

A But the point is, to whatever extent you can manifest pieces of your firm culture within the digital tools that you are using while we are all working remotely.

B Mhmm. I've I've seen some other really good examples of that with some different firms. I know a lot of firms are using Slack. I know I've Heard my friends saying that they'll post up a question about the code to the office and the Slack channel to get everybody's input in. And, actually, my friends over at KieranTimberlake, they're doing this awesome thing where they're hosting these really cool happy hours on Fridays where they and, actually, you can tune in too on Instagram, watch them do a live performance on Friday afternoons with some of their musicians on staff. So it's, you know, just about creativity and people. And I think the most important thing that I wanna say is that the people part is a very valuable part of your practice that you have to consider because it directly relates back to profit. If you're not taking care of your studio culture, I promise you you're losing money because your people are working on your projects.

B And if they don't feel supported, if they're not feeling how if they're not feeling like they're getting enough out of the firm, it totally relates to their performance on their objects. And I think trying to create a healthy, happy studio culture, you know, it sounds very woo woo, but frankly, it it relates to, I think, stronger profit margins. And I think it relates to better project management on project deliverables. And so studio culture is a continuously evolving and continuously improving conversation as Anthony said. It starts with awareness and just understanding where you're at with your culture and then understanding where you wanna go. So not speaking about it or acknowledging the culture of the firm or people in your firm is a missed opportunity. And I think a lot of the firms that are addressing studio culture, They have better retention rates. I think that they are attracting people to wanna come work for their studios.

B And I think there's still room for improvement for for everybody across the board to enhance what where we're at right now with studio culture and firms to where we could go to make it an even better profession passion for everybody.

A So the biggest takeaway that I would hope that all of our listeners got, and this is true of small firms, medium sized firms, large firms. And it's also something that any firm leader can do tomorrow if they wanted to. If you haven't done this already, it was to consider actually putting pen to paper or hands to keyboard, I guess, nowadays, And writing a firm culture policy or developing a structure to cocreate a firm culture policy how that not only helps existing employees understand their role in supporting firm culture, and open up to conversations about mentoring, leadership, and communication, and how you want to do it through not only times of pandemic, but on a regular basis. But it will also help new staff, when you are back to hiring, transition into the firm and understand how their individual roles that they bring as contributors. And I think we will close there. Thank you for listening, and tune in next week. Thanks for joining us on Practice Disrupted, a podcast by Practice of architecture. Visit us at practice disrupted.com to find out more about future episodes and the changing nature of practice.

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