Architecture And: AI & Head of Digital Marketing

A Welcome to Practice Disrupted, a podcast where we find ways to create new solutions to current challenges while elevating the value of architects. I'm your host, Evelyn Lee, an architect who spans tech as an angel investor, start up advisor, and founder of Practice of Architecture. Whether you're a seasoned architect or just starting in the field, this Hello, disruptors. Welcome back to another episode of Practice Disrupted. So I first met our guest today, Ricardo Rodriguez, at the Practice Innovation Lab, which was something that I hosted as chair of the Young Architects Forum for the AIA back in 2017. We also lovingly referred to it as as a PIL. I'll link the information on the PIL in the show notes for those that are new to the show and haven't heard about it before. The interesting thing, Rick Carter, I wanna say is I went back and I watched the video that they produced about that, and you you did have a moment there on camera in in the video talking about the future of practice.

A But what struck me most about what everybody was saying about the practice innovation lab, then in 2017, and today being 2024 is how little we've actually moved the needle on the profession since then. So that doesn't mean that you haven't been moving the needle though in your own career. So between then and now, I've had the opportunity to see Ricardo's career evolve and see him step in the roles that I honestly don't think that he saw coming sometimes. And then I've also had the visual enjoyment of seeing you take on this new passion for AI through your Instagram feed and launch a show that was hosted earlier this year by AIADC called present future. So I'm hoping that we'll get to see more of that as well. And then coming up here, you're also serving as inaugural faculty member for the Center For Professional Learning at the Weitzman School of Design. So that's kind of a high level of Ricardo, welcome to the show. So glad to have you.

B No. Thank you all for having me. I really appreciate it.

A So we're gonna drop your formal bio into the show notes, and we're going to begin to do a roadmap of your career because I think it's truly an interesting one to follow. But we we kind of open each episode by asking our guests to let us know if there's anything else you wanna share that might not be in your formal bio.

B Yeah. I would say that I'm obviously very, passionate about helping folks in the creative fields and creative industries learn about digital transformation, but also, I would say explore and play more is definitely, the key to the game here. I don't think I'm I would have gotten to where I am at today if I wasn't ready to take some challenges and be ready to to fail at something. So I think that's part part of that practice is is an active task, I guess.

A Yeah. It's honestly refreshing to me how you kind of open up with failure being a part of the the transformation process as well as the growth process. So so thank you for that. Why don't we let everyone hear a little bit about your career path, which very much kind of started in their traditional architecture space and and how it's evolved since then?

B Yeah. For sure. I I think it would come to no surprise to a bunch of folks listening in that I was one of those that always wanted to be an architect. I grew up in San Herman, Puerto Rico, which is one of the oldest towns in the Americas, surrounded by historic architecture. So it came to me as a natural thing being the grandson of a builder, and and my dad was in our real estate banking that I was I just fell into it. It was never really a choice. It's just something that it was always something I wanted to do. So I went to school in Puerto Rico at Polytechnic University.

B I worked there for a while, even as an entry level architect in a boutique firm over there. I had a few projects done. And over there, I think the great thing is practice is less segmented. So in being a little bit more old school, you're allowed at a very young stage in your career to run projects, deal with clients, make your own decisions, and learn from those. Then I was hired to go headhunter to come to DC and work for Gensler. I didn't know how prestigious Orbigo a firm Gensler had when I was interviewing for it. So it was interesting to me, especially once I moved over. The funny part is it was my roommate that urged me to go and interview for them and we would move both together.

B So eventually, he didn't move, but I did. And that's that's the funny part. I was there for a couple of years and surprised about the scale and variety of projects and the way they manage their business. Right? The way they practice architecture. That was just around where the recession in 2,008, 9 hit, and I had met my now wife, and we decided to move in together. And then within a month, I was laid off. So so it was fun. As you can imagine, both young professionals and just met relatively short.

B I was like, so, honey, you're gonna have to support me and take care of me for a while. That worked out, obviously. Then I worked for a A and E firm that mostly did Department of Defense work. And I think that's where I started shifting a bit into how I was growing my career. I became the youngest project manager they had, a licensed and I was running projects, embassy projects in several parts of the world and traveling. So I started traveling quite a bit internationally. After that, I worked for DC's oldest native firm, WVG, and I did the switch to work for interiors. And the fun part about that was it was very high paced and and creative.

B I found it a lot more creative than doing base building work, especially in DC with the myriad of rules and regulations. And I enjoyed working on projects that were maybe, at times a little bit bigger than the normal interior design scope, but smaller than what the the architectural studio would take on. They had some complexity or some exterior portions, and and that kind of gray area was where I was sitting at and liked my Before leaving that practice, I designed and or helped, design and put together sushi restaurant project in Times Square, which ended up being winning in a very short amount of time, 2 Michelin Stars. I was super proud of it. We were all super proud of it. Sadly, it didn't survive the pandemic. I I guess everyone would guess then if that's the growth path, then what made me shift to something else. And I had always been kind of like a techy nerd kind of guy.

B I always like gadgets. I always like technology. I took a few programming, basic and c plus plus in college and HTML, that kind of stuff as electives. And I was always trying to implement new technology or new software within our practices that will make our lives easier being in the trenches with the teams. Right? Whether that was doing BIM implementation at the time in several spots or teaching and and doing public speaking. Obviously, we haven't talked about the leadership development stuff, which Evelyn, that's how we met. But I needed an avenue to explore that in a very focused way, in a way that I would be allowed to have more autonomy to explore the emerging technology side of the construction industry. And that's what took me, to take the decision to make traditional practice.

A For me, one of the problems that I see or one of the opportunities that I wish that we would take up more than is actually digital implementation in practice and, and the lack of that. So, so it's interesting me for me to hear about kind of you leaving traditional practice, but then what essentially you're saying is the road that you wanted to go on that you actually couldn't find in practice at the time, And, arguably, it still might not exist in practice in the way that you would hope it would.

B Yeah. That that's absolutely right. It it definitely doesn't still exist. I don't think firms have a good grasp on how innovation is handled at a professional level. I see if you look at the stats behind this, if you look at what the tech industry or even some traditional industries spend on innovation or r and d within their particular practices, it tends to be between the 3 6%. If you look at tech, it tends to be between the 12 to 24% range. When you look at the very few, studies that have been done in the realm of, architecture specifically, it tends to be under 1%. So I think that is a gap that affects business continuity directly.

B And I see it as a lack of sophistication the same way as you would have someone doing your accounting or, you know, managing your finances at your firm or dealing with your legal counsel and that kind of consultancy department. The other issue with that is when it is addressed, it tends to fall on the hands or or push into the hands of either emerging professionals, arguably the people that have less agency within firms to act on business decisions, especially ones that require some kind of enterprise of, level budgets, and IT professionals that mostly deal with systems and infrastructure. So people think question I get a lot asked is, so when you talk about these I do a lot of public speaking nationally, internationally. People ask me, like, when you talk to these audiences, how do they look like? The, people think that these are rooms full of young folks early in their careers willing to do all these tasks. But I'm mostly interested in reaching the the average age of someone in construction. I've heard that that number is around 53 years old. There's other numbers that present now a little bit younger given the generational change, But it tends to be mid to senior level folks at firms, which and I'm generalizing greatly, so there'll be people that might take offense to this, tend to have, less of exposure at the educational level of what it is to operate some kind of business in the 21st century, especially within the construction realm. There's other stats that support that, but there there are no real avenues in terms of a framework on how we run innovation projects, how we develop new intellectual property that we can monetize to offer new services, to connect and get more more provide more value to clients.

B The approach seems to always be like cherry on on top of the sundae kind of thing if if we have some budget, unfortunately.

A And I wish it's just something that we could, like, flip a lever. Right? Like, there there's a bigger problem. I think Janine did this wonderful thing at the end of last season when she was trying to map out everything that we had talked about over the course of a 140 episodes at Practice Disrupted. And the problem is there's not one easy fix or one easy solution for for this industry, a greater percentage towards research, you know, that all falls in this quote unquote, overhead bucket, is if we make enough money to set aside that money. Yep. Right. So not necessarily the rabbit hole that I want for for us to go down, but I mean, it's interesting I would hope for our listeners to hear about where other industries are putting money in, and I think that goes to the state we find ourselves where we are seemingly moving so much slower than other industries, especially in this field. But relative to your own career, you know, now you've left traditional practice.

A You you have all of these facts around innovation spending. Where is that coming from? How did your career evolve more after after you left traditional practice? And then and then frankly, beyond even your interest in BIM and and technology solutions.

B Right. But that was the the hook or or the jump that that took me from traditional practice to this nontraditional path. Funny enough, I answered a role for a global virtual design and construction specialist with a focus on BIM that, at the time, BASF had. BSF being the kind of multinational manufacturer, that's across, like, 4 different particles and had a 150,000 employees at the time. Their thought process was that in an effort to engage better with architects and engineers, they needed to digitize all their content and provide digital twin type of catalog of their product offerings so architects and engineers would use it more. And it would serve as a means of pool marketing for that. That process ultimately failed. And I I like talking about failure because I think we need to be transparent about it.

B For many reasons, I I don't think the construction industry, particularly at the hard construction industry where we were working out, which was mostly concrete related products, wasn't ready for that. Meaning, they didn't have, like, the skill set in house. They didn't see that as a need. And, frankly, your architects engineers didn't consume that level of information that way. Because particularly, that product segment or or, types of product segments are mostly handled by specification writers that work in Word. So with time, that role developed into being the in house, person to do emerging tech scouting. And that's where I started kind of expanding my my wings a little bit and looking at emerging tech within the construction industry, wherever it happens in the world, partnering with startups. I thought I was going into a path that was more progressive than the architecture office.

B In reality, it was, the opposite. But it also provided me the latitude to be able to search and find my own path within these things and and then bring that information as the in house expert of the SME. And through that was that I was able since since we didn't have any kind of internal technology development, and I should specify that that's digital technology, development because for manufacturers, technology is their product. That was the distinction I had to learn. But I started, partnering with these startups that are doing different things, providing new kind of, services, whether it was augmented reality related or drones or, types of laser scans, product configurators. We tried a whole bunch of stuff, but I had to establish a framework for that. And that got me moving into the next role that I had in the in the company, which happened in the midst of a, large transaction where BASF offloaded their complete portfolio that had to do with the construction industry for the most part. And they transitioned the vertical, sold it to a private equity firm, and eventually sold it to their largest competitor.

B In that process, I had to do I had to do a bit of a jump over some gaps that I had in terms of my business knowledge. But I was, I think at the right place at the right time, where there was a need by the organization to have someone that look at this as a system or a series of systems that are interconnected. And I then supported both the transition from one organization type to another and that's a whole setup of of pulling a business out of to another that needs to serve as a standalone. And as a standalone, it means that you need to develop the frameworks for the IT infrastructure, their marketing infrastructure, their ERP or, the enterprise resource planning structure globally. And in starting that business, you learn a lot. We deal with a bunch of these, high paid consultants with the names that you all know about, while at the same time fulfilling a new role, which was running an internal, ideation program, which means we were trying to find new ideas that every company has because I think companies are usually very aware. Their employees are very aware of the problems that happen within and how they could make their lives easier. So we set up out with a grow global process of identifying what these were, And people pitch them.

B And normally, employees would pitch these to us as ideas. We we gave them a a business model canvas. We instructed them how to do it, and we sourced a 133 ideas for the business with a very tight, I would say, definition. They have to be new digital business. New digital business means it's outward looking, so meaning not internal optimizations, and that they could generate new revenue, from new sources. That was a definition we gave it. Of course, that's not the only way you could go about this, but that took the a 133 ideas into 22 that we applied with the definition or that complied with that definition. And of those around, I would say, at the most, it doesn't really had legs that could be turned into something.

B And then the top 2 or 2 or 3 were the ones that the executive committee and the executive leadership was willing to put money on.

A I think, realistically, like, those aren't dissimilar odds if you were a VC, for instance, and getting all of these proposals. I feel like the odds are very similar in terms of, like, what they decide actually is is legitimate and is is developed enough to kind of further invest in.

B Right. And the cool part about that is the at least in our structure, the way we handled it was this effort was housed initially under the corporate development team. I sit in the brand management team under marketing, digital marketing, and we can get into that in a minute. But being under the corporate development umbrella meant that I had resources that I could rely on that knew about mergers and acquisitions and venture capital funding and had contacts in that. And there was legal counsel that I could reach out about deals, how do you structure some of these memorandums of understanding or or intense letters. So I think that ultimately worked out. What happening in the middle of of this huge multibillion euro transaction I mean, I say euro because even though I work in the US, my team is completely in Europe, in Germany, for the most part. I had to shift my focus and was asked to put these on hold and and lead the digital marketing team through that divestiture and setting up the the new ecosystem.

A And and that's kind of your current title, right, of CMO, so chief marketing officer or global head of digital marketing excellence for the Master Builder Solutions.

B Yes. Yes. Exactly. That's kinda where we land, where I'm at right now, which means and it's interesting because I'm doing a lot of things I didn't expect to do in the past or really was trained to do. I've had to learn and on the go. I think our company has been very good also in providing the access to learning resources that I need. If there was a course I wanted to sign up, it was like no questions asked. It's like, go ahead and do it.

B Bring back the information, share it with us. So that was great. But in this, under the digital marketing umbrella, I handle social media. We handle more of traditional marketing campaigns. I have a counterpart in Europe that does that as as a communications person to me being more the digital person. I also manage the whole infrastructure or setup for the website infrastructure or or or I guess you would call it architecture. And it's crazy because that means I manage the website globally in every country. I have, and deal with providers for for those kind of things.

B And it's not like at at this scale, it's not like having a website on on one of these platforms like Wix or Squarespace. You really are dealing with these platforms that are almost custom made for this that have a myriad of providers that either deal with tag management, your domains. The domain requirements to register them in every country is different, so there's some governance stuff tied to it. There's some beta policy and privacy companies that deal with that so that you meet GDPR, the beta privacy section policies in from the European Union. So it's all this web of different things that make me honestly feel like I'm back in architecture to a certain extent as being like the main orchestrator, making sure that everyone sees a big picture and the part they play in that big picture bringing something across. So, yeah. So it so so it's been it's been fun doing with with that.

A When I jokingly say I feel like you've ended up in places that you didn't even really imagine your career to go, I feel like that's where you kind of find yourself now. But in the meantime, you've also threw bites and mortar, especially on Instagram. I would say you were one of the first movers exploring definitely mid journey, but other visual applications of AI in not necessarily just an architecture space, but an artist space with an with an architecture lens. So what what drove that interest there? And, you know, let everyone know your Instagram handle so we can send people that way too.

B Right. So you can look or find me under BYTES and mortar, and that's spelled out and, so almost like brakes and mortar. So it's bytes, b y t e s, and mortar. And also my website, has all the info and links with which is byte bytesandmortar.com. So this story is a little bit serendipitous. Every January or February, I would get reached out by some type of publication, whether it was one of the architecture magazines or some of the magazines and kind of more construction related magazines in in Europe. Asking about what are the trends that folks in the industry should be looking at in terms of emerging technologies. Eventually, we turned this into a bit of a a program in house, and we brought it in house instead of publishing through through the magazines.

B We do it through our own blog because we saw a lot of value into it and we invite people and all that. And I decided that if I wanted to continue supporting and speaking with folks in the construction industry about emerging transformation. I should do a deep dive into one of the trends that I knew least about and take my own self through the pieces of learning about something that I was uncomfortable with. And for a random reason, because there was really no real explanation behind this is, I I had, I took the decision of exploring AI. I I was looking at 9 trends or macro trends that year. AI was one of them. So I said, I'm gonna look at this one a little bit closer. And I started reaching out to all the folks that I met in my techs kinda scouting role about what was happening.

B And it was through that that I was invited to take part of MidJourney's closed beta. So MidJourney, I think, launched in they're closed beta in November to December of 2021, I believe. And at very early in January, I was, like, all already on board and providing, feedback and all that kind of stuff. Interacting with the folks that were developing this early. So there were probably, you know, a couple hundred people on the platform at the time. But that was just, I was lucky. Honestly, there was nothing other than that. I went through some people I met.

B They gave me an invite, and then that turned into an invite to Stable Diffusion's closed beta and, eventually, what was a stand alone DALL E as well. And it really became an obsession. People say you shouldn't use the word passion, but, no, it became an obsession. I was generating and creating images initially of things I've so my outlook was very naive. It's like, let me look at these worlds that are in my head that I'll never get to see. Inspired by movies or or, you know, these fantasies that I think everyone with a very visual mind and creative mind has. And I just kept at it. And with time, I felt, honestly, through someone I met in early in in school who was doing being a composer for films in in Hollywood, he urged me to, like, share them on now the insta my Instagram account.

B So before I even share them, I would just send it to a few friends. Look at this. It's cool. They're like, no. No. There's some really good stuff here. You should share it more open. I started sharing it, and I started to gravitate to certain styles or pursuits that I wanted to explore.

B I found it it became less of a play and more as a means of exploring and expressing myself in a different way. I didn't set out. I never thought I would be like a digital artist or anything like that. I mean, the term's still kind of, it's a little bit weird to me. But but that all started coming together in very focused ways. And this has about happened in parallel. The other thing that I think is important to be genuine about is that this happened at the same time that I had a very downturn in my health. And this became a bit as, like, a therapeutic output to channel and manage the stress, the trauma, the concerns that you have about your health and your mortality, and putting them in some kind of creative outlet instead of, like, just dwelling on them.

B So it's a very genuine kind of discussion, the stuff that I put out there. It's it's not you know, there's people out there that use a lot of these tools as a means of monetizing them or selling t shirts or means of real exploration. So the interesting part was that through then AIADC chapter president, Yisel Santos, which some of you probably know quite well, She alerted me that AIBC was looking to do an exhibition around the month of September 23, September of 2023, around the topic of climate change and kind of like the urban environment and the implications of that. And I'm like, well, I got something. I have been working on processing the trauma of Puerto Rico's challenges after hurricane Maria from the perspective of someone that experienced it from the outside and which was very traumatic. And if you talk to any Puerto Rican about this, they'll be able to connect with it in a very real way, especially those that are in the diaspora. How they felt not knowing anything about their families for a couple weeks and that the only connection that they had to what was happening was occurring through the eyes of reporters on the ground than what you see in the news instead of, like, your own people. Imagine not knowing whether your family is dead or alive for a couple weeks and you're at work trying to figure this out.

B So, funnily enough, I got contacted by one of those shortwave operators, like the old school, CB radio folks From somewhere, it happened to and it happened twice from someone in North Carolina and someone in Florida. They called my personal number and said, we've made contact. I'm just relaying a message. We've made contact with your family in your hometown, and they're fine. Wow. So in the same afternoon, 2 people contacted me about this. 2 people that I didn't know. It shows that this version of analog technology at the time, right, still has a purpose in our society.

B And it was, in this case, to be able to communicate information. And, I've had family members in Argentina that even reached out to my family that way, just by relaying information from country to country. Very old school, but it it was super fascinating to me. And it was because in my hometown, people would line up when that happened, when the hurricane happened, at their local radio station to send messages to their family. And that's how we learn about that. So the artwork came as a response to dealing from without trauma from the outside, but at the same time, being given my architecture background, it has a very physical, constructive, urban kind of output. And we decided to put together this this exhibition, which opened on September, 13, 2023. My I had a big important surgery on September 14th.

B So I wasn't able to actually see it live until this past, you know, in late November or December, which was very interesting. But the support has been great. I think speaking about that process regarding how do you take these almost ephemeral sketches that you get from this hallucinating computer that generates images. Right? Whether it's MidJourney or Stable Ephesian or some of the other ones. And turn it into something that that you can produce and and put out there and feel comfortable that, you know, this is something we're sharing. It has an artistic value, was something I had to develop as a process. I would generate thousands of images looking for a particular subject and look, trying to steer the algorithm in a way and train it in a way that it would produce something consistently that to to my style and my liking. Do post production in Photoshop, integrate it into another algorithm, work on it a little bit there, go back to Photoshop, up scaling it with another algorithm.

B So it's up it ends up being a process very much like a project. And for that, you obviously use your architecture skills and your design skills because it's very, very similar. When bringing that information to real life, how do you turn this into a physical product? So this digital to physical, which some people call fidgetal exploration was also very interesting because I was keen on using up there. And I had to rely on finding production companies, manufacturers, and printers near me that were willing to take the adventure with me and try these things out and to humor this crazy person to just show up and say, hey. Can you print this on a piece of plywood? But it happened. We were able so during the exhibition is organized into the 5 stages of brief, and there's a set of images associated with these. These are on bitesandborder.com, by the way. It's called Present Futures.

B A bit of coining the term of when I go to speak about digital transformation, people tend to think, well, in the future, we'll use AI. In the future, we could do this without realizing that you're, in essence, a little bit talking about the past because all this already happened, especially around AI has been around for a decade. It's now that it's publicly available that we can use it without being so much into the research of it. So I have pieces that are printed in plywood. Some are, sublimated onto, metal roofing, like, corrugated metal roofing. I was very keen. One of the pieces that I like most is that one. It shows a kind of a refugee camp of sorts, like people receiving the basic needs.

B And I was very keen on on printing that with the blue hue of the tarps the female was giving up because it it's definitely a color that we associated a lot with that tragedy and with hurricanes in general. And we developed a way of printing this on tarps. That included finding the right ink that would accept, you know, that would work on the tarp and developing or, I would say, avoiding seeding it to the tarp so that I could distress it afterwards and then ink would fall. It would dilaminate a bit. A bit like the spalling that you would see and the cracking thing that you would see in the updated homes and buildings and, after after one of these calamities. So there's a temporal aspect to it that as that piece moves from gallery to gallery, it it'll it'll degrade eventually. Right? We added a light cedar at the end, so to limit that a little bit. But the idea is that you see that weathering.

B So I find that interaction really fascinating, how you turn these things from from the digital to the physical and and how you tie in your personal background and your profession into it. This view that I think all all Puerto Ricans, the people that have gone back to their home native countries, And after something like this happens and you fly over, you know, you fly over it the first time, and you get a very visceral reaction to that. For us, and I think this is probably shared across all Puerto Ricans is that you flew over the island the first time and you just saw this like grid or texture of blue popping from the tarps that everyone was using on the roofs. So there's a piece that we we supplement it on aluminum, or it's actually a triptychler streak that that looks like a satellite view with these blue kind of tones and these fractured urban landscape. So those are a few that I that I'm really into right now. And and I say that the the fortune and the blessing of some folks back in the island becoming mentors to me in this in this new search even though they don't fully understand it because they're well known curators and artists. They have served as as mentor, providing critique without me really even having to ask it of them. So they supported me along the way.

B They opened new doors. And parts of this exhibition are going to be shared now in Puerto Rico's Polygraphica, which used to be a Biennale that started in 19 fifties, where artists from the island and the whole Caribbean would come in and exhibit their works. And I was obviously very honored to to be chosen to them. So in a whirlwind.

A Yeah. And thank you for, like, being so open and sharing about kind of your own struggle with health throughout this transformation as well. The biggest question in my head is what's next for you, a CMO, AI? I've always said, you know, my next role, like, I'm going to have to create it. Like, it doesn't exist. I feel like you find yourself in a very similar situation. So what's next for you?

B So I think you hit the nail on the head with that one. It is a bit that it doesn't exist as a term. Right? We we try and fall within these boxes, but the reality of ourselves, but also what's happening in the market makes us expand those boxes and shatter them a bit. I've never been a big fan of like these labels and titles because usually they either constrain you or you don't live up to their expectation. One or the other. So I I have received a lot of interest from from firms, and even this is not in the construction industry, about helping them with digital transformation. I think the type of experience that I have with doing these, like, multibillion dollar euro divestitures from a technical side, it wasn't something I set out to obtain, but I have it nonetheless. And and I think it's very valuable to translate that experience to other scales.

B So I'll remain very passionate and committed to helping folks in the creative industry navigate those streams. I've seen some consulting there. I also had the the fortune of now helping University of Pennsylvania through Weitzman's Department of Executive Learning to develop a curriculum of, that serves as an introduction to architects and designers on image generation and AI at a very introductory level. My goal is for that to turn into kind of something that colleges look at at a broader sense. Meaning, this is a skill that is taught at an intro to expert level because that's what the market needs. It's a means of leapfrogging a generation of talent that don't have to come that can come in different with the opportunity to lead instead of being in a position where they're always, you know, at the bottom of the rung. And and I think I think that's important. I think more and more, this this is something that not only we have to teach at schools, it has to be taught to teachers and to executive executive leaderships in firms.

B Those are usually, I would say, the goals because they have more bearing on how this makes decision. But I I firmly believe that the approach that firms have to AI, and it's many manifestations. Obviously, we talked about the generative images kind of stuff. But on the business operations side, where there's, I think, arguably more value, their approach that firms have to that will determine whether they will have contemporary business practices that are sustainable or whether they'll have, boutique artisan shops. It's not that one has less value than the other. It's a matter of competing in a market that has some needs and you need to meet some expectations. You know, a 100 years ago, you could have a portrait of your family done by a very talented artist and hung it hang it on your wall. Now we switch out, you know, bring out our phones from our pockets, take a snapshot and send it through everyone on in the holidays.

B Right? No. There's still people that do portraits and oil that way. But I see that at a very similar situation. Do you want to be the artisan that's perfect at doing these portraits, the oil that gets contacted for these very niche work? Or do you wanna have a practice that can feed a normal market? And I think either decision, from my sense, there there's no judgment. Either decision is valid, but you have to make one. Because otherwise, it'll be made for you. Last thing I would wanna see is more and more firms and businesses close shop because they haven't been able to fill up at the speed they need to. But the changes with AI are so large in scale that are traditional means of of being able to work with them, both at institutional organizational levels, but also at legal and market dynamics.

B It it is beyond that if you look at that. So it's not an exponential growth. I've heard it discussed in terms of logarithmic growth. We can't, as a culture, cope with it at the speed it's going at. So I think it we're gonna need people that are technology savvy and trained, but that are equally trained in the humanities, which is tends to be what Silicon Valley tends to lack when we go to these techno utilitopias.

A I totally agree with I was posting I was playing around with LinkedIn earlier this year and I posted that, you know, with this resurgence of AI, being human is more important than ever, essentially. And also, frankly, I think it's important for more architects to be engaging and to to have a voice in the development of a lot of these tools. Because right now, we're not on the development end, we're just on kind of the, we're the receivers of, of these tools that are being used. So 2 more questions to wrap things up. As a firm leader, what should I be doing tomorrow to begin thinking about all of this? And then as an emerging professional, and I know you have a tremendous connection with emerging professionals, being kind of AIA's representative to the American Institute of Architecture Students and the liaison between the students and the AIA Organization. As an emerging professional in this space, what should I be looking at?

B So as a firm leader, I think one of the most important things is to analyze where your gaps are. If you have a gap in knowledge about this field, you need to figure out means, whether formal or informal, of plugging those holes. That means learning about current developments from reputable journals or or or sources of information online, getting immersed in those communities, or establishing type of, relationships with people on the outside of firms that could help you bring some of that information in. And establishing means of play, and by play, I mean real efforts or real programs within firms that allow people to develop and experiment and as part of their processes. And I would say in a more formal fashion. And by formal, I don't mean that, well, we have this project and over the course of it, this design team had to develop a way of making this happen. That I consider informal because it happened during the course of the project. Formal means that we're gonna set aside some time, some budget, and a team to work on this as a as a effort, as an endeavor.

B You report on it. You track it. You figure out what works. And if not, you work work on something else. I I call that play, but that play is formal. I mean, it it requires a commitment. And understanding that those are 2 very key ways of of filling that gap, I think it's it's important. Usually, firm owners ask me about the risk and liabilities and the ethics behind it.

B Of course, those are relevant, worthwhile subjects, but you can't start approaching them until you get your hands dirty. So if you're in a position where there's a lot of hesitation around that, I suggest just experiment it yourself. And that way, a lot of these conceptions will kinda come down. And and a lot of these technologies are they're not magic fixes. There's no magic behind them, and we also have to be a bit more balanced in our excitement about the new technology that it's gonna fix everything because it's happening now. A lot of it has to do with endemic things that that are cracked expense. From the emerging professional standpoint, I would say that if you could be an advocate for these and champion for these efforts, it would be great. It's something that you can bring to the table.

B You probably have more agility to attack it and play with it and and and figure out ways of of aligning these plays with business objectives. That tends to be revenue. That tends to be optimizations. It could be several things. Providing, you know, better success or or feedback with design results. I always say that as much as architecture deals with the physical world, I tend to find that people in technology have a more sense of who their users are than in data. Are they able to articulate their needs a whole lot better than designers that and and architecture firms that care about the object of the building more so than people that live within it. And the other thing for emerging folks would be to learn as much as you can, quickest way you can.

B I think at times, this information is probably more valuable than a lot of the other stuff that's required for us to learn at a very early stage. I've talked with multinational construction companies that have said that they foresee that through the usage of some of the, of AI technologies, particularly around production, their target is that the folks in the entry level to the 5 year range will will not be needed for production. So question here not that they're gonna be supplanted, Think about what those folks are gonna be doing and put yourself in a leadership situation on that. And I think if if firms really care about the future of the practice, they need to make sure that those folks at the entry level are upskilled enough in other things that are not production related, that are not at risk. You know? They're not in that 50 54% risk of being displaced by 2030. And I think that number is probably conservative. But the other thing is you probably would wanna work out a place that has some kind of approach to dealing with AI and running a sustainable practice. And you can ask whether they have formal programs that are doing this.

B What's their perspective or offerings regarding training and, helping you pay for for additional training that you probably didn't get in school or you're definitely not gonna get within the office setting. So that's very, very important. And I think if if a firm doesn't have that, I think it's a very clear indication that either you can help them grow it or they might need to look for something different.

A Hi, disruptors. Thank you for joining us today on an episode of Practice Disrupted. If you like the content for today's show, you can find all of our past episodes over on practice of architecture.com/podcast. Be a part of the conversation by joining me, our speakers, and other disruptors in our community at practice of architecture.com/community. Our social media handle is practice of arch. That's practice of a r c h. We'd love to hear from you, so feel free to drop us a DM and say hello. Tune in next week for a new conversation on change in the profession.