Architecture, And: Director of Product at Intelligent City

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 to this week's episode of Practice Disruptive. This week, we're bringing on Kristin Slaben to talk about her career path to becoming the director of product at Intelligence City and get her view on the expanding roles of architects within the built environment. As a director of product architect, Kristin brings the expertise and thought leadership in mass timber construction and low carbon building design to the team. Her extensive experience as an architect, developer, and product manager of mass timber buildings and prefabricated building products has helped drive national building code changes and an industry wide shift to more sustainable building practices. Her built work includes Carbon 12, the tallest CLT building in the US at completion.

A So hi, Kristen. Welcome to the show. Welcome to Practice Disrupted.

B Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

A Yeah. We're really excited to have you. We were just talking very briefly about all the many things that architects can actually do. And one of the reasons I love having these architecture and series is because I hear a lot of very typical responses relative to, you know, owners, owners rep, projects manager on the brokerage side, or or just a third party project manager, manufacturers rep. But I think we can do so much more, and that's one of the reasons why we we love having individuals like yourself on the show. So before we kick things off, we usually kinda start off with an icebreaker. We just had your bio in the intro. Is there anything else you'd like to add a little bit of color that will help us understand your story better or just something out of left field, I guess, completely to get us started?

B Yeah. I'll go for a left fielder. Something people don't know about me necessarily is that I have wanted to be an architect since I was, like, in middle school apparently. My mom told me that that's when I started saying this, but I only chose this career path after finding out that I could not be an astronaut because my eyesight was too terrible. So I really had wanted to be an astronaut. You know, I was thinking about going to pilot school so I could learn how to be a pilot, and how do I how do I actually make this happen for myself, and then it turns out biology was working against me.

A I do think though that if you were young again like, my son wants to be an astronaut, and I was like, do you wanna be an engineer? Do you wanna you know, they're sending all types of people Absolutely. To space these days.

B So I have not given up hope for myself.

A I was gonna say, there's still opportunity for you yet even given the eyesight. And there's definitely you know, we had a conversation with Melody Yashar about extraterrestrial architecture and the realities of that. So Yep. I feel like there's still hope for you yet. You can combine the best of both worlds.

B Yeah.

A I would love to talk about your your career path in practice. So, you know, start wherever you think is most comfortable. But I think we all started going to school, like, architecture school together. I don't wanna tell your story. So why don't you why don't you tell us a little bit about your career path?

B Sure. Yeah. So I went to school just like any architect. I I did it actually a little faster than normal. I graduated undergrad in 3 years and went straight into grad school rather than taking a year off to work or gain some experience there. Just knowing myself, I was in study mode, and that's kinda where I needed to stay in order to just like get it done.

A 3 years seems pretty intense, considering how intense any architecture program is.

B Yeah. My sort of general ed classes in the summers, and then and then crammed my semesters architecture. It didn't help that I was going to school in West Texas for undergrad, and it was that was not the the place for me. That's not where I belonged, So Got it. Yeah. Heads down. Just, you know yeah. Just working my way through, I think, my most productive and actually highest scoring term.

B I had, like, 21 credits that term. It was insane. But, yeah, so I stayed in that focus mode and really, you know, went through architecture school with the full goal of being licensed and doing, you know, architecture for the rest of my career, and I, you know, really enjoyed design and and doing everything that we're doing in school. And when I came out, I went into, you know, doing my AREs and and getting my internships and stuff and and did get licensed. So I am licensed in Oregon, but what I found out through that experience after kind of going I started in more traditional firms, you know, sort of both large and mid scale firms in Portland, and learned a lot there and and really understood more about the business of architecture and how things how decisions get made in projects, how decisions get made within firms, and how the career path actually progresses, and not just the romantic idea that we all have when we're in school about it and realized that traditional practice probably was not where I was gonna be most fulfilled. Yeah. So, you know, a few years out of school, I I went to go work for a firm called Path Architecture or, you know, also known as Kaiser Path in Portland. And that firm was great because we were doing development, design, and construction in house with a really small team.

B We were, like, you know, 5, 6, 7 people at any given time. So it was a lot of responsibility for a very small team and Ben Kiser, the owner of the company, really, for better or for worse, gave me a lot of rope and and gave and sort of expected that everyone could figure stuff out on their own, and and so, therefore, we got a lot of, sort of, you know, freedom and ownership over the work we were doing, and, you know, he's definitely not a micromanager, and that is the type of environment that I really thrived in was, you know, going into the deep end, figure it out, make stuff work, and and then, you know, just kinda high risk high reward situation, but also in a place where we were able to make decisions based off of our own values because we were the developer on the projects. And so that was a totally different type of practice than the traditional method of, you know, architects are working for developers and sort of half the time against the GC. Like, we were all sitting in the same room working together and working towards the same goals, and I think that was really, really good for me to understand there could be a different way of even doing traditional projects. Yeah. So that's kind of where it all started, my, you know, diversion from the traditional path. From there, you know, I worked, we did mass timber, we really sort of dove into that and learned a ton and drank our own Kool Aid and really believed in the sustainability benefits of building with renewable materials and natural materials and all of the benefits that could lead for human health and happiness. And it was really wonderful, like, having that amount of responsibility and control over projects, I think, really led to some really great work and an outsized impact for the the size of firm that we were, and the scale of projects that we were doing, we ended up setting code precedent nationally, and and, yeah, kind of making waves in the industry that we didn't even necessarily intend to to make.

B We were just trying to go about doing good work.

A I can see the gears of a few of my I mean, I know some small firm leaders out there that, like, really wanna be more progressive, and they're like I can can just see them asking, how did they fit all of that into a practice of a practice of that size? So absolutely.

B I think there's actually a lot of power in small small firms because small teams, it's a lot of every project is a lot of work, and it's kind of a miracle that anything gets built because it's so complicated. But I think small teams can be really efficient, and I think we often in the in the traditional practice of architecture maybe underestimate people's capabilities and sort of try to hold things tight more tightly than we need to sometimes. And I think if you can give people the the freedom to explore and grow within their role or even outside of their role, you know, people will surprise you. And and so I think there's a lot of power in that.

A I also think there's kind of a forcing mechanism, right, with a firm that size where you can't just do one thing. You have to kind of everyone has to kind of do all the things all the time. So yeah.

B Yep. Yeah. And then from there, I went to go work at Sidewalk Labs, which was an Alphabet company. We were doing prefab mass timber So I sort of pivoted even further away from architecture and into really product design and product management of prefab, you know, building materials and all using mass timber, all with an eye towards sustainability. I also led all of our sustainability work within that and the goal was really to reduce the complexity in projects because it is really hard to get anything built, and we just really believe that in order to make a scalable impact in sustainability, we needed to sort of simplify the way that we go about building buildings. And so taking a prefab approach really, you know, changed the way that I was thinking about projects. And now everything that I do is like, how do I systematize this? How do I actually define with measurable you know, parameters everything that I can about any given project or product or building system? What are we doing that we can simplify and try to repeat as much as possible, at least the approach, if not the actual, you know, exact geometry of the thing that we're doing. And that also, all of that prefab work at Sidewalk also led me to Intelligent City where I am now as Director of Product.

B And so my day to day job is really predefining as much as I can about very high quality sustainable housing before it even hits a project status, and that means working with our building systems team to make sure that everything that we're making on our factory floor is enabling really good housing for people. But also it's sort of taking a lot of what we learn intuitively in architectural school and a lot of what we are starting to do more with a lot of the, like, you know, well standards and other sort of sustainability standards and starting to measure the impacts on human health and on carbon and things like that, and really just trying to get granular with what it means to have good housing, what does that mean for, you know, light levels in your unit, what do we should we have a minimum standard, what is our air change per, you know, hour or per minute using natural ventilation? Like, how do we actually start to define using numbers and data good housing so that we don't have to actually take that from a blank piece of paper and hope that we can create something out of it based off at any given site.

A So, you know, in the move from Kaiser Group and Path Architecture to Sidewalk Labs, you adopted this new title called product manager. And I do think that there is an opportunity for architects to go from this project manager role into a kind of a product manager role. Can you talk to us just, like, about the the nuances or even the similarities of what those type of roles entail?

B Yeah. I mean, I was really lucky at Sidewalk Labs, which was an Alphabet company. It was heavily, obviously influenced by Google, and there were a lot of other products that we were developing within the company that I wasn't part of that were all digital products, not all, but heavily digital. And so I actually got to learn from people who were tech product managers, and they ran like product management 101 course at Sidewalk that anyone could join. And and we learned about how, you know, in the tech world, product managers actually operate. And my biggest takeaways were there are a lot of similarities between what we do with project management in architecture and what product management is generally. And I think there's a lot of skills that we learn in school and that we gain through practice that are really, really applicable to that and would really allow, like, a good transition and use of skills into this other totally different type of work. But the biggest takeaways for me was that in Product Management, it's a lot more methodical upfront about doing Product Market Fit Research, sort of testing your assumptions.

B As a Product Manager you're the person that cares the most about that product, you are fighting for it all the time, you are, you know, you're fighting for your team and their resources, and and it's really kind of about getting into the nitty gritty of what is this thing that we are delivering, to who, for what? Like exactly what are we making here? And it's not, you know, in architecture I think typically a developer is coming to us and saying, Hey, I want an office building and it's 5 stories and maybe it's a spec building or maybe it's for a build to suit tenant, but it needs to kind of work and be flexible over time. And our clients are the developers. But in product management, the end user is who you're designing for, I think. It's really like who's gonna be using this thing so that it has good product market fit so that it sells. And then in the world of what I'm doing in Intelligent City, we still our client is still the developer, but we've designed everything for the end user so that there's a clear demand on the market side for the buildings that we're making and the products that we're making. And so being really targeted about what geographies we're going into, what parameters we have to define in advance before we build any buildings. Yeah. A lot of that sort of upfront work that Product Managers do that architects don't necessarily do to that level of sort of discipline, I would say.

B And then of course the product, like the idea is that it's selling more than once. So you're not building a bespoke building and that's and then it's done and you're walking away from it. Like, you are building something, a product that can be sold over and over again and is scalable and is widely desirable and sort of has to be a little bit more broad in both more broad in what you're the the market you're trying to hit, but also more specific in, like, exactly what you're targeting and defining everything upfront.

A I also wanted to take an opportunity for you to just dive a little bit deeper in Intelligence City and what Intelligence City is as a company so people can understand kind of this role that you are currently in now. So tell us about Intelligence City.

B Yeah. So Intelligent City, we're a housing provider using prefab mass timber building components that we manufacture up outside of, Vancouver, British Columbia. We have an in house architectural team, so we can take projects all the way from conception through full design, and then into manufacturing and installation of, essentially the superstructure and envelope of the building, Corn Shell. So we make the structure, including columns and integrated floor cassettes with integrated mechanical and electrical, as well as an envelope panel system that is essentially unitized curtain wall, but using mass timber as the structural base and designed to passive house standards. So what we are trying to do is use our platform, which is our building systems and the software that supports that to scale high quality sustainable housing across North America using a prefab approach.

A What is the history of the founders of Intelligence City? Do they come from general contracting? Like, where did they get this idea to to develop the firm or the company?

B The founders are actually both architects. So it came out of, yeah, an architectural practice. The architecture firm that's associated with Intelligent City, LWPAC, is actually their original business. They started that 25 plus years ago at this point. And they were doing traditional architecture through that practice and realizing for a couple of reasons that the way that we were building wasn't really working very well for a lot of people. And part of that was they were building they designed and were gonna build or wanted to build housing, actually, housing that they then moved into and their office is in currently. And the impetus for, actually, this whole, I think, this whole thing was really that the transit company in Vancouver said, you have essentially 36 hours to build your building because we need to move the bus line and the bus line is run off of electrical power and the electrical lines are in the street and they're too close to your lot line to get a crane there. So, if we need to move the power lines for the buses, we we only have a short window.

B It can only be done over the weekend, and it's really expensive. So you're gonna either have to move it a bunch and pay a lot of money to move it a lot of times over the weekends or you're gonna have to build the building in 36 hours. And so they were like, okay, challenge accepted. Let's let's figure out how to do this, which led them to modular construction and building everything off of-site and then bringing it in and setting it in place over the course of a 36 hour window. So, yeah, that's kinda how it kicked off. The company until they couldn't really find a company that could do what they wanted to do, so they started Intelligent City to make it themselves. And at that time, it was, you know, it was a a volumetric modular factory. They were building these modules off-site, and they got the building built in that weekend essentially after everything was pre made in the factory.

B So that was, you know, 10 or more years ago at this point, and over the last 5, 6 years, a lot of a lot of code has changed around Mass Timber. They wanted to scale the Intelligent City Company and the Prefab and Modular, seeing how well it worked the first time, they wanted to scale that, but understood that they couldn't really do that with stick built over a certain scale and also, you know, really believed in this urban infill sort of typology that existed. And there's a lot of zoning around that allows you to go 6 plus stories, but concrete's really extensive unless you're doing a tower. And so there's this kind of you know, missing middle in a different sense than it's typically used, missing middle, like, mid scale housing that's sort of the 6 to 18 stories. So with the code changes with mass timber, understanding some of the challenges that they had using the the modular the volumetric modular with shipping and just kind of shipping air and and what that does to limitations on your range, they sort of retooled the company and said, alright. We're gonna do flat pack prefab instead of volumetric modular. We're gonna switch to mass timber so that we can go up to 18 stories, and we're really gonna do this as more of, like, an urban infill type of company that we're focused on. And that's where it is today.

A Yeah. So one of the reasons why I wanted to ask that so the follow-up question to that really then is how how do they or how do you identify as an intelligent city in terms of what type of company you are? So ICON, for instance, you know, they have their roots in general contracting, so I'm actually really excited to hear that Intelligent City kind of has their roots in architecture. But they identify kind of as this construction technologies company as the evolution of what they're doing with 3 d printing. But they're doing a lot more than, right, just the 3 d printing. So how does Intelligent City tend to self identify?

B Yeah. I mean, I think we identify more as, like, a a housing innovation company. We're specifically focused on housing. We are not a parts manufacturer, so we're not just selling ideally, we're not just selling off, you know, floor cassettes to projects that that need some kind of structure. Right? We're it's more integrated, and it's a good segue into a bit of, like, what the definition of product is because that changes depending on who what company you're talking to or even you know, what team within the company you might be talking to. And for us at Intelligent City, the the full housing solution, the full building is the product. It's not just the floor cassette or the facade panel or the columns. Those are just the building systems that allow us to do this housing.

B So I think, you know, where we might be different than other companies, we're not really just focused on the construction, we're focused on the design and the quality of the space and driving down costs through, you know, good design, wherever we can holistically, even if we're not making it. There's, you know, a ton of stuff that we don't make, we don't install in the building, but we still care deeply about both for the integration within our parts, because we do have integrated systems, you know, mechanical, electrical systems in our floor cassettes, but also because thinking through this in advance and really knowing exactly which levers to pull to get that 50 square feet in your apartment to work better so that it's a more usable space and maybe you can get an office out of it or something like that. Like those types of things are are really where our focus is and the technology enables

A that. So can you tell me then or tell our audience, our listeners, what does your day to day look like? And is that really a question that you can answer? Or is it, like, you know, ever ever evolving and and changing and and just kind of filling, like, the gaps where you need to fill things.

B It does change day to day. I am trying to be more focused about what my day looks like because I think as architects, we can fit in a lot of places and kinda help in a lot of areas. So that role of, like, firefighting within a team or a project sort of comes naturally to us. So I'm trying to not be that reactionary about the work that's happening and keep my view a little bit reactionary about the the work that's happening and keep my view a little bit forward thinking, you know, as far as what am I doing now that will obviously help what's happening in the team now, but also set up a system so that in the future, this is not something that we have to worry about so much. Yeah. It depends on it depends on the day. I mean, I have a lot of meetings. Of course, everybody does now, but, you know, my meetings are with clients.

B Sometimes they are with our internal team. We have, you know, discrete teams that are either the architectural team or the building systems team who's really focused on, you know, developing our our prefab building parts to, you know, a very minute level of detail, or the software team to understand, like, how can we actually take some of this design thinking and put it into our code so that we're not having to do a bunch of brain damage to figure out things that no one really cares about. Like, we just we just need it to be a repeatable, manufacturable thing, and it does not matter if the cladding profile is 9 and a quarter inches or 9 and a half inches, whatever works best for, you know, the placement of windows within the unit and and things like that. And so how do we automate that, right? Like how do we create these systems and sort of softwares around us that can help reduce some of those tension points within the design process? And then outside of meetings, it could look anything like putting together baseline buildings for our products to really give, you know, an off the shelf solution. If somebody has a a lot that generally fits the dimensions of one of our baseline products, they could just buy it. Or, you know, like I said, like, doing a lot of the definition work. So I actually something that product managers do is write product requirement documents, which is not something we do in architecture, and so I've got, you know, PRDs going for for our housing solutions and really trying to get down to everything that we need to define about, like, what are all the requirements for these for these products, these housing products. Yeah.

B It could be costing, like, doing a lot of, you know, costing both within our own systems, but also trying to work with general contractors to get them to bring subs to the table that are interested in working on an integrated approach. That's tough because, you know, they're used to doing what they're used to doing, and sometimes they're not super interested in in, you know, taking part of their scope and putting it into a factory. Right? But some subcontractors really are because they understand, like, this is gonna reduce the amount of time I have to spend in the field, and that's gonna make my profit margins bigger or, you know, whatever. So, yeah, it's it's a lot of varied work, but, generally, what I'm trying to do is kind of pull together a lot of these disparate pieces of the industry so that we do have this fully integrated approach.

A Is there anything that you miss about traditional practice at all in what you're doing today on your day to day?

B The only thing I miss, and it's minor, really, in the end is, and this is such an architecture response, but the only thing that I really miss is walking through a building I've designed. Like, there's something so satisfying about site visits and knowing every single detail of exactly that property and of that building and then seeing it built and get, you know, occupied at the end. Like, that's the best part of architecture. And stepping back into your product approach means that I am I'm touching all of our buildings, but I am not directly responsible for the design of that particular building on that particular site. I'm giving the template over to the architectural team, and then they are making the adjustments that are required for that site given the zoning, given the dimensions, like, whatever it is. So they're adopting the product work that I've I've done, but I lose that connection with it. Right? Because as soon as it goes onto a site, I don't know every single detail. And then when I go walk through a building, I don't know everything that's happening.

B And yeah. So I don't know. There's something satisfying about that that, you know, I'm not getting here, but what I am getting is instead of that, I get to work on lots of different projects and hopefully make a much bigger impact. And also, I really enjoy thinking through a lot of these problems in-depth, not on a deadline of a project. Right? Like, we're able to actually think through solutions and test things and iterate without having the pressures of you know, any given deadline. And that allows us, I think, to get to better solutions in the long term.

A Talk to me about the internal culture. I mean, you mentioned micromanaging at one point when you were going through your career trajectory. That is a trait that's not specific to architecture, but it's definitely something that I hear a lot about that happens in architecture and firms of all sizes. Because you're delivering this whole systems approach and you're working with technologists, and you're working with software developers and you're working with architects, you know, what type of ecosystem have you all created in terms of internal culture and professional development, and what does that look like?

B I think the best part of the work I'm doing now is that I have no idea how to do what some of my colleagues do. Like, I don't know anything about coding. I don't know how they do it, and that's so fun for me. Like, I can't micromanage them. They can't micromanage me because we have totally different skill sets, and they're complementary, and we're all working towards the same goals. Like, we're not trying to do the same thing, and if we did, we would fail. So I think there's yeah. It's something that both at Sidewalk and at Intelligent City have really appreciated is working with people that have totally different backgrounds, totally different skill sets.

B I don't know what they do day to day. I you know, and therefore, there's a level of trust that, you know, we've interviewed them. We've hired we've, you know, dug into their past work, and we've hired them because they're good. And so handing over a bit of trust to them and saying, look, you're good. Like, we hired you. You're good at what you do, and I don't know how to do it. So, you know, please tell me what I'm missing, or please tell me when I need to shift something so that it's making your job easier. I think it it kinda brings along the level of openness and collaboration that, you know, exists within architecture teams, but we all know what we're supposed we all kinda know what we're doing together in a way that I think could enable micromanagement if the culture wasn't good.

B And, yeah, I just don't know if it's as possible, frankly, when you're working with a team doing totally different types of work that you just can't do.

A Intelligence City, you've mentioned several times as a Vancouver team. I know that you're sitting in your your kitchen in New York. So how does how does that work too? Because there's a lot of architecture firms that I have been talking to lately, even some of the bigger firms that are trying to push people towards the office even more than they have previously. Like, you know, they started off with the 2 to 3 days, and in their head, they're thinking that's not enough. So how does Intelligent City collaborate?

B Yeah. So I I did spend my 1st year with a company in Vancouver, and so I have a good understanding of sort of how the office works, and and it was you know, my time was mostly in the office, but we do have a factory. And so I spent at least a day a week out at the factory as well, you know, talking to the people who work at the factory, understanding their day to day, and being able to go on the shop floor and sort of, like, get a measuring tape out and say, like, how wide is this piece of insulation actually? Like, it says 2 feet, but it's really not ever gonna actually be 2 feet. So what is it? You know, just kind of that level of detail and and variation. So I did spend, you know, a year there with them. Even when I was there, we were growing, and they've we've grown more beyond the capacity of either of those locations. So just by necessity, everyone most people are working at least one day a week remote or, like, at home just because there simply aren't enough desks. And then, you know, just trying to be efficient and sort of thoughtful about when people come in and coming in as a team and know, that way you can sort of gang your meetings up together and do some more, like, in person collaboration.

B My move to New York was not not related to me not wanting to be in the office. Like, I actually really enjoy being around other people. Like, sometimes the only person I see in a day is my husband, and that can be a lot. Kind of a lot of alone time. Right. So I I I do miss the social aspects and the collaborative aspects of being in the office with them. But for me, 1, I'm supporting projects across across the continent, across North America, including projects on the East Coast time zone, you know, primarily in Ontario and Toronto and and Ottawa. So there's an advantage from a purely just, like, meetings perspective to having me in this time zone and able to meet with those clients 3 hours ahead of when the West Coast could do it.

B And so there's that aspect of it. But, also, the team you know, my my team is small, and we're close, and we have multiple meetings a week just to talk about product. We have 2 team product team meetings a week, and then I have 1 on ones as well with with individuals depending on, you know, who it is, how frequent it is. And so we're just constantly in touch, and I honestly don't think it's hurt being remote at all. I go back, you know, just roughly once a quarter to Vancouver and then up to Toronto whenever is needed, maybe, you know, once every couple months. So I am traveling to accommodate the needs of, you know, being this far away from the team, and I'm sure that will change as various, you know, manufacturing things pick up or slow down and, you know, the needs change. But ultimately, being remote has actually allowed me to focus more specifically on product work and less on the sort of firefighting that I was mentioning before because I I, you know, I'm not there. So, I can't be the one to help them move insulation around the factory floor when they sort of are short staffed for some reason.

B And that's hard because it's like I know people are doing that and it's not their main job, right, but and I'm not there to help, but also it's given me a level of focus that that I have found really, really helpful to getting, you know, work the product work done and thinking about this, this sort of like future facing work rather than the, like, day to day, like, oh, no. This is happening, and we need somebody to, like, help step in and, you know, whatever. So, yeah, I think there's straight offs, but to be honest, the focus has been really, really helpful and just staying in constant communication with the team is is a necessity, but also that happens anyway. It's not that's never going away.

A I feel like people tend to forget how much we weren't in the office, even pre pandemic. Right? Especially as architects, there were days that I would be on the road going to site visits or client meetings and Sitting

B at the city for half a day. Yeah.

A Oh, yes. Yeah. Waiting for school board meetings to happen at, like, all hours of the evening. So listening to your career path, I feel like you were blessed with a little bit of kismet in terms of, kind of, the the switch from product to development, and then you really got into mass timber, and then you kind of ended up finding this company that's really focused on on mass timber. If I'm a new architect coming out of school, and I'm looking, and I'm listening, and I'm saying, I'm I'm more interested in going and working for a company like Intelligent City rather than a traditional practice? Like, what advice do you have for those individuals?

B Yeah. I mean, look, I'm certainly lucky because I happen to be working on a project that Ben Kiser was interested in, and so I'm pretty sure he interviewed me half because of this project that I was involved in, and he just wanted to know more about it. Right? And so, but in that, like, we clicked really well, and I got into this development path that kind of, you know, nudged me away from traditional architecture, and that that was really yeah. I'm I'm really lucky to have had that sort of nudge and then continued along the way. But I think and then the mass timber thing absolutely was also I mean, I'm really thankful that Ben is progressive and forward thinking and open to new things and, you know, he he was like, hey. There's this competition, like, this guy told me about. It was the Tallwood Building Competition and it's, you know, run through the USDA and Forest Service. Should we apply? Like, I don't know.

B What do you think? And so I was like, yeah. I don't know. Sure. Like, that sounds cool. And that's kind of how we got into it. So, you know, it's luck, but it's also sort of putting yourself in situations or in the path of people who are like minded with what you're aiming for, you know, a bit. I knew when I was interviewing and looking to switch over that Kaiser path or path architecture at the time was, like, really where the type of I wanted to try development. Like, I wanted to to do something a little different, and so that was an intentional move.

B And I actually interviewed with with them and then ended up taking a different job because they weren't ready to hire. And then almost a year later, they said, hey, you know, we're ready to hire. Are you you know, would you be interested in coming over? And and so I did. And so it wasn't like an immediate thing, and it was definitely something that was I was looking for, and I wasn't like out there interviewing for a 1,000,000 jobs. I was being really targeted about it. And then even recently and this is a lot easier to do now that now that I'm further in my career and have more experience, but also more confidence in my own abilities to actually support myself financially and and believe that I have some value that I could bring to teams, that it's not a one-sided relationship. Right? I have that confidence now, but when I was looking for a role between Sidewalk and Intelligent City, I was really, really specific about what I was looking for, and I was really open about that. I knew I wanted to stay in Mass Timber.

B I believed in the prefab business model that we were doing at Sidewalk even though that didn't pan out. And so I was I was really, really targeted, and that came from me understanding who I am and what I need in a team and those type of work that I was interested in, and also understanding that that is a very limited pool of companies because I'm very niche, like my experience and interest is super niche. And so having that and being really clear about it in my communication with companies had really helped sort of narrow the path to where I'm at now. And I got really positive feedback when I would say, hey, you know what? Like, this opportunity isn't right for me, this is why I wish you the best, but I'm just gonna, you know, step back from this conversation because it's not quite what I want, even though it's something that, you know, would pay well or whatever, like, whatever the incentives were, I just knew it wasn't what I wanted, and and I think people responded really well to that clarity and to, I guess, me being honest with myself and with them so that I didn't go into a situation where I wasn't going to be happy and end up leaving, you know, 6 months, a year later.

A I think that's amazing. And that too is something is a confidence that I found obviously a lot later in my career. And I asked myself how would I have given myself the confidence or even how can I give others that same similar confidence and and self worth and in this, like, very decisive versus indecisive decision making process towards towards what next? I literally had a call yesterday with an I get a lot of calls about alternative career paths, and they're, like, I just wanna go into tech. Or tell me about this strategy work that you do. And I was, like, oh, I don't necessarily actually know how to help you until you're able to kind to tell me what it is that you're really passionate about. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm empathetic to what they're going through because I feel like there's definitely a time when I was not able to articulate it as well as I can now.

B Yeah. I think it's a discovery process, and I don't think that anyone could have it right out of school. You know, I don't well, you might know you don't want what you don't want, which is good. Like, knowing what you don't want is the right first step. So then being targeted about trying things that you might like or you might want and being willing to give different things a shot, I think is, really important. I you know, like I said, I started my career at a large for Portland, anyway, a large scale sort of local firm, and we were doing institutional university work and airport work and things like that. And and I really liked my team, and I was learning a lot, but I learned a lot about the business practice that I wasn't thrilled with just generally, not specific to them even, just the industry. And and then I was like, you know, let me try something different.

B I'll go try maybe a medium sized firm. Maybe it's the size. Then if I can go to a smaller firm, I'll find some more fulfillment. And that didn't really work. And then, you know, Kaiser Path was tiny, but also totally different business models. I was like, well, let me try that and see if that sticks, you know. And and that kind of did, and then it did for a long time. And then, you know, it wasn't quite feeling, like, right anymore, and I was ready to leave Portland and kinda wanted to scale up my impact.

B So then I tried something new and went to sidewalk. So I think you have to sort of be willing to test some things out and understand that what's right for you in that moment might not be right for you forever, and it's okay to, like, explore and learn about what you do and don't want in your career. And you you owe it to yourself to figure that out because otherwise, you know, 25 years later, you're stuck in the same thing and you're not actually fulfilled.

A Yes. And I would love to add to that. It's okay to kind of take a misstep too in that exploration process. I feel there's a level of perfectionism that, as architects, we expect out of ourselves that translates into, I want my the next job to be the job Yeah. Without being willing to kind of take, 1, take a chance, or 2, if you don't know who you are, then then I don't know how you would identify what the next job is until until you test things out a little bit.

B Yeah. I mean, I was at one job for less than a year. Like I said, before I joined Kaiser Path, I was at the previous company for only 10 months. And, you know, they everyone says, like, oh, you should be at a job for at least 2 years. So it doesn't look like you're, you know, flaky or whatever. But I was like, I don't wanna be here, and I really wanna be there. And so I'm just gonna do it. Like, it's fine.

B Whatever. This wasn't the right fit. It's okay.

A So if there were more companies like Intelligent City operating in this space, what does it mean for the role architects continue to play in the built environment?

B Yeah. I get this question a lot from architects who are, you know, maybe interested in working with us or trying to figure out what it means for them. And I guess what I would say is, ideally, it gives them the flexibility to focus more of their fee and time on the fun stuff, and not so much the fee and time on the stuff that you really do not need to reinvent every time. Like, how fire stopping details work at slab edges. Like, you just don't need to, you know, draw that over and over and over again. It's It's the same detail, like, don't worry about it. And so I think there's, you know, I think there's still a ton of opportunity within what we're doing, and this is very intentional aspect to the program of the building, and, like, so much that happens within a building is not just, like, you know, exactly where your kitchen goes within the unit. It's, like, so much more than that.

B So I think there's still a huge role that architects need to play in these projects in a company like ours, and I think there's a lot of opportunity to create really interesting, you know, iterations on kind of what we're doing to progress even our side of it. If we're seeing from a lot of architects, there's a very specific desire for whatever, a type of clotting that we don't offer yet, then, okay, we know to go do the r and d to figure out if that clotting could work and how we might be able to deliver something better that the market wants, that they want. So I think there's a lot of collaboration that could still happen, and the more ideas that are on the table, the better. It's just hopefully taking some of the annoying parts of architecture away.

A Given where you are now and given the company that you are working in, what is your hope for the future of of architects? So we talked a little bit about architects working in a company like Intelligent City, but what is your hope for the future role that architects have more more broadly as the definition of who we are and how we practice continues to evolve?

B Yeah. That's a great question. You know, I think I mentioned that we have software developers in our team and, people doing a bunch of stuff that I have no idea how to do. A lot of them actually came from an architectural background. Most of them have an architectural education. And they're using those skills obviously to apply directly to the type of business that we're in, but they're doing software development. They are doing, you know, testing of these systems. They're they're writing robot code and, like, running robots on the factory floor.

B You know, it's a totally different type of thing, but they we're all coming from, not all of us, but a lot of us are coming from the same educational background. So I think there's a ton of opportunity for architects to pivot even within the space of the AEC industry. There's a lot of opportunity to look at how generative design or computational design could impact your practice, or you could tie into tech companies that are trying to provide products for architects and sort of provide a much deeper level of expertise and experience in the field than just a software developer could provide. And there's so much coming, I think, from a technology perspective, but also, you know, software technology, but also sort of material technology in the way that we are evolving our codes and trying to unify things across the country a little bit more, that there's so much opportunity for architects to sort of, like, tie into all of that in a way that is, you know, using their education, but more than that, using the skills that they learned through their education for something related or different. And I think there's a lot of opportunity in the sustainability world right now because there's a big focus on it and there's a big problem, obviously, that we all are facing with with our carbon emissions and and other things. And so I think there's a lot that's still to be determined of, like and it'll evolve. Right? So, like, thinking even about the products we're making, we're making them using mass timber, and we have a variety of suppliers that we're working with. But if somebody came to us and said, hey.

B We have this new product, and it's made out of this other, you know, biogenic material. And it's not exactly trees. It's something slightly different, but you can use it. It has the same or better strength properties and fire properties, and you can use it as a replacement. Like, we'd be completely open to it. So there's this, like, iterative nature to what, at least, we're doing in the product world that you can actually start to integrate these new technologies, whether they're digital or or physical, into the work that you're doing in a way that is a bit different than the bespoke architecture project, but uses a lot of those same analytical skills, you know, design thinking, all of that still applies.

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.

B Be a part of

A 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.