Back to The Drawing Board
Back to The Drawing Board
Back to The Drawing Board - S3 E6 - The Evolution and Future of Architects
Ever wondered about the masterminds behind the majestic pyramids or the soaring skyscrapers that define city skylines? Our latest episode takes you through time, unraveling the history of architecture from the era of Imhotep to the present day, where architects blend creativity with rigorous engineering. We'll walk you through the ancient roots of the profession, spotlighting how legendary figures like Vitruvius and Palladio shaped the path for today's architects, who now navigate a labyrinth of design, engineering, and client expectations.
It's a balancing act between aesthetics and practicality, a theme we revisit as we dissect the symbiotic relationship between architects and engineers. Hear stories of behind-the-scenes collaboration that result in some of the world's most iconic structures and how this partnership fuels both innovation and challenges. We also peel back the layers of interior design trends, revealing how architects and designers overcome obstacles in creating functional yet visually captivating spaces. From the complexities of kitchen layouts within home extensions to the adaptive reuse of historical buildings, the narrative weaves together the art and science of shaping spaces that define our lives.
Looking ahead, we discuss the seismic shifts on the horizon for architecture and design. With sustainability no longer a buzzword but a necessity, our conversation pivots to the roles of retrofit assessors and the quest for carbon neutrality. We dive into how new technologies like BIM, 3D printing, and virtual reality are not just changing the game but expanding the playing field, offering architects and clients alike an immersive experience that could redefine the very essence of collaboration and creation. Join us as we forecast the trajectory of architectural innovation—a future where the tools may change, but the goal remains the same: to leave a lasting, positive mark on the world through design.
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Hello and welcome to Back to the Drum Board, an architecture podcast for students and professionals hosted by me, phil Wanda-Smith, architect and Director of PWS Architecture and Design, and this is my co-host and intern. See you all, hello.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:In this episode we're going to be talking about the role of the architect, the ever adapting and changing role of the architect, and we'll be running through sort of a brief history. Obviously, with it being history, it's probably about as accurate as any written record from those times will be. Moving on to what we do these days, what we think is going to come in the future, maybe a lot of things that we talked about and swiftly concluded with the conclusion. Yes, we'll conclude with the conclusion. It's a good place to start, so we start at the beginning. So at least 2700 years before Christ was born, when the step pyramid for Pharaoh Joseph.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:I'll say the name. Do you want me to just do?
Speaker 1:all of the names. Yes, it was built by Imhotep, the first architect in history known by name, apparently, but the word architect these days comes from a Latin word, architectus, which comes from the Greek, which I'm not going to try and pronounce, go on, well, I've not even written it down. It's slightly the wrong alphabet though. Yeah, exactly Arctecton, or something which is composed of two parts Archaethon, who be the first, or who commands, and Tecton, builder. So I think it's traditionally sort of phrased, especially when I learn that you need a master builder, so you are the one, traditionally sort of phrased, especially when I learned at uni as master builder, so you are the one in charge of the building.
Speaker 1:There's a great TV show about that. Yeah, I think I believe there is, but it's often assumed that the architect profession dates back to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians and Romans, although the origins of the word dates back to around this time rather than sort of all the way back into the Egyptians. So Vesuvius Polyon, born around 80-70 BC and died after 15 BC, one of the greatest idols, I'm not going to guess, not Polyon, but just to the irony, but he's often considered to be the first architect, known as the great Roman writer, engineer and builder. However, he wasn't strictly an architect and didn't sort of conform to what we know as an architect today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think to say he's the first recognized architect is interesting as well, because obviously I mean, as you say, even with the Egyptians, since that long we've got recordings of people designing buildings. He's the first recognised architect. It's interesting as well because obviously I mean, as you say, even with the Egyptians. You know since that long we've got recordings of people designing buildings. So I'm wondering what it is exactly that kind of qualified him for the name? Was it including the artistic aspect as well as the engineering aspect?
Speaker 1:I don't know, it's just the term that appeared. I mean, I suppose, once upon a time when you think about those, the pyramids and everything. I guess the term architect didn't exist, but it's kind of that role has trickled down into what we do today. But they did everything. You know they were probably involved maybe it's not involved with placing every stone, but you know, telling where each stone would go down to, like the basics, when we move on to stuff like the engineering side of things further down the line. They were using those basic principles and those mechanisms or simple mechanisms or something. They were using those and that's what we today would probably refer to as engineering rather than architecture. But then, whilst they didn't refer to it as architecture, it's what turned into architecture further down the line.
Speaker 2:I wonder how broad their job was as well if they were doing everything, if they were saying this many stones, or if they had back then the full quantities of it.
Speaker 1:I mean, I know of there are certain ones where that's true, probably further down the line, but it's true that they would do the quantities of it, which is bonkers. But to think of these days I would never. If someone came to me saying, oh can you call me a bill of quantities, or whatever, I would likely be passing that on to one of our quantity surveyors. It's such a strange thing. But yeah, then the modern term architect dates back to about the mid 16th century, from the French architect with an e on the end and the Italian architetto, originating from the Greek, as mentioned before, where arpi means chief, and then builder, tech, meaning builder. So that's sort of the it's all kind of come from the same language variant, and then sort of the first architect practicing the way that we view the profession today is Palladio, who worked almost entirely based in Italy. There's a lot of good ones in Italy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there is, I think, but he's regarded as probably the greatest and most prominent architect of the 16th century, but he's known as kind of the first example because of his use of experimentation with materials suiting individual client needs.
Speaker 2:even then, he's still doing very yeah, he's still doing very. Typical, always Roman designs even at that point. Yeah, I mean, he's placed sort of 16th century is a fair bit after they fizzled out, and it's impressive just how long that style carried on. For yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:Even into Gothic. You can kind of call back. I suppose you then look at that as there was a slow progression because information was slow. These days you have a progression of styles, because I can look at Pinterest or I can Google images and style and steal bits from that. A lot of the stuff that they did was to do with the harmony of their culture and the time that it was built. But then these practices kind of varied enormously during the 16th century and things like architects, like Blady Onalesi, large numbers of commission, larger numbers than their predecessors, but neither of them were also attached to kind of great cause patrons, churches, anything like that. These were sort of individual people they were designing for and they were also not obligated at this point to start supervising the overall construction, which often they did, apparently, but they didn't have to and it seems to be less and less common at this time. That's part of it, like that kind of the role of builder master number seems to have separated itself.
Speaker 2:I wonder as well, when you, when you see about, when you hear about all of these old architects and they've always designed these great buildings but I wonder if they actually had architects with like just everyday people's houses, or if people would have to learn and, like you'd have, just like a mason who would come in and just knew how to put up the walls of the house and a joiner who just knew how, obviously, maybe even they did it all. But maybe if you just had someone in your, in your area, who kind of knew how to construct houses, yeah, and would they draw up the plans or would they go?
Speaker 1:there's a small job that doesn't need them well, I know, when my parents had like their house in Franston, they did some renovation and extension work, but it was completely different to how it does here, where they had like their mason. The mason came around and the mason was who organized all these people and did all of these things. But I wonder, if that's like a terminology thing, is he not just a project manager, what we would call a project manager? So there's probably a lot of linguistic barriers. But if he's the project manager as well as the mason, then he's multi-faceted, which is basically what was going on back then. It was a multifaceted profession. He founded the Jack of all trades, master of absolutely nothing. Well, but then you think about it, you look at some of the.
Speaker 2:I mean, you look at the actual designs that come out of it and you think clearly they were a master of something as well.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, we still can't work out how the pantheon stands Exactly, we'll give it that, but in terms of obviously, we'll always be English. I think Henry VIII decided to declare himself the head of the church in 1534 and started destroying a lot of the architecture. So there was lots of land and money about. So the word architect first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1563. One of the first Englishmen to call himself an architect was John Shute, in a publication in 1563. So his origins are unknown, but he seems to have trained as a painter and was sent to Italy by his employer, the Duke of Northumberland. Ooh, yeah, decent, just next door. But his ideas and his writings influenced others at the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but he worked for a lot of landowning politicians and servants, so a new, rich type People weren't even trained as architects, which I find is the interesting thing. They're trained as an artist and then for some reason learn about physics and then from there realise they can work out how to these structures are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so a lot of it seems to be studying buildings that have been built or studying forms and stuff that have been built, but a lot of it's like an apprenticeship route situation. There's a fine understanding anyway, looking at particularly like sort of the older, older, older architects seem to have just learnt it from those above them and worked their way up an apprenticeship group, rather than what we do now, which is obviously university. 700s of people took one place. Yeah, exactly, but yeah, so it was. You know, up until that point the state and the churches had designed their own buildings in-house. No individual designers were particularly known. I find that interesting.
Speaker 2:I was trying to remember. I couldn't remember the exact example, but I know we looked into certain monasteries where they would have one of their monks who would design it all and I wonder did God teach them? How did they find out about? How did they go from being this religious person to an architect? Or did they do it the other way around?
Speaker 1:It's probably more to do with having learnings on paper and stuff.
Speaker 2:Like you would study the Bible and you would study the buildings and then from there you'd go, okay, let's make this cathedral.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but at that point in British history we had a lot of wealthy landowners that Henry had created through his salt, dissolving the church thing, and so now there became this section in which people were looking to build their own monument as a house, as a building, and so this kind of term of architect appears, because this person is now overseeing the design of this sometimes ridiculously large property for these ridiculously wealthy people, which isn't too dissimilar to what we're at now. In a way, obviously, the less ridiculously wealthy people can afford an architect to design them an extension of the house, but you also still get the likes of, I mean's that 12 bed mansion that I did like. You know, there's still these huge people wanting to make a statement with the massive properties and that's where they come in touch with the architect. But, like I say once upon a time, it was just to signify wealth and to signify power.
Speaker 2:I think that's interesting, I guess that's going back to what I was saying before. Did people with small houses who couldn't really afford it just have someone who knew how to build houses, or were there, even back then, architects who would organise it for smaller properties?
Speaker 1:Possibly not. I mean, you look at things like Soltaire where one guy who master planned this and then built a load of terraces and people just lived in those terraces. Yeah, you just buy the lives available. There's not many instances in Saltaire of them being altered like way back when. It's more kind of the modern era where they've been altered, where it's become more accessible. So I think the next section is it's become more accessible. So I think the next sort of the next section is what's changed?
Speaker 1:Um, so the main sort of type of that is that they had the division of skill set and almost like sort of fragmenting that jack of all trades covering all of the bases out into separate um sort of points. And I think the first obvious one to talk about is probably our most commonly used consultant, as we call them, is the engineer. So the science of mechanics, and sometimes known as Newtonian mechanics, is formed on is both forms of modern engineering, and so engineer became a profession in the 18th century, and then the of the term more narrowly applied to field in which mathematics and science were applied to the ends. Similarly, in addition to military and civil engineering, people then known as mechanic arts became incorporated into engineering. So these days we use them for we need to make a hole in the wall. Can you tell us how big this steel needs to be? Yeah, we'll work with them on steel framing. It might not be steel, could be tin frame, could be clt, could be bullet lab, could be um six panels.
Speaker 2:So they sort of almost became, I think perhaps as because obviously, way back when there is the architecture design, the whole structure. I was about to say actually I was to say obviously structures were more simple and there was less engineering to understand. But then when you look at, you know the Roman arches and the great viaducts, obviously they'd have an engineer work on that. But does the engineer also do the artistic side?
Speaker 1:Because they were all decorated Well it's because I think a lot of I'm sure I read something somewhere about the way that the arches are formed and basically someone going right. Okay, we know what the parable is and we know that structurally sound, how far can we stretch that before it starts to crumble under its own weight? So there's a lot of trial and error that I imagine happened back then. But I think a lot of this engineering stuff has come from that kind of the ambition of the design. Things were very simple back then, but now everyone wants a cantilever, everyone wants 20 metres of glass here and there and wants to make minimal detail and stuff, and the only way to get around that is with a really good engineer, and so as that started to happen, it's become more and more common.
Speaker 2:I mean, you couldn't have got away doing things like the flat iron in the Empire State Building without that kind of yeah without those, but then if the engineer has the artistic sense as well, then would you actually have needed the art effect or could they have done the whole thing obviously. I want to say say, as buildings get bigger, it becomes more and more to handle. But when you look at it, that's the thing when you look at the scale of some of those ancient monuments, how can you accredit that to one person?
Speaker 2:Yeah well, it's probably not, but how many opiates would they consume?
Speaker 1:But then I wonder if these people who did these massive monuments, this one architect that everyone goes oh, he's the first architect, he's the most amazing architect. Did they actually have all of their apprentices? Yeah, did they have 101 apprentices? Are they basically the modern Norman Foster? Yeah, possibly. We can't tell because from what we've been told they've done it. Has anybody got a time machine? I can borrow it, but yeah, it's one of those things where I think, like you say, what would an engineer want to do before architectural design of a building? Probably not like these days. Not these days, yeah. So it's a bit of an odd one. It's almost like, culturally, the job has been separated as well.
Speaker 2:As well as again to the scale where they have to be separated culturally. It's kind of at the point where we kind of wouldn't expect to do it. I'd like to be able to design the Eiffel Tower, but I wouldn't be expected to and I wouldn't go and learn how to do the engineering for that exact reason.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you would kind of. That's where it seems to have become a bit of a disjoint, where and there's a lot of memes about it where you have the architect design something and then by the time the engineers have their input, the design completely changes. So you can kind of see that sometimes where that's happening and the two are kind of drifting apart is because they're actually more and more problematic. So we work pretty closely with engineers at all stages, even at concept stage. If I think I'm doing something that's going to need a lot of attention, I'll start talking to the engineer up front. Yeah, if you were at, you call it faves and go. Can you just do a sanity check?
Speaker 2:over this to make sure this looks remotely feasible. It's one of them as well, as we have to have an understanding of it, because obviously to the most don't but yes, you do, yeah, well, we have to. Here we have an understanding of, like, how much of the roof do you span, how much of the ceiling you span, before you go okay, we're gonna have to have a ceiling here, we're gonna have to put some sort of structural support in. So we know, before we even send it to them, we can kind of go look, I think this is what it has to be, yeah, yeah. And then most of the time we go, yeah, but maybe it needs to be a bit bigger, or maybe it doesn't need to be that big and there there's rules of thumb to work with that people need to work on.
Speaker 1:Like you say, spanning side to side is like one in 20 bits of capital. It's one third hanging in, two thirds support and one to ten or whatever. So there's a lot of bits like that that help. But yeah, like you say, I think it's probably true that last statement is probably true of a lot of these things where there are rules of thumbs and you need to consider these things up front, even though you're palming them off to someone else further down the line to kind of understand it. And the further apart these two get, the more complicated and the more problems we're going to encounter during the delight process. But engineering wasn't really the sort of thing that we see as today. Obviously, back in the pyramid time they just knew triangles worked.
Speaker 2:How did they know the triangle worked? But if you drop a pile of sand and then look at it in section, you've got a triangle. Yeah, that's how the aliens did it. How could they point to the sky?
Speaker 1:like that without the aliens. Exactly no one ever pressed the aliens into their hard work. They just knew triangles worked. They knew arches worked. If you look at it, it's a simple repeating pattern. Some of it might not be a repeating pattern, but it's the principles of those repeating patterns that they take and put into things. We start moving into post and lintel construction pretty straightforward stuff. It's then how far apart can we put those posts before that lintel collapses? How wide can we make that arch before it collapses? How big can that triangle be? Inevitably, it can be absolutely massive. When you look at the pyramids, they're massive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I kind of want to know at what point did this division happen, because I know you're going to be sick of how many times you've heard me say this name in the past couple of days. I know I've said it to Gaudi a 150 years ago, when he was doing his stuff. 140 years ago when he kind of started getting big and he was kind of credited for doing it all. But his artistic side, when you look at his building, was so prominent but because these buildings are so interesting, built he must have had a good grasp and concept of the engineering of that.
Speaker 1:But if you look at some of his stuff and this is very oversimplified if you take some of his stuff and strip off the fancy bits that look beautiful, it definitely does come down to very basic construction methods have I shown you?
Speaker 2:have you seen a section of the loft space in Casa de Milia? I probably have, but I can't bring it. It's got very impressive masonry arches holding it up, but it's arches it's the principles that we've been using for hundreds of years.
Speaker 1:It's that, but he's taken it to a different scale.
Speaker 2:He's used different materials, probably experimented with various things, and then he's put gargoyles on it because they're pretty, and something like Casa Vista, where it's like straight sides, and then he's put gargoyles on it because they're pretty, yeah. And something like Cassavissians, where it's like straight sides, and then he kind of it kind of makes sense. Then you look at his, his stuff, as he kind of develops and it gets very curved and very weighty and you think, well, how is he doing which? Like he's got such a great concept of what, but at the same time he's put so much into the artistic side. It's like, how do you have time to do that? And it's because he's got like 10 famous projects and although they're all famous, he's got 10.
Speaker 1:It's probably best not to look at these, as you know how, when bacteria multiply and you go, probably wouldn't look at it like that. It's not as if oh, in 1842, architects and engineers became separate. I think it's probably one of those things that started a long time ago and then slowly started to like more and more, started to specialise in one area, and the two have grown further apart. That's how I look at it and I think you'll probably find that, like us, we're kind of jack-of-all-trades in here, but we all have special skill sets that we can specialise in within that. You probably find that that's how they worked back then and you had someone that specialised out into that engineering and someone that specialised into the design side of things.
Speaker 2:That's how I imagine it happened. Yeah, there was. Without that time machine. Yeah, I'll never know one thing.
Speaker 2:One project I find really interesting is called Palazzo Del Te. It it's this kind of mansion in Italy. It's single story, but it's designed by, I think it's called Giulio Romano and he designed the entire building and basically what it is. It's this giant shell and then the whole thing has been like clad in plastic which has been carefully carved to look like real. But he designed it so carefully. He even every room has a mural in it. I think he painted two of these murals himself.
Speaker 2:I think construction took two years and the rest of it took another six years, when the decoration takes that much longer. But then he was involved with everything. He designed everything. Obviously you'd get artists and say I want this kind of thing here and they do that. But then where he did do it, so where he paints this one ceiling of the gods, uh, coming down from the end, then you think how has he done that and still had time for the rest of his career? Like, how do you include, how do you involve yourself so much on site with it as well, and actually with the actual construction, not just at the design point, but in the construction phase. They were involved and they were hands-on. But if you're getting good, money for it.
Speaker 1:It's not a big deal. If you were paying me five grand a month to oversee the build and I was also like I mean, there were some projects, I'd probably paint a wall here and there. I didn't want to get a roll around. But if you know, we have a few projects where people have come to us and said, can you manage it on site? Can you just make sure that these things are built as you want? And we have a lot of conversations with contractors. If it's not detailed or if there's something we can pivot, we can, can change, we can design it back in without having to kind of remove or reduce that quality of the end product. I know, with that mansion you did, you had to, you had to do a plan of like every tile in this one space and they didn't even take it, but it's one of them.
Speaker 2:Obviously you got very hands-on with that design, yeah, but then now imagine if you then had to go and lay the tiles or something.
Speaker 1:You know if they paid you to do that as well would you?
Speaker 2:would you ever say yes to it? Would you learn that?
Speaker 1:if I had the skill set for it, I would, for example, um one of the other jobs, I put the steels in with the builder. There's been a few jobs where I put the steels in with the builder. Yeah well, that's because they've seen you're strong. Well, I suppose that's exactly the point. You've got a, you've got the skill set for it. I've got the skill set for it. I can do it. I've helped with demolition, I've dug up gardens, I've done all bits like that. That doesn't bother me. I've helped to.
Speaker 2:You say helped with demolition, but we know you closed the door too hard, slammed it, shouted it.
Speaker 1:Well, thank God that wasn't a demolition plan. It is now.
Speaker 2:You just designed it. It is now.
Speaker 1:I think you just desire a storm Just put on the iPad. I should have opened this space up. There are other things I've done like I've helped people put together timber frames and stuff. Stuff like that I'm fine with. I have done paint and decorating for clients before. Just because I've been there. Shits and gigs I had leads us on to the next profession that's kind of separated out, which is interior design, which kind of popped up in the end of the 19th century, which seems to from the quick research I had people who have run out of their own house to do interior design on and decided to do interior design other people's houses. Interior design that's the next one. So the interior design obviously is mostly things like you can furnish, changing colour palettes, materials, all that kind of stuff which definitely was something the architects would do back in the day because it was all considered at that point. Like we do it here, we'll tell clients this is where we put this.
Speaker 2:That's why I'm calling it a leisure stay. I think I mentioned that somewhere on here. But yeah, I think, because obviously back then you look at it and it's like okay. So I think that was kind of my point of you look at his interiors and it's his design fully in the interior, and then you look up, we will propose working interior designs. But it's kind of like we never, we never. Well, for a lot of the time we don't expect them to do it. It's more proof of concept that their interior could work, that we're designing a functional space and we'll never go okay, we expect you to have this set of shelves. I'd like to get into that.
Speaker 1:There's a few that we have and the main thing is obviously, like you say, we do it as proof of concept. This is what the afterspace is. So when we do the headset VR things, people can kind of see ah, that's the size of the kitchen, that's the hob, that's the window. They can feel all this stuff when they see it. But I mean, we send jobs out to a kitchen designer and they'll send us back like, oh, all we've had to do really is inspect the colour and the actual products themselves. So you've done a layout, you've nailed where these bits are going to go.
Speaker 1:We've had a few occasions I'm going to say and I'm not going to mention who it is that gives us these types of situations that we find ourselves in when I've had full-height windows in an extension and the kitchen was at the other side. So, if you imagine a sort of L-shape, we had the kitchen at one end, closest to where it was originally, because the drainage was so sort of, the tolerances were so tight we couldn't really move, couldn't afford to move the kitchen too far, because then we'd have a sink here and a kitchen at the other end. So we kept the kitchen nigh on where it was made it bigger, gave them an island sort of reconfigured how it all worked. Walking pantries, hidden, this, that and the other, the lot right. But there was a series of these at the far end of the extension, a series of these full-height sort of slotted windows. And so this kitchen design came back to me and the client said can you take a look at this just to make sure that you're happy with it?
Speaker 1:One, the kitchen was at the other end where the drainage wouldn't work unless you took it all off ground. Two, there was a hob in front of the window. Three, it was a full height window so you would have seen the back of the unit if you were walking out the outside of the house. Now, bear in mind, the kitchen design is going on as the build is near on, like progressing. So they come out and measured once the first fix had been in. So all the electric? Well, sorry, as the first fix was going in.
Speaker 2:So the walls were all up, the windows were all in, so they'd seen it and even then still designed it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gee, it was bogus so they needed it finished for the first fix electric. So that was interesting. But that's just kitchen design. But then interior design do a lot more than just kitchens. Like they don't want to shoot on anyone.
Speaker 2:Are they one of the groups that you will refuse to work with? If someone suggests it, I'm not going to refuse to work with them.
Speaker 1:You give a very big pre-warning. Yeah, essentially there's a couple of jobs we've done where they've been involved and even the builders said actually we're not willing to fit this particular kitchen now because I know who you're going through is going to be a nightmare. So ask them to fit it, we'll remove the fitting cost from our bill, we'll fix it afterwards. Well, they just said we'll remove the fitting cost from our bill because we don't. We don't want to have our name put to that. But then that's not to be confused with interior architecture. Yeah, interior design versus interior design, yeah, so interior design is more the furnishing, fittings and all that other stuff. But then interior architecture has sort of really popped up recently.
Speaker 1:I think when I started university, there wasn't that many of them. Do you mean as a separate subject? It's a separate subject, but it's also now a separate profession.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because obviously, as you say originally, it would be the architect designing the interiors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it seems to be a bit more of a separation of Well, what they essentially specialise in is doing the interiors of existing buildings, but it also includes all structural elements, whereas your interior they're dynamised. Here, purple, green, blue, soft furnishing sofa, here, this is the sofa you're going to pick, this is the carpet we're going to give you. And interior architects say knock that wall out, it's blown up, so we're going to have to put a steel in, but they're not to put a chimney outside. They've got a lot more grasp of that and they typically seem to, from my understanding, work a lot with camp listed heritage buildings, but as well as fit-outs, and I seem to find a lot of people who give us CVs who have done interior architecture and leaning more towards kind of your bars, your restaurants, your cafes, like fitting out buildings into separate and new purposes, which is an interesting subject.
Speaker 1:But again, that feels like another subdivision of what we already do, because it's something that we do already do. But yeah, the other thing about the interior architecture I'm not sure if it's because it doesn't seem to be that popular in terms of employment rates, but now there seems to be an upgrade course that you can take. So I know Northumbria University, do one where if you're doing a bachelor's in interior you do a topic course, then you can do your master's in architecture. Then obviously you're on your way to part three, then becoming an architect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a strange one that seems to have popped up. I've seen a few kind of like that where it's if you do that, you can then move on to the architecture course, which is definitely a new concept, because obviously for a long time it's been. If you want to finish the architecture course, you have to start.
Speaker 1:I know in America they do a thing where you can get I think they have like a I want to call it a 2-3 or 2-4, like a 5 year or 6 year set, of course, where you can start a different like thing for what the equivalent of our bachelors is, and then move in, specialise into architecture.
Speaker 2:Northumbria has one where it's it's over 2 years or 3 years and you study engineering architecture and another very relevant subject, civil. I think they included that just within Edge.
Speaker 1:I think it's civil architecture and something else very relevant, and then from there you can move on to any of the related courses, including architecture at Northumbria, and then, yeah, I've heard of and then I suppose from there you've got things like I think we touched on quantity today where it's somebody who calculates the bill of quantity, so telling you how much of each material needs to be used, things like that, from which a builder then associates costs and prices, and they can also do value engineering. All that sort of stuff is probably things that were done by an architect, much like landscape architecture, yeah, like you would always see, like these master plans or these crammed houses with their gardens, all you know, dimension to an inch of their life, walled gardens, growing certain vegetables and fruit and stuff, and that was all done by the architect. But slowly we've started to specialize out into these places and we come separate from one another, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1:Another thing I've got on my list is like planning consultant, which will probably come to in this more in the next section. But that seems to be becoming more and more common and I think when I first started planning consultant, we've got a really complicated planning problem to solve or be rejected. We need to do an appeal let's get a consultant in, whereas now it seems to be more and more common for you to go well, actually, before we submit this, let's get a planning consultant in. Let's have a planning consultant in at stage one, stage two, the concept stages, just in the preparation and grief stage, just to get an overview of what might be acceptable and then working within those parameters, which I think is great, but does it?
Speaker 2:mend the media? Yeah, because you use it a fair bit, don't you? Especially if you think we're in an area where there might be a lot of contention with like yeah, we're in a listed building, we're in a conservation, so let's just check that what we're about to do, and you can almost use them as a feasibility study, can't you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean a few of them there's one in particular that we use who are basically shopping an email and just say this is what I'm thinking. What do you think? Most of the time, all I'm expecting back from them is oh, you missed this or do you this? This is not an exact situation, but you can't take down the elevation of that great little listed building If I, because I'm proposing something and something slipped in the net and I just haven't considered something, and they go so you haven't thought about this, or don't worry about this bit, think about this bit.
Speaker 1:Can't use that material, can't use this material. This is the plan of what you should look at and it's a quick response. And likewise, if they ever then send me a question about architecture, I can help. But we're starting to now talk more and more to planning consultants at that earlier stage. So, for example, with the lodges project, we did a pre-application on the house the two new builds that are associated with that already, and then we're working on the lodges thing to send to one of our consultants who will then help us with these various sort of layouts and other bits of planning policies we need to overcome, but I think that's pushing us now further away from us understanding planning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, almost yeah. The more you divide it up, the more, the less we, the less you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We're almost essentially then putting ourselves in a corner, being constrained by the engineer, the planning consultant. It lowers your workload, but it also reduces your skill set and reduces your control, which I think is a big thing.
Speaker 2:Some people don't know that.
Speaker 2:I think that kind of chips into how there's the whole.
Speaker 2:We talked about it maybe in two weeks' time or maybe two weeks ago, but talking about kind of the fact that part of the culture of this job is putting all that effort in and like having to do these all-nighters and just being this kind of superhuman that can stay up 25 hours a day. Yeah, and it's kind of, as you separate it out, you kind of think, well, that's good because it means I can actually put less pressure on myself. But it also kind of takes away from that superhuman kind of vision of it. I guess of that like you become less important for the design station. What if, eventually, you just become kind of the person who designs the structure of it and then the engineer is just the person who, like verifies the possibility of the structure and then the interior designer just becomes the person who decorates the inside that this architect has created for them, and the kitchen designer just puts the shells in, and it's kind of actually, the more you take out of it, the less useful every place becomes.
Speaker 1:Does that lead us on to the modern day practice and the present day challenges? So the big thing is that currently everything feels political. It's all greenwashing, people buildings, and it's all can make it.
Speaker 2:It's just sucking a big pile of bleep to make everyone feel, everyone higher up feel happy about what you're doing. It's kind of a lot of people trying to just fit in. You see the right, a lot of the old designs where it's progressive, someone actually actively trying to rebel against the standard. I like Brutalism. It's a problem. Back then it was fun. But the problem is it looks nice for about a year, then it looks horrible. But even the Renaissance period when they went into mannerism and it was a lot more Jordan Diggs on the ceiling, yeah, and it suddenly becomes a lot more sexual than it does intense design work. It's the way they do it. It's a lot of that when it becomes so, as you say, political.
Speaker 1:Everyone's trying to fit in and please the higher-ups, you kind of think, well, you'll lose that chance for development. You get a lot of constraints that you then kind of it almost gets designed for you like planning constraints. It's the same problem we've got with my house is that you can't use this because X, y and Z, but actually so when they limit you so much. Yeah, we're potentially limited to, or you can only put white render on it because that's what the rest of the building has, but there are many instances where you can have. I mean, two years ago our house won the house of the year, or was it? Yeah, I think it was the house of the year, right where it was this listed building which was like this grand. They had this black clad very modern, fit well.
Speaker 2:That's great. When the thought is like, yes, it needs to be separate. What would really be great is if they went yes, it's safe, it meets all the technical standards make it look good, just make it look nice.
Speaker 1:There are certain considerations that I totally appreciate from that conservation side of things. I do get that. There's other things parts of that as well that I totally appreciate. But there's an argument and justification that now just gets ignored because they decide that they want to ignore it, and sometimes it just depends on what plan you get. Anyway, I think that's a different episode we could go into, yeah well plans work, as far as I can see.
Speaker 2:How many times are we going to mention this before we do it?
Speaker 1:It's on the list. It was probably about three weeks ago. No, we haven't recorded that one yet. Well, that's what I mean, but I feel like a lot of the architects that I've worked with are forcing me to do less and less full-scope things. They tend to do the concepts and then get it ready for planning and then pass that on to either the client to do the applications and deal with it, or on to a consultant the planning consultant to deal with the application, and the dealer to be the client's agent, as we call it. So that process seems to have just become kind of separated out, and then they've started to, it's like, with the amount of work that certainly you have to do.
Speaker 2:That isn't anything to do with designing, it's purely to do with convincing it to let you do your job, and the other thing as well, as you say in there, but a lot of it's not to do with design.
Speaker 1:That's not what people get into this for. You find a lot of people like especially some of the cvs I get and some of like, when I talk to people who want to be architects just say, oh, I really want to design a building, I really want to design this, I really want to design that, when actually there is so much more to being an architect than just going building it's a nice drawing.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of it where you think it's unnecessary, I suppose with that kind of the certain points where they're arguing with you for the sake of it and you just think you're just wasting everyone's time. And as you say, yeah, preserving the context and conservation area is absolutely great. It's important to preserve your history. But then I suppose maybe that comes down to as well trying to do less extensions and more new builds, trying to build.
Speaker 1:Well, this is the site of the time, so let's create those. If you're building a new build, you might have green belts considerably. You might have conservation areas considered you don't build in a green belt.
Speaker 1:That's the first rule. You shouldn't, you just shouldn't. Well, yeah, we look at the paragraph 79 houses and things like that houses about standing, architectural merit or innovation, but you've got like these set of rules to work within and sometimes those sets of rules can be really Like the paragraph 79 house. There was one on-ground design that was like a sculpture of steel and glass and it was absolutely stunning. But it had to be that wild to be a paragraph 79 house, whereas if you wanted to put a brick built two up, two down, in the middle of that field, you'd be told where to go. So, yeah, I think a lot of it, like you say, especially when I got into university.
Speaker 1:They don't talk that much about how much is involved in like the tech package and stuff in the later stages, because it's not as nice as oh, I'm gonna have this three-story atrium space and it's going to do this at the other.
Speaker 1:It's not as glorious to talk about, I suppose, and it's not what people think of when you think architects. Um, but most of these architects these days seem to want like the glory of doing their creative side of things, and that seems to be what goes on their portfolio website, and I spoke to our website designer, who I need to get back in touch with. He was saying, as I was looking through architects' websites, they all seem to be about other architects. A lot of them don't seem to be about clients or their social medias. They're not like we did this to solve this client's problem. It seems to be. Here's something we designed. Look at it, isn't it beautiful? You designed something like this, so I find that really interesting and I think that might be part of it, where people are just wanting to do one part and not do the other, because they don't care about the actual building, they just want to do nice things and flex their.
Speaker 2:I think within our kind of jurisdiction of working with individual clients on their house, it's really important that, as you say that bit of we're solving your problem, yeah, instead of we want to look. Obviously we want to design nice buildings that's fundamentally why everyone gets in it but we want to solve. We get into this part of the industry because we want to solve people's problems. We want to help people, we want to help improve their lives. I think that's a really good point. It's very important within architecture not enough people trying to show off. This is why we're good for you instead of this is why we're good full stop.
Speaker 1:This is why we're awesome this is why we'll help you. I also wonder if there's a bit of a north-south divide on that, because I know a lot of my friends who work down south. The client doesn't necessarily care too much about solving problems. They want a monument to their ego, and so they do all these grand gestural designs because there's the money for it Like a greenhouse.
Speaker 1:You always see stuff like that. I mean, you see some things like that up here, like the dowry hall for jess and the cosmos, where people just clearly have a lot of money that they want to put into this building because it's what they want, um, but there also seems to be a shift towards certain clients wanting to have certain types of professionals rather than kind of assuming the architect can do it. So a really good example is we'll have someone come to us and say oh, we're looking at taking down this internal wall just to knock between our kitchen and our dining room to make our kitchen bigger and incorporate the two into one space. More than that. That's in touch.
Speaker 1:So what gives me that call? I give them the engineers, I give them the number of one of our engineers. I just say this is who you need to be taken out of the wall. Here's a kitchen designer to do the kitchen and lay the space out. You don't necessarily need us. This doesn't need planning, this doesn't need thoughtful consideration, really. So you can help people out, which I know I'm not helping myself or anyone else I do, I'm not helping our profession by doing that, but there's no need for us to get involved in something like that, but it can be done really straightforward. Most contractors can just come in and take that down, as long as they understand, and get building control involved early enough. It might be that this is a lintel rather than a steel, in which case you don't need an engineer at that point. There's a lot of ways around our things. But certain clients don't need ours, certain projects don't need it.
Speaker 2:That's one of the good things about the profession is that you actually make it easier for people to customise their own space. If they have to get less people involved or they have to kind of get a less I won't say less trained, but someone who doesn't need to doesn't full-time do as much you can get someone who's got a very specific profession that can just do that one thing and that's what they do it can be really ideal for you.
Speaker 1:So in the UK, obviously, architect is a protected title. More often than not you tend to find that anyone can kind of do what we do, or at least they think they can do what we do. There's a lot more to just what we do than just drawings. But you tend to find like designers, or house designers or people who probably have maybe bachelor's, maybe master's in architecture, aren't architects but have gone to work for developers, gone to work for, you know, like the Amethyst Barrett's, or developers, like private developers, as people who just design these copy and paste type houses or little things like that, and that's great and that's fine. I suppose they probably wouldn't want to approach an architect because they're not looking for something that we would do. But today I think a lot of our work gets caught short in final stages. So often you'll find the builder decides to use a quicker, cheaper or easier method for them that's never happened to us recently, though, has it?
Speaker 2:it's not caused any problems on any of the jobs clients have come to me after the building. I think it's such a crazy idea, because if you're working for a client who can afford it, why would you not do it like the client's going to pay you for your work? Why would you do less work?
Speaker 1:but, more importantly, why would you price to do something based on the design, the spec and all the details? Because we'll give you 30-40 drawings for a link to extension. So it's all there. There's no guesswork. So why are things suddenly changing? And also, I always find the client never gets a return on that. They never seem to be like. I've done it this way. Here's five grand back because it's a cheaper, easier, quicker method for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you're going to say this is how much it's going to be, then do it at that much, because that's what you said you're going to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, then I suppose you start looking at things like Starcatex. I think that's kind of brought back this notion of architects get paid a lot of money because people are paying them a lot of money. I mean, we're sought after. People come and get in touch because they want to work with us. So I suppose we're kind of we're not just architects but we're falling into that kind of bracket of being able to say you know, this is our fee because you want us to do what we do best. Yeah, and it's not just me price gouging it, it's more kind of making sure we've got adequate take to keep it all going. But I think some of them do it because they know they can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it shocks a lot of people when they get into architecture because a lot of people will get into it, because you see the architecture I know one of my favorite designs is still by Frank Gehry. It's this CCTV building in China, which is this massive skyscraper, and it's the type of thing I know I would now have any interest in doing, because I know the work that went into it and I know the amount of design work he probably didn't actually do.
Speaker 1:Scrumpled up a bit of paper into doing it.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, that was cool. Then turns it upside down. It's like a lot of people probably get quite a bit of shock when they look into it and certainly people who are in the profession will see these are the people who are doing it. So architects are all paid well, and then you kind of look into the people who are doing your small B2 extension.
Speaker 1:Actually Not really when you're on 15 grand a year. There's people who earn more than you. I might go to that yeah, if I were you I would but I think there's a lot of people who think as well that everyone's going to be a star architect. That's how they're all treated in the industry. You're really really rarely going to be at that height. What's also nice is that some of these star architects aren't necessarily actually star architects for their buildings and things.
Speaker 1:You look at TV programmes like Cran Designs, george Clarke people like that have become synonymous with the profession. Kevin MacLeod of Cran Designs he doesn't actually be an architect. No, he's not even an architect. He doesn't design things. George Clarke obviously is. But then you look at your homemade perfect he doesn't speak. Yeah, you look at your homemade perfect, where you have architects who come on who are not visually well known because they've been on the television. Yeah, so they're kind of stark attacks to everyone in a way, but they might actually be more normal types like you and I. Rather than your friend Gary's, you've got a lot of Norman Foster's. But then within all of that, this modern practice thing, we're talking about fragmentation. So it's actually. There are people who want to do everything in a scheme, like us, and we have pretty much every skill set in this studio, but we probably don't specialize in any of those things.
Speaker 2:I think it's one of them being able to say, look, I'm going to put aside the time for it. I know, for a certain amount of time, for a year or so doing this extra bit of doing this nice hand rendering of it isn't going to bring us anything, but we might start to get recognized for it and then I suppose that's one of it is. That's why we've started doing a lot more of interior stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we want to start doing more interior stuff.
Speaker 2:You want to get recognised for it and then request it so that you do it. Yeah, so it's 360 and VR things that we do and all of that sort of stuff is leading into that I think, knowing that for a while you kind of have to give away your specialty so that people recognise it, and then start asking to pay for the specialty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean we we expanding at the moment, finding new staff, and it's not necessarily to plug holes and gaps of knowledge, it's more of a kind of right. You know, I'm really good at this bit, I can do everything, but I'm very good at this bit. You can not very good at these bits and you can do this bit really well. And then it's kind of finding, getting that and I'm going right, okay, within the studio, what skill set are we missing or what's missing that we need to improve on? That's the talent essentially. Yeah, basically finding. Yeah, I mean we're looking for a techie at the moment because we've got three sets of great designers and then we've got one and a half really good techies. Like we really techy, we're really good at the construction drawing side of things. Like the audience is making their way up that ramp, sort of fish. There we'll get to you. I'm busy with those stuff. We need to plug someone into that gap to fill that.
Speaker 2:I think it's one thing I'm realising at the minute. I'd love an engineer to sit in the office. I'd quite like to almost start trying to specialise in designing for inclusivity and accessibility in a much bigger way than just putting ramps in. I'd quite like to be able to start designing for neurodivergent or neurodegenerative or that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:I know you're quite interested in that area as well, but obviously 393 is a really good, but I think what does the future hold is probably the next big question. Then, that's a big question. Yeah, I think the major thing is probably stuff like designing with greater social and environmental impact. That's the obvious one. That's stuff that we need to be doing. Things like you've just said, designing for people with neurodivergencies I know we mentioned greenwashing before, but actually we do need to be reducing carbon. There's obviously the 2030 goals and all of those things, so I think they're going to become more prominent and that's going to push people into directions and that's probably going to start to bring in things like retrofit assessors and carbon assessors that we've got as contacts, where you say right, this is the design, can you help us? Or can you do the overall maths that says this is how much if we're going to achieve net carbon on this project, can you make sure we do? And retrofit assessor it's how good is this building? Help us make it less good?
Speaker 1:Like when we did Jesmond, we had a retrofit assessor. When we did 205, we had a retrofit assessor come in assess if there was insulation of the cavity, what those cavities were. Is there anything under the floor? How can we improve the roof and they gave us those kind of tips, an intrusive method, a scientifically backed method that we could then go right. This is what we've got to work with, this is how we do it, this is what that means. And then I think it's sort of redefining the role, so you get things like your design, consultants, et cetera. It's probably further fragmentation, but I think it can be implemented within the studio or within the office, within the practice, so you'll have people who specialize in things, but we'll all sit in the same room together and we'll pick at each other during stages, like we do here, where we have conversations about every project we do like I'm really good at putting shadows on the roofs exactly really good.
Speaker 2:but I think it moves us away from that jack of all trades mentality yeah, if you've got a studio of people with different specialities and you can all specialize and then I can take advantage of yours and it's literally yeah, if collectively the studio is a jack of all trades but every individual is that master and one, and then you can get these really impressive products as long as you've got basic knowledge, and then you confirm that with the specialist and that leads us on to I think there's going to be more collaboration or at least there should be both with other professionals people within the studios, but then maybe people outside of our profession photographers, sculptors.
Speaker 1:You know we talk about the an artist for that facade, which was like it's incredible, and it's that culmination of the two that makes it an amazing space.
Speaker 2:I like the idea of having, like an in-house engineer the idea of me just being able to draw a shape on a whiteboard in front of the church, like flashing in front of their eyes while they're working. They can just go nope and I go okay, good, yeah, I'll move on from that. Or they can go maybe. Yeah, feel that roof. Yeah, exactly, just having someone there who can say yes or no, or I can develop that. Yeah, exactly, and that's what I call in some of those favors, for some of the wild projects where I go.
Speaker 1:Can you just take a look at this and make sure I haven't missed something, because I'm too in the forest to see the trees. But I think the next thing that's going to be big for the future is technology. I mean, I know everyone, especially when I started. We're going into the metaverse. Yeah, everyone was talking about Bing when I started. Obviously, building the information model. It's going to make us all redundant, yeah, and it hasn't. It's just meant that we all collaborate more with other people and we then put that onto one system.
Speaker 2:You have to understand that system to do it. I don't think AI could get to a point where it would put us out of business, but I certainly think it will. Ai is the last thing on my list to talk about, because I think it's a big one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, I'll wait, then I'll wait. I'm getting excited. But with BIM you then have to understand how to use it to pull it together. But it's basically simplifying the process we already have. We can still design buildings without BIM to the level that BIM does. It just makes it easier to collaborate and work those things together. There's now 3D-printed buildings. It just changes the job. Yeah, and it's the 3D-printed buildings Now. I don't see that as a problem, because I think what most people are looking for is the doom and gloom in this. But I think 3D-printing buildings is not a problem. I think it's just another construction method for us to learn and for us to experiment with. We've got a 3D printer in the office.
Speaker 1:We've got a laser cutter the other thing that's coming in is things like VR you look at TV shows like your Home Made Perfect, where they call it the headset. That's really good. I've been doing that since, like 2014.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's really cool. It's being able to, because we've had clients before where we've shown them floor plans and they've gone oh, we've got a standard, can you pull together 3D? Yeah, like, yeah, sure, but then being able to just put a headset on and look at the space, this is how it will be. They can instantly engage with it in a way that their brain hasn't been trained to do, like we have, where we can look at a plant and understand the space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thinking in 3D constantly. Yeah, the thing is, with that, that's become something that people seek out from us. So we'll get people to us. They'll the decontamination. Send the people to us all that good stuff and they'll spot. Oh, we're looking at the prices. We've got from other architects. You mention this 363 panoramas, four realistic visuals. They don't offer that. Can you give us an example or help us understand what the benefit of that is? And I'll send them a link to 60s and a couple of visuals on the outside of the building and go this is what this means, this is what we offer, this is what we do. And then slowly, we started getting people come to us and say, like 205 in Jesmond who said we can't understand spaces from drawings. So we did that's the first time we did it within the practice. That was the first time we did it. That was the.
Speaker 1:VR one. Yeah, yeah, that was the first time we did it within the practice, got it on the website, haven't we? Yes, we had it on the website before Christmas we did. At one point I didn't want to keep updating it, and then I needed to get you to actually do it as a proper website. But then that leaves us on. Whilst we're on acronyms AI, ai, way AI. Everyone seems to be talking about it taking over Way, ai, architects, way, ai, ai. It just seems to be talking about it taking over way I, architects, way, I, ai. It just seems to be the thing that everyone's terrified of, and I don't think I don't see it as a threat, because I don't think it can do what we can do, and I don't think, at least not in foreseeable.
Speaker 2:If I could be able, to do what we do, understanding what a person needs in a space. We are people so we can empathise. I think that's it, If it can develop and we experience it. Yeah, and when you look at the models where you kind of ask it to design something, you can instantly see the flaws, and obviously the whole point of it is learning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh god, yeah. So I mean, as we say this now look in five years' advancement and I see it An assistance. Yeah, basically I don't see it as designing a building. I see it as giving us ideas and concepts that we can then throw our skills at, not just for ourselves under the bus here, but we use it to help us create templates for these episodes.
Speaker 2:We don't, and we use it. I use it for templates and emailing as well. Yeah, we don't let it do the job for us, but it kind of helps spark what to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it prompts, it gives us ideas for what we're doing and also a structure.
Speaker 2:I remember when we did that Halloween post and you showed me what AI had suggested and it was like, okay, we're not going to use what it said, but we are going to take chunks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what we do going to take inspiration. I suppose it's not letting it get away with just doing a job. You look at a lot of posts that come out from other architects and builders and engineers and that you can tell it's been written by ChatGPT. It's got the same format as earlier ones. It's got the emojis in the right place. That make my skin crawl.
Speaker 2:I love throwing an emoji in that I would never use in a normal conversation on a professional account.
Speaker 1:I love throwing an emoji in that I would never use in a normal conversation on a professional account. Yeah, we take that. We do take our descriptions on our social media descriptions for the website, description of templates and emails and we tweak them every time. Yeah, because I mean it can take me an hour to write a post because I'm back and forth anyways, but I get chat GPDs right here and then I take that information and tweak it. That post might only take me five to ten minutes because all I'm doing is 5-10 minutes of change that word. I don't like that. Give it a personality. Turn it back to our personality.
Speaker 2:That will be. The concern is when it develops a personality. Yeah, that will put everyone in trouble.
Speaker 1:I don't think it has to design the building for us. I don't think it will anytime soon. I know there are ones that generate. You can tell it to generate you an extension. I think we should look into that, maybe as an episode, but also in the office have it generate as an extension but take that as the prompt for our design. But then the other thing with the AI and machine learning is there's a lot of algorithmic usage, things like SketchUp. You can get plugins that create organic forms based on its location.
Speaker 1:There's a really good example and the name completely alludes to me at the minute but there was a building that was done, an extension that was done. It almost looks like a bulb with a top on it and it's swirled and it's made of copper and that was built using machine learning because they set really where it was, how they wanted to get light into this place and that's how it was generated and that's like a basic form of this. But it then needed an architect to refine and change and tweak and engineer. It needed all of these things to do the work. So I think it's more of a tool. I don't think it's going to be a replacement. I don't think it ever will be, maybe for basic things, but for more complex, in-depth, personable architecture, I think, things which need engineering as well.
Speaker 2:You want to be able to blame on human error. In a way, you want to be able to say a human has looked at this, not to be able to blame them, but to be able to go okay, I can claim responsibility for this. I don't want a robot to be claiming responsibility.
Speaker 1:I also see more and more of the common tech things coming into practice. So drones, cameras, point cloud mapping, 3d printed laser cutters these have all been here for a long time. They've all been used by the big practices, but now some of us we're quite a small studio We've got a laser cutter, we've got a 3D printer, we've got access to drones and cameras and point cloud mapping. We've got access to all of these things. That will eventually progress us and then the more of us who are using these things, especially if they're like open forum or open cloud we can start to then manipulate those into what they're going to become for us. So I see that as the future technology and pushing these kind of boundaries of what we've got and taking in these huge things that big practice are doing and bringing them into the little leagues. That's how I see it in the future.
Speaker 1:Well, you're the future. You're 10 years younger than I am. Thank you. What do you expect or what do you think is going to happen when you get to my ripe old age of maybe 31? I think.
Speaker 2:I think farmers are going to be farming, designers are going to be designing and everyone else is going to be working in the service industry for a headset, so everything's going to just become metaverse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you think you end up then designing buildings in metaverse, or do you think it just becomes? I live in this file, in this folder, I think when you look at things such as Minecraft which are really popular and you look at the big designs, they're done by artists, not engineers. Yeah, no engineer is going to be thriving on a virtual world because they're redundant. Yeah, you can turn physics off, exactly, it doesn't matter. I mean sure it has to look right, but if you spend enough time there what is looking right?
Speaker 2:It just has to look cool. I think that will then go down to look cool. I think that it will then go down to the artist, and the more we let AI become a great artist, the less that artists really care. Yeah, that's right, because when you say, show me a floating island and it'll do it, and it can be pretty convincing. So I think service industry is going to become pretty redundant and we're going to have some WALL-E type situation. Yeah, wall-e and Ready Player One are going to combine it. There's some weird future.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's what we do in episode one the future as in, like architects in gaming.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, because obviously I think that's a really cool thing. For a while I was thinking I'd like to go into it, because you can do anything as long as it looks right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're just about rapses.
Speaker 2:They're just about rapses yeah, thanks for joining us this episode. If you're listening on any podcast or platform, please consider leaving us a review. If you're watching on YouTube, please like, subscribe and drop a comment down below. Unless they ever put it to the side, that would be an intromile. 10 years from the future, comments will be on the side of the video.
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