Over the weekend, I had a very productive conversation with my former High School art teacher, Rachel Santel. She now runs a successful house flipping business in the St. Louis and St. Charles area. (www.rachelsantel.com). She is also a great artist! We discussed her experience with the house-flipping business, as well as the real estate industry in general. After speaking to other companies and startups in New York working in this "home renovation" space, I wanted to talk to someone who was actually doing the work on the ground, and not someone at a desk with VSCode and an Excel sheet, building yet another web platform. What are some lessons that can be learned from real life experiences that new-fangled "startups" just don't understand? 

I've been noticing a lot of folks working in the world of BIM and construction technology startups lately. With the recent backlash against Autodesk and the increasing costs of architectural software, I see that there are lot of new players (and venture capital) moving into the world of construction tech, trying to find new ways to "disrupt" traditional construction and reduce costs. There have been major players in this field over the past decade, from Katerra to WeWork, but many smaller companies have emerged most recently. Many are pitching home renovations (Block Renovation), prefab backyard studios, new BIM/parametric platforms (BlenderBIM , Hypar), and new Construction Technology tools (Join). These startups are working towards the demystification of the construction and design industry, which has been marred by stagnant productivity, entrenched incumbents, and increasing costs (See McKinsey Report and 5D BIM). They are trying to move the industry towards greater digital adoption, more standardization, transitioning from service to products, and more vertical integration in the supply/value chain.

While these developments are great for a very old industry, ​I am questioning if they are enough. Industry digitization will help foster more transparency across disciplines and reduce construction time, but there still seems to be major structural issues in the economy that reduce product quality and increase costs. Until these structural issues can be addressed, digital tools will just seem more like band aids/stop-gaps to long-term problems, rather than clear, viable solutions in and of itself. For instance, an open-source BIM platform is great. This reduces overhead technology costs for everyone (architects, engineers, developers, contractors). On the other hand, do we really think that a better rendering engine in the documentation program, (that is 10% better than the current market) will help improve construction quality and reduce costs THAT much? What are we really solving here? 

My hypothesis is that inefficiencies in construction and construction quality are not the fault of the architect, but of the economy in general. Incentives are not aligned for the industry to make better quality products, due to market and political factors. Until there is political reform in these areas, it would be difficult to change the overarching realities of construction and real estate. 

HOWEVER, if this is the reality we live in, and operate in, and these are the major serious problems facing the industry, then we can work with it and find solutions. After all, you can't find solutions if you don't even know what the problem is. 

Why is construction expensive and product quality poor?  

• Cost of Land: Rising cost of land, due to land and RE as an attractive investment vehicle during uncertainty, and just time and speculation
  • Solution: Can there be more regulations against exorbitant RE speculation?
  • Solution: How can we expand land and RE supply (this is a pipe dream)?

 

• Cost of Labor: Rising labor costs due to less skilled labor pool (more retirement, less newcomers), more stringent government protections (unionized work on public projects, major cities), more employment insecurity pushing prices per job (when will I get my next gig?) for independent contractors
  • Solution: Can the government incentivize more trades skill training? (immigration?)
  • Solution: Can we develop robotics to reduce reliance on a shrinking labor pool?

 

• Cost of Materials: Rising costs of materials, due to shrinking competition (M&A of large manufacturers, supply chains), higher company investments in technology per product (embedded costs), more embedded technology, more stringent codes, trade wars, brittle supply chains (overseas factories, increased logistics), more "optimized" products (break faster, planned obsolescence)
  • Solution: Can we increase material and supplier competition? (Break up monopolies, or have less protectionism)
  • Solution: Can we incentivize long-term material life versus short-term optimization?
  • Solution: We need more home-grown, local suppliers and supply chains to reduce costs; reduce the "brittleness" of  just-in-time global supply chains

 

• Government Approvals: More uncertainty and drawn out processes for government permitting, due to aging populations (growing NIMBY and anti-progress), shrinking local government budgets (allocations to building and planning departments, less people for more projects), outdated zoning codes (more time spent on "special circumstances/permits"), more hostile political atmosphere in general
  • Solution: More Youth Voter and Civic Participation (Fight the negative aspects of NIMBYISM)
  • Solution: Increase local government budgets, after decades of tax cuts (Incentivize public good over private interests)
  • Solution: Update zoning codes to reflect demographic, economic, and political realities
  • Solution: Invest in stronger parties (Ian Shapiro Lectures) that support moderate long-term development, but development in general

 

• Sustainability and Codes: More energy and environmental requirements force new buildings to adopt new and often expensive components, which haven't reached economies of scale (and which suppliers charge more for); old renovations must meet updated code requirements; costs of sustainability requirements are embedded into project, b/c public/users doesn't have a good understand of its benefits and longer-term savings (lack of public education and short-term mindset)
  • Solution: Improve public education on sustainability; help them understand the long-term costs and benefits, b/c right now the education is very poor and full of holes
  • Solution: Make more tax credits available for sustainable development to offset the cost of new technology adoption that hasn't yet reached scale; make those competitive with legacy products that are much cheaper

 

• Developer Incentives: Increased costs across all these fields (see above) incentivize developers to focus on the high end of the market, to retain profit margins respective to the amount of risk they undertake (this means that new development is focused on upper classes, global investor class); affordable housing lotteries, or components, still don’t solve the central problems listed above, and affordable housing costs are spread across the market-rate ones
  • Solution: Solve the problems above (rising material, labor costs) to incentivize projects at the lower ends of the market
  • Solution: Properly reform affordable housing requirements; or, just expand and incentivize public housing developments to reduce the predatory forces of the market (so that private markets have more price competition versus public housing)
  • Solution: (Magic) Raise middle class wages to incentivize developments for middle class (higher purchasing power, bigger market); This seems like a pipe dream, though.

In the seminal 1978 book Delirious New York, architect and theorist Rem Koolhaas lays out a "retroactive manifesto" to architecture and urban design in 20th century New York. The book follows the development and growth of New Amsterdam, from a small Dutch port, to the postwar metropolis of the 1960's, through his theory of "Manhattanism", which posits that the city's culture of congestion and density defined its seminal architectural developments. Shaped by a rational city grid, and curtailed by the 1916 Zoning Ordinance, the city becomes an archipelago of hyper-dense, chaotic, mixed-use buildings, bringing chaos and vitality to each urban block "island". The book exported the theory of density throughout the world, during late 20th century globalization, and foreshadowed the resurrection of New York City in the 1980's through the 2010's, becoming a sort of defining architectural ideology of the past 30 years. If Corbusier's Towards a New Architecture defined and characterized architecture of the industrial age, then Koolhaas' Delirious provides critical commentary on postmodern/post-industrial architecture, eclipsing stylistic movements and political agendas (i.e. postmodern architecture, deconstructivism, environmentalism, etc.) of the late 20th century.

Forty plus years on, both New York and the impact of Delirious has changed irrevocably. Since the book's publication, "Manhattanism" has become the norm rather than the avant garde outlier, in America and everywhere else. Mixed use buildings and density are the hallmarks of contemporary buildings, and even one of the OMA partners call the typical office mixed-use offering "Bento Box Architecture". Moreover, New York has arguably become a victim of its own success. After forty years of almost nonstop growth, several recessions, and a pandemic, the model of "Manhattanism" has turned the once grungy, 1970's metropolis into a "boutique city", a more unequal and stratified palace of consumption, a playground for the wealthy. Post 1978, investor capitalism, the personal computer, the internet, and then globalization made New York fabulously successful. The city's architecture transformed along with the economy, with successive mega-urban redevelopment projects like Battery Park City, Time Square, World Trade Center, the High Line, Downtown Brooklyn, Billionaire's Row, and later Hudson Yards. In many ways, it can be read as the natural and inevitable outcome of "Manhattanism" - a nonstop consumption palace pushed to the extreme, which to its many critics (critics of capitalist corruption, or critics of liberal identity politics) can only lead to inevitable disaster or eventual decline.

While the pandemic appears to have proven critics right, with the city's economy in tatters and folks leaving in droves, these doomsayers are missing the point. Since the late 19th century, New York has been a hotbed of architectural and development innovations, shaped by changes in the economy and technology. From the newspaper barons of yesterday to today's tech titans, New York's power brokers have consistently reshaped the city to their own image, decade after decade. To isolate and chronicle New York's recent boom, and to negate developments prior to the 1970's, or to only understand New York architecture through the specific case studies of Delirious, would be a grave oversight. A longer view is necessary. 

From the 1870's until today, New York architecture, specifically tall buildings, can be classified into seven distinct ages, lasting 10-20 years each, and corresponding roughly to the boom-and-bust business cycle. Each of these time periods corresponded to unique circumstances facing the city - a booming industrial population, the rise of automobiles, and even the growth of global capital today. They were grand structures built by companies and organizations who wielded the power of the day - steel magnates, insurance companies, consumer products, financial firms, and global investors. These players utilized architecture to project wealth and status, but also to make a bold and lasting statement on the New York skyline. The buildings were designed by the leading minds of their times and employed the most cutting-edge technology. While style, ideology, and construction methods may change over time, these facts remain the same. 

Architecture as a Living History Textbook (Reading Architecture)

​1870-1900: The Early Height Experiments

July Update. I have decided to take a break from New York. After two years in the Heights, which flew by so quickly, and then four months in quarantine, I need to refocus and re-center myself. I am at a critical point in my life, and I just need some time to re-center. I feel so lost and yet so liberated at the same time. 

New York has given me so many new things to think about. Without going there, I would not have gotten a better understanding of what I want in life. I also would not have been exposed to the fame and fortune forces that run the city, and therefore the whole world. I got to meet some famous clients, I got to work at a famous startup, and most, most importantly I found my next direction. And there are so many ideas going through my head right now, I want some time to sort it out. I'm just beginning to now entertain the idea of inventing my own job, and not only finding one. I think that in the long run, it will benefit me no matter what.

They say you become what you think. And I think the honest truth is, I haven't been thinking a lot about art and design in a while....

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I must have written about the same topic once a month, for the past 3 years now - how architecture has become a lens through which I see the world. Funny thing is, it's always changing. Nowadays I really do think less about it as a profession and more of a viewpoint - just like lawyers may understand the world as a series of grey shades (and truth is subjective to an argument), or perhaps an engineer, where the world is run by rational mechanisms (like physics and chemistry) but is unfortunately operated by irrational humans (who care about emotions and subjectivity). An architect looks as the world as being made up of interrelated and interconnected systems, many of which actually don't naturally play nice with each other, and through the medium of geometric drawings find ways to make things work in concept, in business, and in practical construction reality.

So how can I apply this type of thinking to digital space? What interrelated systems and networks, which normally don't play nice with each other, can somehow do with nice organization and just, more critical thinking? 

But first---how did I get here? I think for me, it's been a process of thinking about the world through art, and then through science, and then art again. Visual art was a world I entered to understand how to translate emotions and feelings - it was a way to communicate grand and true ideas, or what we call objective "beauty". What I really loved about visual art was the way simple mediums can convey complex ideas, when done right, and through this act of translation art became a piece of creation whose sum total is greater than the scattered ideas in your head. I love how I could play with ideas, and how it was really effective in speaking about certain things that words cannot easily express. Drawing was about trying to understand something through focus. There's a lot of intelligence in that. 

But visual art wasn't perfect. What I didn't like about visual art was how ---- at some point, it always just became about personal ego. It was "showing off". It couldn't transcend its own medium. What you make is what you make. And I think at some point, I think, I lost faith in it. It seemed to be still extremely subjective, and as I looked around at artists today, I couldn't really find anything I could really rally behind. Paintings don't matter, sculptures don't matter, mixed media MIGHT matter.....but to what end, other than your own? Something else felt like it may have more impact. 

​When I first really founded architecture, what really sparked my interest was its three-dimensionality. It was grounded in some constraints, which I didn't find in art. It felt like an extension of drawing or sculpture, but was even more spatial. I learned in school that it could even be habitable. This was a game-changer. This was art you can live in. This was art that impacted real life, at the scale of objects that I used to remember (Hong Kong Skyscrapers). And it could tell beautiful stories. All buildings have stories and histories, created from arguments and cultures and ideas. And I found this whole world of construction and design and a profession I felt it was very noble and creative. And again, it allowed me to do the one thing I've always liked, which is to explore and document ideas.

​But then, again, I think, I slowly started accruing things I didn't like. There was a wide disconnect between design school and design practice, which is well-documented everywhere and is a common grievance. As much as the mantra of visual art is "what you see is what you get", in architecture I found myself just producing representations of representations of representations of the real thing. I didn't have the slightest clue what the real thing is. Which at some point, doesn't feel honest (and far from the craft itself). And then, as much as architecture was a "bad business", I started to realize it was still actually mostly about business. As a real practical profession, there was no real time to explore and document ideas, and most of time there is no clear value provided for this form of exploration. Architects are firstly project managers, building scientists, draftspersons and problem solvers, not necessarily designers. Often times today, the client has already thought through 60% of the decision-making of what the project is, and the type of thinking about why and what are mostly delegated to management consultants, developers, and analysts. We are meant to find innovations purely in the building realm, stick to our circle of influence, and to dress things up nicely. 

​This is where entrepreneurship and computation steps in. Everywhere I have worked, I have always been more interested in the client prompt than on the building itself. The prompt, especially unclear and irrational ones, excite me. The prompt was always closer to understand the why of the building, rather than the what. I always wanted to know the underlying motivations, because it is always more than just making a return. Good clients and good projects always have a driving force behind their buildings. It may be a trend they see, or a dream they have. And these underlying questions were always the most exciting to me, and finding those questions always leads to better buildings, and therefore better neighborhoods and cities. And I will just never, ever understand why answering those questions is way above my pay scale, or even not my profession's responsibility to begin with. And that was always slowly killing me. It was like I can see through a small pinhole, through architecture, to a larger world of WHY. The WHY of suburbanization. The WHY of Amazon warehouses. The WHY of shopping malls and boutique cities. But I am locked out of this world of the WHY because I am not qualified enough, and I don't know enough about finance, or CS, or business. And so I should play with my drawings and models instead. 

And I just want to say NO. I believe I am smarter than that, and I believe I can intuit trends and forces through design and architecture. Some people tell me it's messy, and I should stick in my lanes. That I won't understand the motivations of other industries, because I may find corruption, cruelty, and villainy. To them, I say isn't architecture just enabling bad actors and bad behavior, then? If so, then I think I would like to participate in the WHY decisions as well, and stop being ignorant and willfully blind. 

In equal measure, computational design and automation offers a way to take back control from a messy reality, and to then focus more on asking and understanding the WHY. So I can no longer be ignorant about those systems either. 

So I have come full circle, only to start with art and end with science. 
(What you ignore before will always come back later.)

​I want to trace the divergence between architecture and computer technology, since 1967. In the 50 odd years since, dramatic advances have been made in the field of computer science, notably the invention of the transistor, personal computers, and the internet. However, I would argue that the field of architecture, in comparison, has mostly stayed the same. Besides evolutionary improvements in building performance, the adoption of computer-aided design, and the unprecedented building boom in China, there has not been the fundamental shift in the way people build and live over the past 50 years. In some cases, buildings have become even more wasteful, housing more expensive, and living environments less healthy and more unequal. Why is that the case, and how did the two disciplines react to changing economic and political forces differently? I would like to revisit several epochal moments in the last fifty years and understand these changes more precisely.

​Economic and political changes notwithstanding, my hypothesis is that these two fields proposed radically different scales of social intervention -- bigness versus miniaturization -- and ultimately one won out. By means of its inherent flexibility, network adoption, and friendliness to market capitalism, computation won out as the primary means to shape society and culture, in ways that 19th century urban planners and architects can only dream of. In contrast, the implosion of the postwar consensus in the 1970's forced architects to re-package modernist utopias into consumption playgrounds, abandoning social agendas for commercial interests, in a decades-long quest for ever bigger "bigness". In the next 50 years, I foresee that the two disciplines, which once worked side-by-side with shared hardware, will once again come together, to address the spectacular challenges of this century.

When President Kennedy delivered his famed 1963 speech to send a man to the Moon, the country launched into a decades-long effort to spearhead the scientific and technological innovations to achieve his goal. To make the literal moonshot a reality, the United States needed massive computational power, in a time when "computer" still referred to a profession, much like a "secretary" or "engineer". The national project triggered intense investment in computer technology and research, particularly silicon transistor technology, to make all the real-time calculations possible as astronauts traveled millions of miles from the Earth. In this era, IBM's machines reigned supreme, their room-sized behemoths powering the space program, as well as corporate America. In an era of unchallenged American supremacy, at least in the non-Communist world, computational technology signaled efficiency, progress, and national pride. Simultaneously, modernist architecture, as exemplified by industrial classicism of Mies van der Rohe and the slick interiors of SOM, captivated a postwar society eager for prosperity and progress. For a brief moment, architecture and computers worked side-by-side, in spacious fluorescent laboratories. In these machine rooms, humans encountered both systems at the scale of a room -- architecture as an efficient, modernist shell, and computers as futuristic printing presses, outputting reams and reams of digits to guide the spacemen.

During the high watermark of Pax Americana, in the late 60's, the architects and the computer scientists still worked side-by-side, pushing scientific advances forward. However, with the Apollo program roaring full-steam ahead to a successful conclusion, they began to envision alternative lives after the Space Race. For the architects, spatial questions became urban, and even planetary: with a newfound understanding of the Earth, how should humans inhabit and occupy the planet? The world population seemed to be ever-expanding, and resources ever-shrinking. An environmental conscience emerged in the discipline. Meanwhile, the computer scientists, emboldened by new transistors and silicon chips, began to dream up new ways to shrink their incredible calculating machines. Without the messy business of punch cards and vacuum tubes, the silicon computers of tomorrow can be much smaller than previously imagined. What other practical problems can they solve? The possibilities seemed endless.

Architecture's vision for the future came in the form of a 200-ft tall geodesic dome. At the '67 World Expo in Montreal, American architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller erects a double-layer, icosahedral acrylic bubble, a monument to American triumph in space. Inside this miniature "Earth sphere", visitors can marvel at Apollo technology and learn about the environment. A monorail even ran straight through the pavilion, to add to its vision of a techno-utopia. In the same year, Texas Instruments unveils the first prototype of an electronic handheld calculator. Though primitive by today's standards, the pocket calculator was groundbreaking technology, at a time when folks were still using slide rules, log charts, and room-sized computers. Within a few years, the electronic calculator would become a widespread item, found in every office, home, and college campus in America.

As a designer, I can design objects.
As an engineer, I can make objects work. 
As a teacher, I can help designers and engineers create objects that are personally meaningful to them.
As a leader, I will help guide others to become better, so that their work is more valuable to them and to the team. 

In any case, a great leader serves the team and sets the tone. While a large part of it regards creating a vision, a significant part of it also has to do with teaching the team about my own experience and thought process. Great leaders can communicate well and entrust others to tasks because they know they have taught the team well. 

And vice versa, if great leaders are great teachers, they are also great students who learn from their teams. ​

Reflections on the Beauty of Architecture
Nobody ever said "Making Beautiful Things is Easy." Nobody. The Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was not painted in a day. Gustave Eiffel was mocked day-in and day-out during the construction of the Eiffel Tower, and long after the tower opened. (The whole country of France hated him.) It took two generations of the Roeblings to build the Brooklyn Bridge. Nobody said architecture was ever going to be an easy road. 

The beauty of architecture lies in the constant tension between an ideal abstraction and concrete reality. The interplay between these two forces is always a fine balance, a carefully articulated line. Too ideal and artistic, and the project is "thin", and probably unbuilt. Too practical and realistic, and the project becomes just another "building", a "competently decorated box". Architecture is walking that tightrope between the creative and the analytical, the right and the left brains, the "hard-charging project manager" and the "wistfully thinking imaginative designer". Architecture is understanding nuance, which is really, really hard. It is hard to explain with words, and it is even harder to quantify with numbers, figures, and dollar amounts. 

A New "Beaux Arts" Moment
I see this ideological tension, between the ideal and reality, in the relationship between the physical and digital environments. While physical architecture may be a pure and beautiful experience, it may be hard to carry over to the cold and calculating domain of computers (booleans, strings, integers). Likewise, while a website may be beautiful, sleek, and seamless, the physical infrastructure is messy and tough, with people and their irrational politics. While people complain about this all the time, and over and over again, the fertile ground is the space between -- the loose machine-to-human interface, the desktop monitor stand and "setup", the strange touchscreen exhibits at modern art museums. The "space in-between" is always the missing link between the two, and it is where there has been the least development yet. 

We have been promised an internet of things and virtual reality. However, how are these devices really integrating the two worlds? Are they not merely devices to supplant the physical with the digital, at the great detriment of physical experiences? 
 
We are at a turning point. Much like the early 20th century, when artists and architects were beginning to grasp the true potential and aesthetic of the machine age, we are today witnessing a digital revolution, just beginning to understand the power of computation and AI. In the 1900's, the leading architects of the day were still building to Beaux-Arts standards, perhaps with some European Gothic references. In other words, they were still utilizing the aesthetics of the 18th and 19th centuries, whilst their buildings were employing 20th century industrial technologies (Elevators, Steel Frames, Mechanical Systems). Corbusier and the early modernists started looking at the latest "machines of the age" for architecture inspiration -- airplanes and automobiles -- instead, rejecting centuries of tradition. And rightly so -- the world and its systems were changing, so why dress up buildings in ancient and outmoded garments? His buildings adopted not only the aesthetics of innovative machines, but also their logic and performance (towards efficiency, functionality, and speed). He studied airplanes and automobiles, and loved them. 

We are in a similar moment of transition today. In 2020, modernism has become the old institutional guard, while the aesthetics and culture of computation is ascendant. Modernism has failed to keep up with demands of globalization, sustainability, and automation, just as Gothic Architecture in the 1900's "dressed up" the beauty of industrial structures, and could not keep up with social and technological change. While the most forward-thinking architects of the day has adopted the system of digital production, such as AutoCAD and BIM, we have not yet embraced the full comprehension and logic of computation in our design cultures. We have yet to understand computer science as our primary design driver, much like earlier architects failed to understand industrial design as an aesthetic on its own. 

The same way Gropius established the Bauhaus to create art and design in a new Industrial Age, we need to establish a new school to celebrate design in the age of computation and AI. While this age looks the same as decades ago, it is fundamentally different because our technologies are mostly invisible. This should not mean that architecture should be permanently nostalgic for a bygone era. It means that architecture has the fundamentally embrace the language of parameters, variables, inputs, booleans, loops, and recursion as a way of thinking in practice and not only in academia. Only then, can we make genuine innovations and start thinking about real ways to improve how humans live on Earth (and beyond).  

Year 27 Goals 
I turned 27 this week (T-3 Years Until the Big "3-O"). That's right. I'm getting older. Amid all of the national protests, the pandemic, and the economic depression, I still have hope for the future. I wonder what I will accomplish by the time I turn 28, one year from now. Since moving to New York, I've been setting yearly goals for myself to move the needle forward and to try to do better and better work. It has, and will always be, about producing new work and discovering new ideas. That is the truest expression of architecture. Last year, I promised that I would gain professional licensure, start learning programming, and make/save more money financially. I have generally achieved those goals for year 26. 

For the next year, A. I plan to move forward with my software design education -- 1) become intimately familiar with Revit API, 2) become fluent in HTML, CSS, and JS (Front-End), and 3) develop my own set of design tools from scratch -- regardless of where I end up working. B. I am going to incorporate my own side business and get my first real client. ​C. I will finally make my belated trip to Iceland, which was supposed to be my present to myself for passing the ARE's (but was derailed by the pandemic).