I think we need to find that right balance with is how do we cater to these unique aspects of the design process, these unique professions that all work together to achieve a unified outcome. Hello,
and welcome to the Business of Architecture. I'm your host, Ryan Willard. And today I'm honored to have the opportunity to converse with Roderick Bates, esteemed Director of Corporate Development at chaos. So throughout Rodricks distinguished career, he has been at the forefront of identifying and nurturing innovative solutions to architectural challenges. In his pivotal role at chaos. He is tasked with the critical responsibility of monitoring Industry and Market trends that are influencing the methods employed by counselors can tell, both presently and in the future. His role involves engaging in strategic collaborations with technology partners, clients and leadership teams of counselors product development, and research divisions to evaluate and initiate new product ventures that will pioneer future architectural design. Previously, during his tenure as a principal at Kieran Timberlake, Broderick spearheaded initiatives to develop and bring to market various software and hardware tools. These innovations have been instrumental in enhancing the environmental and operational efficiency of the buildings within the wider architecture engineering construction community. And it was a real delight speaking where the Rodriguez is absolutely fascinating career number one the the innovation of practice like Kieran Timberlake a hiring and developing a research and development team, and putting that kind of resource into innovation. And also Rodricks kind of visionary thought his research mind and the kind of career arc that he's taken that now sees him at chaos, and the kind of work that they're doing in specifically, we focus on N scape as one of the kind of key products and bits of software for chaos is developing. In this episode, we discuss how a blend a flower Street and architecture lead to groundbreaking approaches in sustainable design. We uncover the transformative power of software in visualization, and influencing architectural projects, we look at the surprising ways non architects are leveraging advanced design tools. And we also learn about the future of architectural software and its potential to revolutionize the industry. So a really fascinating conversation very important. And sit back and relax and enjoy. Roderick eighths. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, business of architectures, flagship program to help you structure your firm for freedom, fulfillment, and financial profit. If you want access for our free training on how to do this, please visit smart practice method.com. Or if you want to speak directly to one of our advisors about how we might be able to help you please follow the link in the information. Roderick, Welcome to the Business of Architecture. How are you?
I'm doing wonderful. Thank you. So I think the first day of winter, and it's one of my favorite seasons.
Excellent. Yes, it's certainly certainly starting to get a little bit colder here. So, welcome. You have had a really fascinating career. You previously before your current incarnation as Director of Corporate Development, chaos, you were principal at Kieran Timberlake. And you were there for about 13 years. You're part of their research group working on ecological, economic, social and site driven data to kind of create in an informed sustainable design, which in itself was a very unique position. Very interesting position in practice, to certainly to practice at that caliber as well. And
particularly at that time, I mean, it wasn't something that really was on the radar, most firms thinking on that scale, and to be able to have the opportunity to come in and for them to see value in that was unusual.
Was that something that came out of your your kind of university work? Or how did you end up positioning yourself in such a kind of unique kind of domain of expertise? Well, what would happen? And what is this domain? What does it mean?
Absolutely. Well, I, I first worked actually a career in timber Lake coming in from between my first and second year at forestry school. And there, you get exposed to a lot of concepts within the realm of ecology and one of them. Maybe it sounds a little simplistic, but essentially one of the professors said, you know, listen, everything matters, but some things matter more than others. And so when you're looking at an ecosystem, you had to figure out okay, what are all the inputs, but then what are the ones that really matter? Were the ones you can manipulate. And so when I came to Karen Timberlake and I actually came by an introduction for one of my professors as an advisor I had, he said, What are you in? What do you want to do for your internship? And I said, you know, I'm really interested in the built environment and how we can manipulate the built environment to achieve ecological goals, you know, same way that within a forest ecosystem, you manipulate it to achieve a particular ecological outcome. And so he said, You know, I have a couple of firms that might be interested in this. So he put out his feelers and Karen Timberlake was one of them. This one sounds interesting, you know, we don't really exactly know. But yeah, once you bring them on over. So I went down there and interviewed and I showed him some work that I had done that was, you know, little hand drawings of like a sort of a nature experience, I had a ecological component and educational component and folded into a larger development. And they thought, you know, this is pretty creative for someone that's not even coming from architecture. So they brought me on board for the summer. And it ended up being an incredible opportunity to work on one project. By and large the whole time, it was a, it was a university project up in Calgary, which for the firm was kind of like an opportunity to really punch above their weight for the first time, significantly. So and they really put a lot of effort into an interview process that was very unconventional. And a lot of it was around understanding the context of this project, and what the opportunities were for this project to have a benefit to that larger context, whether it be the educational context, which is kind of obvious, right. But then also, you know, this is a place where the oil sands were one of the primary sources of funding for any project up there, university or otherwise. And so they really understand the environmental implications there. Wherever the opportunities for building to have an impact on that particular ecological outcome. What was the local ecology? What was the, the nature of the, of the wind throughout the year? And how would that say be something that that could be harnessed, I ended up having this incredibly complex understanding of the site that I communicated to the larger firm and ended up being the basis for interview, showing how all of these myriad of influences would actually yield an architectural outcome. And it ended up being something that was pretty unusual for the firm, as far as an interview process, and start to set a little bit of a template for how they approached site analysis and design going forward. So given the success of that, they asked me to come back. And I thought, well, you know, that was an absolute fantastic experience. So yes, I'll come back. And so
that's absolutely fascinating. It's that's so interesting, that actually, your, your, your initial area of expertise is in forestry and ecological systems. And that's very progressive for an architect to get to take to kind of engage with that. And actually, you can start to see how, in a way, it's so obvious. It's such an, it's such an important
sort of obvious now, right? That was a long time ago. And it wasn't then. But it's while maybe obvious, it's also really dependent upon a firm with an open mind. And that's perhaps What I enjoyed most about there. Maybe I didn't realize how special that was at the time. But if you could come to say, Does internal design, review or create or what have you, with a compelling argument, some data, strong visuals that you could communicate, people would listen. And it didn't matter if you're like me, I was an intern, or you know, you were a design principal or a partner. Everyone's voice mattered. And as long as you were effective in your communication, and y'all had sort of sound reasoning and argument. And I mean, to me, that was really satisfying because of most places, particularly with architecture, and I, you got the cape and Kane and all that, you know, you have sort of an ego element, right. And that really wasn't the case there, which I thoroughly enjoyed, was
that so that's a very kind of interesting perspective as well, that you must have, because you've come from a slightly outside discipline to architecture and worked very intimately inside an architecture practice with architects as a principal for a long period of time. But not been a necessarily a building designer, I could
play an architect, right, you know, for certain aspects of it, you know, and there's some things that I did where I was like, Okay, this really started to drive design like, you know, some very simplistic CFD analysis that actually informed the shape of buildings based upon my understanding of wind patterns in this particular location throughout the day and throughout the year. It actually influenced the design and then get to see that It actually worked. You know, there's things like that were like, Oh, wow, that was satisfying. But you're right. And you know, I'm not specifying things on a really detailed level and things like that. But I'm still playing within that realm in ways that were actually pretty informative. In that first internship, one of the things I also was involved on it, it was a school called Sidwell Friends School down in Washington, DC. And I think it was the first LEED Platinum K through 12. School, it was just wrapping up construction. And there was a desire to like let people know how special the school was. So there was a lot of components there like a little constructed wetland that was processing wastewater and things like that. So they had a visual about what was happening as far as that wastewater that was right there, front and center. So to understand this whole wastewater system, they're like, Well, here's the specifications. And they're like, you know, gave me some files to go through, and had to read this. And then from there, kind of like back, understand the specifications for the system, and then create a diagram. So all sudden, okay, I learned architectural specifications and things like that. So it was a really great way of learning a lot of the things that architects maybe take for granted, and allowed me to have a better understanding. But I do remember, it was a long process, and I remember going to an interview. And somehow I said something like, oh, there's a cement truck or something like that. And they're like, oh, that's concrete, young man. You know, things like that. We're like, I still got really chastise on terminology and whatnot, which I really appreciate it. Because it was all part of that learning process.
Amazing. And so how did your role then evolve at Timberlake? And what was the what was the kind of group that you were leading and pioneering that?
Okay, so I've certainly wasn't leading it, maybe for a short period of time. So when I did an internship, there was an individual by the name of Kevin Pratt, delete Kevin Pratt, who was really a polymath and sort of had a degree of intellectual latitude. That was really, really exceptional. I mean, he was a remarkable individual. And so I worked with him during that first summer, and he was sort of the the research director. And then when I came back, he actually left to take a teaching assignment, I remember exactly where it was, I'm going to be Cornell or something like that. So it was just me. So there was a year there where I was going to, like I was the research group. And it was really a lot of fun. Because, you know, there wasn't necessarily a lot of second guessing of my assertions, which is always satisfying. But at the same time, you know, you got to do what you want. And what you saw was important and, and guide things in a certain way. But obviously, I was pretty green. So they brought in a research director by the name of misbelief Faircloth, from UT Austin, and she was fantastic. And so the two of us work together to map out with the where the capabilities we wanted, what was the the type of skill sets that were going to be required to hit those capabilities. And I remember, we had printouts of every person in the office and their relative skill sets and things like that, trying to map out this whole concept of, okay, there's certain problems we want to solve, what's the team that we need to have to solve it? What's the team that we have right now? And what are the skill sets we can pull in? So working together, we ended up having to an entire research vision that went everything from like a very structured component, because we were an ISO certified firm. So everything had to we had to have a research process that was documented and formulaic. But within that, of course, there's a lot of latitude, and then we had to build out the team. And I have to say, There's nothing better than getting to build out your own team. You know, it's really satisfying, because you get to find people that, you know, you're going to be able to work well with, but are also going to push you and push the practice. And, you know, what are the people say like, you know, the people hire a people or no, what is it a people hire a plus people or something I don't know, all I know is that the people I hired were definitely smarter. They really got us to deliver. But it was also really fun interview process. And bringing finding these people was really an exceptional process. And honestly, the interview process was probably the most fun I've ever had in any firm I've ever worked at. And I've always tried to take elements of it going forward, was
it primarily architects or were you bringing in people from other disciplines as part of this research group?
We were pretty open minded. As far as who we brought in, you know, there was a certain amount of bias on who would apply or even see the opportunities here, you know, because we're oftentimes trying to kind of pull in people from adjacent fields, but you know, what's a mechanical engineer gonna even be looking for a job at an architecture firm? So we ended up with some architects but to call them architects would really be shortchanging these people. You know, there's someone that has like a had a background in anthropology but also architecture and forestry. So in the head was like Russian linguistics, chemical physics and architecture. You know, things like that. I mean, it was like, these people were all over the place. But I think that was part of what made it work really well is you had this exceptional group of people that performed at a really high level. Of course, they're all kind of alpha people. So I think probably to hang out with us was probably no fun for an outsider. But we all got along really well.
Love it, love it. So that's that I mean, I mean, as a business perspective, that's a very, that's actually quite a unique position to be in is to have like an architecture firm to have this research group that's, that's doing, I'm assuming a lot of independent research and then research, which is then specifically geared towards particular projects.
It was Yeah, we had sort of these two pathways that we pursued, by and large. And it was all funded by the work that the firm did seem, there's a certain element of commitment and sacrifice there was like, it was like, basically, they were committed that like 10% of the firm staff was within the context of this research group. And we weren't doing bathroom details. I mean, this was researched. And so that group had, really two different avenues that I pursued. One of them was that research that was in support of current design practices, or current design projects. And then in addition to that we had when I would put it more into the category of really blue sky stuff like way out there. Some of the stuff like I remember flying out to a company out in California that was doing printed solar vortex organic, photovoltaics, where he actually printed on like a sheet of plastic, like a roll to roll printing. And, you know, working with them on a research grant with the Department of Energy. I mean, really, like, I don't know, it was way out there, particularly at the time. So we got to do stuff like that, and really think well outside the box. And same deal, as, as I was saying, in these design reviews, you know, if you can make a compelling argument put together a good research proposal with a budget, an application and all this kind of stuff. It was a go. So there's a lot of things that we were doing that was way ahead of the time, you know, deploying custom building sensor networks, to allow for these extreme high density, temperature and humidity sensor networks. And we'd be going down to buildings, we were going to renovate and drilling holes in the wall, trying to hide them so that the architect in charge when find the things like that, and then using that to create these really complex models that can predict performance, I got one project, I remember he ended up actually working with a client bringing in it was an an unrestored building. And we put in all the sensors throughout the whole building. And what we wanted to do was figure out essentially, what was the the thermal inertia of this building as an input to refine the energy modeling from a passive perspective. So we put in all the sensors throughout the building in the wall, everywhere. And then we brought in all these heating elements in blasted this building with heat for about 24 hours in the middle of winter, and then turned everything off, and then measured how long it took for everything to cool back down. And then from that, we were able to create this really nice dynamic model for how heat transferred through the building envelope, and then coupled that with some thermography scans that were simultaneously
extraordinary, because I mean, one of the big sort of missings in a lot of architecture practice is the fact is, is the ability to be able to go and actually record and measure how well your building is performing. Built work. Because
yeah. And also what was your starting point, right? It's like, well, this is where it is now. Well, this is where we began. And now we actually could do that, right? Because then you know, we didn't want to take the sensors out of the wall. So you know, something where you could go back and actually measure and say, Okay, this is how big the improvement was. And we actually had a really neat project up at Yale, where we did that on a building. So that Yale University has an obscene amount of building stock, as you can imagine, right? It's a big university add in the research component and the the medical component, it's huge. And so they're saying, well, listen, if we just improve the efficiency of some of this building stock, like well, then what are we doing as far as reducing our carbon emissions and things like that. So there we got a project where it was actually we're able to do an in situ A B Comparison, where we did the same thing, we put all these sensors both in the room, we put them in the wall, and then we actually got one of the rooms and we figured it out and actually insulated this historic building with a certain amount of insulation and things like that. And then we ran a series of basically, tests like through not through any kind of act of measurement, but just kind of passive test, recording how people felt, and then recording the the temperature and then Also the setpoint on the thermostat because people can manually control the thermostat to make this argument for Well, shall we be renovating these older buildings or not have been a really interesting data set, mostly showing that you can't just renovate the wall assembly, you have to do the whole mechanical system because these old systems with these boilers that were just raging in the basement, you overheated the buildings that was kind of the techniques so much that you couldn't just insulate. You had to redo everything, because the otherwise the building just became too hot.
Wow. Wow. Which is kind of disappointing.
Yeah, um, but But it's so kind of critical to know.
It is yeah, right. You don't want to spend millions or 10s of millions or even more than that. And then figure Oh, well, maybe I shouldn't have done that. This,
this is such an interesting area of kind of post occupancy analysis and actually being able to collect real data from built work, or current existing buildings. A lot of architects end up only ever speculating, speculating about.
I know, that's the kind of the bummer, right. And every time you go back, like there hasn't, there wasn't a single time in that whole experience, where we went back to a project and perform any type of sustainability focused analysis, whether it be bird strikes, or embodied carbon or, you know, energy consumption, or something like that, and found out who, like, you know, just needs a little extra work. You know, nothing was nothing was the way it should have been. It didn't mean that we couldn't get it there. But it did require some level of intervention. And I think for us, that was like a really important lesson. But it was also one where we found that oftentimes, it was happening on a sort of a one to one scale, like it was this project, this lesson learned. Okay, done deal. And I remember one of the, the firm founders, Steve Kieran was presenting on a talk at University of Pennsylvania called like the end of oil. And essentially, he wants to make an argument that we as a, as an industry actually have very little influence in history, in that case being architecture. So I did an analysis looking at all the projects that were built every year. And how many of those, what percentage of that to that reflect of the overall total building stock is in the United States, and then how many of those had an architect or an engineer involved. And the sad reality was that I think at the time was like, 127 million buildings or something was in existence, you know, you had a limited number of those, you know, maybe 10%, sort of exchanged every year, new buildings. And then you had this like, tiny sliver. And I mean, it was like, this huge diagram of buildings representing each one's like a million. And then like, one little part of a house was architects involved. And you realized, holy cow, if we're going to solve this problem, you know, is isn't going to be a solution coming from one building at a time, like, we need to think bigger. And that thinking led us to take some of the lessons we learned, package them into software products, or some sort of technology products, so we could get out into the larger industry. And from my perspective, that was probably one of the from a sort of a paradigm shift. One of the most impressive things that that firm did is it really tried to not just hold this as this sort of reserve reserve of their knowledge, that would be a competitive advantage, but really try to get it out to the larger industry. Wow.
Okay, so So the research that you guys were doing, you were developing tools, unique pieces of software and, and ways of manipulating understanding collating presenting data, which then start to manifest itself as the new bits of software, which you can then release to the rest of the industry to have more of a bigger influence, which then leads us on nicely. I'm imagining now of the bridge that happens between Timberlake and your current position. Yeah,
absolutely is and that is, in many ways the bridge. So we had some software that ended up being actually relatively successful in this realm was one that was called tally it was around quantifying the embodied environmental impacts of materials. As you were specifying them on a particular project. It was a Revit integration and ended up being one of the first tools for this type of analysis. It was one that was born out of an experience was actually an EPA had a project where it was called the design for disassembly as a competition. So I did a virtual disassembly of one of our first projects that was done in Revit as a house down in Delmarva Peninsula, and wonderful house absolutely beautiful, but it had a ton of spray foam insulation. And it also had one side of the house that opened up with these garage doors to face the ocean. And when I did an analysis of the invite environment Olympics at that time, the data was pretty thin on the ground. So we could only do carbon. And it was we were it was some some serious bodging here to get this analysis. I was like weighing things. I was like wait buckets of bolts and whatnot. And I tried to understand how much how much the components were. And we found that this spray foam insulation was more than half of the overall body carbon, so to speak for this house. Wow. Which is huge, especially given that the house like half of it opened up. So it's like, how important was this insulation? That was like half the impact. And so we were thinking out of that was like, wow, I wish we really had a tool that could understand this at the time when we were making this decision. And so that led to the development of this, thinking that we needed to have something else integrated into Revit. As you made decisions, you need to specify materials, you can quantify that impact, then we ended up getting a commission for the New London embassy for the US government. And part of our proposal was that we would quantify the embodied environmental impacts of this building, which is all well and good, you can do it by weighing things when you're working on small house, but when all sudden you're working on an embassy, which is huge, you know, this building was like a million square feet or something, it was massive. That's not going to fly. And so all sudden was like the dog that caught the car, you're like, Oh, crap, you know, what am I going to do? And so that really jumpstart the development of a process. And so we ended up coming up with an idea of reaching out with Autodesk which almost reached out to us at the same time to work together. And then with them, we find the technology partner in Germany called P International, which I think is now sphere. And we work together to essentially create this tool for this project that also had applicability to anyone that had this problem and end up being really successful. When you think about the first sort of product commercialization process, you want to figure out, like how many people even knew about this, and remember sending a survey out to everyone in the firm contact list, which is pretty big. And we got the survey results back. And it was like less than 10% even knew what we were talking about when we said lifecycle analysis or body carbon. I mean, it was like nobody knew. And then you know, I think if you were to do the same survey now in the profession, right, it would be like, okay, you know, almost everyone understands. But to get to where I am now, though, a little bit of the challenge was that it's still an architecture firm, right? We're still in the service of of architecture, and architecture was essentially the engine that was enabling this type of ciliary work. And there came a point where he, essentially, I wanted to focus more on that aspect of how do we get from that little sliver to the much larger paradigm of of improving performance and really move the needle in a meaningful way. And you do that by essentially getting in front of as many designers as possible. And the one great thing is that N scape was a software that was in front of a lot of architects, and even more today. And so I saw this as sort of a potential Trojan horse, if you will, you know, to, to get in front of that really broad audience in a way that would allow for them to understand not only how something looks, but also how it performs. And I saw that being able to have those pieces of information together at the same time, would really empower pretty sophisticated design thinking and design decision making in a way that currently wasn't possible, at least from my perspective. So
so kind of you starting to recognize here in your in your career, that you've developed this very powerful piece of kind of way of analyzing data, there's a limit, because Kieran Timberlake, they're still an architect practice, as you're saying, they're not a software company. And this might not be something that they want to necessarily go through the whole, you know, developing a piece of software for a mass market is its own has its own business,
it's its own beast. I mean, I can just tell you, like I was doing sales and support and things like that for that tally software. And it was like every day for hours of just answering emails, you know, sending out invoices, dealing with the accountants, I mean, it was, you know, and that's taken away from really what helps develop those things in the first place, which is architecture.
Yeah, did that piece of what happened to that piece of software in the end?
So one of the last things I did before I left Karen Timberlake was helped facilitate the transfer of that software to the carbon Leadership Forum, which is or the CLF, not CLS, sorry, the old car, what was it called? Now? Sorry. Now I'm gonna probably insult some people. It was called the EC three. And so it's a embodied carbon data Bass, they had some pretty hefty funders like Microsoft and things like that. And they were really taking the charge, had great funding, great staffing, and a really good position to be good stewards of that tool. So they were the ones that and we also had a really good relationship with them. So essentially, we facilitated the transfer to them with a long term objective, that it would really align with their nonprofit vision, right, you know, sort of greater accessibility of the software. And so that's, that's where it is right now. And I think they've been able to take it and adapt that technology to other purposes as well. Because the idea that it took a very accurate material take off from Revit, as you can imagine, has a lot of utility. Yeah,
absolutely, absolutely. So you, you then your career started to move into, you know, you kind of recognize actually being or working with a software company, actually is going to give you a bigger platform in a way to be able to further these ideas and empower
it was and then I also wanted to kind of enjoy this next transition period. And I really liked working at Kieran Timberlake. So it wasn't like I felt like I needed to see the door. But I also didn't want to be in a place where my aspirations were pushing the company, or were butting up against what was best for the company. So I took my time I to find an exposition, I reached out to all the contacts, I knew that we're kind of dialed in and whatnot, and said, you know, do you see some different opportunities, and there were a lot of different ones that that actually showed up, you know, whether it be working as a sustainability director or research director at architecture firms, a couple of different software options, some startups. And then there was this one, and ended up being introduced through a mutual colleague, actually, interestingly enough, I got him a job at another firm. And so I had reached out to him a little quid pro quo. And he introduced me to the then CEO of N scape, Mr. Christian Lang. And I ended up having an interview with him, where I came prepared with a presentation kind of show him my vision of what I thought this product could do. And he's like, wow, this is great. And I ended up having a really good rapport with him. And so a lot of ways. I went there, not only because there seemed to be receptivity, to my thinking about how something is very strong, in a visual sense, could also be used to communicate performance. But also because of this individual, you know, he seemed like someone that really had a great leadership capability, someone that really wanted to work with. And then really the other piece was instincts reputation. A Karen Timberlake, we had a Technology Evaluation Group that look at new software. And remember, Enscape came in on a Friday, they've done the evaluation, they showed it to the office during this little sort of, you know, thing where you have some beers, and you kind of look at the new tech. And by like, a week or two weeks later, every design team in the whole firm was using landscape. So I knew like, Okay, this, they got something special here, you know, this is this is like the, the iPhone or something, I mean, it just took off. So to me, it seemed like a really nice confluence of individual firm mission and receptivity to what I wanted to do. And
Escape has been one of these, one of these bits of software, where there was a sudden sort of improvement in so many people's output in terms of their visualization. I remember practices saying, like, how did you how did you do that? He went, who, who's doing these images for you? And it's like, our way we're using we're using this, we're using this landscape. So you moved over and kind of started to work out chaos. Can you just give us a bit of a context of the of the bits of software that chaos is involved in and and perhaps we can talk a little bit more about specifically NCA?
Absolutely. So I started out actually at N scape before it was merged with chaos, right. And I was the 100th employee. So it's kind of easy to remember. And how it ended up happening with chaos, becoming this larger company was that Inscape was realizing that we want, we have a lot of opportunity here. But there's a limit to what our customers are able to do, you know, they want to go to that next level of quality. And we knew a lot of them were using something called the V Ray software, which is made by a company called Chaos, to be able to achieve that next level quality know that picture, perfect stuff, photo reel, so to speak. Whereas we were really the reserve of real time and ease of use and things like that. So we were used for interviews and things like that, but we weren't like you know, SLM wasn't necessarily using us for that unknown billion dollar project movie or something like that. So We were looking at options for that next level of quality. And interestingly enough, unbeknownst to us, at the same time, chaos was seen and escape as a threat, and was developing sort of an escape killer, so to speak. And that would take a little bit of our lunch in There ended up being some investors that were kind of talking to both of these companies and saw this strategic opportunity saying, wait a second, what about bringing these two entities together, and making the company that could really be the visualization company up in the world. And so that's ended up what happened and end up being this, this merger, between Enscape and chaos, to bring together this continuous workflow of or real time to photo real. And from my perspective, it made total sense. And I think, from the perspective of where the industry is going, it absolutely makes sense as well. So when you think about the ecosystem of products that we have, you have n scape, which is it's really about ease of use at the most fundamental level. And part of that is real time, you know, it's really quick. So you can make a design decision very quickly. So you can look at options, you know, it's like a curtain wall versus storefront and things like that. And it's so easy to use, and so fast from a disappear technical perspective. And it sits right in the platform you're using for the design process, that you can actually compare these options and things like that. It's also that ease of use means that anyone can use it in your firm, I have a lot of firms that I talk to, it's like kind of a second window. So I have Revit, on one side of their big screen, and then they'll have landscape run in the other. So it allows for them to get a more intuitive visual understanding than you might get through a Revit interface. And then that same visual intuitive visual understanding has a lot of weight. When it comes to other audiences. You show a client certain, like I say, a section drawing and like, I don't I know from experience, there's a lot of things that I probably at Karen Timberlake, we show clients like, either they really knew their architecture, or they were just nodding. And I suspect a lot of times, they're probably just nodding, because some of these things are really complicated to communicate via a 2d drawing, and particularly one that's like line drawings and things like that, whereas Inscape cuts right through that. And it's like, you know, anyone can understand this, because
I think that's very, that's very interesting. As architects we can, you can be looking at a series of drawings for weeks and weeks and weeks, and you train your eyes to be able to read them very quickly. And, you know, for me, I spent 20 years looking at architectural drawings, I've come across a heavy set of construction documentation drawings, that are heavily labeled, or have seemed to take me a little while to understand what on earth actually going on. So God knows what it's like for a client who's, you know, trying to understand, and particularly sections are a bit more this was such a kind of interesting architectural abstraction. A sectional? Yeah, I
mean, right, no one's seen a building section unless there has been a disaster or something like
that. Yeah, exactly. It's such a, it kind of really takes a little something to understand what it is that you're looking at. And it can leave a lot clients a little bit baffled. So that's
part of what I always felt in, in all of these processes is there's a real need for inclusion, you know, people talk about the importance of inclusion, and I always had a slightly different lens on it, which was everyone. And the design process has something to bring to the table, you know, there is always a mildly derisive term that people would use, like, oh, you know, don't let the client play architect or something like that, and just, you know, be there pay a lot of money for this experience, like they should enjoy this design process, let them play architect. Similarly, with various stakeholders, like I think a lot of people have something to bring to the table that you're not going to think of. And so that's why one of the things I really like about Inscape is it brings everyone potentially into the design process. You don't have to be just that expert that's looked at the drawings all this time, and really understands Plan and Section like nobody else, you can be anyone. And you see this and you can have informed decisions, because you really don't necessarily know where the good ideas are gonna come from. They may come from the client group, they may come from those eventual building occupants. So, for me, I had a very open mind. That's one of the things I really liked about Inscape. Is it kind of broke down that expert wall and allowed everyone to be participants in the design process.
What were some of the other issues that you feel that architects were dealing with or other designers are dealing with? And scape start to open up and provide a kind of new set of solutions to?
Well, I think one of the if I think we're Inscape is today. I think part of it is just getting work, if you're to think of like sort of the challenges of that and I would say like what it takes to get a project. Now it just keeps seems to I remember when I left practice, boy, it was getting competitive out there. I mean, I remember working on, you know, this isn't like a top tier college, it was a good college, but it was like, you know, not exceptional. And there was a library project, and we were competing against Snohetta. And I was like, Snohetta, doing this project. I mean, what's going on, like, competition is fierce. And if you go into an interview process like that, you know, anything less than prepared, like you're really underwhelmed. And so that's one of the things where I think about what Inscape is enabling. Now it's enabling people that don't necessarily have visual experts and things like that to create really compelling proposals for winning the work, because obviously, if you don't win it in the first place, you know, you're gonna get the job. The other thing that I was starting to see is that a lot of interview processes were getting longer and longer. And there was an expectation, there would almost be like an element of design that was rolled into these interview processes. It was like the clients where I was trying to get something for free. And so having something that allowed for a really rapid visualization, as part of that early ideation made it a lot cheaper, because you're not getting fee for this process. But you have to present something, otherwise, you're not getting the job in the first place. So n scape seemed like a really good tool, and is a really good tool for people to go through that sort of unfunded, early design processes now seems to be required to when projects particularly in interior design, I'd say even more so than architecture. So that's a big part of some of the value that I think it really brings to the architects. And then something else that's unique that I find, you know, beyond just the pure visualization that Inscape enables is virtual reality. And virtual reality is a little bit like there's a bit of a schism, I would say, and our customers, you know, some people are, like, totally sold on VR, and other people are like, I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole, and I'm gonna get conjunctivitis. But for those that, that use it, motion sickness, or motion sickness, probably the more fun, I think it's a right, I was a little worried about seeing these goggles being passed around. But as one of our customer advisory board members said, you know, he feels I felt at the age of sharable wearables is coming to an end, like everyone, people are actually bringing their own VR goggles, to reviews and whatnot, which I think is a nice idea. But one of the things that VR does bring that I think is really powerful, particularly for those that don't have a huge reservoir of experience in design is a sense of space. And looking at a drawing set and understanding a volume, or how one room flows to the next is incredibly challenging, unless you have a lot of experience in architecture and architectural design. And what you put on VR goggles, and all sudden, you can understand volumes, you can understand if that floor to ceiling height is appropriate, or maybe too much, you can understand what it's like to actually move and navigate. And that's something where you will just never get it from a traditional 2d drawing. You know, it's like you kind of it's like a little bit of a surprise. It's like, well, that worked. Whereas I think in a lot of ways VR allows for for people to understand what is I think, in some ways the most one of the most complex aspects of architecture? Um, like I say, it's that sense of space, and volume and scale, which is very difficult to communicate. It's
interesting, actually, how does the software evolve itself? With like, it just kind of going back to what you were talking about Karen template, where you were running, you were part of a research group? And you were looking at those sorts of independently driven ideas, and then developing software? How does Inscape develop and evolve itself? What kind of interaction do you have with, with architects and designers that that had to have you create innovations in the software?
I mean, one of them, it is absolutely customer driven. But it's also mediated customer driven, it's kind of like, you know, it's not a Greek democracy. You know, it's more of a representative democracy. So one of the things that that we do is we absolutely listen to customers, you know, we have a public facing product board where people can actually vote and input their opinion. And then what we do is you actually look at the company that the person represents, you know, and so there's always a financial aspect that's as balanced with it, too. And then also, are they kind of industry leaders, like are there are their request ones that maybe indicate what's going to come next. Some firms we know are going to be the early adopters and what they do like something that foster and partners does, there's a good chance that your rank and file firm will be doing that in five or six years, maybe not today. So if we're thinking ahead, you know who they are really matters. But the other thing is it customer advisory boards. That's something that's part of my purview is managing our customer advisory board. For AC media, entertain. meant things like that. And getting a group of individuals together that have the experience, both as practitioners and are maybe now thinking more strategically, getting them together, challenging them with ideas, giving them assignments, in some cases where they present back to us as a collective, hearing them discuss the challenges that they're facing collectively, and providing a forum for them to talk in a way that's private, that they really don't get anywhere else, interestingly enough, is an incredibly valuable resource for us to say, okay, these are the challenges that they're seeing today, this is what they anticipate tomorrow. So that's a really good one. And then we also have a power user group, it's a little bit more about brass tacks, you know, it's like more a little more feature focused and things like that. But then we're also we have, particularly through our sales team, really good connections with a ton of different architecture firms, and engineering firms, contractors of all different sizes, from the largest to relatively small. And something that I like to do is, is actually reach out to those firms and understand their workflows, their challenges, and things like that, you know, do an interview process, create reports out of that, that are disseminated internally. And then, of course, you know, you have support tickets and things like that. But all this information comes in. And then from that, we also have to look at this larger trend. So part of what I do in my group is look at just trends within the industry, and actually put out monthly reports internally, that also get sort of a redacted version, if you will, goes out into resellers and partners and things like that. So I look at all these different pieces, and we really as a product management team looks at him as well. And from there, we kind of divine what we need to do, because everything's going to be a compromise. And you know, you're gonna make some people unhappy, some features aren't going to be there. I know, for instance, Revit filter support for Revit filters in n scape is something where we have some people have been like, just for the love of God just do it. I would buy 100 licenses. And then you know, on the flip side, we're saying yeah, but we really need to focus on our our licensing procedures here because license compliance is a huge problem for global software company, right? So you have to balance all of these competing interests. And there's always going to be more that you want to do. But that's a big part of it is that we have to take in these inputs and make compromises. fundamentally speaking, I think that's one of the hardest things is saying, Okay, what do you sacrifice and a lot of times, it's things that I really felt were important. But I also have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
Sure, sure. You were saying earlier as well about your your interest in in case of having pieces of software that weren't there that have the capacity to both visualize and anticipate the performance of the building, it doesn't escape, have that kind of capacity at the moment, it doesn't
have the capacity at this moment, at least in a public facing way. You know, we have some really rudimentary things that maybe look at lighting, sort of intensity and or light intensity and things like that. But that's absolutely an area that we'll be playing. And we'll be playing in, in a way that really aligns with our core functionality, you know, prioritizing ease of use, but also maintaining a high level of quality. And in order to do that, we're leveraging our skill set, which is visualization and visual communication, but in conjunction with a technology partner that has a really strong presence, from a quality perspective in this industry. And this is something that we sort of shown and limited to a limited degree, usually to solicit feedback and things like that. But we'll be rolling out as a product next year. And so for me, needless to say, this is something that I'm really excited about. Because essentially what we'll be doing is the same thing we did for visualization, in architecture, which is democratization. we democratize visualization, we took it from the reserve of the visual expert, visualization expert, and made it accessible to everyone in the design process. And we're going to be doing the same thing in the context of building performance, making this something that where you can not only tell how something looks and compare options from an aesthetic perspective, but also understand the implications from a performance perspective, and a level of quality that you can really trust. And I remember people that we were talking to for feedback about this concept, they say, you know, the first thing is going to happen when I show this to a client, is they're going to ask, Is this accurate? You know, is this how the building is going to perform? And they said, I'm not going to show it to any client unless I can say yes. And so when we think about our mandate, you know, it has ease of use, has an equality of outcome and it really has to yield something that's actionable. You know, where your render that and visually intuitive interface is the place where you can see the relative performance of your building from Have an environmental perspective. It's extraordinary,
extraordinary vision. And, you know, to, to kind of imagine software being able to be that kind of predictive of how buildings are forming tied in with like, you know, I mean, just how the visualization has evolved over the last few years where now we've got pieces of software landscape where you can be making these decisions very quickly. And you're not just getting a mock up, you're getting near photorealistic, almost imperceptible, is that real? Is that not real? Of what something will, will look like in you know, in real time?
That's part of the challenge, right? You're seeing this thing where the quality has gone up so much, man, it's like, you look at an Ikea catalog, and you're like, well, it was a wonderful photographs of all these little apartments, like, Oh, those aren't photographs, that's V Ray, you know, it's like, you know, where this is going. And so from our perspective, you know, we can't just kind of wait till we get to that quality cliff and say, okay, you know, all of a sudden, now that quality is accessible outside of our software, we need to start to adapt and say, Okay, what's the what are these other critical workflows that are out there, that we need to adapt and include in our software, with that same level of accessibility? So that's obviously where our mindset is thinking in the context of landscape, you know, what are these critical design workflows, and there is no shortage of them. You know, some of them are even going the opposite direction, where it's like, Listen, I love Inscape. I love that photo reel. But, you know, let me tell you, schematic design is no place for photo real. How do I walk this image back? You know, how do I make it more artistic, more interpretive, so the client doesn't focus on the detail, but instead focuses on big design moves, that
bass vessels are very interesting as I was going to ask, you know, what, what are some of the limitations around being so photorealistic? Because, you know, there's, there's something almost where we are, we're now living in a world where it is, it's, it's even for the best trained i i struggle. And other people, other architects who are looking at these images all the time, difficult to tell the difference between reality and virtual reality, or reality and visual image. Is that a constraint in any kind of way for for clients?
I think it is because there's an element of art and science and architecture, right. And photo reel certainly has an element of both, to some degree, but also you lose a little bit of the emotion in some ways. And you get an you have an emotional response to space, when you walk into a fantastic piece of architecture. But sometimes photo real visualizations aren't as effective actually, at communicating that emotion. And you need to have something that's a bit more artistic, frankly, you know, I remember talking with Herzog de Meuron about their practice, from a visualization perspective, and they're like, oh, yeah, we have a bunch of visual artists that work on different projects. But which one you choose kind of depends on on what you want to communicate, you know, sometimes you want to communicate something that's a little dark and moody, sometimes you want something that's really light and airy, sometimes you want something that's very tectonic. And different artists have different emotions that they apply to their visualizations from their, their perspective. And we recognize the same thing with our customers as well, this except they just may not have the resources or capacity to do that. So one of the things that we're doing, and we actually show that recently at Autodesk University with some nascent AI tools that we've developed, and that's one of the places we think AI can actually be really powerful, is to bring that type of artistic visualization into our drawings. And I think what's really exciting about this, that I've never seen anywhere else, is that we can do that in real time. So that means that you can, instead of VR goggles walk through something that is like an oil painting that you're building, I mean, like, that's out there. You know, that like something like that, you know, this isn't just like a, you know, a mid journey button press. You know, this is an immersive real time experience. That's artistic, which is pretty incredible, right? You know, that's so far removed from photo reel, and anything you can experience right now. It's pretty exceptional. That's
extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. Do you find that actually Inscape is finding its way into the hands of non designers or all kinds of professionals that you wouldn't have necessarily expected to be using it? For
sure. Like one of my favorite users that we have, it's actually an artist that does these sort of cyberpunk Tokyo night scenes for like, 2045 like he's really futuristic things. I love it, because it's art, but they're using landscape. And from my perspective, you know, that I remember in when I used to work here in timber, like people would take our tally. Software and they would use it ways I had never seen before, you know, they would like create Dynamo scripts and manipulate things and find the best best outcome. And things like that where I was like, wow, they're really kind of hacking our software. And I was like, that's how you know you've made it. When people take your tools and use it in ways you never expected and Enscape has that we have people that use our software in ways that I never would have expected. And these artists being a really great example where they're communicating things truly artistically, via our software that's well outside of the traditional realm of architecture, you know, it's,
and this is where you get the real interesting kind of feedback loop, where you've got unexpected users using it in a completely new way. And then a new, a new feature begins to evolve or develop, which then everybody starts to use and becomes quite fundamental. It's true,
I think there may be this artistic mode will be one of those ones, or, you know, the the capacity for say, PBR material generation sort of on command, things like that, I think, have a lot of opportunity there. But on the flip side, I think what we also are faced with is a challenge is that as you get into more of these critical workflows, you know, building performance, being an example of that, you also start to cater towards maybe a distinct branch of the art of the design process, you know, these are different disciplines for a reason. Whether it be interior design, landscape architecture, what have you. And that's one of the pieces that that I think we need to find that right balance with is how do we cater to these unique aspects of the design process, these unique professions that all work together to achieve a unified outcome. And that's one of the things that makes this industry so exciting is that you really do have these diverse teams, incredibly diverse teams. And yet they all work together to deliver one building. And so similarly, our software is going to have to reflect that diversity and when it comes to capabilities, but also allow for that unified design experience.
Amazing, perfect place to conclude the conversation to moderate that has been absolutely fascinating and wonderful speaking with you. So I really appreciate your it's my pleasure, your time this morning, because you've given me a really, really deep and unique insight into into both your own career and the kind of fundamentals of landscapes. Thank you.
Absolutely. My pleasure.
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