Why Architects Should Build Project-Based Teams with Kevin Kennon | 102

Most of the events in my life, I have to say,

didn't come about by planning.

They came about more by circumstance.

Things will happen to you, good things, sometimes bad things.

I saw a remarkable display of humanity, inspiration, sadness and courage.

That was a day that profoundly changed my life.

Welcome to Architecture Business Club, the show that helps

you build a better business in architecture so you can enjoy more

freedom, flexibility, and fulfillment.

I'm your host, John Clayton, and if you're joining us for the first time, don't

forget to hit the follow or subscribe button so you never miss another episode.

We're joined by Kevin Cannon, an internationally renowned

architect with over 40 years experience in sustainable and.

Innovative design.

He's the founder and CEO of Beyond zero DDC, leading the creation of zero carbon

luxury eco resorts around the world.

And his portfolio includes major projects such as the Barclays North

American headquarters, the Rodan Museum in Seoul, and award-winning

Bloomingdale stores, a finalist in the World Trade Center Design competition.

Kevin has received over 40 international design awards and has

work in MoMA's permanent collection.

He also lectures at top universities and contributes widely to discussions

on urban development and climate change.

To connect with Kevin online click the link to his LinkedIn

profile in the show notes.

Kevin, welcome to Architecture Business Club.

Hi, John.

It's a pleasure to be here and thank you for asking me to join your show.

You are very welcome.

Yeah, I've been looking forward to this one.

So it's great to, to finally make it happen today.

Kevin, before we dig in, I'd like to know a little bit about what

you enjoy doing outside of work.

That.

Wow, that's a great question.

I, I, having just come back from five weeks of incredible weather and an

incredible place, and we have a place in Maine on the water, and we also had

an opportunity to stay at that place, which is absolutely beautiful and simple.

But, the it was, the building itself was about a hundred years old and

and remarkable and the approach to how to build with the land it's, it's

on a kind of granite outcropping and multiple levels of different houses

arrayed around this absolute, gorgeous place in which most of it is conserved.

And just the smallest part of it is where people live.

What I like to do in my spare time is I guess travel.

I travel after for business, so it's a little strange to say

what I like to do, what I'm not doing business is to also travel.

But I feel it's throughout my entire career, it's the one element that

seems to continually animate both.

My work how I think about my work and then how I relax and how I enjoy this.

And it has something fundamental to do with our humanity or understanding

our common humanity by going outside of yourselves or ourselves

and trying to fathom the mystery of the world and the universe.

Something along those lines is a kind of animating force for me.

And I love doing outdoor activities.

And yeah I guess I'll just keep doing it as long as I

Mm. I love that.

I love that.

That's one of the most interesting answers that I've had to that question, Kevin.

I really like that.

I love to travel too.

And it, how lovely that you have the opportunity to integrate something that

you really enjoy with your work as well.

You said you get the opportunity to travel with work, which is really cool.

We are gonna talk about the concept of distributive practice so that

practices can access the best talent and they can still remain

competitive and grow their business.

We're also gonna hear a little bit about um, your story as well.

You speak about distributive practice.

What does that really mean

The idea of distributed practice is, it's been around for a while.

It's not something new.

But I think it's more we have the ability to realize it now in a in a better way.

So the, one of the lessons you learn from running your own practice is

the, it's overhead is the killer.

For most pro practices the, you quickly, everything.

If you lucky enough to start a practice because someone maybe someone in your

family or a friend or whatever, has given you a job and you can take that

money that they give you and, use that to rent a space, hire a couple people,

buy computer equipment, et cetera.

What happens is that then the next job comes along and you're using the next job

to expand that space, buy more equipment, hire more people, and then all of a sudden

you are waiting for the job after that.

And that might take a little more time.

Because you haven't, you've been so focused on doing these two projects

and doing everything you can to make sure the clients are happy that you

forgot that you had to go out as the owner and find the next job.

And so pretty soon what it ends up happening, you run into this kind

of a Ponzi scheme, where you're basically using, two jobs out to

pay for what you're doing now.

And then in most architecture offices, particularly true of smaller offices

are usually two or three bad clients away from just going completely

Hmm.

and again, this is all for me, hard learned experience.

Nobody tells you this in architecture school and nobody tells you this

when you're running a practice.

The promise of distributed practice is that you are creating project-based teams.

Just in the way that most of us don't try to do the engineering on our project.

We'll go out and hire engineers either will tell a client to hire them or they

will be part of our team and we hire them.

And their advantage is to either approach, but it's the same principle.

If you have people that you know who are architects and they're particularly

good, or you've met them online and you've vetted them, you've had a

number of face-to-face, at least Zoom conversations, you've seen their work,

you've gotten their, references and credentials, et cetera and you build

a professional relationship with them.

Over time.

That's how you can expand because let them do, handle their payroll, let

them handle their employee insurance and HR and all that other stuff.

And you just expect them to, here's what I want you to do

and, I expect you to deliver.

And if they don't, you fire 'em and get somebody else.

But firing another company, trust me, is a lot easier than firing people

who've been working with you, who you've developed personal relationships

and, you've mentored or what have you.

But for whatever reason it didn't work out.

That's a lot harder.

And it's not good for morale, but in terms of every day it's hard to

have a studio, ensemble office and.

And, hire and fire people along the way you have to.

But what ends up happening is you spend so much time as a

principal, as an owner, managing what is a inherently disfunctional

process that if you can avoid it.

And then at the same time you become, and again, you have to take

your ego out of this because the one thing that is the coin of the

realm for architecture is not money.

It's credit.

And credit, not monetary credit, credit for the work that you do authorship.

So you have to be willing to say I am, I'm operating in almost an

impresario, like a producer, and I'm pulling it together, the best talent.

And guess what?

These, this team.

X, y, Z architects, they really did the work on this part of the project.

Bingo.

Now all of a sudden, now you've got x, y, Z architects.

They've come in, at a reasonable rate they've done the lion's share of the

work, and they're getting credit for that.

So then they can leverage that and put that on their website and say, Hey, this

is a project I did, and it was a project they could never have gotten on their own.

So you have to, that's the key to making distributed practices work is empowering

people that you work with everywhere.

And being able to present that to your clients and say, Hey, guess what?

I'm able to do incredible work and I can charge you less

because this is how I operate.

We're lean, we're nimble, and we're project based.

And my track record, and it works for me is that not only do I have all these

incredible buildings I've designed, but I have designed them by putting

together the best and the brightest teams to do these types of projects.

I love the sound of this approach.

I think it's a really smart idea.

There may be some people out there though.

That are listening that maybe have some doubts about this.

One of the one of the things may be about working with remote teams on projects.

I was wondering what common misconceptions you think there may be when it comes to

working with remote teams in particular.

I think that from the.

Let's talk it from the architect side and then we can talk

about it from the client side.

So from the architect side, what I hear a lot is well, no, no, no

studio culture, everybody being together is essential to what we do.

It's you're sort of planning the accidental, the, the, it's

a, it's the whole rationale between return to work, right?

That there's no substitute for that sort of social engagement.

And architecture is a social activity.

I don't disagree with that.

And developing a kind of shorthand or being able to just walk by someone's

desk and see what they're working on and go, Hey, that was very true when

everybody was at a drawing board and you could see exactly what they were doing.

Not so much when everybody is at a computer screen.

And if you're good at being a design architect and having people work, for

you the one thing you learn is the thing people hate more than anything,

especially when they're on a computer, is having somebody come around and look

over their shoulder at what they're doing.

Yeah, it was, you could do it.

As a drawing I'm not sure what happened 'cause I was very used to working

on a big drafting table, everybody coming around and, occasionally

spilling coffee and what you're doing.

That was like the worst thing.

But, you were always talking about the drawing and you're looking

at, have you thought about this?

And you would sketch over it together.

And it was much more the drawing, making the drawings were more

interactive, obviously you didn't do as many of them, but you know, um,

transparent process as well, because it's so visible, isn't it?

You've got that big drawing board in the office and you can't

help but be drawn to it and see

Yeah.

what people are working on, which, as you say, when people

are working on screens it's, it's a little bit harder to see the bigger

picture of what they're working on.

Yeah.

And then especially if they're working on like design models, like

I do a lot of work on Rhino and I taught myself how to do Rhino finally

because I, people were, didn't really like the fact that I would sit down.

I go, oh, just move this line this way.

Can you just put this box over here?

And and you're tempted to do that when you are sitting down and trying

to design over someone's shoulder.

Anyway I stopped doing that and what we did instead was we would just

get everybody together as a group and put stuff up on on the ball

on the wall or a giant screen and we just go through it that way and

then everybody participated in that.

But you can do that, that just as easily on Zoom.

You can share a screen.

Everybody can be on there.

Hopefully everybody's paying attention.

And the one thing on Zoom calls that I really like is um, people

maybe, depending, they're in their own environments, either in

their smaller offices somewhere, or, sometimes they're at home.

I think they tend to be a little more relaxed.

Actually everybody's a lot more polite.

You don't get as many people talking over each other.

And also, I find that sometimes the quietest people feel more comfortable

speaking and on a Zoom call than they would if they were sitting

there face to face and dealing with this sort of social anxiety.

Cause you can have that in practices where there's some more

of a quieter, more introverted people may feel a bit uncomfortable getting

involved and, and sharing their opinions on things for fear of being Oh.

That's a terrible idea.

Why have you shared that?

So it, that's a interesting advantage, of using something

like um, you mentioned Zoom.

There's obviously lots of other ways to collaborate together

on projects now as well.

What about from the client side?

Do you think there's any kind of misconceptions from

a client's perspective on

yeah.

I think there are cultural misconceptions.

I had a client once tell me, who's doing your, who's doing your working drawings?

And at the time I, I was working with a company in India who were

doing some of it, not all of it.

And.

I had a project manager, who I guess she was trying to work both

sides of this and she, and and she was whispering to the client.

And that kind of came back to me in a meeting once, there, there was some sort

of disagreement about their bill usually.

And and they said, oh we think you're taking advantage of us and, you're farming

out, our work to someplace in India.

And they said it disparagingly.

My response at the time was you hold on a second.

I'm able to do what I'm doing at your price.

Because, we originally went in at this level and then, we went down and I and you

keep changing things and, whatever it was.

And we have to meet up with your demand.

I'm not coming back to you and asking for more money.

I'm trying to work, within your framework and I need to be able

to make that decision myself.

It's my business decision.

It's my responsibility to ensure that the end product works.

So it's not like there's no filter there, right?

So how I go about my business is my business not yours.

I think you have to be able to have that discussion and that

battle a little bit sometimes.

But fundamentally I do believe that it's not the client's business.

It's as long as you are, working within the framework that they've

Yeah.

I suppose it, it could be seen to be a challenge to build a strong

team with other project members that are not in the same room or

perhaps not even in the same country.

What do you think is needed to help bind everybody together?

I think you, if you're gonna do that, you have to

vet who precisely is on the job.

And the first time you do it is the riskiest one.

'Cause you have to think of the first time I really wanna build not only do

I wanna build a team that's right for this specific project, but I want to

ideally build a team with companies who are going to be able to deliver on the

next project so that the first game is always, and what we call in basketball,

a pickup game, throwing people together.

And this is a little bit like when I formed United Architects to do the World

Trade Center competition, and, we're one of 800 people who got, there's a

field of 800 teams all over the world.

We were selected.

There's one, there's only five that got selected, and the

other ones were big names.

We were just kids.

But these, they were all my friends, and if I didn't know them directly,

somebody on the team knew it, recommended the other one and we all got together.

It was like the ultimate pickup game.

But it was such a fulfilling enterprise that it, the, the fact that we

didn't win was irrelevant because we won by just doing what we did.

And we were just.

Happy to be part of that at the time and to show, in a way it was

a real illustration of a kind of distributed practice international.

And of people coming together now we did physically come together just because

our engineers had a space and donated a space for us to do that in New York City.

But we also did a lot of work in a distributed way at that time.

I love that real success story of the, this

type of model in practice.

Was there any other similar stories or examples of this type

of model distributive practice that you'd like to share?

Yeah, there, at the time that we were doing, did United Architects,

there was another company called Ocean and it was founded by a friend of mine,

QBI sat, it was a great Finn architect.

And there, so there had been early on as at the dawn of digital architecture.

There had been attempts to do that, but we, but the, we didn't

have the tools that we have today.

We didn't have the communication tools.

We, you know what we're doing right now, or Zoom calls or you, you had web calls

and things like that, but it wasn't there, I think it really took the pandemic to.

May people could understand that, oh, wait a minute, there is a different

way to practice and you know what?

We can actually get a lot of stuff done.

It does require constantly meeting.

You can't just let people go off on their own.

You just have to structure those meetings.

But, that's basically what I did, what I have been doing for the past 20

years, this is, it's meeting with teams, providing direction and letting them do

their thing and then coming back and doing more and, not so much a day-to-day sort

of minute by minute, what are you doing?

How are you doing this?

This kind of thing.

But, checking in every other day or and letting people go off a little

bit and bring their own skills and.

Ideas and thoughts and to the table and and we'd all get around and discuss it.

Sounds very cool.

To summarize this.

What would you say are the some of the main advantages of distributed

practice versus traditional practice?

I think the biggest advantage is that we

have to change our way of work.

I don't think the old model is sustainable.

I think our technology works better.

And they're all, mainly the strongest ones are collaborative tools.

Building information, modeling for, which everybody has now adapted reluctantly.

It only works as a collaborative.

Tool.

It fails if, if in the classic design bid build structure, it, it BIM doesn't work.

It can't work because in order to build a successful building information model,

you have to basically start from the beginning and you have to have input from

the general contractor at the beginning.

You can't have them come in.

The design team does one bin model and then the construction

team does another bin model.

That handoff is tricky and it's filled with legal issues and all

kinds of stuff and it doesn't work.

I don't think it can work.

And so if we're gonna use these new incredible tools

like BIM and ai, we got it.

We have to, it's just it does.

There's no, i, in my mind, there's no alternative.

We have to try something else.

And then the other thing is you, we have generational issues where people

like me have a wealth of experience.

And I think that's valuable, but I'm not, didn't grow up in a digital fluent world.

And you need to be able to tap into the experience.

And then also the ity of the younger generations with digital fluency.

That makes sense.

Could you briefly tell me a little bit about your career in architecture

in particular, why you became an architect in the first place?

I didn't set out to be an architect.

I, very few people I know.

Let's say I, this is what I wanna be since I was young even though my father

was an architect, so probably that's one reason why I wasn't focused on it.

But, uh, at some point in college I grew up in Southern California,

but I moved east, eastern United States to go to college and I had

an opportunity to join a program in New York City a place called the.

Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, you can look that up.

Has a pretty interesting history as a kind of radical think tank.

And they were accepting students from, I went to a small liberal

arts college Amherst College.

And they accepted a bunch of us from various colleges to come and

study architecture in New York.

And, um, I fell in love with the city even though New York City BA back then.

This was sort of the late seventies.

It was a very different New York city than it is today.

A much more of a wild west.

But even that part of it I liked and the sort of spirit of adventure going

completely blind into a program.

I had very little understanding and, but through that rigorous process, I

came to appreciate architecture and essentially fell in love with it.

That's cool.

That's interesting you mentioned there that.

It is true lot.

Not many people, when they're young they know exactly what it is they want

to do and end up going down that path.

And that was interesting.

You mentioned that your father was an architect and maybe, maybe subconsciously

there was something there, that there was always a familiarity with it that

maybe perhaps led you down that path.

But you've been a practice owner since you were in your early thirties.

First as a partner at KPF and then with your own firm,

Yeah.

what are the pros and cons of firm ownership in your view?

Most of the events in my life, I have to say,

didn't come about by planning.

They came about more by circumstance.

And I think that's a really good lesson for a lot of people is that

the things will happen to you, good things, sometimes bad things.

And if you if you use a certain time during that period of change to

reflect on what's happening and what's happening, and ask yourself a few

questions about, am I doing something here that, I could do better if I were

to just change my trajectory in the face of, it, and just by pure coincidence,

today happens to be nine 11, the 24th anniversary of the attacks at ground zero.

And it, that was a day that profoundly changed my life.

That's, that was when I left KPF or not shortly after that,

and started my own project.

But it was really propelled by my intense desire to help help New York

City, the city I fell in love with.

Help but heal.

And I was very fortunate to have participated in a number of

activities at Ground Zero very early on, first of the temporary.

Viewing platform, which I designed and built in collaboration

with friends of mine.

And then secondly, also putting a team together of friends

of International Architects.

And we were selected as finalists and the World Trade Center Design Competition.

So the, those two events, I would say propelled me onto,

my own and to go out on my own.

And again, it wasn't something I was planning to do, but it just

seemed the moment to change.

How did it feel to be able to get involved in in that

aftermath and sort of rehabilitation and regeneration of New York?

After that event.

I think.

Again it's hard.

It sounds strange to say that I consider myself fortunate in, but I consider myself

fortunate in that I was able to help,

A lot of people I think, had that desire.

It's natural when things that hit you are so catastrophic that it's very difficult

to make sense of it in the moment.

But if you in my case, followed my heart and everything else followed after that

I saw a remarkable display of humanity.

Inspiration, sadness and courage.

So it's, it that, I feel, privileged that I was able to do a small

bit in the healing of the city.

Yeah, as you say, to be able to give something back

like that to be in a position.

To be able to do something and change things for the better.

But an advantage of doing what you do.

So that was a catalyst for you going out and starting your own practice.

Could we talk a little bit then about the difference that you found

from working for other practices to having your own practice?

Did you find there was some advantages to having your own

practice once you set it up?

Yes and no.

You know, the advantage was that I didn't have an institutional layer of either.

Other partners or one of my things I struggled with when I was uh,

and, and KPFI have to say a, a lot of corporations was certainly

one of the more admirable one.

I think the leadership of the original partners, gene Cohen and Bill Petterson,

Shelly Fox they were very, I would say, generous in their views of mentorship

and helping younger architects succeed.

It's, having those mentors is invaluable.

I think, in terms of how you navigate through and understand the complexity of.

Especially the types of projects that KPF was involved in, which

are, tend to be tall buildings which have their own inherent complexity.

And then understanding fundamentally that architecture is, despite its

portrayal in movies like the Brutalist is not a kind of lone wolf activity.

Quite the contrary.

It really is a cast of many people.

And that's part of that also I have to say, appeal to me.

I always enjoyed team sports growing up and I liked that spirit.

And I feel like part of our jobs is to create a vision.

As design architects we're the point of the spear in architecture projects.

But, if we can articulate a vision articulate our client's desires and create

a vision, that's how I'd like to say it.

And then impart that vision through everyone, from the people on your

team all the way through to the various consultants the contractors

and ultimately the people who will occupy and use and live and work there.

That to me is the most satisfying part of what I do.

I note that you mentioned team sports there I. Also firmly believe

that architecture is a team sport.

Even on small projects, there could be multiple people that are involved.

And actually business generally I think is better played as a team sport.

For sure.

I think it's definitely ease easier and I think there's more opportunity

for growth if you can work with other people and collaborate, for sure.

So what about the future of the profession?

Where do you see things heading?

There's a lot of discussion and I talk about this more and more simply

around where's the profession going?

Like a lot of professions or, and industries right now, there's

a lot of conversation around ai and technology in general.

I think that the, there's great promise in what that level of information,

the rapid rapidity of the information and the dis this, the ability to

work across the world with people.

And just as we're having this amazing conversation, we're in

completely different places.

That's a remarkable change in how we operate.

The, for centuries we had to come together in a space, a studio space.

As architects work together, there was.

Always two parts of that were essential to how we work.

One is that was where you went to learn, right?

The most of the stuff where that learn, you learn in terms of how to create

architecture, how to understand it, understand how it's put together,

the rules, the regulations, the methodology that's not taught to

you in school, nor should it be.

The school is a place of discovery and a place to give you a kind

of overview of how you fit into culturally, how you fit into society.

But the pragmatics of what you do is generally taught in an office.

Now, when I left graduate school.

Which in 1984 and started, I had been working for architects before that.

Essentially in 1984 you went and you worked for a company and

everything was drawing by hand.

You spent, I would say, the first part of your career just learning

how to draw learning how to letter that was hand letter, everything.

You're also learning what to say and how to, build curtain walls

and how to put buildings together.

But it's quite different now.

The tools are different.

And now with ai, you can achieve a lot in terms of imagery.

And to some degree, I think we're starting to see ai in planning.

Doing test layouts where it used to take us hundreds of hours

to figure out, parking lots.

You, we can do that rapidly.

But we have been working that way for a while.

I just think it the tools are there and they're theoretically

gonna make our lives simpler.

But historically what's happened, I've found at least, is that the more tools we

possess it doesn't speed up the process.

It just allows us to look at more options and look at more options faster.

And I think that's where we're headed.

The real problem with AI is that there is no substitute for learning.

And learning sometimes is learning on the job.

I think we, a lot of times clients I've heard clients not the good ones, but the

not so good ones who say things like we're just paying for you to learn on the job.

My response is always, I hope so, because every job that I do is

we start with a blank sheet of paper because it's not replicable.

You, what your desires are different from someone else's.

So you better hope that I am learning on this, and everybody around is learning

and they're learning about what you want.

And how we can achieve that.

So it's I think that's the part that we haven't quite cracked yet is, how

do we package those years of learning?

And then to be able to use AI effectively as a tool so that, when you're prompting

ai, you have the ability to think critically about what it's producing.

Is this just hallucination?

Is it really how can I prompt it in such a way that will give me a

critical perspective on whatever is being whatever the output is.

I still think that the, that old expression that used to motivate.

Computer science and technology in general was, sort of garbage in, garbage out.

And I think that we have to can focus as a profession on garbage in the, if

we're gonna, basically because we don't understand what garbage out is unless

you have like me, years of experience.

And I don't think that AI can replicate that sort of critical way, let's say,

of engaging the architecture process in, both for ourselves, what we wanna

accomplish, but even more importantly, to get the best that we can for our clients.

Interesting.

So you don't think that architects are in any danger of being

replaced by AI Anytime soon.

I.

We're all in danger of being replaced by ai, but I think that

the, what AI can't do, at least not yet, and I'm not so sure it will ever be

able to, is to think, you know, for, you know, this is gonna sound very cliche,

basically think outside of its box.

Have the ability to not to think in a kind of linear fashion or descriptive

fashion or serial fashion, which is how most language models are constructed.

They're just predicting what the next term or image or what in the sequence of

what they're doing against an array of.

Other sequences, but human beings have the capacity just to completely leap

out of that and think laterally and up and down and sideways and at once.

And I, I, that's a skill that I've developed, but I've developed that over

years of trying things, making mistakes, trying it again, making another mistake.

It is that it's, and it's not just pure trial and error, it's

trial error and inspiration.

So show me the robot that is inspired and then I think we can talk.

But to date, I don't think I, I think right now it's just another

tool and we'll learn to use it and the profession will adapt.

That mean fewer jobs.

Maybe what I hope it means is that we get to reexamine practice.

And find new ways for people to improve their lives in the cause of architecture.

It's, we don't have a great model.

It's not sustainable, I think from just a economic, model.

It's terrible.

It's a process that we inherited from a 19th century, almost Victorian.

Practically futile idea about what architects do, who

architects were why people in the 19th century hire architects.

It is, it's contrary.

Architects haven't, the profession of a architecture

has not been around that long.

But it evolved from a different economic model where most of the

people who were practicing as architects were fairly well to do.

Folks.

So if the current model is outdated, what advice would you

give to younger practices to young architects and designers out there?

The advice that e everybody got when I left.

Architecture school or even thinking about going to architecture school was go and

work for someone who's work you admire and stick it out for a minimum of five years.

And, learn everything you can, you know about that.

I think now I feel like there's a different model out there potentially,

which is, I still think it's valuable for if you can go and work for someone who's

worked your admire at the beginning of your career, you have choices to make.

Do I go a big firm or a small firm?

And there's different advantages to both.

But I don't think you have to, make a career.

In any one place anymore.

I think you, you, if you're directed, you go in there, you

have, you're gonna work hard.

I, I don't think the, I wouldn't get distracted about the work-life

balance stuff because I, you have to basically go into architecture with

the idea that your life and work are gonna be pretty much the same.

That there isn't a whole distinction between 'cause you're really entering a

kind of culture not so much a business.

So that's number one.

I think the second thing is, en engage with other architects all over the world.

You have the, we have a portal.

We're doing it right now.

We have incredible networks.

I still engage with a lot of people on LinkedIn.

Maybe it's a little old fashioned, but I do the fact that LinkedIn has,

is, tends to be more professional.

It's about business.

You can go to other social platforms to get commentary

that, but those are distractions.

You having that ability to reach out, ask questions, go on

podcasts, listen to podcasts.

I think podcasts are one of the best mediums to get a sense of who people are.

And then go after, to set up shop as, as early as you can.

Because the only way.

That I think you can have a satisfying career and feel

like, you're actually making a difference is to have your own shop.

That's where, there are a lot of people would go, oh, it's just you

who not many people can afford to do that it to money, et cetera.

But if you're clever about it and form associations with friends or

other architects and for people like myself who are, at a point in their

career where I don't need, this is gonna be American idiom, but I

don't need another notch in my belt.

I've done enough, projects that I don't feel like I have to do

another project to, to prove that.

I know what I'm doing.

Yeah I spend a lot of time just trying to help and promote younger practices.

Either bring them in on projects that I'm working in or, tell other people I

know who are not architects or in real estate in New York, for example, or

are, or startups in, in Silicon Valley.

Places where people might need the work of architects.

They want somebody younger.

They want a sort of fresh thinking.

And obviously younger architects don't cost as much.

The, all of that.

And take advantage of the world that's out there beyond just

having to go and meet people.

Excuse me.

Meet people face to face, go out and, find a place, a studio and have everybody,

and as much fun as that is, and as much as a lot of people idealize that

you don't need it to make architecture anymore, you can do it perfectly well.

And there are plenty of companies out there who and they work 24 hours a day.

And who will produce the right set of documents and and get you that

kind of autonomy that I do think is something that, that's what I would do

if I were just starting out right now.

What would be the main thing that you would like everyone to

take away from our conversation today?

I.

Don't give up on architecture.

It's so vital.

I think today, more than any I do think that the best way to think of

architecture is that we are, and our value to the world is that we're visionaries.

I ideally rooted in an understanding of the past, but with our eyes and

spirit, pointed towards the future.

And and that the only way we get anywhere in that building, that better

world, and it is utopian in my, it's a you can't really be an architect

and not be fundamentally an optimist.

It doesn't work.

And and the only way you can do that is by.

Sharing our humanity and working together.

Oh, that's a nice positive message to, to leave people with.

Thanks for that, Kevin.

Was there anything else you wanted to add that we haven't already covered?

No, I think that's the limit of my profundity today.

So maybe the next cup of coffee I'll have I'll have some more, but no

that, I think I'd like to end there

Perfect.

Perfect.

Yeah.

And it is you've got up quite early this morning, especially for this

interview so, um, I'm sure you, you're probably gasping for that next,

next cup of coffee after we finish.

Um, I will let you go in a moment.

We've just got, uh, was just one question I wanted to ask.

I'd like to ask all the guests.

I also love to travel and to discover new places.

Just wondered if there was one place that you could share with

us one of your favorite places.

Could be near or far, so somewhere that you love and any thoughts?

Maybe it's just what happens when you get, to be my age.

You you start having dreams that you had when you were younger.

They come back to you sometimes more vividly.

And the, I used to dream always about Yosemite and and I don't, I have

no idea why I dream about Yosemite.

I don't under but yeah, I, this is, it's they're, there are, they're our favorite

places and I have lots of them, but most of 'em tend to be extraordinary.

Somewhat desolate, landscapes.

That sounds cool.

I've not been to Yosemite but I love anything either with the coast, the

sea, or the mountains or both together.

I love anything like that.

Brilliant.

Kevin, I really enjoyed this conversation.

Thank you so much for giving up your time this morning to record this with me.

Just can you remind everybody where's the best place for people

to connect with you online?

Yeah.

LinkedIn by far, that's the easiest.

And you'll find me on LinkedIn under Paul Kevin Kennon, and Paul is my first name.

That was my father's name.

And the only reason I have to do that is just so I can be verified.

It doesn't work anymore.

So I go by Kevin, so I'm known as Kevin.

Kevin, but if you'll find me on LinkedIn under Paul.

Kevin.

Kevin.

That's it.

I don't think there are too many, so it's pretty easy to

find me.

And that's K-E-N-N-O-N.

Perfect.

And I'll make sure we put a link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes.

So you just need to go and click that link and you can find Kevin on LinkedIn.

And just one other thing.

I love connecting with people, so if you reach out to me and you have a question

and I, I'll take the time to, answer.

If it's a longer thing, we can schedule a meeting and we can talk about it as well.

Oh, that's brilliant.

That's very generous of you.

Thanks again, Kevin.

Thank you, John.

Pleasure to be here.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode

of Architecture Business Club.

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Remember running your architecture business doesn't have to be hard

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This is Architecture Business Club.