181 - Architecting Conversations: Coffee, AI, and Creative Spaces

In this episode, Jamie and Kurt dive deep into a lively discussion about the utilization of AI in editing their podcast episodes and the creative possibilities it holds. They reminisce about their seven-year journey, accumulating over 181 hours of conversations. The focus shifts to an intriguing debate on shipping containers as adaptive spaces for libraries, public restrooms, and third places. They explore the potential for these temporary structures to serve communities in innovative ways. The episode wraps up with thoughts on how such creative solutions can foster community engagement and provide essential public amenities. Additionally, they touch on upcoming events and plans for a podcast meetup in Boston.

00:00 Introduction and Episode Theme
00:41 AI and Creative Editing
02:10 Podcasting Journey and Reflections
04:48 Coffee Talk and Recommendations
09:47 Upcoming Events and Plans
15:14 Sketch Discussion
18:01 Exploring Architectural Inspirations
18:38 Design as Activism: Quick Deployable Strategies
19:56 The Concept of Third Spaces
21:02 Revisiting Old Projects: Shipping Containers
22:37 Innovative Uses for Shipping Containers
25:56 Student Projects and Neoliberalism
34:21 Pop-Up Retail and Community Spaces
36:53 Concluding Thoughts and Future Ideas

Transcript

Kurt Neiswender: 0:32

Hey Jamie, how is it going? What does one plus eight plus one equal This episode?

Jamie: 0:44

It means today.

Kurt Neiswender: 0:47

Today

Jamie: 0:48

it means we

Kurt Neiswender: 0:51

architect mug book architects. For those that are watching, they get a little screenshot For those that are listening, it's just gonna be dead air.

Jamie: 1:11

And we're just showing off our coffee mugs. And

Kurt Neiswender: 1:14

no, technically I have a way to cut the dead air, which is usually how the episode goes from hour and a half to four minutes.

Jamie: 1:25

Not really four, but you know, we are working on, on like some creative editing.

Kurt Neiswender: 1:32

I have the ai, but AI is working for me.

Jamie: 1:37

Yep.

Kurt Neiswender: 1:39

I've deployed it. No I'm, I'm, I have some new assets in the in the d script app that we use to edit. So we'll see. I haven't yet tested them out yet, but yeah, I owe some clips. Clips forthcoming.

Jamie: 1:55

See now what, I think

Kurt Neiswender: 1:56

that's what Jamie's alling alluding to. That too master.

Jamie: 1:59

Well that too, that, that, that may be a desire is, you know, a couple of the like clip eclipse. But you know, I just, when you start talking about AI deployment and your tools and the toolkit with D Script and whatever, you know, visual learner. So I immediately start to see this sort of imagined reality where as Kurt is, you know, working with his AI bot, it starts to critique us on aspects of the episode. That would be amazing. Be like, did you mean to talk about this for 10 minutes? No, no, no. We didn't like condense that.

Kurt Neiswender: 2:40

Well, we could, we could test that. I do think, I don't you ever think about, I don't want to toot our own horn, but with a hundred, this is 181 episodes. Of which when we record, there's over an hour of recorded information, not all makes it to the show, which then results in, in over 181 hours of our conversations over seven years. It still kind of blows my mind.

Jamie: 3:12

It is. I mean, it's in a good

Kurt Neiswender: 3:14

way. I'm happy.

Jamie: 3:17

Well, and not just that, but the fact, the fact that, you know, we're, we're the only, the only architecture podcast that we're aware of that live Streams content, you know, and then, you know, for our listeners, you know, we. We also sort of do some editing and sort of, as Kurt's described, sort of, you know, tighten up some of the episodes. But I mean, generally speaking, the episodes are pretty tight. You know, they do have a loose flow to them as, as one who, you know, has, if anybody's listened to more than one of these, they're all like this. But, you know, I think you're right. It's, it's amazing, you know, to sit back sometimes and think about how long we've been doing this how many wonderful guests we've had. I stumbled off across one, you know, thank you. Facebook memories. You know, that's probably the best feature that they ever came up with. You know, yeah, I, those general, those gentle reminders of things that like, you know, we've all lost the ability to remember, you know, deep details. Who was it, what was the memory? Matt dch. Dch D like, like I think it was like. So we're in we year. That was, that was

Kurt Neiswender: 4:30

pandemic times.

Jamie: 4:31

Yeah. So this is like four years ago. Like, yeah. So yeah, that was a good time. So like four, maybe five, maybe five years ago. Talking about like all his crazy travel and his, his love for Christo. So yeah. Yeah. Good stuff.

Kurt Neiswender: 4:48

Yeah. Especially during esp Yeah, during the pandemic we had some good comradery with friends and and fellows along the way to make this more enjoyable or less, more colorful. Oh.

Jamie: 5:05

What am I not tolerable? Is that what you're saying? No,

Kurt Neiswender: 5:08

the, the pandemic. The pandemic. That's what I meant. Oh, not this, sorry. We're not in the pandemic anymore. Wow. Okay. What are you drinking today, Jamie?

Jamie: 5:23

Kurt's. Like if this isn't a hostage situation, everything's fine.

Kurt Neiswender: 5:26

Change immediately. No, yeah. No, I meant the pandemic. Let's, so, so what are you what is in the coffee? Have me a week off.'cause last week was finals week, so it was p hectic around campus. Yep. So

Jamie: 5:45

have reverted to the grackle at the, at the old house. So we are doing I. Little city's grackle and which I know Kurt has had. But I owe him a couple other varieties from their Austin original Coffee purvey. Shout out to New Austin Coffee Joints, maybe new to me. But in the next episode I'm gonna be hopefully able to talk about a couple new ones that I've been trying to get to that sound really, really amazing. So I'm just gonna leave it at that.

Kurt Neiswender: 6:25

Sounds good. Oh, that was my, my turn.

Jamie: 6:28

That was your cue. So there's one of those moments that we're just gonna shrink.

Kurt Neiswender: 6:34

The dead air goes away. The, well, I actually, I, so our friends at, at the farmer's market the, the little coffee spot they have been stocking some, some different things. So I got a venture, a venture away a little bit from our, our friends at Rootless, but they have a, a company out of it's Detroit area called Black Diesel. So, you know, diesel, you gotta pronounce diesel correctly, you know, for the automotive peoples the engineers. But, and this batch that I got is called Dark Matter, speaking of all things Dark. So it's a dark roast and it's quite nice. It's not, it's not overly powerful or anything like that. You know, it, it, it, you know, when I, when I've talked about using my little grinder. You know, it definitely grinds like a dark roast, you know, which is usually some it must be a length of time that sort of like makes the bean, the coffee bean kind of grind easier the more it's roasted. That's my scientific approach. Like light roast, a little harder to grind, medium roast in the middle, dark roast. Very easy.

Jamie: 7:55

See?

Kurt Neiswender: 7:55

How do you

Jamie: 7:55

like that? See, here's the thing. There was a time where it almost happened, like when we first started this podcast that, and then the pandemic happened. So that screwed everything up. But in that, in that brief instant or instance, instant instance. Instance, instant instance. Instance, yeah, let's go with that. So that period of time, yeah. So. At that moment there was a place in East Austin that I loved to go to coffee, and it was a great sort of adaptive reuse rehab former mechanics and sort of body shop. So kind of along the lines of which you've just been talking about, turned into a coffee joint. But they also did, which was sort of amazing at the time was they were also doing sort of a coffee sommelier class. So kind of all things coffee, but sort of a, you know, explaining everything and you could sort of really kind of indulge yourself in that whole aspect. So my hope at the time was that Coffee sketch podcast, be able to go over there and do that. That didn't happen. But there are definitely some other folks that have that kind of you know, ability and sort of, so we are on the lookout. That might be something that we do in the future because unfortunately that business has rebranded, changed ownership, and it's still a coffee shop, but they don't do all the coffee sommelier stuff. Now they're sort of using their education kitchen as sort of a kitchen kitchen and have gone sort of a different route with things. But the space is still architecturally really great. Michael Shu and Austin the architecture firm, they, they did the project. Hmm. Really, really love it. I think it's sort of a really great sort of adaptive reuse kind of indus, you know, industrial site into something that's sort of unique as a third space. But all that to say is that Coffee Sketch podcast is on the lookout.'cause we do travel for that coffee sommelier experience. So if you have a good suggestion, you know, hit us up, let us know. Maybe it's in our future

Kurt Neiswender: 10:19

Yeah. And our, our near future in Boston, you know, in our AI near

Jamie: 10:26

future in Yeah, we are, we are. You know, thank you for the, the wonderful segue. We're making the trek,

Kurt Neiswender: 10:31

you know,

Jamie: 10:32

we're making the trek. We're working on the calendar folks.

Kurt Neiswender: 10:35

We were, we spent, we spent a, a solid hour planning unhealthy

Jamie: 10:41

amount, unhealthy amount of time. You

Kurt Neiswender: 10:43

know, trying to, trying to coordinate schedules and, and, and, and figure out what is a good day to get more podcasters in the same space together. So for all our friends out there that are podcast, our architect podcast friends stay tuned

Jamie: 11:03

or No, no, we can say it because this is

Kurt Neiswender: 11:05

gonna

Jamie: 11:05

come,

Kurt Neiswender: 11:06

this will come out. We're pretty much, we can see it. Oh, no. Stay tuned.

Jamie: 11:09

We can see it now. We can say it now. Like it's live stream. So there's people gonna hear it and then when we edit the episode seven weeks from now. Just kidding. Like, we'll, we'll be able to, yeah. Like everyone again,

Kurt Neiswender: 11:25

it's only, it's only gonna be 12 weeks.

Jamie: 11:30

Dang. Dang. See, no, see at this point, like, like we're getting comments in, in the chat, trying to suggest like good coffee shops in the area of the conference, which is important, but that's not what we're going for here, for our Coffee Sketch podcast event, then. Yeah, I mean, I'm all

Kurt Neiswender: 11:48

about gas station coffee, right? Yeah.

Jamie: 11:51

But, but event is, is maybe a broad term. It's more like we just wanna see everybody who also does podcasts that we consider friends and fans of their work. And we hope that they like what we do.

Kurt Neiswender: 12:05

Can we call it a i I I would be Okay. Calling it a bit of a, a sort of, a, sort of a shout out to our friends, Kevin and Andrew Marathon. It's,

Jamie: 12:17

it's inspired by,

Kurt Neiswender: 12:19

yeah, inspired by Archie Marathon. Which is not, is a YouTube channel, not a podcast. I'm sure at some point those guys might pick up the the microphones to a podcast. But they do a YouTube channel and they, they, but they also do these worldwide tours of what they call Archie Marathons. We're gonna try and do a mini Archie marathon in the Boston area, and I wanna try and capture as many of our podcast voices from, from our architecture friends into this little, little jaunt downtown Boston. It, well, I guess not downtown. It's, it's the ICA area, which I guess is that seaport. Chris, you're gonna have to correct me on that one. So yeah, so that's the game plan.

Jamie: 13:10

That's, so we are, we will be putting out sort of a message on that. So this is not just for podcast folks, but you know, people who enjoy them, you know, definitely come along, join us. Yep. But also sort our fellow

Kurt Neiswender: 13:25

bias tickets to the ICA

Jamie: 13:28

our fellow podcast hosts. I'm just kidding.

Kurt Neiswender: 13:30

I'm just

Jamie: 13:30

kidding. And friends. Yeah, I mean, I'm just ignoring Kurt at this point. So yeah, we're going to, we're going to basically send out some info post everything. Look for that this week. Hopefully this episode will be kind of hitting everybody between now and the conference so they can sort of plan for it. But we're, it looks like that Friday is the day, Friday the sixth. Yeah, based on all of our very careful calendar planning that I will attribute to Kurt because. Kurt is excellent at the multiple things on, in juggling the calendars.

Kurt Neiswender: 14:09

I just like adding'em all to Google and seeing how they overlap. He just

Jamie: 14:15

loves to see all those colored boxes just sitting there and going, yes, exactly.

Kurt Neiswender: 14:19

All the blocks do overlapping.

Jamie: 14:22

How do I get, how do I get from there to there? It, it's,

Kurt Neiswender: 14:24

it, it, it's, it's like a challenge. Can you touch, can you make it to all of the events in the, in the calendar block?

Jamie: 14:34

So as an example, we might have been talking, we, meaning me and Kurt and more Kurt in this instance, Kurt, describing how all these calendar blocks started to stack up and then his brain shifted into like sort of a geospatial model where he was trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B to point C. Like in a reasonable amount of time and without

Kurt Neiswender: 15:02

sweating,

Jamie: 15:03

which is, and, and, and somehow, somehow Kurt's brain went to, I think there's a bike involved, and he was gonna rent a bike. Red Bikes. Yeah. And I don't know. It was, it was a lot. So we backed down off of the rental bikes. I think we've arranged the calendars

Kurt Neiswender: 15:22

Friday changed the, changed the route, and it might be more casual.

Jamie: 15:27

And so Friday is gonna be fun. It's gonna be casual. We're gonna have lots of people on the mic, lots of voices talking about our architecture hanging out. And more information will be posted very, very soon. But looks like Friday folks, so join us.

Kurt Neiswender: 15:45

And so, yeah. Do you wanna talk about a sketch, Jamie?

Jamie: 15:49

Yes, please. Because that's, you know, it is the Coffee Sketch podcast. We've done the coffee, we've done the updates. Oops. There's the aerial view of

Kurt Neiswender: 16:00

Boston.

Jamie: 16:01

The, yeah. Oh, Seaport, as Chris

Kurt Neiswender: 16:04

says, Seaport South Boston. We sound like locals now.

Jamie: 16:08

It's like, like we've maybe mapped a route, but this is the sketch,

Kurt Neiswender: 16:14

so Yeah, you're gonna have to fill me in. I, you know, we were brainstorming sketches for tonight and we're passing around back. A couple, couple different ones. No, no, no. This one, and then I was like, oh, okay. Mm. And, and I saw a little, the glimpse of these books that you have in the photograph, and I was like, oh, well that could be interesting. Design as activism. And I'm like, okay, you know, tell me more. So the sch the, the sketch is composed in a photograph for your Instagram page. For those that you know, go to Instagram, you'll be able to see all of Jamie's sketches and his photographs as they are often portrayed with coffee. But you got the hint of a book design it. Who, who wrote it though? I don't see the, I can't read the author. So do you know? You wanna remind me, Jamie, you're on that one. You forgetting? Do I need to fill the air, the dead air? I think it says.

Jamie: 17:25

No, no, no.

Kurt Neiswender: 17:26

Wakeford Did I get it wrong?

Jamie: 17:32

So no, it was maybe like a streaming thing. Maybe a streaming issue there for a second on your end. I'm not sure. Oh I lost so we'll, maybe I In the edit

Kurt Neiswender: 17:42

tech? Yeah. Maybe maybe not,

Jamie: 17:47

maybe, maybe not. So I, what, what I liked about this sketch in, in, in terms of us scanning through recent sketches,'cause I was, I was really on a, I was really on a, you know, a quick repetition there for a while. And so reason why I, I, I pulled this one from the, from the hat of sketches, was that sort of twofold, was we were talking about. Know the fact that you just had your show the

Kurt Neiswender: 18:22

show. LTU

Jamie: 18:23

Yeah. Your show. LTU buddy.

Kurt Neiswender: 18:28

The end of year student exhibit exhibition at Lawrence Tech.

Jamie: 18:33

Yeah. Yeah. So in, in terms of exhibits, right? And yeah, the Venice bi alley hanging out, looking at stuff. Like I might be doing a sketch tonight based on some of the photos that I've been of the Venice B Alley and how much I, you know, generally admire that. You know, I've talked to you about that before. But the American porch, I. Right. Yeah, exactly. Right. Exactly. So so, you know, what, what I found myself doing here was I was looking at this book and, you know, this is part of my architect's library series where I'm just pulling books off my shelf and sort of, you know, getting inspired by things and then doing stuff in the sketchbook or vice versa. And so this book design is activism. Activism, excuse me. It, it sort of really resonated with me about just architecture of place and how you can implement quick deployable strategies. And I was working through some ideas that relate to the work that I do day in and day out, but also sort of these bigger ideas about what happens when the budgets get cut. You know, what happens when you don't have the architect in town? You know, what happens when you still need to have creative solutions for third spaces in communities that need them? You know, what's, what's a, what's able strategy that, you know, you can do stateside that is a creative solution that sort of resonates on different levels? You know, I had been reading a little bit about Carnegie Libraries and Rosenwald schools and had been to a conference where they were talking about Rosenwald schools and, you know, a lot of this has to do with like literacy and education and a lot of which is under attack, you know, of late. And so, you know, I thought, well, a lot of people love, you know, those ideas of the free public library. Right, the little free libraries. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Know the ones that people like build the, build their bird box, you know, out at their po you know, out on the street. Yeah. I've got

Kurt Neiswender: 21:05

neighbors. I've got at least two on my street.

Jamie: 21:09

Yeah. And it's such a beautiful, it's such a beautiful, you know, generous, easy, but creative design solution. Right. And people decorate them and they, they take a lot of pride in sort of, you know, sharing. Right. It's like this whole sharing idea, which is a lot about what this podcast is. And so I thought, well, gee, you know. That reminds me of this project that I had. I, there was an earlier time where, you know, my studio, you know, young as it was we were trying to not necessarily enter a lot of competitions because sometimes you can't just do, you know, go after all the free work. You can't win every competition. But sometimes you do those as sort of a balancing of the creative juices, right? So sometimes you have to do those competitions or speculative projects to push through some ideas, get them down on paper, even if they don't ever go anywhere. And it's sort of the idea with the sketchbook, sometimes you have to draw those things, get them in the sketchbook, get'em down on paper, and eventually you can revisit them. Well, this is me revisiting one of those. And the, the idea for me was something that you, you would, you know, you're gonna like, is this idea of. Shipping containers. So what if, you know, that whole, everyone was fascinated with shipping containers for, for a period of time.

Kurt Neiswender: 22:41

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jamie: 22:42

But they all wanted to put them in houses. Who wants to live in an eight foot by eight foot square tube? Right. Or eight and a half foot by eight and a half foot square tube. You know, you would have to jack with that tube so many times to make it really interesting that you kind of lose the efficiency of the square tube or the rectangular, you know mm-hmm. Tube. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But what if you used it as a deployable third space? Mm-hmm.

Kurt Neiswender: 23:16

Mm-hmm.

Jamie: 23:17

You know, for communities that really need it. So what if it became a strategy similar to Carnegie Libraries or Rosenwald schools, where you had this, this box that was a library? You know, I mean, everybody's gotten fascinated with, you know, letterbox, you know, as a, as an app and you know, the, you know, pick your four movies and, you know, kind of, you know, rating movies and all those types of things. So they had that South by Southwest, they had, you know, the Criterion collection, the letterbox people, you know, had their their van that showed up with, you know, all the movies in the van. And everybody would go in and sort of pick their four movies, fa four favorite movies. And I thought, well, what if that was just a, like a shipping container, like full of books and you were able to do that? You know, and it was designed really well and designed in such a way that maybe it's also becomes, and then I started to extrapolate that and I thought, resilience hub, so mm-hmm. What if it also becomes a, a charging location? What if it also becomes for Flint? What if it becomes a water distribution location? You know, take it a little step further and what if it becomes a public restroom? Mm-hmm. So, you know, I, I think the idea was just something that I just needed to get down on paper. And so that's what this exploration was and I thought it was just sort of applicable for, to the podcast, kind of given where you were in your semester, but also sort of, you know, addressing these bigger design as activism kind of concepts.

Kurt Neiswender: 25:14

Yeah. Cool. Very cool. I totally appreciate you know, I, I mean, I think you picked on me'cause I have designed a couple of projects with shipping containers in the past and yeah, it's sort of a flash in the pan or a fad that kind of comes and goes as a, although I do I teach with somebody that it does a lot more with shipping containers on a regular basis and has learned a few tips and tricks to like, kind of, you know, manipulate the, the shell and get a little more bang for your buck. But yeah, you, you're right on with some of those dimensional constraints, so we don't need to dwell on that. But like the the premise, you know, I think what you're doing though is you're adapting the form to a program to be a more suitable match. Then some other developers who try and do. Things to a shipping container that it doesn't really wanna be. Right? It's like goes back to the, we, we, we are circling back to Lewis Kahn. What does the brick wanna be? What does a shipping container wanna be? Right? It only has so many sort of moves or manipulations. You can, you can attach to it. It does remind me. So last week, since we didn't record last week,'cause I was sitting on a jury for a graduate studio on you, you would actually find this pretty fascinating. I'm still trying to digest the premise, but it was sort of addressing neoliberalism and, and, and, and essentially how the attitudes of neoliberalism have led to conditions that we are existing with today. And so the students were tasked to like, how do you attack a particular thread of neoliberalism and then address a design response to it. And one of the students was trying to speak to this third place condition and try and develop better third place strategies and, and her approach. One of my former students from a different class she came up with a, a concept of like this sort of trolley that could travel around a little a route and it could, it could almost be multiple cars, but not attached, right? And so one car is the library car, and one car is like the social, like maybe a little bit of a coffee shop or something. And, and so they, they can travel around town. And park in front of different, kind of like a food truck concept, but a little bit more diversified as far as, it's not all about food per se.

Jamie: 28:10

Yeah. It reminds this

Kurt Neiswender: 28:12

network of movement.

Jamie: 28:14

Right. It re it reminds me, like, did did it come up in the, in the conversation with that one? You know, our, our friend Catherine, her light and design project for the bus. Right. You know, the bus conversion, you know, that turned sort of the bus into a food market,

Kurt Neiswender: 28:32

right? I'd, no, not specifically, but it was all about like, all about the, the, the conversation. I mean it's all, it's all builds right onto your sketch too. It's like the idea of we got a cat, a cat visitor. Oh, cat. Cat said. It needs more attention. Jamie, how dare you do this podcast?

Jamie: 28:59

Oh, no, he's, he's happy. Like we're in a different, different location in the house, so there's more room for him to be up and near the, oh, near the, the, the listening devices. So,

Kurt Neiswender: 29:10

but yeah, so yeah, I I, I, we didn't actually specify you know, Catherine's work and some of those interventions that she's done in Chicago, but you know, your sketches, your concepts and, and then, and this, this former student of mine in, in their sort of graduate studio review. It was, it was really interesting.'cause it was quite compelling. Like the idea, I guess the, the point I guess I'm trying to make is that the idea in, in words. Floating in the air may not sound convincing, but it's the graphics, it's the visualization, the, the sort of ability to embed or perception or pull people in. And she had some very good compelling drawings, diagrams, and renderings that, that, that kind of painted the picture of how these components and it, so it all comes back to your sketch as, as we've done, you know, for 180 previous episodes, you know, the, the attitude and the act of, of. Diagramming, sketching, thinking through these things, creating the visualizations, and then be able to share them with a client, a, a, a contractor and, and someone else. And, and

Jamie: 30:40

well, I mean, and you, as you say that, you know, and we look at the sketch that we've got it, it's a perfect dovetail because, you know, the reason why we haven't done one like this outta my sketchbook in a while, where it is very, very process oriented. Yeah. And you could, you can imagine exactly what you're describing is as I'm sitting across or sitting with you know, people in a conversation about a particular project and trying to, trying to diagram some solutions and then riff on that conversation and evolve it over time. You can see the progression of the sketch. You can even see that the plan of that shipping container, there's multiple versions of it. So, you know, think shipping can. Container folks, right? You've got doors on either end, right? So, okay, we enter on one side, we enter on the other. We enter only on one. But what if we, what if we cut new doors and we, and we create it on either end, you know? Now do you have, now, do you have a pass through space as well as to. Two, two occupiable spaces. Have you created a dog? Trott. Think about the great TRO firm like Plato, right? And you have Sure, sure. The dog Trott, right? That's, that's the, you know, that's, that's their, their bread and butter. They even have a, they even have a WordPress site that became their blog, which became their kind of emblem. You know, it's, so I think that these kind of concepts in this sketch sort of diagrammed out that become, start to become sections, start to become perspective, start to become some details and then some visual notes there. For myself as well, it's what, and what I looked for, interestingly enough, and there's sort of one little note about it is sometimes as I'm doing these, I'm like literally googling stuff and trying to figure out like, has anyone else really di you know, run with this idea? Can I learn something from someone else's work? Are there precedent studies or case studies that I can use and, and really understand, like the advantages, disadvantages? And the only place where I saw a shipping container deployed as a library was a project that was funded out of England, but deployed in Africa and apparently only deployed once. At least that I could, that I could see. And what was interesting though was that they were just viewing the con, the shipping container as like a vessel to hold stuff, like solely as a piece of storage. And that, so it was sort of like the li you know, a very traditional kind of view of a library. Like I come up to the counter and you check out a book and they go back in the back and grab the book and then they give you the book out the window and, and then you sit in the shade and you know, around the shipping container. Okay. Would that work in middle America? Right. Would that work in an urban environment? Would that work in a rural environment? Would that, you know, would that work on a street corner? You know, and so, no, it might, my answer would be no, it has to be more adaptable than that. And so that was sort of the, to me the design challenge was how can you take what somebody has clearly thought through far more than me?'cause they've deployed it, they've actually constructed it. And what are, what are the disadvantages in that for the things that I want it to do. How can I modify that and sort of think through it as a design problem knowing that somebody's tried to build this once, at least once. You know, public restrooms are sort of an ongoing challenge in urban environments.

Kurt Neiswender: 34:38

Yeah. You

Jamie: 34:38

know, and so could this be a solution for that? So I think those were sort of some of the things, and this is just, you know, a, a piece of the process, two pages in a sketchbook. But I thought it would be a, an interesting conversation for today.

Kurt Neiswender: 34:53

Yeah, sure. You know, I, I did, I did some pop-up retail research the University of Michigan Flint, oh God. It's going back 20 16, 17, you know, so it's, it's getting a little old now, but trying to deploy a shipping container as a popup. Well, well. Conceptually in one regard as a popup retail establishment. But then also, like you said, with the flexibility to be adaptable to other amenities, third place amenities that, that you described. You know, in Detroit, there, in, in, in Flint they've, they've used shipping containers for some, some semi-permanent establishments. Like the Flint I'm gonna forget the name. It's the Watershed Coalition, or an offshoot or related nonprofit does kayak rental along the Flint River, and they, they store the kayak. Like you're, like you said, you know, just primarily as a storage shed for the kayaks are a shipping container. Another group in Detroit that I'm, I'm working with is I, I'm working on a, a new build of a building for, kind of go back to your earlier comment about commercial kitchens like your one in Austin that you were talking about, the coffee shop. It seems like teaching kitchens or community kitchens are, are kind of emerging or maybe reemerging as a, as a, a, a, a a thing, again to sort of educate on food. But I'm working with this group that already has like a, a shipping container that is used as, I think they're using it like a, a food vending or food truck. Like, so if they grow food, it's in there, or it might be a food truck. But so, so these two things do exist. And, and I think the successes are when they're, they're kind of like stepping stone structures to me, right? A sort of semi-permanent, you know, way to, to, to incubate the idea with the intent to move toward. And that's kind of how my research was framed to sort of be there as the stepping stone between an idea and then brick and mortar, right. Like a traditional building. And yeah. This has been super fascinating conversation. We need to do a little bit more of this on, unpack it probably a little bit more, I could probably scrape up some of my old research. I did wanna say we can go back to, to the conversation in a second, but I parked next to your sketch, a image from the Biennale. Since you brought up the Biennale of Taka and Sarah from Lawrence Tech two of my faculty friends who had a piece exhibited in the Biennale this year, or it's still, well, it is in the Biennale. And it is in the, the space that Carlo roti curated himself. So they made it into, I don't know what the layout is, but it's kind of like maybe the main event space. And so that I put that image to the side'cause Taaka just came back. Sarah is Italian, so she's spending time with family still in Italy. But quite an accomplishment. And you know, I know you and I had brainstormed a little bit of like. Turning to throw our hat in the ring. If, if we put that out on the air now now that it's all passed, but we can now park, you know, we, I think, I think what we need is to start now.

Jamie: 38:50

Yeah. We'll start now for the next, for two more years. Two more years. Yeah.

Kurt Neiswender: 38:54

Given, given the work and effort that my two friends and, and teaching have put in to get in, you know, their piece into the exhibit. So it's kind of exciting because. An interesting sort of a meta slash connected moment of,

Jamie: 39:11

well, no, of all this. And, and I I love it. I, I saw it pop up and I, I saw their faces there and I, I kind of gathered that that's sort of where we were headed. I think the thing with the shipping containers and the popups and in sort of what your last statement there talking about them as sort of incubation spaces is, is really pretty accurate. I think that from a, from any kind of retail environment, the ones that I've seen that have had any legs to them is that there's an acknowledgement that, you know, this is a stepping stone to a brick and mortar for the, for those businesses. You know, I think again, our friend Catherine, her project boombox, you know, was one in Chicago better block in Dallas, deploys a shipping container to different sort of communities with a kit of parts. For them that kind of comes out of the shipping container. So the shipping container's still there, sort of a storage device and sort of activation space. But then there's kind of a kit of parts that they can kind of deploy to help reimagine spaces, you know, in urban environments that are kind of underutilized. You know, paint goes a long way, folks, right? Paint, lighting, seating, you know, I mean, yeah, activities, you know, people, you know, occupying space together sharing things. All that's goes a long way. All of that's good design, but again, it's, it's probably like you say to kind of instigate sort of other actions or other thoughts. And I think that was the sort of part in me looking at it from the sketchbook was I. Instead of looking at these as incubation kind of spaces, which they've traditionally been used as, you know what, if a community is trying to think of a new third space and they don't have a big budget, and everybody can appreciate sort of coming together to borrow a book, you know, or sit down and, you know, in, in the same space and you know, and have access to a restroom, you know, or, you know, have an event surrounding it. You know, kind of art, public art, you know, that was one of the things that I was exploring on one of the shells of the shipping container was, you know, what if it becomes a public chalkboard, right? I. So, you know, the idea of graffiti art that becomes sort of community art. You know, everybody loves a mural. Like, what if everybody participates in the mural? You know, there's, you know, what if that, that that changes and that gets programmed and it's site specific and community centric, you know, and this object allows for those things without, you know, forcing an economic narrative to it where it's just public good. And so that, that was just sort of a different exploration that I just needed to do. I don't think it's a, I don't think it's a dying idea. I think it's just one I need to spend more time with. Maybe that's our two year project. No, I'm just kidding. It's just, it's, I. We've also talked about, I still think we need to kind of circle back with this. Is those, those warming sheds? Yeah. On an ice pond in Canada. I'm, you know, yeah.

Kurt Neiswender: 42:42

Timing wise, we need to just map out the yeah. I think their deadline is in the fall, winter, I believe, because cold, right?

Jamie: 42:54

We can do it. We can do it folks. We can do, we can do the hard things. So

Kurt Neiswender: 42:59

it's, yeah. It's just about putting it on the calendar, but No, you're right. The I'll share, I'll share you, I'll find out, I gotta dig up a, a little bit, the archives of some of my pop-up shipping container design stuff. And yeah, I mean, it's already been done or some, at least in, in, in what I've, and we've, I've, I've stumbled across. You've stumbled across, but doesn't necessarily mean it's. Dead right or bad, or passe or whatever the word might be. I think there's still merit to it. If, like you said, you know, it, it, it serves and solves a, a, a problem and a need and you know, even in a temporary manner. And I think it's all about the the attempt attempts made right toward, toward making good design and yeah. Fun. I'm so glad I didn't actually pick up on the, the sketch, the container and the sketches when we first said, yes, we'll do this one today. So I guess I need to study them harder, but that was, it was fun. Thanks, Jamie. That was it's very thought provoking. It seems, it seems, I don't know. I don't, I don't know if I'm. Late night sort of acting, acting goofy. But the

Jamie: 44:18

No, that's, that's why I bring the books in, buddy. I mean, it's like the books are the inspiration to, to provoke all these thoughts. So I, I appreciate the conversation. Great. And, and I knew, I secretly knew that you had lots to share on that particular like design subject, so I thought it would be pretty rich up. I set you up. I set you up.

Kurt Neiswender: 44:40

Oh, I appreciate it then. Alright, well thanks. I'll talk to you soon.