183 - Boston AIA25: Conference Recap & Architectural Adventures

Boston AIA 2025: Conference Recap & Architectural Adventures

In this episode, Kurt and Jamie recount their experiences at the AIA 2025 conference in Boston. They discuss a variety of highlights, including keynote speeches from Pete Buttigieg and Evelyn Lee, and their own activities at the event. The hosts also share insights from their visit to the ICA, complete with an impromptu drag show, and touch on their podcast meetup and cocktail napkin sketch initiative. Plus, they offer a sneak peek into next year's conference plans in San Diego.

00:00 Surprise Introduction
00:37 Home Renovation Woes
03:48 Coffee Talk
08:15 Conference Recap
19:32 Expo Highlights and Networking
21:04 Memorable Moments and Follow-Ups
22:21 Conference Keynotes and Special Guests
26:18 Architectural Insights and Reflections
30:26 ICA Meetup and Design Observations
42:18 Karaoke Night and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Kurt Neiswender: 0:37

Jamie. You surprised me.

Jamie: 0:39

Oh, hi. To

Kurt Neiswender: 0:39

the show. Oh. Oh, welcome to the show. Indeed. I feel like the, the heat is getting to the the data, right? The, the network. Oh, I

Jamie: 0:48

think the heat's getting to your. Maybe the little gray cells up there. Your camera,

Kurt Neiswender: 0:52

your camera, camera jittered a little bit, so you know, we'll just leave it at, at that and cross fingers that, that all the people are there and that they can hear us. Yeah. And see us,

Jamie: 1:04

or it's, it's just the delirium that you're living in, in your sweat box.

Kurt Neiswender: 1:09

Well, I'm sweating. I'm still, I have, I, I've have two houses, which means I have two yards. I have one house that's full of boxes and one house that's empty and full of holes for electrical that's getting redone. Are you familiar with knob and tube? Jamie?

Jamie: 1:33

I have heard of this.

Kurt Neiswender: 1:34

Well, this is knob.

Jamie: 1:36

Mm-hmm.

Kurt Neiswender: 1:37

This is tube knob and Tube Knob and tube. This is my show and tell people this is the scientific, educational component of the show. So these are both made of ceramic'cause, ceramic, you know, masonry, insulates, electrical and yeah, so they run wires through these things, you know, like a wire will come across and it goes into the, the knob, which is nailed into the stud. And it didn't, you know, you were getting the show, the educational. You ever watch Mr. Wizard? Jamie, this is Mr. Wizard. I'm, people don't even know. I'm just hoping. I know my students dunno.

Jamie: 2:17

I I'm hoping that the students get this demonstration with, with the, oh, show them the show and tell

Kurt Neiswender: 2:23

the, well that's why my look. You hear that on the mic?

Jamie: 2:28

Click, click, click.

Kurt Neiswender: 2:29

The that's why my electrician, he, he he is like, here, take, take these, take these with you. Anyway, so yeah, so I'm, I'm in I'm in all sorts of discombobulation.'cause I've got a house that I'm moving into that is plaster walls that have old wiring and so on. And then the, you know, the plaster work is gonna cost me more than the electrical work.

Jamie: 2:51

But you're gonna do the plaster work yourself, right?

Kurt Neiswender: 2:54

No. No way. It's plaster, plaster, not, it's not drywall. We're talking about pla plaster. No, I understand.

Jamie: 3:01

I know. But it, there's like a whole science, like there's a science and a, a craft and a skill and you can just, yeah. I don't embed that skill into the home. I mean,

Kurt Neiswender: 3:13

I have a, I as they, as the saying goes, I, I got a guy, I got a guy to do that, and he's really good at it. He did, he did some work in this house. Yeah, I had it. I had a, it's not cheap, but it looks good. So yeah, that's, that's how my, my my yeah, my, my first house that I bought, I've been dealing with this for Uhhuh. Guess what? Your first house was Plaster.

Jamie: 3:34

A hundred years.

Kurt Neiswender: 3:37

Yeah. This, well, this house is 98 years old. I think my next house is 80 something. So. Yeah, can you hear me? I think the camera is tired of us talking about plaster walls.

Jamie: 3:52

I think so.

Kurt Neiswender: 3:53

Yeah. My and my dog is over here on the floor. I threatening, threatening to end it all. She also is not loving the heat.

Jamie: 4:00

It's not Is is it, is is she doing the squirrel, the splt? Is she doing a

Kurt Neiswender: 4:05

Yeah, well, not really. You know, beagle beagles, just do the corpse pose sort of. Ellie don't look at me like that. She's, she's very sad. Wants, wants this show to get on the road. So with that, Jamie what is in the cup? If you're drinking coffee in this heat,

Jamie: 4:25

it is the grackle of which of which I might send, I might send as a care package. I don't know the new address though. So there's been no care packages because of no new, new addresses?

Kurt Neiswender: 4:37

Well, I'm still in the old address for a, they'll be here a while. I didn't know that. What do you want? I thought you guys had moved. I didn't, I didn't know. I didn't know it either. Surprise.

Jamie: 4:47

See there's the, see, there's the real answer. Yeah.

Kurt Neiswender: 4:50

I didn't know, I didn't think it would be this long either. So I, I, I'm actually paying rent to the people that bought my house for this month. Isn't that something? The, you know, any who, that's life. So aren't you aren't some carryover

Jamie: 5:08

you're an architect. You aren't you an architect?

Kurt Neiswender: 5:11

And what about it?

Jamie: 5:12

No, no, I'm, I'm just saying about the knob and tube and the house and the thing and the moving and the blah and the, I don't envy it. When you told me you were doing it again, I, I just said an extra prayer for y'all.

Kurt Neiswender: 5:27

I'm just pulling favors so, so, so much right now that, you know, I gotta, I just talked to my plumber friend today. You know, I mean, that's what being an architect is, is that, you know, these trades, but they also don't wanna always, they don't, not that they don't want to, but they don't always have the time to. To make it happen. So I need some plumbing done now that we've cut holes in everything. There's some sketchy plumbing that needs to be fixed. Oh, well anyway so I still have, I just wrapped up my, my, my last few beans. I'm gonna move on, talk about coffee. My last few beans of my Dunkin Donuts house blend coffee beans. And I, then I did, I then just picked up a bag of I was at Starbucks and I got an iced coffee because it's hot. And I got the Odyssey blend, I think they call it Odyssey. I dunno if you've had the Starbucks Odyssey. So anyway, is that

Jamie: 6:28

like, like the ID in the Odyssey?

Kurt Neiswender: 6:31

I don't think so. I don't, I I did, I, the bag doesn't allude to that. I think it has something to do with like one of those fundraiser kind of roasts. Like they, some of the money goes towards that.

Jamie: 6:44

It's, it's going to pay for Christopher Nolan's new film about Homer. What? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. He, he's making a movie about the, he's making a movie about The Odyssey.

Kurt Neiswender: 6:54

Okay. Okay. I, I'm too far away to go verify this. He might be, he

Jamie: 6:58

might be. I mean, he might be crowdsourcing his funding through every means necessary, including selling branded coffee at Starbucks worldwide, worldwide. Because it's an odyssey, you know?

Kurt Neiswender: 7:11

Have you seen the, the, it's a Apple TV show called The Studio with Seth Rogan. Seth Rogan. Right.

Jamie: 7:19

I know it exists. I've not seen it

Kurt Neiswender: 7:21

yet. It's, it's very good. It's very good. It, every episode actually gets better. It's, it's very good. And it's all about the Hollywood scene, you know, production of,

Jamie: 7:33

someone said that same thing about severance to me recently trying to convince me to, to go back to it. So that might've been you.

Kurt Neiswender: 7:40

Severance is good.

Jamie: 7:41

So,

Kurt Neiswender: 7:42

yeah, that's probably, well, I, I at least said that also. Yeah.

Jamie: 7:45

Yeah. We spent a lot of, could be a lot of time together.

Kurt Neiswender: 7:47

Yeah. We talk a lot. I talk a lot about tv, but I mean, we did spend a lot time together. People probably think, I don't do anything but watch tv. People probably think I only watch tv, you know? So any who we'll, we'll have to make, do you know, I don't know if you're picking up a little bit of a delay on your end, so we'll do a little fix up in the edit and stuff, but I've, you know, we're, we're kind of like over talking over each other a little bit, so hopefully on the live stream it's not too irritating to people. I don't know. You can, you, you know, you could still say stuff and then, you know, because it's better than not saying things. I don't wanna then be talking to dead air, you know, for the next half hour. So now pantomime is not gonna help Jamie. It doesn't help. Look at, look at this dog in the back. She's unimpressed. Yeah. With what, what's the is it Marcel? Who, who is the famous mime? Oh

Jamie: 8:42

my goodness. We're going mar

Kurt Neiswender: 8:44

Oh, I forgot. Any who work on your mind skills? Jamie.

Jamie: 8:47

Okay.

Kurt Neiswender: 8:47

All right. Well do we do, do we wanna introduce, we, we, we were gonna talk about the conference a little bit, do we, before we show some of our sketches. Oh, and I was gonna green room, this one of us. Let me move this sketch out of the way.'cause now we've not, we've blitzed past the green room, so we might as well get into the, get to the get the right images in order. But here we are. We're back from the conference. It's as if we've never left. Right Jamie? Just the next episode for all the listeners. But I. We're still, oh, nice. Nicely done. I I I still have to do a little bit of laundry on my end, you know. So you can wear the t-shirt. I will wear the AI Michigan t-shirt though.

Jamie: 9:31

Well, I mean, you, you were explaining to me on our trip that you had lots of, lots of black t-shirts. You were like completely leaning into that wardrobe again. And so yeah, like, let's, let's keep it going. Yeah. You could do it with like, you could do it for like your students and you could do like every day, like, can Kurt find another black t-shirt to wear se sequentially throughout a, a summer semester?

Kurt Neiswender: 9:59

Well, summer would be easier to pull off than a full,'cause it's shorter and there's yeah. Only one class a week.

Jamie: 10:10

But Oh, oh. Only meet with them like FaceTime once a week.

Kurt Neiswender: 10:13

Yeah. I have two classes I'm teaching though. So one on Wednesday, one on Thursday, and yeah, only once in per, like once together and then the rest of the time is in the wild online. But yeah, so. Alright. Shit. Let me let me get these sketches up here, right Jamie. And then we can kind of walk, walk through what we've been through in our quick Boston excursion. It, it always feels like there's a long week of, of a conference. And then by the time you're into it, it's, it's basically over. So we were in Boston for the AI conference, which was, I don't know, in my opinion, I think one of the best ones I've been to in a long time. I don't know what you think about it. What are your thoughts there?

Jamie: 11:01

Oh, yeah. I mean, I, I mean, yeah, I mean, I, I think I, I I think that, you know, we I, I think that, you know, going into a conference like that, I mean, I didn't, I didn't, did you hear a final count on how many architects were in the room?

Kurt Neiswender: 11:18

Oh, attendees? No, they didn't do a fancy announcement. Did you

Jamie: 11:24

hear

Kurt Neiswender: 11:24

anything?

Jamie: 11:25

I heard someone say 15. Thousand Uhhuh

Kurt Neiswender: 11:29

Uhhuh

Jamie: 11:30

which is, you know, kind of around, you know, the, the, the typical number. And so, I mean, it felt big. I mean so especially on it felt

Kurt Neiswender: 11:39

like that. Yeah.

Jamie: 11:40

Yeah. I mean, especially on sort of the day two-ish. I mean, it really felt like that size wise. So, you know, I'm, I'm comfortable saying that, that we, we were about that number. But yeah, I mean, a conference that big in a city like that I think it was you know, it was anchored by a lot of, you know, really interesting keynotes. You know, a lot of good continuing education sessions. A lot of, you know, I mean a lot of touring kind of an interesting city, you know, whether formally or informally. But you know, most importantly it's also just sort of like time with your friends and colleagues that you kind of, you know, coalesce around that, that event for, for a number of days. And and I think, you know, mission accomplished for us at least on that. I mean, we get to see, you know, quite a number of people and spend a lot of, a lot of quality time. Plus, you know, for the podcast, you know, we also were able to do, you know, a fair amount of interviews. And, and then I even pulled off a special event, which I think we'll talk about as well. So, you know, this is our a i a 25 recap episode. But yeah, I hopefully, hopefully kind of bookended it for folks who haven't heard one of our recaps before. I know we were doing a lot of lead up to the conference, but I think that those are sort of the, the big highlights.

Kurt Neiswender: 12:57

Well, yeah, I think the, I feel, I, I feel like I am. Now a professional conference. Attender attend. Attendee, attend. Yeah. Attendee. I think, I think I've managed this year, although I've, I was pretty tired every day. I think I managed to do a hundred percent of, well, let's not say a hundred percent, I think I would say 90% of the agenda of the things that were on the schedule and including, I quite, I, I think I socked away quite a few continue education courses that I, I didn't think, I didn't expect to actually, I typically don't get into enough of those and usually spend a lot of time on the expo floor. But I, I actually wrangled a a quite a few hours this year, which is good. Good money for the value or whatever.

Jamie: 13:50

Well, I mean, also it was, it was convenient. I mean, we were in the conference hotel for once. It's been a number of years since we've been able to pull that off. So convenience factor of being near kind of the epicenter of things, I think sort of facilitated sort of both expo time as well as continuing ed time. So that was, that was good. I, I'm, I'm glad that that all kind of, kind of worked out as we got our bearings.'cause you know, I mean, part of it too, for us, and we've talked about this a lot, you know, if it's a famili, if it's a city you're not necessarily familiar with, or maybe it is one that you're familiar with a little bit, but a conference like this is also about exploring, right? And, and, and not just yourself, but exploring with other people, you know, who are, you know, kind of of the same mindset. And I think that that's sort of a fun, you know, fun element to this too. You kind of let different folks in your group lead for a little while and sort of, you know, lead, lead the crew in sort of, you know, different directions, you know, and sort of have different interests, but all of them end up being, you know, a great experience in the end. So yeah, there was a lot of that.

Kurt Neiswender: 14:59

Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was a lot of fun. You know, Boston, Boston's a great city and yeah, I feel like it, it, it went off really well. My shoes, you know, shoes, high, high performing shoes. One can never underestimate the footwear when you're at a conference'cause you're spending so much time on your feet. I know that sounds really, really dry.

Jamie: 15:22

You sound a little, little old. I, I was gonna give you a little bit of, kind of an ageist comment there.

Kurt Neiswender: 15:27

I know, right? It's, but you know, when, when all I, when all I have to critique is the footwear, you know, you, you know, I think everything else kind of fell into place. What I'm trying to avoid is talking about karaoke, but, you know, we'll save, save that till later. Maybe the end. We can,

Jamie: 15:44

we can, we can get that in now, or we can do that later.

Kurt Neiswender: 15:47

We can, and well, let's treat it chronologically, right. You know, so, like, for example, to the viewers, you know, we have a variety of sketches and things up on the screen. The first being the, what we teased out before we left for the conference was that, you know, for this year, for the podcast for fun, we thought it would be great to. You know, put the logo on a co cocktail napkin and, you know, architects like to do sketches, but also like to do sketches on cocktail napkins while out at a bar and talking with other architects. And so we were kind of just handed out all these cocktail napkins and some of our friends treated them a little too preciously and wanted to like, put it in their, put it in their sketchbook and, and, and like, you know, hang it on the, on, on the shelf. And, and so we, we try and encourage people to just sketch. But here, you know, we, we do, we did actually get a, a, a, a little cluster of, of great sketches on our napkins. I st Did you actually come home with any, Jamie? I still have a little stack.

Jamie: 16:56

I, I did, I did come home with a couple,

Kurt Neiswender: 16:59

I have, I have this many, about a inch tall, maybe a a half an inch. So, you know, if any of our watchers or listeners wants a well traveled cocktail napkin with the podcast logo, just say, just say so. And it might even get to you with a little sketch on it, but you know, so,

Jamie: 17:20

oh, are you promising you're promising stuff now? Are we doing, if people

Kurt Neiswender: 17:23

ask, if people ask, it will be delivered. Except for people whose first name starts with c and e, if you know what I mean. Just kidding. I, I, I won't, I won't exclude our friends, but, what are you doing there? Are you making a drawing? Are you trying to make a drawing?

Jamie: 17:40

I am not making a drawing.

Kurt Neiswender: 17:42

Oh yeah, no. Okay. No, I just, it looks like you were, I was just, I was just

Jamie: 17:45

double, double checking. I was just double checking some stuff.

Kurt Neiswender: 17:48

Statistician over here

Jamie: 17:50

I was doing. Yeah, so, so I, yeah, I, of, of our, of our podcast friends, I distinctly will say that we did not spend enough time with the arch speak gentlemen. They, they seem to they were on walkabout a lot more than us. But in sort of a completely different section of the conference, it, it felt like, well, we did intersect, well I spoke to them on the

Kurt Neiswender: 18:15

expo floor.

Jamie: 18:17

We did intersect on the expo floor. Yeah,

Kurt Neiswender: 18:20

they also are on a, another echelon than we are.'cause they were getting you know, fancy dinner invites, which, what kept them from our. Our podcast meetup. So yeah, maybe next year.

Jamie: 18:34

I mean, you know, they're,

Kurt Neiswender: 18:36

take it

Jamie: 18:37

up a notch. I mean, you know, we're, we're doing well, you know, we're doing well with the podcast. You know, but those guys have, they're the OG podcast, and, and they've, they've been, you know, with all, with all due respect to them, they've been doing this a while in, in, in, in a good way. So yeah, it was, it was nice to see them. I would've loved to spend a little bit more time with them. So

Kurt Neiswender: 18:59

I as always, well, you know, I think when you see somebody at a conference, I think that's always the, the, the common, you know, at least I think seeing, just catching somebody for a few minutes is, is basically, I mean, it's always better than zero minutes, you know? But like. Just by catching them, you know, it, it, it, it checks the box sort of in a way. You know, you've, you've, you've made that touch point. And then if you get to spend any extra time, then it's like icing on the cake there. But Yeah, I know what you mean though. It's a, it's a, you know, a, a a busy, a busy week for everyone. So the

Jamie: 19:37

but we did, so like, again, conference, so we're gonna just sort of drop these little conference nuggets in here as we move along with our recap. So some of the thing is, you know, if you go to a conference, you know, and, and we know that we have a lot of students, or even professionals who haven't, you know, who haven't gone to national, you know, maybe they've gone to their regional or state conference or local conference, if they have a conference like that. You know, Texas, you know, of course we've got conferences. Coming outta everywhere. It's nuts. But you know, the national one is real special for a lot of the reasons Kurt and I have already described. But the other thing too, with the expo is that you have a lot of product representatives that are there, you know, to both, not necessarily sell you things, but, but to you know, kind of explain who they are, make connections, you know, they're trying to do the networking on the floor related to their products especially if they're ones that you aren't as familiar with or if they've got a new rollout of something. But there's also sort of taking it up to another level of, you know, it's, you know, attention span, right? And so, so some of them have to do kind of really innovative popups. Arguably one of the best ones still for me that from this last one was where we saw Cormick and Evan was, you know, at the Anderson window popup with the coffee. Totally on Brandand for our podcast and the like mini Stanley Cup mug for your your little mini cappuccino or latte or whatever.

Kurt Neiswender: 21:07

Yeah, reusable. Reusable, yeah, definitely a hundred percent. Favorite, favorite spot? I think for, for Mo most of us, I was just spreading the word. I was like, oh, you better make it over to Anderson. Plus they had this giant glass door on display, which was pretty sweet. But yeah, the lots of good, I had a lot of good conversations. There's still, there's still a bunch of emails and you follow up on with some people that wanna join the podcast from Vectorworks. And we still have to, I still have to do some editing for the SketchUp conversation we had, which that's in the works. So that'll be kind of like a follow up to this, this episode. And I think there was

Jamie: 21:50

like, I,

Kurt Neiswender: 21:50

I'll have to check the email, but there's, you know, some other people that had some interest in

Jamie: 21:55

didn't we do a meetup? Didn't we get some b roll from a meetup where we talked to some folks? I think we might've done that. Are we gonna talk about that today? We might mention that

Kurt Neiswender: 22:05

the Wait, well now you're, now I'm now, now I'm lost. You've, you lost me. Well, you'll, you bring it up when appropriate. Or, or maybe it'll hit me. There's so many things swimming in my head about the conference. I'm still trying to think about. I mean, I'm, I, I know for sure on this other tab here, there's like a bunch of emails that that need to be followed up on.

Jamie: 22:28

So I'm gonna, I'm just gonna set the scene for folks. Let me kind of mid episode right now is that, you know, Kurt is in the midst of a move. So, you know, he's got two houses and he's got lots of stuff going on. If you missed the knob and tube at the very beginning of this episode, there are props. And so it's, it's a real thing right there. There's home reno and a move all going on at the same time. He also went to Boston for a week and went to this conference with like 14,999 other architects and, you know, of which the national president, who happens to be a friend of ours, you know, killed it on stage. She was fantastic. I thought Evelyn's speech, you know you know, and typically the president doesn't, you know, doesn't kind of get that kind of opportunity. I mean, they always have really great opportunities to provide remarks, but I think in the context of. The way they scheduled that out. I thought that was really, really brilliant in terms of scheduling and sort of planning that, that portion of, of that sort of day two piece. Because she was able to deliver some really kind of important remarks, kind of, you know, kind of packaged for herself and sort of what she's been focused on and what she feels like the institute's focused on right now. And then sort of was able to pivot, to bring on, you know, former Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, you know, to, to have a really kind of, you know, wonderful conversation on stage. And so I thought that whole segment was just, I was so happy for her you know, so proud of her for, you know, as a friend, you know, and for her in that moment. But I thought that the sort of the remarks, you know, from both including the conversation with Mayor Pete, I mean, I think was really, was really, really inspiring and special. What did you think?

Kurt Neiswender: 24:19

Oh yeah, I mean the, the, the, I, I mean, I was so looking forward to Pete Buttigieg as, you know, once they announced him. So, and, and he didn't, he didn't disappoint. And I, I think it was awesome that they, they chose to do it as a q and a and that gives Evelyn a chance to spend some time on stage.'cause,'cause you know, when you, it, it, it sounds exciting to be ai, I don't know if anybody's not familiar with the, the leadership track at National, but you know, when you're president of AI National, there's a lot of, a lot of, a lot on the agenda for that year or two years that you're kind of like in, in the, in the mix. But then they don't always spend. As much FaceTime say on stage. So when they get a little chance to do a, a q and a and, and, you know, you get to sort of soak it in, I would, Ima I'm sure Evelyn was, you know, sort of absorbing, absorbing that whole experience. But yeah, it was great. And you know, Pete was great and I, I've, I've I've been following him on Instagram. I don't know, I I'm sure you do too. And you know, he's, he's not lacking an opinion about the state of affairs and, you know, he stuck to his you know, he's true to himself and you know, I can't complain'cause he is a fellow Michigander now, right? So he lives in, in Michigan, traverse City area. And yeah, I mean, I also was, I also was super excited for all the keynotes. You know, we had a race, really diverse, as you said. Spectrum of, of speakers, you know, somebody who's an expert and a leader in AI technology information and what's the word? Education. And then, you know a social media, a YouTube architect you know, alternative career path and, and, you know, Damie Lee and, and doing all kinds of interesting. It was a giant, a giant YouTube following. I mean, it, I, I was actually super overwhelmed with the stat stats, you know, being that we do a podcast, you know, and we put it on YouTube and, you know, but in, I mean, we pale in comparison to to Dam Lee's you know. You know, video focused, not a podcast, but her, her YouTube channel, which is it, you know, grown, grown so fast. And yeah. It's, it's really, it was really exciting. All, all of it. And, you know, and then just like you said, yeah, going back to being able to bump into Evelyn a few times and kind of catch up like little checkpoints along the, along the week. And you know, one thing I didn't wanna lead with this, because, you know, it's not all about this, but, you know, if you saw one of AI architects email blasts after the conference, did you see the one where Evelyn and Pete, or sitting on stage and Evelyn, you know, chose to wear her Adidas?

Jamie: 27:12

Oh yeah.

Kurt Neiswender: 27:12

Adidas sneakers, Adidas, and, and there it's, it's quite, you know, it was quite a killer outfit, you know, po tied up with, you know, Evelyn and you share the love of soccer. Well, I, I don't, I'm not saying I don't love, but you guys have a different love as a player

Jamie: 27:31

Yeah.

Kurt Neiswender: 27:31

Of, of the sport. And and so I thought that was kind of cool. Yeah. Did, did you hear, you know, I, I don't want this will probably embarrass Evelyn when she hears this, but did, did she tell you about the hairdo? Were you there when she was talking about the hair? No, I didn't

Jamie: 27:45

get to hear about the hairdo.

Kurt Neiswender: 27:47

She's gonna hate this. But when we were afterward. That same day, right? So she's in, in the same outfit. She was interviewing Pete in, we saw a, a few of us I guess, saw her. You must have been on a tour. And and she said, oh, well, she told the stylist when she got backstage. She's like, I want something a little edgy. And so they kind of did it up with a, a, a nice sort of sculpted ponytail thing. And I thought it was pretty, you know, I,

Jamie: 28:17

I mean, it, I think, I think she looked great. I mean, she, you know, she, the, the dress, the Adidas, I think the whole thing, you know, being on stage by yourself in that kind of a room to deliver remarks, like she did, you know, sort of almost a state of architecture, kind of where we are and kind of her thoughts on it and kind of her place in it. I think, you know, kind of her, you know, who she is, I think was really, really special. But then like you said, Pete didn't hold back. I mean, didn't disappoint. And I think, you know, it was really, really great. He also was able to slide in like a, a subtle shout out to our friend Claris.

Kurt Neiswender: 28:57

No, I, I was, yeah, I was gonna bring it up if you didn't bring it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jamie: 29:02

I mean, and, and not that Claris had made the remark you know, in meeting Pete, his reference Yes. His reference to riding in the elevator with somebody who maybe didn't agree with his political, you know party affiliation, but respected him for his intellect and his, you know, passion for service and kind of what he was doing. And, and, and, you know, applauded that in that kind of elevator moment, that was Clara's coworker Claris was able to, you know, relay all this to you and I in a text message, which at first. W we did not believe, but

Kurt Neiswender: 29:40

yeah, those, yeah. Yeah, it is very funny. And yeah, my jaw dropped when he cited that interaction.'cause I knew exactly Oh yeah. Who he was talking about.

Jamie: 29:50

Yeah. We like all of us. Exactly. Right. Perfect. How funny,

Kurt Neiswender: 29:53

what a, I mean, I think, I think most people probably this episode's sort of turning into a little bit of a anecdotal recap in my, in my, at least from what I'm doing you know, I know you're trying to get us back into a little bit of a focus, but the my, I think to me this sort of reflects on across the, the whole week and the various activities, right? Whether it's keynote, visiting, expo flow, catching up with, with friends and colleagues and, and you know. Fellow architects. I think it, it really had a whole, it just had all these, these sort of significant me memories for me that I, I, I think what, what makes it a really, a really strong lasting, you know, particular conference compared to many of the other ones. I mean, we're kind of regulars at this point, you know, e

Jamie: 30:47

except the fact that like you, I was dropping all the hints and we're gonna go there right now. I was dropping all the hints and, and you were not picking up the breadcrumbs? No. Like, you just, you weren't, I mean, what I was trying to say is the coffee sketch podcast, you know, in addition to the napkins and the sketches, we also held a little meetup. You know, we tried to be ambitious folks, you know, in the spirit of our friends from, she Builds podcast. Shout out to them. We've got some plans. We've already got plans in the works with them, so we will not say much more about that at this point.'cause both of us are terrible about keeping secrets. But we will just say it was great to see them took inspiration from them last year at conference and decided to do a little bit of an informal meetup which included sort of a trip to the ICA which did not disappoint. And so we'll, we'll go there, but before we do, let's go to the, the SketchUp on the upper right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So this was, one of, this was a napkin that I gave out when I was talking with Jeff. And Jeff was standing there talking to somebody that I have known for years from the interwebs. Have not ever met him in person that I can recall before this, have had sort of the internet kind of conversations that you do with those folks online who are in your discipline. We've talked about this on that, on the podcast, but Mark Gardner is an architect and a professor at Parsons and clearly can sketch like a demon. Loved it. Gave him this, gave him the coffee, gave him the cocktail sketch, and he was immediately like, do I need to do it now or can I draw a little bit later and, and take a picture and send it to you? And I was like, that, that will work. So, mm-hmm. Just, you know, completely understood what we were doing. And, and just, and loved every minute of it. So it was, it was great to see him. And he was, he gets the award for being the first post. And so, and, and clearly, you know, like you were saying before, did not kind of get in the weeds on their sketch and didn't get in their head on it. And he was just like, I'm just gonna have fun with this and sort of sketch, you know, purely cocktail napkin sketch, kind of some thoughts about some architecture, some little entourage in there as well which I love. And you know, I, I'm, I'm gonna ask you, Kurt, kind of, what pen do you think this is? Because I, I'm kind of digging it.

Kurt Neiswender: 33:18

Oh, I was actually just thinking the same thing. Well, I, I mean, you were there, right? Oh, no. He, he did it. No, he did it. He did after, right?

Jamie: 33:25

Yeah. Wow.

Kurt Neiswender: 33:27

I don't know. I mean, it has to be something. Well, you used, you used the what should we call it? Oh my God. A a v zero or a V seven or a V, yeah. Five, right? A pilot.

Jamie: 33:38

Yep.

Kurt Neiswender: 33:38

And, and I was gonna say now this thing, his,

Jamie: 33:41

his has a lot more kind of like bleed in. Yeah. A little more bleed, but like, it's a controlled bleed, which I,

Kurt Neiswender: 33:47

it could be one of the felt a little bit felty type versions, but, you know, I used the, i, I used a fountain pen and so I don't know. It had, it had some interesting, you know, pressure, pressure matters, right?

Jamie: 34:01

Yeah.

Kurt Neiswender: 34:02

Yeah. And so and I don't remember what Brian used. Do you?

Jamie: 34:06

He has a fountain pen too, I believe.

Kurt Neiswender: 34:08

Yeah. Yeah. So. No, but this is, this was cool. Yeah, it was nice to see the very first of the conference posted on with the, the, our hashtag that we used, the coffee sketch hash hashtag. So yeah, a nice little kickoff for, for the week. And but yeah, so, so the ICA meetup, so we decided to choose, we, you know, I've, I've always wanted to visit the ICA, which is the Contemporary Arts Museum in, in Boston with designed by Diller and Scofidio in the, in the years before Renfro was part of the title, but, you know, the same firm. And a lot of aspects of the ICA were stunning, you know, the details it's, it's not a huge building. But it, it's it's, it's actually, well, I mean, it's kind of a square, right? It's essentially, it's a fairly sort of vertical cube except for this, the very cascading staircase that sort of emerges from say, the second floor down to the waterfront. But it still has quite a bit of gallery space and, and then these, these sort of voids, I, I'll call it, you know, I, I was thinking about when, when sitting there for a little bit and the elevator shaft is this very monumental elevator. It's very glassy and it's, it's sort of the freight elevator that can move large pieces of art, but also very glassy and, and sort of transparent and visible.

Jamie: 35:38

And fun fact, a way to ditch your friends in the gallery and then surprise pop out where you're in the elevator and they're still on the first level. Trying to figure out where you guys went.

Kurt Neiswender: 35:49

Yeah. Well I got a text. It said turnaround. We're in the elevator. It is a it, so, but it, it sort of creates this vertical shaft to the center of the cube. And then there the, the building itself, you know, is very bilaterally symmetrical, right? You know, you, you slice it in half and, and it, it would look very similar on both sides along the, the staircase component. And then there's this void that turns horizontal or 90 degrees to all that which faces the water, right? So there's this sort of bar of. Of this viewing space out to the water. And then there's the vertical glassy elevator that's a sort of void. And so it, it while we were sitting there, it kind of dawned on me the, the sort of, actually I might've, there's actually kind of a hint of the diagram. It's a little fuzzy. But it, it sort of accent to the building is like, there's a lot of this exce accentuated staircase, but, you know, sort of might make people think, oh, it's all about, it's all about that one thing. But it actually, is it interesting composition of these cuboid rectangular volumes, right. These void spaces?

Jamie: 37:04

Well, and it's, and it's funny you say that'cause I think, you know, the, I I hadn't thought about sort of that viewing. That, that horizontal viewing room where you caught a really good, sneaky photo of me at by the glass which I appreciate. But you know, as you're describing sort of that horizontal sort of glass void that sort of is conscious of its location on the building to the site, it's looking out, it's a view, it's, it's another viewing deck which effectively is a hallway, right? It's a hallway connecting two sides of the gallery. Also gives you a spot to kind of rest for a moment, and then there's some restrooms right there. But it's, it's a really elegantly done kind of space. And then, you know, that is. Above the smaller viewing platform, the little triangular piece that was also captured in a sketch. You know, my sketch, but also one of the sketches that, that was done kind of in the space. I think Chris did that one. Mm-hmm. And, you know, the, I I think the, the thing that sort of struck me as you were describing it, was there's these sort of spatial moments, you know, this is me jargoning a bit, but it's like there's these they and there, but they're all suspended. It's like, you, like, when you're in those spaces, you kind of feel like you're suspended within this, you know, larger cube. You, you know, you've entered a cube. And you've either ascended the steps or you've come in the lobby and you've gone up the, the, the glass elevator. And so, you know, you're in this sort of box, this sort of, you know, kind of interesting modern cube. But then there's these moments where you stop and you're not looking at the art and you're sort of recognizing that you're sort of in this space, you're, you're looking out. And in those moments you're kind of suspended. Mm-hmm. And, and I just, I think it's sort of a really clever thing that the architect is sort of playing with it a bit. I don't know if that's, that's completely intentional, but knowing Dill and SCIF's work around that time where they were you know. Sort of playing with the idea of surveillance. Mm-hmm. And sort of, you know, the, you know sort of the idea of sort of prospect and refuge and sort of being the, you know, being in a space and observing another space and all those types of things. I think this is, has some elements of that. I think there's some DNA of that you know, in this building in a way that I had not really read the building that way before.

Kurt Neiswender: 39:39

Yeah. I mean, it's, it, it's just a prime example of like the, the reason we always tell our students to go visit the building yourself. Don't just look at it in the picture. I think these readings kind of are only solidified by your, your experience of the space. And yeah, I think, yeah, there. It, it may seem like a strange object on the, on the landscape, you know, by the waterfront, but I mean, it really is packed full of very functional interior spaces, but also very deliberate as you put it, you know, the, the, these suspended moments for view and and resting and things like that. So, so I mean, yeah, it was a great choice. Credit to one of us that picked that as a meetup spot. And then but points, points, extra points to Jamie for figuring out that that was a first Friday of the month, which then ICA hosts these first Friday parties, which this, this month's theme was R Rococo, a Gogo which included a, a kind of a drag show. And on the, on the deck facing the water. And then the interior of that second floor was like this giant it's a big gallery sort of theater, well, I would say multimedia space probably. And then there was a DJ and, and, and, you know, a bar and, and a lot of a lot of people. And it was cool, you know, lighting and, and I've been showing the students the lighting and acoustic effects of, of the space. But the yeah, that was a added bonus, just having, so, you know, we, we met up just adjacent to the ICA recorded a podcast, so we have that to edit as well. And then met up with some of our fellow podcast friends, viewing the ICA from, from a distance, capturing a sketch. Then moving into the space. So it was really nice sort of processional experience. You know, we, we didn't just, you know, show up at the door, walk in, walk out, and, you know, disappear. You had a nice way to spend some time with it. So it's definitely a highlight for me.

Jamie: 41:54

So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you think about it, went to an architecture conference, decided to do a podcast, meetup of designers, showed up to podcast meetup of designers and podcast, meetup of designers turned into a drag show. So, you know,

Kurt Neiswender: 42:10

did you, that's, did you, did you notice Our friends our friends from, she builds, they, they got espresso martinis because Coffee beans. Oh yeah. Coffee.

Jamie: 42:21

Oh yeah, they, they, they're, they're, they're

Kurt Neiswender: 42:24

more on it, on top of it than I am

Jamie: 42:26

sometimes, you know, sometimes it was very

Kurt Neiswender: 42:28

nice. It was very touching. I, I enjoyed the, I enjoyed the chance to, to spend some more time with them'cause we're just, just getting familiar with their, their work and, and and their presence at the conferences. So, yeah. So much fun. Well, was there, oh, well, aside from karaoke, was there anything else that you wanted to talk about while we were at ICA?

Jamie: 42:51

No, I just, you know, all I'm saying is that you have now, you know, shared with your architecture friends, you know, and, and your co-host that, that Kurt might, might really enjoy the karaoke. And so he also folks has an alias, which we're not gonna reveal in this episode because there is an opportunity to have a a two-parter. You know, we, we typically do the AI 25 with a sort of a part one and part two. I'm gonna leave that part for part two. Yeah. And just follow up, you know, as a tease. It's a tease. It's a tease. This is what they call the tease.

Kurt Neiswender: 43:33

Yeah. Sorry, my screen is getting dim, but yeah, they're turning

Jamie: 43:38

off the power. It looks like they're turning off the power. Power power's

Kurt Neiswender: 43:40

gonna, so, yeah. So I'll only say about, and I'll, and I'll, I'll we'll dig in a little deeper about the karaoke is that I, we also travel in another circle of friends called Entree Architect. And there's a good handful of them that like a Good Friday night karaoke and we had a couple of friends. Chris and Erica who are locals, original Bostonians, or I don't know if that's the,

Jamie: 44:11

it sounds right to me.

Kurt Neiswender: 44:12

That knew of a karaoke bar in downtown that that was their college day haunt. And

Jamie: 44:23

clearly the fire marshal did not know about this place because there was a lot of people in there.

Kurt Neiswender: 44:29

OC occupants was very

Jamie: 44:30

small load

Kurt Neiswender: 44:31

might have been exceeded. It was, might have been exceeded, you know, but, but that, back, back, back up to one more technical anecdote is we ate dinner, Jamie Claris and I just before karaoke, after ICA at an Irish pub. And the decibel level reading in the Irish pub was actually louder than it was in karaoke bar.

Jamie: 44:54

Yet the fish and chips was

Kurt Neiswender: 44:56

fabulous. Well, yeah, so I don't

Jamie: 44:58

think the food, food was great.

Kurt Neiswender: 45:00

The karaoke bar had, they were walking around with like sort of a a buffet of skewers chicken on, on a stick.

Jamie: 45:07

There was a lot of skewers, like there was a lot of skewers at that place. I'm not sure where they were coming from, but yeah, it was yeah,

Kurt Neiswender: 45:14

yeah, I was full from the fish and chips, so yeah, I, I respectfully declined. But yeah, so I, I, I think I think we can, we can call this recap part one and we'll, we'll sort of save it as the the fun, the fun sort of a brain dump, I guess, for a lack of a better term, but the sort of, let's, let's put it all out there and then we can, we have a few other things that we'll, you know, technically get into. But as always, Jamie, every year we managed to do better and that this was, we

Jamie: 45:50

outdid ourselves again. So I don't know how we're gonna tap it

Kurt Neiswender: 45:53

next year, but I know we, we will,

Jamie: 45:55

well next year. Oh yeah. It's gonna be kind of like Highlander, right? Where like, is that Highlander? No, that's not time. Yeah. Well, maybe folks who are just joining the podcast for the first time and maybe have missed some of the earlier season one episodes. Kurt's an identical twin.

Kurt Neiswender: 46:15

Yeah. And next year we'll be in San Diego. Where, where said twin lives.

Jamie: 46:20

So Jamie has, has met. Has met, said twin, but only through this medium that we have here. Oh, yeah. So I did, I did argue about needing a proof of life kind of situation, and now I'm actually gonna meet Charlie. So shout out to Charlie, who's also does a lot of the sound for the podcast. But yeah, next year, next year we will totally top ourselves from this year. So there's always count on that.

Kurt Neiswender: 46:47

Yep. Yep. All right. Thanks Fran. Yep.