And so, I'm a big advocate of whoever is listening, just trusting yourself, trusting your judgment far beyond anyone else around you and what their feedback might be because we always have to remember that each one of us has our own individual path. It's never a straight line and any advice you might receive can only come from a certain experience. Welcome to Buildings 2.0, where we dive deep into the technology, trends, and visionaries reshaping the very structures we work in. Here's your host, Jose Cruz Jr., CEO of Integrated Projects. Hey everyone, thanks for listening to another episode of Buildings 2.0. Today, I'm speaking with Ryan Filvin, design architect and owner of NoSoge Studio. Ryan, thanks for chatting with me today. Thanks, Jose. It's really great to be here. I'm excited to talk to you. Let's dive in. Before you were an architect doing some incredible projects, you were just a kid. What made you fall in love with buildings in the first place? Falling in love with buildings was probably a direct result of growing up around machines and tools and playing with those things and building stuff. As a kid, I grew up in a very rural context, surrounded by a lot of old equipment and a grandfather who was constantly making things. It was often, "Hey, can we make this, or can you show me how to use that tool?" That evolved into more artistic expression around woodworking or putting things together, making random things from welding metal. I was very fortunate that as a teenager in my high school, there was a big program around technology. One of those pieces of that puzzle was the architectural drafting and design class, which was very amateur. It was just like the tech teacher who had an interest in architecture. Ironically, my academic career in high school started off a little bit bumpy and I showed up to art class a little bit late and the teacher had made a spectacle of me. At that moment, I just left the room and said, "Okay, I have to go adjust this." I went to the guidance counselor and said, "Okay, can I get into a different class?" I said, "No, sorry. We just have this architecture class." You can take that or stay in the art class. That was it. I just went to the architecture class and stayed in that tech department for the rest of the time. I took every class I could for the rest of the high school for your career and then I applied to one school out of high school, got in, and that was it. I just chose architecture. That's fascinating. You ended up in architecture as an escape from the original class. Yeah. It was an escape from the ego of the art world, which I didn't know yet, but it was really something interesting where I applied these things I already knew about making stuff with an idea about planning space, whatever that meant to a 13-year-old. How do you reconcile that? You mentioned the ego of the art world, but then also reference what sounded like both modest and passionate upbringing with your grandfather working at a woodshop. How do you reconcile the two and are there takeaways perhaps from your grandfather in the process you still think about today? Oh, sure. Absolutely. He was never give a good compliment. If it was all right, it doesn't suck. I carry that with me in my career, and that's how I also approach criticism with my colleagues if they tell me, "Hey, look at this. I'll tell them if it doesn't suck. If it sucks, I will also tell them." That comes with putting the ego aside at the table and just making sure we're all here to do quality work. We're here to support each other, but also to criticize each other's opportunities to make things a little bit better. I would argue that he kept it humble and left a little room for ego, but at the same token, I'm a lover of art, art history, and also historical designers who I consider to be artists. I spend most of my free time whether it's at exhibitions or art galleries or just reading about the stars of the art history world and how they did it and what they were really after. There's also this contrast inside of me of artists and architect and humble and ego and all those things. In your own work, you oscillate between buildings, products, fashion, almost as if design was universal. Help me understand maybe how you define it. What is design that does not suck? I'm opening up a can of worms. I do. You're a girl. Yeah. Design that doesn't suck. I mean, for me personally, I can't speak to everyone's opinion, right? Because beauty is subjective. What I can tell you about my opinion about quality design is that it has a certain refinement, of course, but it's also thoughtful in the way that it gives back something. That could be a beautiful object, maybe it's a shoe, and it makes the wearer of that shoe incredibly proud to be wearing that shoe or it gives them the comfort and support that they need to get through the day, et cetera. Yeah. It could be an object that she would door so much that you just love to see it in your living room, or it could be a space that's designed just for you, and it does all the things that you needed to do. And so therefore, you as someone who may not be educated in design can still appreciate why design is valuable. I'm just thinking out loud here. You know, I guess the difference between our architecture and again, I do recognize I'm opening up a can of worms, and I'm probably not qualified to even ask. But when you have a piece of art that plays a passive role, perhaps it kind of starts within a certain emotions, comparing that to a shoe where in addition to the emotions of being proud of that shoe, it has to be somewhat practical and utilitarian. If I'm wearing it, my ankle breaks, something, I'm probably going to... Absolutely. There's a baseline standard for whatever the product that is being consumed, right? If I'm providing you with a building, you should expect at bare minimum it's safe. It's designed efficiently, it performs as it needs to, as a basic standard. If it's an object, it's a light, it's not going to explode or catch on fire. You know, it's rated to the specific standards of the industry and the code. And so there's like a baseline. And unfortunately, I've witnessed a lot in my career that baseline is sort of often the standard for output, especially within the US. And it's not the fault of any specific architect or builder. It's more a product of the system in which we're building. I do have... I'm fortunate to have about 10 years of experience working also in Europe with very different architectural climate, much less private industry building and a lot of government hands in funding architecture and architectural projects, which results in a much longer duration of design and construction versus the States. You know, there is this sort of satisfaction here where you can start and finish a project fairly quickly considering where things I've touched in Germany or in Italy. Some of them are still in construction and, you know, I don't know. I don't know when I'll see them. I know that they are a much higher quality design output, probably because the government is involved and they ensure a certain quality and a certain standard for the results and the long spent life of each one of those buildings. But yeah, I mean, there's quite the difference between the two worlds. Is there a project throughout your career that you're most proud of that you would say you could confidently present to your grandfather and say, "I'm confident this one doesn't suck"? Yeah. I don't think I could get his... Unfortunately, he's passed since. But I don't think I could really get his sort of like, "Yeah, all right? You're doing..." He used to call it architecture smoke and mirrors. You know, he didn't believe that it was such legitimate. You know, he came from a very working... He was an electrical engineer but grew up as a farmer. So he was a very real person. But as far as like personal satisfaction, there isn't necessarily one specific project. There are a handful of experiences I've had and I can always point towards having a good client. And what that means is that it doesn't necessarily mean a good budget because I've had both like big budgets and very little budgets and that actually doesn't determine a good client. Even if you can spend a lot more and you can do a lot more things with your budget, a good client is someone who understands the value of design as we've already talked about but also appreciates the effort and the struggle to push things all the way to the finish line for the life of the project. One example is designing an ICU for a doctor in Louisiana. And it was in a place where design wasn't really a standard but we provided something very special to a doctor who was opening a new unit with an existing concrete tower. And the way we resolved it brought tears to his eyes when the facility opened because he was so proud to be the head doctor at such an institution and a facility in his name that was going to ensure a real quality practice moving forward for all of the patients and all of the staff. And on an equal note, more recently a project I did in Italy for some close friends, every time I speak with them they tell me how much they love their house and how amazing it is to have such a unique piece of architecture that is everything that they need. And we designed every sort of corner, nook and detail around their lifestyle and what they do and what they prioritize and also what they value. And so it's really satisfying because you know in that we all know in the industry that there's a lot that goes into making a building regardless of that scale. But at the end of the day, it's very rare that the end user or the client really values that more than something liquidatable. So when you can have like a real emotional connection with a client and they continue to have an emotional connection with your work after you're finished, that's the most rewarding for me. I mean, this is like really type of people I like to work with, the type of businesses I like to work with and I continue to search for more of these people essentially. You mentioned healthcare design in almost the same breath as residential and do you find that there's recurring threads or common themes kind of oscillating between both? I think right now at this very moment in the industry, residential architecture or at least residential behavior from the occupants of buildings is the biggest influence on where the industry is moving and why I say that is because if we look closely at the sort of branding behind new healthcare projects, you'll hear the word hospitality a lot. There's a lot of references to hotels and the sort of atmosphere that's provided within a hospitable environment. And also when we look at the workplace, there's a huge trend right now around this question mark of how do we get people back into the office? And so as a prototype, a lot of studios I've seen and I've been included in these exercises are looking at how did people behave during the lockdown and how did they adapt their home to be more office and what are those sort of qualities, what are the attributes of those spaces that we can now bring back to the office to shape the way people and interact with an office space. There was once a time when Google was a little bit ahead of this thing and they were making a lot of very playful spaces that were sort of game and entertainment centered and now the shift is towards wellness and getting closer towards what is assumed to be the behavior of people at home in the comforts that they need, whether it's a kitchen or a sofa or some plants, et cetera. Now for me personally with a sort of duals background in both healthcare and residential architecture, the two sort of overlap naturally for me because when we think about designing a healthcare space, the first part of that exercise is planning all the things that go in that and within those planning exercises, you're immediately looking at all the parameters. What are the restrictions of a wheelchair? What is the restrictions of the equipment of the bed? How do we move this from here to there? Who are the people using these spaces? What are their needs and preferences? And so what I've done essentially is sort of integrate this mindset into also every other project type that I have. So it doesn't matter if I'm working with an artisan who makes concrete furniture. I'm walking myself through every step of their day in order to plan out the best space for them. It doesn't matter if it's a blind woman in a new house who needs help navigating her new facility, her new home safely. It's the same mindset. So I see that right now is a very unique moment in the industry where there's a lot of questions around the future of buildings and the future of how people use building space and ways in which we can start to be smarter, more efficient, more human about the spaces that we put people in. Yeah. You've talked about tactics before, this idea of a model and a drawing being a drawdle. You've talked about collages of technique. When you navigate a project, talk to me about the toolbox of techniques as to how you think about this. Sure. I mean, the excitement that comes with a new project is unmatchable, because essentially there's every opportunity in front of you. And so this is the moment to be more of an artist in the profession, because I really believe that an architect should be someone who is a little bit too faced in the sense that they are both an artist, but they are as rational as they can be and need to be to ensure life, safety and efficiency and cost effectiveness. And so there's a strange sort of dichotomy or balance between those two identities. And so what I really enjoy at the very beginning of a project is to just jump right into artist's mode, grab my favorite fashion magazine and start cutting it up and building collages around sort of the fantastical ideas I might have based on a very small amount of information given to me about a new project. And so that's why I sort of leave it, actually. So I'll do this early schematic design phase where just flush out ideas quickly, sometimes with other people. And I've found that the collage is actually a great tool for collaboration and putting ideas together quickly, because you can sort of both be in that thing, putting stuff together different than a drawing on a computer or by hand. It can be a real team effort. And so ideas can start to collide. And from that, a lot of the in between, which could take several years, is much more rigorous. It's much more about legalities and efficiencies and optimizing whatever sort of resources are available to you, whether it's financial or manpower, people power. But I'd like to think that at the very end of a project, when we get to the details and we get to the interactions with the contractors and the makers of the actual spaces, that artists should come back and be a little bit strict about the ways in which decisions are made. And that's the moment when I suppose the ego comes in and has to be strong to ensure that the things that are promised to a client are seen through. Because it's really in that translation between drawing, email, phone call, and putting the brick down or laying the tile or whatever, that's where the translation is lost. So if I ever talk to someone who doesn't really know anything about the building industry and they're very excited to learn, okay, you're an architect, that must be great. I always explain it's very similar to writing a poem and then asking 1,000 people to translate that poem and hope that it's the same when you get it back. For me, that's what it means to be in this industry. So the greatest designers are the ones who can actually keep that poetry all the way through. I'm curious, are there emerging trends, whether technical, social, regulatory that you find is coming up across your projects? I wish there was more of sustainability. And I say that with a light heart because I know that there's a lot of efforts inside the industry and there's a lot of focus more than ever around how to be more sustainable. But unfortunately, like to be a little bit critical, it still sucks. It's not at the level where it doesn't suck yet. And why I say that is because I am a big fan of the fashion world as a maker, as a creative. I'm a little bit jealous of the speed in which they can produce a line or push out ideas and put a product to market. But I also really appreciate the trend in the fashion world right now in this huge push towards sustainable practice. And there are some brands that are really leading this charge. I even appreciate the fact that a lot of those brands are even reaching towards interior architecture that's even more sustainable than what we're used to seeing and reaching towards materials that are actually 100% recycled or 100% recyclable. And that's admirable. And that's one of the reasons why I really love that industry and love working with that industry. But in the large scale projects, it's very difficult to actually get new products into the built space. And the manufacturers, there are many who are pushing for things that are more sustainable. But I would argue that they fall very short on what that means. Just in general practice of distribution of when we think about material samples that are coming from each manufacturer, it's a very crucial part of a design is that a designer should interact directly with materiality to understand colors and textures and performances and compliances. However, the waste that comes out of that is insane. To watch if you ever sit in a large office, the monthly dumpster that goes around that just is there to collect materials that people don't want anymore. So there could be a little bit more thoughtfulness, I think, in the industry in general. I know there's a lot of big moves, there's a lot of greenwashing, there's a lot of campaigns that suggest sustainable behavior. But at the end of the day, if you're still drinking out of a disposable plastic cup, when you're talking about being more sustainable, you're missing the mark. There's a lot more opportunity to be simple in the ways in which we are conscious of our actions as an industry. And so that's something that I would hope continues to get more momentum, especially within the construction industry. And of course, I don't know everyone who's doing everything. And I'm very aware, and I watch closely those who are doing great things. But I will continue to advocate more sustainability on a real level, not just a league sort of certification or any kind of green stamp. Can I assume that some of the frustrations you might have found in your careers as an architect? Working for other firms for several years, at some point, you decide to start your own firm. Can I assume some of these are the motivations to effectively go off, do your own thing and build it on your own? Of course. I mean, what's ironic is that starting my own firm happened probably before I graduated. Even as a student, I was a bit entrepreneurial. And I had founded a magazine within the school and started basically a small business using the school's money to get students involved and engaged. I was also part of many clubs and was constantly pushed to the front as the spokesperson of whatever the new organization was. Now, the reality of exiting school, especially during financial crisis was a shock. It was like jumping in cold water. And in that climate, you go from being a very optimistic, excited person to, "Oh shit, okay, I have to pay my loans and I have to go to work." And when I get to work, all those things they excited me about, they're not really happening. And if they are, they're getting wiped out by someone else who doesn't care. And so, yeah, at the very beginning of my career, of course, there was things that were exciting and they were fun, but somehow those fun things never really paid. And so there's this balance, especially as you become a business owner too, there's always a balance between the things that excites you and the things you just have to do. And so I've always sort of reached to art. And my practice, as it is now, no-so, has actually been sort of the evolution of a lot of freelance relationships and some projects I did for fun that just got enough attention that I needed to make a website, essentially. I've found that the projects that resonate with me and with other people in my career, the most powerful work I've ever produced has always been somehow for myself first. And so it's those sort of personal initiatives, those personal investments in time and resources that have the amazing results that you can't necessarily achieve when you're working under someone else's agenda. And so, yeah, my practice is a response to all of those things and a criticism to all those things. But it's been a natural evolution and that's one of my favorite parts about the clients and the people that I end up working with. It's almost always out of the blue, someone thinks of me because of conversation we had or a thing we did or something I said 10 years ago and it came back. And so I'm a big advocate of whoever is listening, just trusting yourself, trusting your judgment far beyond anyone else around you and what their feedback might be because we always have to remember that each one of us has our own individual path. It's never a straight line and any advice you might receive can only come from a certain experience. We each have our own experiences and our own perspective of how things work and yours is different than mine and there's no chance that you could give me the right advice beyond what you could tell yourself and the same and the opposite. And so I always like listen, but with a brain assault and I always speak, but I say take this with a grain of salt because you have to trust yourself and once you trust yourself and what you're doing, you have to just run with it. Just go as hard as you can until you can, essentially. You now have the benefit of years of experience having worked for good clients and not so good clients and the kind of highs and lows of the career. Looking back, what would you tell a young Ryan who's kind of bright-eyed coming out of school based off what you learned through your years, what would you tell him? I would probably tell him to just be sure of himself and avoid shaping yourself for a moment. In other words, if you show up at a new office and you're terrified about where you are and who you're working with and what you're supposed to be, don't be. Just like show up the same person you would be if you went to your mom's kitchen table and be that person because there's a lot of value in realness and not everyone has to fit in the same box and they shouldn't actually because the strength of teams is the diversification of those teams and whether it's skill set or perspective or background or style, whatever. Homogenous teams, it's a little bit dangerous, especially when your practice is based on creativity and for me, collaboration has been the secret ingredient of every single project. I always reach to the brightest minds I can think of or that I can find to educate myself beyond what I know and I let them be themselves and I'm completely myself in that relationship and when it works, it works very well and when it doesn't, it's okay because I'm always looking for those very strong long-term relationships, whether it's in a client or a contractor or a friend or et cetera. To shift gears a bit, AI is on everyone's mind right now, no matter if you're in health care or in protection. How do you balance between timeless principles in design versus adapting new tools and tech to optimize the process of design? How do you think about that? I dive head first right into it. I think it's kind of interesting now that we have a name for AI that we're concerned about it but we've all had spell check for decades, that's sort of like simple AI, right? I say that because I'm very comfortable with this movement that's happening underneath our feet of autonomous thinking through computers and the reason why I'm so comfortable with it is because I did really dig into it. I will be honest, I was completely terrified learning the capacity of what these machines are capable of in this moment, especially my wife is a writer and her career is completely shaken by this thing and that's terrifying and I have plenty of friends who are creatives and they produce content, whether it's video or audio, et cetera and it's like everyone is terrified like what do I do, especially architects? As I start digging into it, I'm learning it's actually quite a beautiful thing and I point specifically to an art exhibition I went to recently, which I was suspicious. I went to a show that was immersive, 100% AI art and when I got there, I was actually surprised that I was moved by it, more so than some contemporary art made by people. And why I say that I was moved is because what's really quite special about this specific moment in AI is that it's learning and we're watching it learn and so if you've ever tried to produce an image with AI, you'll see that it's a bit wonky. It's almost dystopian looking when it starts to try to create humanistic things, there'll be extra fingers, there are dwarf faces and elements that are floating that you can't understand. But what's really exciting is that this is a machine who's trying to digest every human discovery at once and respond to a prompt with what it understands human discovery to be. And so to look at a painting that's like mildly renaissance in its composition and has other influences and is projected on a wall, but you can see that it's a computer that made that and you keep this idea in your head that we're watching a machine sort of digest human ideas, it's more raw than any movie documentary, news story, article book or anything you'll ever get because it doesn't have the extra layer of human animation or human excitement that is always added by some creator, someone who touches something, but in this way, there's no human that's completely removed. So that's exciting to me. But if we zoom back into the industry, I'm using AI, but not to replace my work, actually it's to speed up my process. And so what I mean is that I have tools that I use for my meeting minutes and it always requires me to go back and reread it and edit it. It's not like a product that I can just put on the shelf, but as a tool, it's extremely powerful because I just save a lot of time and I have very accurate information. And I was instead of having to take notes, I was able to look my contractor or my client in the eye and listen as closely as I could and receive the information as a person that the machine couldn't like body language and subtleties. But at the same token, I have sort of the annotated version of what was discussed and the important points. And so that's really nice as an administrative tool. And when it gets to production, you know, I've seen some products that are maybe similar to yours in some ways and that ways that they look at sort of existing conditions or regulations and they digitize those things into, for example, like a plug-in for Revit that could combine your program typology and requirements with the local code and the number of seats you need and just like you can stretch around your layout and you get floor plans. For me, okay, maybe that's efficient and useful in a very specific context, but removing the planner from that exercise, again, you're losing those nuances that are human as we've already discussed are very important for the final product, you know, if we were making a space for boxes, I guess to store machines, great, sounds good, but we're making a space for people to live their life or to do their work and to have flexibility. And so what I like to do is I like to use AI in between phases. And so thinking of it as like this super Pinterest where I can prompt my ideas and my references to get some results quickly and then I can discuss the results with my team internally and sort of pick and choose like what's on point or what's not or something that might have surfaced that we hadn't thought about and then go back to the drawing board and like interpret some of those concepts back in. So I like this idea that we use AI to supplement little pieces of our day. My dream is I have an AI that can like do my dishes and fold my laundry. That's my dream, but I pray it keeps getting further away from creative work because it's not actually good at creative work. If you think about it, it's just really good at digesting things that already exist. But even on that, it's not as good as it promises yet. I'm sure it will be there soon because it's a very fast technology, but I'm embracing it 100% as we go forward and I'm ready to see what it's capable of helping small businesses or helping young people to open their minds a little bit or helping older people to open their minds a little bit. I think it's a kind of a beautiful moment for technology and human discovery. To flip the script here on the final question, we talked about the evolution of tools, how they change and I'm sure five, 10 years from now, we're going to be looking back and kind of laughing at ourselves and we were using that and then we're using something else maybe to switch perspectives. What's like not going to change specifically the way that we engage, design, build and habit buildings and five, 10 years from now, what are we still going to be talking about? I consider your career today versus your first day at starting a firm versus your first day at a firm versus when you just got out of college versus the wood shop. 20 years from now, what are we still talking about for buildings? I would like it to be skilled labor. There's an old tradition that architecture was sort of the catalyst for artisans to make things and there was a lot that came as a result of byproducts of those artisans doing other things. There's where you get this more classical integration of architectural elements. I don't think that's going to happen, unfortunately. We might see more classical elements but I think they'll continue to become more decorative. Something that won't change will be flexibility. I think that as buildings and the way people use buildings has evolved, the highest priority in this period and I think it will continue to be with the evolution of human culture is flexibility and I don't know if that means our buildings are going to walk away like some of our 1960s idealists projected. I mean that sounds kind of cool, not so practical but flexible more in the sense that it can perform a building or a space can perform almost any function needed hopefully on demand and that it's so good in its planned performance that it's ready to do whatever you need. Almost how an iPhone became that object for us, I think that we're going to inch closer and closer towards the everything program where specialized space will be more integrated into space that is for everything and essentially for everyone. Brian, this has been an incredible conversation, I think incredibly thoughtful and interesting approach to space making, company making. For the folks I want to follow you, how could they reach out to you? Sure, I have an Instagram, I'm pretty active on that which is yes and no so. That's where I put a lot of my art and my daily architectural explorations as well as my adventures in New York City and I'm actually pretty active on LinkedIn so if there's any kind of professional news I might post it there otherwise I have a website where I might add new project information or some news as well so those are my sort of three hubs of finding what's new. Amazing. Brian, this has been a really fun conversation, I can't wait for the next one, thanks for your help now. Thank you so much Jose. [Music] [Music]
