Anne Mooney

[00:00:01] Our process is, the important part is that it's the first couple steps are non-architectural. And we don't go right into architecture. We try not to, a lot of our team, they're very talented and so they want to go right into architecture. So that's why I said I kind of slow, like if we can slow down a little bit and do this research, reading, writing, idea exploration,

[00:00:26] and then kind of come up with this non-architectural conceptual construct. Still not architecture, but embodies the ideas. Hi. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello and welcome to Architecting. Hello and welcome to a special series of the Architecting Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Weiger. Over the next five episodes, we're bringing you exclusive interviews with the keynote speakers

[00:00:52] from the 2024 AIA Colorado Practice and Design Conference held in Keystone, Colorado. I was grateful to AIA Colorado for once again inviting me to sit down with these giants of our profession and diving deeper into some of the ideas from their talks as well as deeper into their personal stories. In this episode, I'm speaking with Anne Mooney, FAIA, founding principal of Spirano Mooney Architecture.

[00:01:19] Her work masterfully integrates modern aesthetics with environmental stewardship, creating meaningful, context-driven architecture. In this episode, we really dive into Anne's journey, her inspirations, and the powerful insight she shared at the conference about the role of architecture in shaping communities and the natural world. But I think, like, that has been the dilemma for me a little bit where the idea of this podcast was just to focus on Colorado architects,

[00:01:48] you know, where most podcasts, you know, you're getting the national kind of coast people and kind of the same people. And so it's like, okay, let's focus on this specific area. And so it's been great to really build it up that way. But then you have this sort of natural inclination to want to go more national and barred and things. So it's been a little thing of, yeah, how do I keep it with the mission of it but still be able to go outside?

[00:02:18] And so, like, things like this, like the AIA conference where we get to talk to people like you is nice. And it doesn't break my rules for myself. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's all Western Mountain region. And I think we live and work in an incredible region. Yeah. Right? When I love, you know, so first, thank you for coming. Thank you for coming to the conference. You just gave a beautiful keynote speech, the opening keynote speech talk.

[00:02:48] And I just, you know, I love seeing such high-quality work and high-quality thinking, especially not from a firm that's on a coast. Right? And you are set in Salt Lake. So I'm curious, take me through a little bit of your journey of how you got, how you submitted yourself into Salt Lake. So. Yeah. Decker, you grew up in Montana. Is that right? Well, I was born in Butte, Montana. Montana, but I left when I was one. Ooh.

[00:03:18] A lot of memories. But I actually have a lot of memories because I spend a lot of time there. I love Montana. Grew up spending summers in Montana. And my, we now have my grandparents' home. So it's kind of stayed in the family. So I have deep roots in the West, I would say.

[00:03:40] I've lived in, I've lived in New York, in Switzerland, in Italy, and lots of years in Los Angeles. But I just love Utah, Montana. I'm loving Colorado since I've been here. It's pretty nice. So you left Montana when you were one. Yeah. Then where did you move after that? So I grew up basically in Southern California and moved to Utah when I was in high school.

[00:04:09] But my parents met in Utah in third grade. So they also have a deep connection there. And the reason I ended up back in Utah after going to grad school and working is that my parents were there. And I had twins. I found myself with twins. Found them. Found myself with two incredible babies.

[00:04:38] But I was a little outside my zone of expertise and comfort. So, yeah, you were in Southern California, then Utah, and then you went to school at Columbia? I went to Columbia and also SciArc. In SciArc. Yeah. In which order? I went to Columbia first. So you left Southern California, went across the U.S. And then came back. And then at SciArc, I studied in Los Angeles. And then I also studied in Switzerland. They have a, or had a campus.

[00:05:08] I think they, I know they have a couple international campuses, but they had a campus in Switzerland. So I lived in Tuchino, Switzerland, and studied there, which was incredible. And then went back to Los Angeles. And so how long had SciArc been around when you were there? It was, so they started in a warehouse in Santa Monica. And I. This works. It's a famous warehouse. And I actually took my, an intro to architecture class there.

[00:05:37] And I remember going in and there was like water dripping from the ceiling. And it was rough. And people standing there and drawing it, seeing it for concepts. It was, it was a lot of fun. But I went to the school when it was in the Marina Del Rey kind of warehouse. When I graduated, my, the commencement speaker was Frank Geary. So that was pretty cool. But we were in a parking lot in folding chairs. Nice. That sounds very SciArc. It was very SciArc. It was awesome.

[00:06:08] And, yeah. Who was, who was sort of leading school at the time? At the time, it was Michael Rotundi, who was incredible and a great leader. And I studied with Robert Mangurian and Marianne Ray. But then I took a class from Eric Owen Ma. And, and very different than, than other classes that I took. And, and then I ended up working for Eric Moss. That's who I did my internship with.

[00:06:38] And I met him as a student. Yeah. And so, and, and when did, when did Switzerland fall within that? It was before that. I, I did my first year, I think, or semester in Switzerland. Okay. Yeah. And, and going backwards a second, but like, I know sort of at Columbia at that time, there's, there's kind of, there's kind of a few different camps, right? Yeah. The DECON. The DECON. And then the, yeah, I'd like, then the sort of Stern camp maybe. Right. Right.

[00:07:07] Actually, I maybe shouldn't say this on camera, but that's why I left Columbia because I didn't want to study with Stern. Although I know he's an excellent educator. Excellent. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I, and, and then I ended up, you know, with Eric Moss, who's, you know, Eric Moss and, um, just loved CyArk, loved CyArk so much. I had a great experience.

[00:07:34] And so you were kind of in the sort of like Frampton, Eisenman kind of area of. I suppose. Yeah. And then they said, hey, go off to CyArk, complete best. The occupation. Yay. Right. Yeah. Art. It seems like a long time ago when I think about design and how it's evolved. Um, but it was a, it was a really fun time, special time. And, um, I love studying architecture, which is why I still teach architecture.

[00:08:03] I mean, it's, um, it's fun to be in the academic world and be experimenting and testing out ideas. And I was in a very experimental school. And cause, um, yeah, what do you, what, what courses are you teaching now or what? I teach design studio and usually they're the most advanced design studios. I teach the final year of our undergraduate, um, which is what I'm teaching currently.

[00:08:33] Uh, and, and then I teach the final, uh, semester of the graduate program, which they're all doing their independent kind of thesis projects. It's exciting. It's fun. Yeah. It's really exciting to see them each kind of take their, their passion and, you know, run with it for an entire semester. They have a semester to prep for it. And then I work with them as they get that prep and moving it into architecture.

[00:09:02] So it's awesome. I, I, I also teach about every other semester at CU Denver here, um, and, and doing the final grad studio. Um, and, and it is so fun, right. But it, it does take up so much time and effort. Yeah. And especially running a firm and, uh, you know, I loved your, your talk today just because of the variety of drawings, models, ways of thinking. Right.

[00:09:29] And it's, and it's so easy to kind of lose that or get that, uh, straightened out in a, in a, in a firm that wants to make money. Right. Yeah. And it's so nice to see that staying. Um, I want to, I'm curious a little bit about how you went about thinking about this presentation and how you set these up and kind of, especially around these five projects that you presented.

[00:09:59] Yeah. It's always hard to, to, um, can you get that thought in mind? Yeah. I just need the chair. Okay. Remember what yours. Okay. Your box. Okay. Okay. So there is. Great. Thanks. You need to stand much better than when you do that for a whole interview and then all of a sudden you don't come in the audio. Yeah. But in audio spine, I just wanted to make sure we're good. Okay. Uh, and Rebecca.

[00:10:26] So it's always a challenge to decide what projects to share. I, I, one of the things that I wanted to show was the variety of projects and scale from, you know, uh, a single family residence to things of a more community scale projects like the church, the community center and the art center. Yeah.

[00:10:52] So kind of mixing that up, but we do, we, we don't specialize back to like, does that make sense financially? Yeah. Maybe not. Maybe not. Business of architecture podcast area. Right. Um, it's not the business of architecture. Yeah, probably we should specialize, but we're not going to, we won't ever because I think we're a little bit more focused on trying to find people who care about the same things that we care about.

[00:11:21] And that is where you get to architecture. And so we don't really care if somebody has a small project or a single family residence or a mega project. If they have similar values and care about the same things, they, it's a good fit. Right. And I also think that this whole era of specialization isn't the best for our profession because we start limiting our focus.

[00:11:51] And I think it's always better to expand our focus and learn. We learn a lot of things. I was just in line for coffee and I was talking to somebody and I was telling her how in the single family residences, a lot of times we, we can experiment a lot and we can test out ideas and details and material things and that we wouldn't be able to end up on a university project, for example.

[00:12:20] So they kind of inform each other, even though when you get to an interview and they ask the question, how many do you have? And you know, the person that's coming in the room next to you have 20 of them, they might be bad or mediocre. That that's tough. That's tough. Well, that's where it comes down to the client, right? If, if you're saying, Hey, look at, look at what they've done and look at, look at our cardboard models, which, which one do you want?

[00:12:45] And, uh, and, and I'm curious about that, especially, so you, you, you were in LA, you had twins, you move with your partner, I'm assuming, uh, back to, to, to, to salt Lake, you know, the idea of now you're limiting that amount of clients who are looking for the kind of work that you're doing. Right.

[00:13:10] And how you build that firm up without losing the, the conceptual bones of it, you know? Yeah. Take me through that. Okay. Right. How to do that. I know. Um, it's, it's true because Los Angeles, there's a lot of really good architects in Los Angeles, a lot of great design and, um, a lot of sophisticated clients who care about design and architecture. So we weren't sure how that was going to work.

[00:13:39] And actually when we moved there, we just thought we would commute to LA. We didn't think we could do anything in Salt Lake. We actually didn't think we could. Um, so we're just like, we're just kind of starting a firm. We started it in Los Angeles. Yeah. For, for how long? Um, maybe, um, five years or six years. So we had been there for a while. Yeah. So we knew we wanted to keep that because we had something and we had, we had a partner.

[00:14:08] We have a partner who's been with us for 25 years. We've been in business 27 years and he's been with us a long time. Um, so anyway, we moved and we just thought, Oh, we're just going to commute. This is back before remote working, but. With you two in fit. Well, yeah. Yeah. I know. Easy. We, we didn't think this through very well as you're hearing. They're easy until they're like six months, right? Yeah. They're each put in seats and yeah.

[00:14:37] So, um, so then we started in Los Angeles. We moved to Salt Lake city. We, we did start kind of reaching out to people in, in Salt Lake city to see if we could, you know, get some traction and some projects. Um, and, uh, we, we ended up over time kind of building up a private set of clients in Utah,

[00:15:04] which is interesting because we really are actually really good at public work. And that's what we started. Los Angeles is all public work. Uh, so, so it was, it was kind of interesting. The public clients would not hire us. In Utah. Yeah. They wouldn't hire us. Huh? Because you didn't check the boxes of what had been done before? They knew, they didn't know us. I actually sat down for a debrief after not getting up an important project.

[00:15:33] And the guy said, we, you know, we have our favorite guys, you know, and it was pretty harsh, but I probably needed to hear that because I realized we're never going to get work from them. Um, so we, so we just kind of focused on private instead of public, even though now we're starting to do more public work. Um, but it's amazing how long it takes to break into that market when there's this old boys network

[00:16:03] that is really entrenched and, you know, it, it, it was a little tough, but now we're doing, we're doing a mix of projects there. We actually have more diverse portfolio in the Utah market than in California. It's still public. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to, I'm, I'm really curious about this idea of, you know, like looking at your, your St. Joseph, the worker church. It's just, it's fabulous. I love it.

[00:16:31] I love it from the, the idea of reinterpreting crochet that, that the simple geometry is coming together, the different spaces, spaces in life that you're able to create there. And, you know, I, again, to me and somebody who's had a firm for less than five years, the idea of, of getting a commission like that, right. It seems very difficult. And it seems like in the profession, there's kind of two ways to go about that of, of just grinding, putting your nose down.

[00:17:01] Maybe you're doing churches that aren't good, right. Long times to say, Hey, I have churches and then hope someone tires you for the good one or almost like thinking harder, right. Of like how you're engaging with this sort of art world or academic world or whatever to elevate your profile enough to get those. I'm trying to ask. Did, did you, do you see yourselves working in one sort of way or the other or? I, I think it's such a good question because it's both. Yeah. I think it's both.

[00:17:30] Um, we had to do some work that isn't great, you know, because, and there wasn't, when I say not great, I mean, not a lot of design potential. And they were, so we did a few, you know, kind of low level, low profile renovations, um, to build up, uh, a modest portfolio and have a little more confidence in the clients that we, we had some skillset.

[00:17:57] Um, so, so we did that, but we also have to do this other, this other where we're, we're honing our craft. We're working on our process. We're not going to give up, um, even though it's tough and we're going to keep at it. Um, and it is, it's a challenge. Our field is challenging. It's, it is so easy, right? It's just so easy.

[00:18:23] It's challenging, but so I think we really, we have to do those kinds of practical things, but we also have to make sure we don't lose the more passionate, artistic, rigorous, um, intellectually challenging, experimental side of, of architecture. It's, that's the thing that's so cool about architecture though. It's a complex profession, but you have to have a broad skillset. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:53] And, and, and talk a little more. I love the way you're, you label it working through these conceptual constructs, right? I, I haven't heard it labeled like that, right? But it needs a real freedom to, you were showing, you know, sketches, you were showing beautiful models, uh, uh, conceptual models. Right. And, um, so talk a little bit about how, how, how, how the firm works in that way and, and

[00:19:21] the sort of basis around, around those experiments. Uh, I think it is really important for us because what we see, and I see it in my students also, is people kind of go right into what they feel comfortable with, um, what they know. And, you know, I, I feel like to move our profession forward, we should be creating new knowledge in architecture and to, to create new knowledge.

[00:19:50] We do have to not reproduce what has already been done or what is the current fashion. Right. Yeah. Uh, and which is tricky because we have so many images out there around, around us. Our process is, the important part is that it's the first couple steps are non-architectural and we don't go right into architecture. We try not to, a lot of our team, they're very talented and so they want to go right into architecture.

[00:20:18] So that's why I said, I kind of slow, like if we can slow down a little bit and do this research, reading, writing, idea exploration, and then kind of come up with this, uh, non-architectural conceptual construct, still not architecture, but embodies the ideas, embodies a set of ideas. Then our job after that is translating that and we get to new architecture that way. Right.

[00:20:46] And having your anchor that you can keep going back to and focusing on and. Yeah. Having it on the desk at the office and that we're looking at it and you know how many questions come up in the process, like how should we do this? And we have something to go back to. What would it look at the stump? Yeah. What would the stump sit at? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I didn't realize that. Yeah. No, it's, it's true. You have an anchor to, to refer back to.

[00:21:10] And that does tell you, you know, it answers the question of, we have so many ways we can go, but we can also get off track during the design process. And then at the end, it, there's no, it's like, what happened? Where, where did our big idea go? So, so it helps us to remind the, the full team where the, what the big idea is so that we can refer back to. That's so, that's so aspirational, you know, like again, from teaching and making my students do all these sorts of things.

[00:21:40] Right. And then going to my own firm, uh, where, yeah, that time is limited. The kids are calling. Yeah. And, and, you know, I've been doing things of, uh, like have a rendering style that really looks like a physical model style, you know, and says like, I don't have time to hue this passive wood base. Right. But I can make it look like it. And it, and it gives that same feeling or appearance and kind of works in some similar ways. Right. But it's shortcutting that thing.

[00:22:09] And I'm trying to make this into like a formula where I can, each project has this model and has this and this, right. And trying to streamline it and be, uh, efficient. But the, the aspirational idea of like, no, let's break this system a little bit and slow it down. Yeah. It can, it's hard. Right. So, uh, you don't do that for every product. Do you? You know, what I was going to say is it is aspirational and, but we also live in a deadline

[00:22:38] driven profession. So we have deadlines and sometimes we can't, sometimes that model ends up being a steady model. We have to come back and finalize it. That happens. Yeah. But, um, and sometimes we don't have time. Like we've had projects that you have to design the whole thing and produce it in two months. And so, yeah, the, what is lost is that process.

[00:23:07] Um, and you do the best that you can. Um, and so it, I, I guess it, it doesn't happen with all of our projects, but our goal is to have that happen with all of our projects. Right. And when you have, have that aspiration in place, even if you're hitting 60% of it, it's still more than. Yeah. Right. And we, we build it into our process too.

[00:23:32] For example, in, um, you know, in architecture, we have a conceptual schematic DD, CD phase, CA phases. What I've noticed is a lot of people are cutting out that first phase. They're going right into SD schematic design. So we always like fight for this conceptual design phase. And sometimes the clients don't appreciate it or don't understand the value.

[00:24:02] So we say, well, this is when we're going to be doing our code research or zoning analysis and all those pragmatics that they do appreciate. And our stumps, that's the stump curving. Yeah. And, and we do, we have to do all of it and, and, but that's an intense, very important part of the process. Right. Um, so. Pre-design. Yeah. Pre-design is our conceptual design. I guess it has kind of moved away from calling it conceptual design because now schematics are kind of concepts.

[00:24:32] It's kind of a strange thing. We're collapsing our process a little bit because everything is so fast. Yeah. What, and it also goes back to sort of like, again, how you're communicating that value to clients, right? Yeah. Of, you know, if they're looking at a total spreadsheet of your fees and they're like, no, I don't want that, whatever piece of it is or whatever. That would be easy to be cut. Right. It'd be easy to be cut. But then I guarantee the thing that they're putting on their coffee table at the end of the project is that thing, right? Yeah. And, and appreciating it then.

[00:25:01] And, and, and that's, I feel like what I've been working on lately a lot of the, of yeah, how do you, how do you demonstrate your value and how do you really get people excited about that process and those things and, and be able to communicate it? Cause it can seem obvious to us, right? Oh, you know, let's design your house. And, but have you, have you really grown with that and, and, and being able to demonstrate sort of that process?

[00:25:26] Well, I, I, I think some clients really appreciate it and are super into it and get really excited about the process and those concept models. Like, how did you come up with that? I, which is exciting. And some of them don't care at all. They just want the final outcome. Yeah. The final result. And for us, it actually is okay. Either way. I think it's fine.

[00:25:52] Um, some people, we, we show, we share that process with most of our clients, but not all. Um, because we don't want them to think we're wasting their time and money and, you know, um, but, but it is important and, and, but we, we kind of have to gauge how interested they are. And, you know, you talk to your clients about what they're interested in and have those conversations. Yeah. Do you want this flashy hand or do you want this other thing? Yeah. Huh? Yeah.

[00:26:22] And I, I mean, I think the, the interesting thing you sort of ended with was the idea that especially in the profession, we, the things we control are seemingly less and less and the things that are out of our control, you know, and, and, and you were talking about sort of, okay, so what, what can we control? Right. And, and how do we do that in a good way? I'm just going to have you like kind of summarize that a little bit here. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:50] I, I feel like there's more and more things outside of our control. Right. Um, you know, the economy, that's not in our control. Um, fluctuations, um, politics, um, regulations. There's just a lot and, and competitors, you know, we, we face new competitors today that we didn't have. And, and I think there's going to be more and more of that. There's a lot of, um, national and maybe even international competitors that weren't in our

[00:27:20] markets before. So, and maybe non-human competitors. Yeah. Actually, that's true. The, the whole, um, you know, I went to the tech connect session yesterday and it just made me really think about that too. Um, so, so that can be discouraging. I think for an architect who really cares about their work and what they do, but I, I think

[00:27:46] it is important to just focus on what we can control and we can, we can be the best architect possible, uh, and, and have a rigorous process that we follow. And for some people that might evolve over time, we've, we've kind of have a process that works pretty well. I am interested in how it evolves with AI in the picture now. Um, but I know we'll continue to follow that, you know, grounding and research, the idea

[00:28:13] of translations as part of the process and that will continue, but we might lose some other things, um, or fold in some new things. Yeah. But, uh, that's the focus is what we can control. And there's, unfortunately there is, we can't be a control freak in an architect, right? It could be very discouraging. You can't, there's for the people who do, right? But, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely, I mean, just like you were talking about just

[00:28:43] the amount of things it, you have to think about as an architect and as a firm owner and keep trying to keep everything in balance. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot. And I mean, again, as a young, younger architect, like I just really appreciate seeing you and seeing you here, seeing the work and seeing that aspiration and how it can help spur the rest of us along. So thanks for coming. Yeah. It's a pleasure. You can visit architecting.com.

[00:29:11] That's architect dash I N G.com to see images from this week's guest. And please rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Have a great week and keep connecting. Hi, I'm Eli. This show is made by my mom and dad and these people. This podcast is powered by the plug. This podcast is made by my mom and dad and my dad. This podcast is made by my mom and dad and this show is made by my mom and dad. Thank you for coming up and being happy. Thank you.