Marlon and Meryati Blackwell

[00:00:04] When I got out of school and I was working for that 10 years, a lot of the projects I was looking outward. And, you know, postmodern stuff, Michael Graves or Alvin Rossi, you know, they're kind of that sort of language until you started to find your own language and your own voice internally. So that's the patient search, right? Yeah. And that search is more internal, I think, inward focused. Our task as architects is the task of recreating strangeness.

[00:00:38] 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 from the 2024 AIA Colorado Practice and Design Conference held in Keystone, Colorado.

[00:00:58] 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 last episode from the conference, I'm speaking with Marlon Blackwell FAIA and Mariette Blackwell AIA.

[00:01:19] The dynamic and funny and engaging duo behind Marlon Blackwell Architects, an award-winning firm known for its bold and contextually rich designs. Their work combines a deep, respectful place and innovative approach to form and materials, creating architecture that resonates on both local and universal levels.

[00:01:42] We explore their shared journey in design, the philosophy that drives their practice, and the insights that they brought to the conference. It is quite an enjoyable conversation and keynote presentation. Check it out. Well, yeah. Welcome to Colorado. Hey, it's good to be back. It's great to have you again here. Yeah. When were, because you, do you speak here at this conference? I did. A while ago? Years ago. Yeah. Maybe 2010 or something. I don't know. I can remember it.

[00:02:12] And then I, but I also went to high school. Oh, really? Colorado Springs. Oh, really? Yeah, from eighth to 11th grade, so four years. Oh, nice. Yeah. What high school? Whitefield. Whitefield, okay. South of Colorado Springs near Fountain. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So we were in the Will Rogers League. Oh, yeah. So we, Cheyenne Mountain and, you know, all these other programs that we used to football and wrestling. Oh, yeah. My wife is from Colorado Springs. Oh, is that right? Right down there, but I don't know the schools that well.

[00:02:42] I think it was at a new school, but yeah. It was a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, you're coming back home here. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, it was 50 years ago. I hadn't thought about that. Wow. Yeah. I graduated. Oh, he's old, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can't believe that. It was 50 years ago. So they probably would be having their 50th anniversary, and I didn't get invited. Hmm. They would have happened this summer, most likely. That's it. Oh, well. We move on. Yeah.

[00:03:09] But, I mean, you've moved around a lot in your life, right? Yeah. My dad was in the Air Force. Oh, okay. So we were stationed at Ent Air Force Base. I don't know if it's still there, but the Air Force Academy was in the league. And so, but yeah. And were you born in Germany? Is that right? Yeah? At the base. At the base? Yeah. First in Feldbrook. Yeah. Huh. I think it's the Cesar, C-Moin, like in Elvis Presley, where he met.

[00:03:36] No, it's the, actually, unfortunately, it's the one where the Israeli athletes were blown up. Oh, really? By the terrorists at the 72 Olympics. Yeah, it was right at that base. So how long were you there? I was only there like a year and a half. I mean, we moved back. My parents were married there. Yeah. Right. I mean, she, I also, your mom brought her wedding dress. Yeah. On a boat. Over there. But she wasn't German, but she was.

[00:04:06] Never. Yeah. She's American. They were from Alabama. They were right in high school or something, you know. And it's, that's back then, you know, where they're getting very young. Yeah. We moved back to Alabama and then we moved to the Philippines and then to South Florida and then to Colorado. Huh. To Montana. And then back to Florida. Huh. Before I went to college. Wow. And then where'd you go to school? Auburn. Auburn. Yeah. For undergrad. Yeah.

[00:04:35] And I practiced 10 years in Southern Louisiana in Boston. And then I went to Syracuse in Florence. So I got that. You're at Italy. Yeah, yeah. I got my master's. Nice. And I started teaching at Syracuse and then decided to come back South and bonded up in Arkansas. Nice. And you, where were you? What formed you? Yeah. I came, I came to college to the U.S. from Malaysia. Oh, okay. I grew up there and then I knew that college would be abroad and I ended up in the U.S.

[00:05:04] And I went to University of Miami in Fork. Yeah. That's where I got my architectural degree. University of Miami at the time had just split from the architecture was architecture engineering. Oh, okay. A few years before I got there and they had just split into a new fully architecture, a standalone, you know, degree, not under engineering. Because people ask me like, why Miami? I was like, I don't know. I think it was the cheapest. I've got the one that I was... Maybe the climate was similar or yeah.

[00:05:33] I think it was just that. They had just broken away. So they were trying to kind of drum up this in. So give it a little cheaper for folks like me, you know, international, where they international student government. And anyway, so I got there and I thought America, I've never been here. And if I was like, I tell one of this, it's like the love story. I imagine it like the fall with the brick building covered in ivy. But I arrived with a suitcase like in the middle of August in Miami.

[00:06:00] I remember like the door open, you know, the other day door open and I got hit with like heat, even harder than Malaysia. I was like, wait, I thought America was cool and all of this stuff. Like it wasn't, I had no idea where I was going. Was it, was it, and was that sort of the peak of like the new urbanism kind of going around? Yes. And like sort of Bob Stern was down there? Plater's Eyebird. Plater's Eyebird. I'll be under one. Yeah, Ron E. Yeah, Liz Plater's Eyebird.

[00:06:28] Yeah, I think it was happening around the time I was there. Right. But I remember, yeah, they teach a lot of very classical principles, like a lot of like historical based architecture. We would have to trace like shinkle and like do, what is it, a do? Beautiful drawings. Like all of those things and like drawings and detail, like some pretty serious and they want us to look at Korea or whatever, you know. But I was an international student, like, you know, Miami at the time had just started

[00:06:58] like study abroad in the AA London. And it was like, wait, you can go to London? Like you can go to the AA? I'm like, I'm going to go there because they can pay me, you know, my scholarship paid me where I go. So I went over there and I think that's when like everything kind of like a part for me because all the things. That's a very different experience. Yeah. At the time it was like all John Hager kind of like experiential architecture. Like it not only like it's about building, what about the experience embedded into experiencing

[00:07:27] architecture? It made me totally confused, but I remember, but I really liked it because I thought that, you know, it kind of opened up for somebody like me. Like it's not just one thing, that is many thing. And being in the center of the UK, like this is like around the corner upon the British Museum. Like you would see fashion, like you would see St. Martin's, Calway Place City.

[00:07:48] You would see more in the center of the UK, like the American Museum, like the Tate and the National Gallery and the, you know, all the things that you could do as a student. So it was, it was more than I could ever imagine. So by the time I got back, I think my professors all hit me. You ready to blow up that school? Say, all right, here's some ideas. Let's try this out.

[00:08:16] You might be doing stuff like the A.U. stuff back in your senior year in, you know, Miami. You're like, you're not going to get a good grade. In fact, they were like trashing us. But, you know, I think like they were mad because we were not following that what they want us to do. We were just exploring what we had just learned. You know, like I don't think we were rebelling, but I didn't think that we got a good grade. Like in your senior year, which typically you would. I think because they were just mad.

[00:08:46] And they were like, why did we send students like abroad? But in addition to going to the A, I also went to a study abroad in Italy and our program was in Venice. So, you know, just experiencing all of that, like kind of, I just felt like I thought it was very interesting. Well, and it's so interesting that just, just the idea of how, how your influence as a young architect and how that can set you off on a different path. Like it's, it's a real treat having you here.

[00:09:12] So I'm teaching a, a graduate studio at CU right now and, and we're redesigning the architecture school. So the big idea is right. Like trying to get them to understand or articulate what is architecture, what they think architecture is and how it should be taught in what environment. And so we did a big dive on precedent, of course, but the whole studio is about sort of how you, how you can make ideas in architecture more accessible to more people. So we did short form videos for everything.

[00:09:41] And so I had them each study in architecture school and, and one of them was your Arkansas school. And one of them was Tom Pfeiffer's Clemson school. And he came to our class last week and we, we talked with him and now we're going to talk with you here, but. Oh, that's cool. So I really, I really pushed the students to be like, okay, what, now what formed these architects? And like, what, what, what's the background of the school and how did that come together? And so it was really interesting to see them come up with these sort of hypothesis on like

[00:10:10] what was going on in Marlon Blackwell's head when he was designing the Arkansas school and, and, and how he's taking the, all these ideas of architecture and putting them into this thing. And I watched the video today. I was like, maybe I'll show it to him and see if they're right. But it wasn't a very good video. But. What did they say? What did they think was going on? And it's like, you know, that's a good question. I, I, I mean, I think he was, he was able to dive into your background of, of, of sort

[00:10:37] of like we got into a little bit there, but then, you know, we were kind of questioning like, well, how, how did you end up then coming back to the South and going to Arkansas? And, and, you know, I, I really love, especially being in Denver, I love figures like you and, and, and others who, who really dive into the kind of the local, right. And then have a national presence and elevate the architectural sort of discourse. So I guess the question is, was that your idea of, you know, going from Syracuse, going

[00:11:04] there, coming back to this place and really diving in for this long? Yeah. I mean, I think I felt like my roots, you know, culturally and otherwise were in the South. I really wanted to go to North Carolina where I had done some work and that's published. I thought, well, I would teach at the North Carolina state. There was a guy named Frank Harmon, who, you know, was there, but, uh, they weren't looking. And then it just, I went to Arkansas and I sort of fell in love with the landscape and the schools in this total midst of change.

[00:11:34] Um, and, uh, I interviewed and they offered me the job the next day. I was kind of take it back a little bit. And, uh, they, I said, I am not so sure. I thought this was supposed to be like a courtship or something. And I said, well, tell us what would it take for you to come here? What would we need to do? And I said, well, I'm not a intellectual. I'm not a scholar. I'm just practitioner who wants to teach. I want to practice when I preach. And I said, I'd really like to start a firm.

[00:12:03] And the Dean said, if you'll come here, I'll guarantee you commissions to start your firm. Wow. I was like, cool. So I'm back to the Dean at Syracuse Law. I was like, better go. So, yeah. And he was true to his words. Huh? Yeah. So, and then that's, that's how that, but I also was very, well, was familiar with Faye Jones at the time. And, uh, he had a saying because he had Edward Durrell Stone, who's from Fayetteville, who was constantly bugging him about coming to New York to work.

[00:12:31] And he finally put his foot down because he had been working for Frank Lloyd Wright. He went to Rice, got his graduate degree and doing some teaching at Oklahoma. And then deciding to kind of set up shop in the fifties and start teaching in Arkansas. And he finally pushed back Mr. Stone. And he told me, he said, because Stone was telling him, you need to go come out to the world, get out of the boonies, you know? Right. And, uh, like Stone had done. And he said, well, I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do, Mr. Stone. Uh, I'm going to bring the world to me.

[00:12:59] So I'm not worried about going out to the world. I want to bring the world to me. So I thought that was a really good position because he had made a national presence with his firm. And, uh, and I thought, well, he's already done it. Maybe it can be done. Right. And so that, that was an inspiration for coming there. And then I did, I think also never having been a citizen of any place because you travel

[00:13:21] around, I think I learned from some, uh, mentors and influence that if you want to make architecture where people want to linger in and stay, you have to stay in a place. He said, there's a lot of architects just move around and they make architecture that makes you want to move around. He said, which is fine, but the architecture, the move, people don't really want to come back. They go through it once they're done. Right. So the linger has stored energy and every time you come, it's different.

[00:13:50] And, uh, so I had a, I had a guy really looked up to you, told me, so you've been running all your life. It's time to cause time to put some roots down and said the best architects have roots. So that's, uh, that's what made a huge change. And, uh, and then I talked her into coming, uh, thinking she, she thinking we'd only be there two, two or three years and we've been there 33 years. So, so yeah. Where did you guys meet? Miami, Miami, my first public lecture. Yeah.

[00:14:19] I was late when you lost and was at D-Burse. Oh, wow. You sat in the front row and just waved there. No, it was like, actually, because a young intern, I was supposed to go back as part of my scholarship. Like, I get my education paid so that I could work for them for 10 years. So, but when I graduated, there was a big recession in Asia. They were like, okay, we didn't have a job for you yet. If you can get a job, like, you know, being an architect, you can get some experience while we kind of situation in economic situation all over Asia, we're improved.

[00:14:49] I was going to take that off. So I would be like, I'm going to leave the year or two. So meanwhile, I was lucky enough to have friends that had their parents or something had, you know, had an architectural connection. So that's how I would intern in the office. Meanwhile, I waited because I, you know, I'm responsible to pay back for my education through service. But it never happened. After year five, they were like, all right, we can't hold up our side of the thing, of the bargain. So we're going to sign off.

[00:15:18] You can just go do whatever. Meanwhile, I just had more. I went to his lecture because a friend that organized the lecture just like this, they were like, all right, I'm doing a separate lecture. That's not classical. It's about young people, young architects that are emerging or different thoughts, you know? And he started calling all the folks and they were like, make sure you show up. So it was a Thursday night. I'm like, do I really want to go to the lecture? But you know what? I want to go support my friend. So I went over there. It was a big auditorium. It was very ambitious. There's a hundred people.

[00:15:47] And I was like, I was in the back, you know, not like totally in the back, but kind of in middle, middle. So I was watching more than, and I thought it was good. I wasn't expecting a lot, you know, like, cause I don't know what these people, it's not like Ram Cool, somebody like that, you know? So you're like, you go, after it was over, I went down, me and my friend. You had a bunch of notes for him? Yeah. I went down and I said, Mr. Blackwell, are you into a lecture? And it was it.

[00:16:14] And I went to say to my friend, I was like, hey, thanks for, I showed up to your lecture, okay? So don't, don't bug me next time. Like, like, I'm not going to show up. That's how we met. That's funny. So what were you doing in that, in that 10 years between undergrad and grad? Like what, what sort of form do you architecturally pass school? Well, I moved to South Louisiana. I was engaged to a little Cajun roots.

[00:16:43] And there was a lot of work on the World's Fair at the time in 1980 for the 84. I worked to the World's Fair. Yeah. So I went to New Orleans thinking I was going to work for Perez Associates. But I didn't have any, any experience. Because I had spent my summers with, my family, everybody put me school side. What I did during the summers, I worked for a college program, selling Bibles door to door in the rural South and managed to put my way through school that way. So I didn't have any experience in an office.

[00:17:12] So I just kept running into that problem in New Orleans and then Baton Rouge. And then I got to Lafayette with about $7, a green and rust 71 Cutlass, Olds Cutlass. You don't have a Bible ever doing it. I go, I grow out of money and gas. I had about a half a tank of gas, which wasn't going to get me to Houston. So somehow I got a job and this guy offered me a position. So that's where I landed. And I worked there for four years and it was a recession. I was laid off four times in four years, you know.

[00:17:43] But I got a good experience. I did a lot of freelancing on my own just to learn more. Even some of the firms I worked for, they were giving me freelance just so they could get my skills up because I wasn't a great student. I mean, I had talent, but I wasn't disciplined and I didn't take advantage of the educational opportunities that I had at Auburn. Also, I didn't think it was a particularly great time at Auburn either. This is one of those things. It was before we were all studio. Oh, yep. Way before. We were going to train.

[00:18:10] In school, he said, but like as part of AIA, like organization, we was at the thing we were really great. Trying to find a day. Learn how you do laundry. Yeah. A lot of things to learn. I think somebody went to Boston. One of their friends grew. So he went. Yeah. And then when he went to Boston, he realized like everybody that he worked in his offices are graduated from Ivy's, you know, like Howard River. And they get to do all the best design. Moreland gets to do like the lobby renovation.

[00:18:41] Well, I wound up in Boston and everybody wanted me. I had four years experience. And, you know, but I was very, somewhat intimidated because it was like MIT, Harvard, guys. And so one of my job I decided to take when they went to post-gust hour and they made an offer that equate this so much per hour. I said, I'll tell you what, I'll take a dollar less. And they looked at me and it's like, you want less than what we're offering?

[00:19:07] I said, well, I don't know how to stack up, but I want to improve myself. Whenever I approve myself, they know give me a raise in three to six months. Okay. They were like, this guy's weird. What office was that? This was an office called CBT in Boston. It's a big firm, a good competent firm, but, you know, not the hot, super hot design firm, but they were very well respected. But anyways, I spent five years in Boston and I learned a lot. It's very formative.

[00:19:37] I lived in cool places. My freelance work started to take off. I got published in 88 in architecture magazine with a small garden house. I had done with a landscape architect, formal gardening garden house. And then in 90, my first house was an architectural record home, which was, you know, it's like, so I'm working nine to five, but after hours, I have my own independent after-hour studio. Right.

[00:20:04] So I am hustling lectures, competitions, doing freelance, whatever I do to kind of level it up. And I did at a certain level because I worked. And a lot of those folks that I was so impressed by, they talked. A real lot. I did find that, too, that the firms in Boston really liked folks from the South because they would get in there and work. But they also were like worker bees. Right. You know, and so. They elevate the other ones. They elevate the other ones.

[00:20:33] You know, I had Tom Mann tell me this once. We were, remember one of the architecture, probably the art fair, Academy of Arts and Letters. He was talking. He was like screaming of consciousness talking. I never responded because I didn't get a chance here. I finally get the chance to respond. And he realizes I'm not from New Yorkers. He goes, so where are you from? I said, well, I'm in Arkansas. Oh, Arkansas. Yeah, I said, I teach a practice. I love the University of Arkansas. It's a five-year program. I said, yeah, man. I love those five-year programs.

[00:20:59] Man, if I want, you know, designers, folks, that's what I go for the five. Right. But if I want leaders, I go to the Ivy Peaks, Yale, Columbia. And it was like, wow. And it's like, so why can't we do both? Right, right. That kind of thing. But yeah, that was the category. But, you know, after a while, you'd look around in Boston, you realize that it's a pecking order there.

[00:21:24] If you're not independently wealthy, blue blood, pedigree degree, well-connected, you're just going to wait. Right. And I was talented, but it's saturated with talent. So I finally decided that I needed to go to grad school, which is what I did in Italy, kind of explore Europe, which is a great education. Just traveling, seeing all the great modernist works, had great teachers. It was a great experience. And then I came back with it.

[00:21:53] I sort of wanted to teach a practice. And that's when you got the commissions and the teaching job. Yeah, things started coming together. And the idea was to be the sole proprietor, noble savage, doing two to three projects a year. Do that for 30 years as a teacher. You got 60-something projects, really great portfolio. You've done well. And life is... Yeah.

[00:22:14] But after about, I'd say, eight years of that, I realized, man, dealing with people's personalities and the whole effort of getting things built because nobody wanted to build what you design because it looked different from other stuff. And so you're managing it yourself. And so I just started to move into public work. And that's where we've kind of... So that was a real choice there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[00:22:38] I mean, you know, I think it's interesting, the idea of like, okay, yeah, I'm hustling at this firm in Boston, but I'm still trying to do lectures. I'm still trying to get things published and built. You know, like, it seems... And then you go to Syracuse and Europe, and it's even more mind-expanding. And you get down to Arkansas. Sort of getting back to that question I had to the students, like, are you able to articulate your idea of architecture?

[00:23:07] And like, even back then, it's, you know, it's not normal for a young person to want to be lecturing on things. But like... No. Well, I'm... What I was doing at the time was... It best got articulated by a book called Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, which is a book by Lawrence Weschler about the artist Robert Irwin.

[00:23:29] And I read it, and it was like, it synthesized everything I'd been thinking about, was this idea of using direct experience, you know, your day-to-day, as a source of inspiration, as a source of what you could draw from for the work, right? Because trying to create empathy through the work, right? And in an experiential way. So things that are more tactile, sensory, you know, the whole phenomenological kind of approach at the time.

[00:23:56] The challenge was just to come up with a language vocabulary. That gives you sort of half of it, right? Right. A voice. So what is it? What's the book? Right, right. So when I got out of school and I was working that 10 years, a lot of the projects, I was looking outward. And, you know, postmodern stuff, Michael Graves or Alvin Rossi, you know, they're kind of that sort of language until you started to find your own language in your own voice internally. So that's the patient search, right? Yeah.

[00:24:26] And that search is more internal, I think, inward focused. And that's what I was on, not realizing it. Yeah. And for you, was that, you know, looking at from the outside, you know, it's taking that southern sort of vernacular of different elements and things, but then simplifying it. Sam Motby. Yeah. I knew his work for the 10 years I was out. And that was interesting how he sort of put a twist on the vernacular of things.

[00:24:54] We call it the strangely familiar. You know, like to say, our task as architects is the task of recreating strangeness. And so that then, you know, you start looking at outsider art. You start looking at the underbelly, which as a Bible salesman, I got to experience the underbelly and these way out places that nobody goes to. Right. And, you know, go to, I went to like chicken fight, cock fights and all kinds of strange sort of cultural things.

[00:25:26] And then, you know, I'm going to go to like, I'm going to go to the underbelly and this sort of thing. And, you know, just crazy stuff. And crazy. And selling during that, right? And it's a marketing thing. Yeah, and so my Southern roots, I was triggered by this sort of the uncanny or that. But then combine that with this rise of the Swiss.

[00:25:50] And so I got introduced to the work of Zumthor, Ertzaga de Muron, highly, you know, material culture, work that really comes out of the place, and work that was less about form and more about surface. So I invited those guys to come, and they came. And I had Ertzaga de Muron for three days, Ate and I. I had Zumthor there for three days, had brought Robert Irwin,

[00:26:19] had brought the writer, Greal Marcus, who wrote Mystery Train and Lipstick Traces. It's like a rue of all of this stuff going on, plus you're in your place, right? Right. I think we didn't want to fall into the trap of taking the binocular and making it. Yeah, well, especially at that postmodern time, right? I mean, it could be an easy trope to fall. Or a should. Yeah, it was kind of the start.

[00:26:45] Start with that, but then translating into something that we see. It's like in Arkansas, you know, you have something in North Florida, Arkansas, where the university is based. There is a tradition. There's been a tradition of modernist architecture through Fay Jones and Boris Seagrase and several other folks, right? But it's still era, too. Like, it's now how do we take that and also all the regional influences in that area

[00:27:13] and celebrating that, but at the same time creating something that's just uniquely of the contemporary mode that we get to affect as well as architects. And I think now we have a lot of contingent of young architects graduate that are, like, you know, modeling after that, which is kind of nice. Yeah. Not only in Arkansas, but within the region. How do you become gently transgressive, you know?

[00:27:40] So I got a chance to teach with Peter Eisenman for a year. Yeah. And that was very influential. And I started that word transgressive, sorry, because we had won some design awards, which we never did. We never did awards. We never published purposely. And then started to have to do it so I could get tenure. I remember getting critiqued from an award we won. And I said, why didn't we win the top award? And one of the jury members said, well, because you never transcended the vernacular.

[00:28:08] I was like, oh, you know who that was? That was Steve Dumas. I ran into him in an airport in Dallas. What was that jerk? The barn house. Oh, okay. He had never trained. So it wasn't like it was bad. It was good. But I realized I've got to go deeper. Yeah. It was a real quick switch. Yeah. I can't observe the world around me like postcards, right? I've got to get beyond what I see. Yeah. And I remember when we got that project, the commission to redo the school of architecture.

[00:28:37] So it's like not only you're taking the existing building that used to be the library, it was stacked. The middle was a stack. And turning that into renovation to the school of architecture, that's not going to house architecture, landscape, and interiors. It's never been a house on the water. But also adding an addition. So the standard, I remember talking about it was, well, you know, everyone else was expecting us to respect the tradition of those early years. Yes.

[00:29:04] The buzzard be like the thing, you know, like the king of the little, and like whatever we do, it has to be quiet and not. And we're like, forget that. We have to rethink this, you know? Yeah. But I think it was so interesting what you did there, right? Of the initial bar building, and you duplicated the bar, and you have that core, your middle, same proportions. Same steel. And then my, yeah, and then my student did a wonderful diagram comparing the two visage, right?

[00:29:33] And how you translated the columns into glass fins, and how you were looking at translating hip groups into balconies. I think the fact that, you know, we included that as a study in, you know, sustainability. Like, and in some ways, because it's facing the West subject with those fundamentals, all those things. But like, we didn't talk about it that way. But like Marlon talked about, like, if you look at the old building, it has a mast with the punch windows.

[00:29:59] On the other side, we wanted to make the whole window a wall. So rather than the differentiation between, you know. Figure ground. Yeah, figure ground. We reversed it. We inverted it. And then also the figure starts to become animated through the form. You know, like all of the things that we did. And the funny thing is people were trashing, like, the blog back then, you know. The Arkansas, Arkansas did not like the fact that we got the commission.

[00:30:28] You know, they were, like, not happy about it. But after it was over, I think everyone kind of forgot about it. They loved it. They loved it. They realized that it was a rethinking. And how do you take something that has such a strong historical presence and a historical language and how you can still have your own design, you know. And completely contemporary also make that have a certain resonance of each other. And it's still one of our favorites.

[00:30:54] When you go inside, particularly for me, who deals a lot with the intersection of inside and all that, you know. Inside is like how the detail, some things, like the cut. Or just that, like, that linchpin of the red void jersing through and bringing them together. We're calling the retoculus. Not the oculus. Bringing the light in. You can't tell from the picture, but it's actually skylight. It did. Yeah, so we have a 20-foot piece of glass. And having those spaces around it before it comes out.

[00:31:22] And the thing is, like, what we didn't talk about is that the bead, it is actually, of course, a sustainable, you know, measure, right? You're trying to bring light in the middle of the space. It didn't not only brought light, it saved the energy, but at the same time, it transformed the space. The sense of well-being that you feel being inside was completely different than what it used to be before. We didn't change the proportion of the room.

[00:31:49] It's still being used as a transitional gallery phrase. But, you know, just embedding, including acoustics, because it was loud before, so now it's very quiet and tempered. Like, having skylight that washed the whole space. Like, all the things that you don't really see and we don't really talk about, it really is very transformative. It's like, it's a much more healthy space to be throughout the building. Right. More so than what it was before. Yeah. Well, I hate doing this, but you're flagging me now.

[00:32:18] You guys had to jump on the stage in, like, two minutes, five minutes here. Well, I hope this is helpful. Yeah, this has been very, very, very fun. So, again, thank you for coming. I'm looking forward to the talk here in a little bit. And, yeah. You can visit architecting.com, that's architect-ing.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.

[00:32:49] I'm Eli. This show is made by my mom and dad and these people. This podcast is powered by The Plug.