[00:00:09] Speaker A: Hi, I'm John Co and welcome to Icons of DC Area Real Estate, a one on one interview show highlighting the backgrounds and career trajectory of leading luminaries in the Washington, DC area real estate market. The purpose of the show is to highlight their backgrounds and their experiences and some interesting stories about their current business as well as their past, and to cite some things that you might take away both from educational standpoint as well as lessons learned in the industry and some amusing and sometimes interesting background stories. So I'm hoping that you will enjoy the show. Before I introduce my guest, I'd like to share that both this podcast and the community I started in 2021, called the iconic Journey in CRE, is now part of a new nonprofit organization with that same name. The new company will offer opportunities for sponsorship to grow the community both in membership and in programs. It also allows you as listeners to show your appreciation for this podcast, which has delivered episodes twice monthly since August 2019 with a charitable contribution.
Transitioning the community and podcast into the nonprofit organization is underway. The community, which is open to commercial real estate professionals between the ages of 25 and 40 years old, is currently up to 65 members and growing. If you would like to learn more about either joining the community or contributing to the podcast, please reach out directly to me at John at co enterprises coenterprases.com separately, my private company, co enterprises, now will focus only on advisory work for early stage real estate firms and career counseling. If you have interest in learning more about its services, please review my
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Thank you for listening. Thank you for joining me for another episode of icons of DC area Real Estate. My guest for today's show is Jordan Goldstein. Jordan is the co CEO of Gensler, the largest architectural firm in the world with 53 offices and 6500 employees. It's quite a large company that designs and coordinates architecture and other services related to design for its many clients around the world. So Jordan grew up in the Washington, DC area in Rockville.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Neither of his parents were in the.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Design business, but he had a passion, as you'll learn, for Legos and structure and form. So he knew when he was real and young that he wanted to become an architect.
Went on to attend the University of Maryland undergraduate and then on to Penn Graduate school in architecture and started interviewing and decided that Gensler, because of its collaborative nature, was the best sort firm to join. And he's now been there almost 30 years and now as co CEO. So here are some of the highlights of our conversation today. He wants to talk about leading with purpose. A day in the life of Gensler. Design is an optimistic act, and he's very much of an optimist. As we talk about the foundations of a design mindset, he talks about that bridging communities through design, the architecture of optimism again, and urban revitalization.
He talks about the pandemic perspectives and the future of design. He also talks about some of his wins, losses and surprises as I ask all my guests and some career reflections. And then, of course, my usual closing questions as well. So without further ado, please enjoy this wide ranging and very incisive conversation with Jordan Goldstein.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: So, Jordan Goldstein, welcome to icons of DC area Real Estate. Thank you for joining me today.
So please tell me about your position and role at Gensler. What are your day to day activities and what initiatives are important to you today?
[00:04:41] Speaker C: Well, thank you for having me, John.
[00:04:43] Speaker B: You're welcome.
[00:04:43] Speaker C: Great to be here. So I stepped into the co CEO role of Gensler and started that. I was announced in late September and stepped into that role beginning of the year. So I've been at the company 28 years, and in those 28 years have had a chance to play different roles and opportunities to lead different aspects of our firm, which has been phenomenal. So in this perspective, it's an opportunity to work across our firm, work with all 53 offices, 6500 people around the globe, and really look at the day to day operations and looking at what we are strategizing for this year as well as looking towards the future, but at the same time, thinking about where this industry is going, what's on the horizon and how do we tack left or tack right to make sure that we're proactive towards it.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: With that many offices in that many countries, you're in, the diversity of situations, I guess you're looking at, from an architectural standpoint, have to be almost infinite.
[00:05:53] Speaker C: Yeah, it's unbelievable. You know, I just got back from a series of trips. I was in Germany and I was able to visit our Munich office there and meet with clients and look at some projects we're working on. I was then in Miami. I go to San Francisco and Atlanta and India in the coming weeks. And I love getting to these different places because, one, it's a cultural immersion and we're seeing how we can really be the best of local and the best of global at the same time, but also really thinking about how we are able to play it across 33 different practice areas in the firm. So the scope and scale of projects is so different.
And being able to look at emerging practices as well, which I find super exciting for us. If you look at new practices like sports or health and wellness, and being able to work with some of the great talent we have in those practices and the opportunities they have to work on projects which are the scale and the magnitude and the impact potential of those projects are significant.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Well, I want to get into the societal changes that we're seeing, not just from the pandemic, but other things that have happened and how that influences your practice. It seems to me that we are going through a lot of sociological changes right now in the world and global trade issues and all kinds of things that are going on that have to have impact on architecture long term.
[00:07:27] Speaker C: I would think they do. And it is interesting that when you look out at some of the challenges that are out there, I'm a big believer that design is inherently an optimistic act. And I find working across the globe with our teams, that we are in these amazing opportunities, and they're not just on the projects, but also with our communities. So the opportunity to have social impact, to think differently about sustainability and what the footprint, the carbon reduction capability that we have through the projects, if you think about those 53 offices and all these different projects around the world, it's a chance to make impact at scale and really be. When we think about it, you really shape using the talent that is in this firm and really thinking about how we are designers of impact. To me, that is a phenomenal point.
When you think of the challenges that we have to be able to look at, whether that is on the resilience issues that we're facing, some of the geopolitical challenges, and then even in our communities, the opportunity to do projects that can help unite and heal communities.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: That's great. So let's pivot now, sir, and tell us a little bit about your origins, youth and influences of your parents.
[00:08:56] Speaker C: Well, my parents were tremendously influential in a number of ways. So my father was a lawyer and my mom was a school teacher. Okay, so they were not in the design field. In fact, once I got a little bit older and was trying to really figure out, okay, where did this interest in design come from? And was there anyone in the family tree that had design and artistic focus? I actually found that my grandmother on my dad's side was very much into art. She was actually a fantastic artist. And then on my.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Did you know her?
[00:09:33] Speaker C: I did. I was fortunate to know her, yes. And in the time that I got to know her, she had long since given up painting. And actually it wasn't until she passed that we were able to kind of find a portfolio of her work, and it's phenomenal. So in my house, I have tons of her work on the walls.
Yeah. And then on my grandfather, on my mother's side, and actually my uncle are really accomplished. Well, they were really accomplished statisticians. So my grandfather was passed, but my uncle still practices. He's a statistician at Carnegie Mellon. And so you get a little bit of, know the math and the kind of the artistic side. But it wasn't really until my were. I've wanted to be an architect since I was five. And it was a Lego person. Yes. Love Legos. Yeah, Legos. I was all into Legos. And you could attribute some of my design influences to maybe Bauhaus or Cubism, but I think I'd attribute it to Legos. So it was when I was really young, my parents wanted to move out of the townhouse that we were in, and they were looking for houses. And my father was practicing law and at his firm during the day. And my mom, when she wasn't doing teaching opportunities, she would take me around as a little kid, and we would go look at these construction sites, and we would see houses under construction, and there'd be floor plans and stuff. And she would come home and she'd wanted to give my dad a call and talk about the projects that. The buildings that she was seeing, the houses. And she plopped me down in front of a pile of Legos. So I just started building, or trying to build what I had seen. And that really was kind of the impetus to explore this world of design. But I give my parents a lot of credit. One year, as a gift, holiday gift, they gave me. A drawing table wasn't your average gift. So I took that as a sign that they were saying, yeah, go for it. And so from there, it was.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: How old were you at the time? Do you remember?
[00:11:41] Speaker C: Well, I was five when I definitely started to show an interest in design. I think the drawing table probably came. Yeah, something like that.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: And did you start just diving into it?
[00:11:53] Speaker C: Yeah, after school and after any extracurricular activities, when I probably should have been doing my homework, I was drawing floor plans, know, drawing sketches, know, new.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: What was your inspiration for?
[00:12:08] Speaker C: You know, it's was I grew up in, you know, coming down to DC, we come down to museums and stuff. There was certainly precedent that I was able to see at an early age, but it wasn't that much. So I just think it was more exploring, kind of just creative combustion in a positive way. And what it led to was really, it just piqued the interest to the point where I looked at going through high school as just a way to get from kind of point A to point B. I wanted to get out and learn about design, and I wanted to get out in the world and practice architecture. And that's why I went straight through. I went undergrad, architecture degree, grad architecture degree, and just went right to practice. I didn't take any time off between undergrad and Grad.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: Why not engineering? Why architecture? Not engineering?
[00:13:02] Speaker C: Just out of curiosity? Yeah, I love that. Architecture in its pure form, it takes into account so much of different trains, different disciplines. I actually saw it from the beginning as an interdisciplinary career. So it combines a little bit of engineering, right? It combines some of the things we think about from an art standpoint. If you think about it from a landscape and site understanding, certainly there's kind of the understanding of geometry and thinking about volume and space and proportion. But it wasn't really until two moments in undergrad and grad that were really a catalyst for thinking about architecture at a totally different level. And I was just about to finish what I thought was finishing, I should say, my undergrad tenure as at the University of Maryland and had a great experience there. And I remember a professor coming up and saying, you're going to actually be a couple credits shy of graduation, and you can walk through the graduation ceremony, but you need to take a summer course, and you could take it here at College park, but the same course is actually offered as a version in Rome, Italy.
I'm like, well, I'm going to go to Rome. And so that was my first kind of foray, know, across the pond. And I was with a class, and I had an apartment near the de Fiori in Rome, and the classroom was the streets of Rome. It wasn't a classroom. So every day we'd be out there, and we would be drawing, and we would be painting and looking at amazing moments in history and thinking about not just the history side of it, but what made it work.
And there was one moment on that trip that I'll never forget, and I was sitting out there sketching in a piazza, and different day, different era, and I was sketching a plaza in the plaza, but it was a palazzo facade. And two guys come up to me, and they look at what I'm sketching, and they say, you're an architecture student. I said, yes. And they said, this person's an architect, and the other one was this client. And they said, the architect guy says, do you mind if I see your sketchbook? So he takes my sketchbook, and he takes the palazzo facade, and on top of it, he draws a musical staff, and he makes it such that the windows, the doors, and the articulation on that facade are the notes of the music.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:15:43] Speaker C: And I'm like, okay, wow. So then from there, I went straight to grad school.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Leonardo da Vinci.
[00:15:50] Speaker C: Yeah. It was like one of those moments, right. Where you're just like, oh, the music of architecture. Right. I can see, you know, I can see, in this case, multidisciplinary. Yeah. Gets back to it. Right. And it just weaves kind of, like, all together at that moment. So I went straight to grad school at the University of Pennsylvania. And one of the reasons I chose the University of Pennsylvania was at the time, they were really the only school in the country that was offering a Japan program. And I felt like I explored western architecture philosophies, and I really wanted to explore eastern. So I went to Japan, and the program there was phenomenal. You were studying with a japanese master, so unlike the Rome program, which was very much the classes in the streets, and you're studying these amazing pieces of architecture in Japan. We were traveling around the country with this japanese master who was teaching us the traditional ways of japanese architecture.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Okay, stop there for a minute.
What is the major distinctive factor about japanese architecture compared to, say, the Romans? Because we're going back thousands of years in both.
[00:16:57] Speaker C: Yeah. And, well, there's some inherent ideas that started to emerge in a compare contrast scenario. Certainly the permanence of western architecture like you see in Italy, the stone facades. Right. The columns, the sheer mass and the weight and the beauty that's woven into that in Japan, it feels very much like the architecture has almost an ephemeral.
The wood framework, the shoji screens, the way light plays through. It's actually very light. It's touching the earth in a different way. And that was phenomenal to be able to see that at an early age.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: What about the thought process when they were designing it? Was it thinking long term in both cases, or was it thinking, we're going to adapt, we're continue to adapt?
[00:17:48] Speaker C: Well, some of those temples have stood the test of time.
What I found fascinating is we would go around and we'd study, like, traditional joinery, and that's what makes it. What makes it work. These things that were coming together, and they're not using nails and glue or anything. Right. And it works. So that was an amazing juxtaposition. Right. So I came back from. Just to add one more note to this, I came back from Japan, back to Philadelphia, and I was just know my mind's kind of a little bit scrambled. You're seeing all these different approaches to design. And I started doing a quick internship before going back into the finish the last year, and it was at a firm in Philly. And one day the head of the firm walks through and he goes, we got a grant to work with the Zuni tribe in New Mexico, working with their old historic pueblo. We need somebody to go and be on the pueblo and work with the tribe. And he looks over me, he's like, you're good at building models. Why don't you go? So I was, all of a sudden, I'm out in New Mexico not that long after I got back from Japan, and now I'm seeing this Pueblo historic, amazing construction that has also stood the test of time.
Different era, obviously, but fascinating to see that all. So that really wetted my appetite for exploring international design, being able to immerse in different culturals and different experiences and that architecture, when we get down to it, it's really about creating platforms for experiences.
Fascinating.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: So you went, was it five years at Maryland or was it four?
[00:19:37] Speaker C: Four Maryland and then two at University of Pennsylvania.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Modern architecture undergraduates are five years now, aren't they?
[00:19:43] Speaker C: There's different programs. You can do different tracks. You could do a four plus two or a five. Five is a bachelor of know, four plus two. You can get a master's.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: I see.
[00:19:53] Speaker C: Or you could go and get a degree in something else and then go for a graduate level master's degree, which is a three year program.
And the reason why all this is kind of coming right to the forefront of my mind is my younger daughter is applying right now to architecture and design schools. So you get a refresh of all the different tracks.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Is she aiming at Maryland or is she going to.
[00:20:17] Speaker C: It's one of the ones she's looking at. Yeah, she's going through the whole process right now. The older daughter is studying theater at Northwestern. So we have know the arts in different ways.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: I don't know if Northwestern has an architectural program.
[00:20:30] Speaker C: They don't.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: I went to Michigan and I know they.
[00:20:32] Speaker C: Oh, they have a great.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: So.
So six years there in education. And then what? Then when did you jump?
[00:20:43] Speaker C: Well, I was looking at where to work, and it was interesting. I remember sitting in my apartment in Philadelphia, and I was filling out, writing cover letters and putting portfolios together to send out to firms. And I was sending out to the firms. I wanted to come back to DC, the DC area, because my family's here and girlfriend now wife was here. I was getting recruited to go up to New York to work there. But when I was filling all that stuff up out, I got a phone call from my girlfriend, now wife, that she said, you really should look at this firm, Gensler.
And she's like, I'm reading this US News and World Report article, and it talks about how they have a really great intern program. And I'm like, oh, interesting. Okay. So I sent my stuff to Gensler. So when I came to DC. So when I came to the still had, I was know, finishing up classes and graduation, I did a slew of interviews around here, and I came into Gensler and was interviewed here. And Diane Hoskins was actually one of the people that interviewed me when she was running the Washington, DC office. And it was a fascinating conversation, because what I loved about it was, at a lot of the firms I went to, the conversation was about a traditional path of design education in the professional realm. You're going to come in and you'll be able to do working and supporting the team doing this, and you may move from doing that to doing this. And it was very much about a process. And I came to Gensler, and the conversation was about people, it was about culture. And design was like an undercurrent to it all. And that was like the glue holding it together. And I'm like, that's interesting. That's a different perspective. And I was still very fascinated by an interdisciplinary approach to design. And I was hearing more of that message here. And then the last piece of the puzzle was one of the ways I was supporting myself through grad school, was working at the University of Pennsylvania's architectural archives, like, unfolding drawings and cataloging drawings. And it's the work of masters. Louis Khan's archives are there, corbusier's, some of his work is there Scarpa. I mean, you name it, there's amazing stuff there. And I kept thinking about one of these drawings, and I'm seeing them, and I came across some photos of these masters in their studios. And the thing that always caught my eye was the master was in the foreground, and there were these people in the background. Interesting, right? And that was the team, but you never really heard about the team.
And I just kept getting this thing in my mind. And I find that this is very much true at Gensler, that design is not a solo art.
It really is an art where the voices of many in the right arrangement can create some really wonderful, rich solutions.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: Well, it's interesting, like writing design to me, is you're addressing a need to some extent. Right. You're trying to get in the head of your audience to some extent, because you're doing it for a purpose. The purpose usually is not just for your own need, it's for someone else's. Typically, in an architecture, you're serving a client, right? Yeah, almost all the time.
You're not just doing it for your own edification as an author of a book, you're supposed to write something that people want to read. Right.
[00:24:36] Speaker C: When you think about it, it really comes down to you're using the power of design. We talk about this a lot at Gensler.
The power of design to shape the future of cities, shape the future of experiences. Right. And that's a powerful statement when you think about it.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: Well, it's a cultural statement. Right.
But your client might have a little different perspective and say, wait a minute, that's not what I want you to do. I want you to do this. Well, this might be your role. Let's stand back for a minute. How does this all fit in?
[00:25:15] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: To its surroundings.
[00:25:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:17] Speaker B: Think that through a little bit.
[00:25:19] Speaker C: To your point, how do you also look at these as true collaborations?
And I think that's something I feel like we do very well, which is not to come in and assume that there is a know. It's the Adam Grant book. Think again. You know, approach the world from the standpoint and view of as a know where. You don't know the answer. There's a question mark. And if we come into this and say, you know what? There isn't a prescribed solution. Let's figure this out together.
What's the vision? What are the ideas? And that's the kind of ignition moment that sets the journey on the path. And hopefully it's the right path. Right. But it sets the journey on a path where it's like the ideas are flowing. And then I feel like as architects and designers, we have this wonderful role to be conductors of a symphony. And in the true collaborative sense, the client is at the table. Also, there's other expertise that should be at the table, depending on the project type, thinking about some of these amazing projects where we're dealing with complex sites. So it's unlocking the site. But let's get some fabulous landscape architecture talent at the table. Let's think about, if you're thinking about some of the cultural projects, lighting design and how much that can play into this structural engineering. Being able to think through these days, like on the Under Armour project we're doing in Baltimore, which are net zero project, having really talented structural engineers and mechanical engineers at the table. So we can think through different ways. Like, let's get away from the conventional norm and think about, this is net zero building. So just by the nature of what we're trying to do, we should throw to the side the old process.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: Conventional.
[00:27:16] Speaker C: Absolutely.
This thing has to work and perform at a different level. So let's just start fresh. Whiteboard. What this could be, I think we're going to get. It's under construction now. Just topped out last week.
A very different type of building that I think for under Armour's teammates is what they call their employees. It's going to be a very different experience working there. They're creating performance apparel in a performance.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: Interesting, interesting.
So you decided to go with Gensler at the time, I did talk about how you were told by the other firms you were going to do a certain kind of ladder. How did the ladder differ at Gensler, in your mind?
[00:28:05] Speaker C: Well, the mid 1990s were an amazing time to be coming into this profession, and it was when firms were really starting to think about technology and they were making the investment in computers and the software. And what I realized going all these interviews is all these firms had invested in the technology, and there were computers at all the desks, but people really didn't know how to use them. And so I still had a lot to learn about the profession. But one of the things I'd specialized in grad school at Penn was digital.
You know, had something to give as well. And when I came to Gensler, it was this wild time, know? It was like, what can you do with that new technology? So while I was learning about buildings coming to how buildings go together, I was able to help teach how we could think differently about the design process and what I found. The firm was a lot smaller then, but we still had multiple offices. I found other folks that were like me coming out of school that had a similar mixed skill set. So we banded together and created a group where our goal was to make Gensler a digital design firm. And if we were truly successful, our real goal should be our obsolescence.
If we could get to the firm to embrace digital design, which the firm did, then we no longer needed to be a special group on the side. Why? Because everyone would.
[00:29:32] Speaker B: Then you get mainstream, right?
[00:29:34] Speaker C: And so here we are now at this point of inflection, 28 years later, when there's another technological wave that's going to be massive disruption AI. And so I'm super excited by this and I'm finding that people coming out of school just like me 28 years ago have had a chance to play in the sandbox. So it's a chance for us to actually have them inform a changed process.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Have you done any collaboration with some of the big tech firms with regard know, how can you help us use AI most effectively?
[00:30:11] Speaker C: Yeah, well, it's, it's, I will say it actually know AI a little bit. So we have an amazing team in San Francisco that was doing Nvidia's headquarters and it's resulted. The buildings are built now and they're amazing. Nvidia's headquarters is absolutely stunning, but it very much fits their brand. But during that design process, the leadership of Nvidia really challenged us in a good way to use their technology together with what we're doing to envision their space so that the team was able to get in there long before a shovel hit the ground and start to imagine what it would be like, but not just like a rendering. It was like the actual daylight modeling and moving through the space as if it was built. And so now you look at AI and what we were doing, this is what has been phenomenal is because I think we have this talent spread around the globe, is thinking differently about the process as how can we experiment with this? So how can we? We call it the AI sandbox. And we have some design technologists that we're mixing in with design teams.
We're selecting some projects to experiment on and we're just trying a totally different process.
And the result is absolutely stunning what we're able to do and explore. And it's very much an iterative process. I think a lot of people have started to think of AI as it kicks out great images. We're looking at it differently. We're saying, actually, what if it is actually integral to the creative process, iterative right from the beginning all the way through, and it is transformational.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: Wow. So basically what it does is accelerates the creative process a little bit then?
[00:32:11] Speaker C: Exactly, yeah, it accelerates it and it starts to bring some opportunities for more decisions to happen upstream. Okay. Which I think ultimately will allow us to think differently about the other stages of the design.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: Does it anticipate challenges that you're going to have ahead as things unfold?
[00:32:30] Speaker C: Basically, it does, yeah, it does. And if harnessed in a way that it is truly, it's enhancing the toolbox that are available to architects and designers, then it allows questions to be asked and studied very early on in a way that can really consolidate that front end of that process, which starts to say, okay, how do we use time differently? It's such a precious commodity. How do we use time differently? And we had a guy, by the way, that was transformational for us. Colleague named Joseph came to us from Disney eight years ago, Disney imagineering. And he was leading design technology. So he was able to bring a lot of that thinking in because what they were doing at an experiential level with new technologies, and we see it. That comes out in some of the amazing Pixar.
Yeah. And it brought it in and even in the attractions and experiences to get at the parks. Right, like the Star wars land, he was involved in that. And you come out and you start to say, okay, some of those ways that the process was able to change there, could you change the conventional design process in a way that kind of reimagines how this could work, and it's actually worked out phenomenal.
[00:33:58] Speaker B: Yeah. I think of the term reverse engineering when I think of looking at the future and what your ultimate goal is, and then how do we bring all that back to today and starting with the fresh ideas using that future technology there.
[00:34:17] Speaker C: Yeah, I agree with you 100%. I think you said it well, Gensler, we always try to look towards the future horizon there and say, okay, what does 2030 look like? But we started that process in 2020. And ironically, we did the same thing for, we called it our Vision 2020. We did it in 2010. And it was interesting because you set some kind of big, hairy, audacious goals.
[00:34:38] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:34:39] Speaker C: Right. And I think we also talk about them as smart goals, specific, measurable, achievable, with a realistic time frame. And when we look at 2020, the majority of those goals we set in 2010, we were able to achieve. And so we really challenged ourself in 2020. Where's the industry going to be?
Where's society going to be? How could we think about that power of design to really better the world?
[00:35:07] Speaker B: Was this before or after the pandemic started?
[00:35:10] Speaker C: Right during. Literally right as the pandemic began, we were all sitting at our respective dining room tables. We said, we can't miss the opportunity.
We're forced out of the office, but we can still be together. And maybe now more than ever, we really need to think hard about the future.
[00:35:30] Speaker B: Yeah. It was disruptive and sometimes disruptive times.
You whiteboard that and say, this is different. Maybe we have to step back and think a little differently going forward, potentially.
[00:35:43] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, it's an opportunity to not only think differently, but also collaborate differently. Right. And you ask, when I came here, so I came here and I was doing, 28 years ago, I was doing that kind of the mixed role of digital design and also very much involved in projects. So it was an opportunity to really grow and learn fast and became a design director here and then started leading one of our studios. And then in 2008 had the opportunity with a business partner here to lead the DC office. And that was a phenomenal chance to really think about not just design, but what does it mean in this market? Does it mean for us in the Washington DC metro area? And we grew. Certainly we had the challenging times of the eight nine crisis, but we grew. We got into different practices and became the largest, most impactful firm, design firm in this marketplace, which was a phenomenal opportunity, then passed the baton to take on global roles.
[00:36:51] Speaker B: So you're a Washington native, or at least Washington area native.
[00:36:54] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:36:55] Speaker B: So let's think first principles about Washington, DC, because I want to get into how Washington has evolved.
[00:37:02] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: And where do you think Washington should know? We all know that Washington, DC was built for one purpose, basically for the federal government on a swamp. Basically why it was situated here, because George Washington liked the site. I think he surveyed up and down the C o canal here and was right up the river from where he lived, although he never served here. John Adams was the first president that served in Washington, D. C. Historically. So it's interesting history there. So talk about from a first principle standpoint going to today about Washington, DC from a design standpoint, it was built to be the federal capitol. All the buildings are monumental, at least in the mall in that area.
The design thinking as it evolved and then how it's transformed over the years into a different kind of city than what it was originally.
[00:37:59] Speaker C: Yeah, it's interesting. We were talking earlier about the power of kind of the human experience. And you think about DC and scale and whether you're down on the mall or you're on the other side of the river, say on the GW parkway, looking back, there's a sense of scale in this city that's really phenomenal. And it's a very human scale city.
The buildings with the height limit, you go into the neighborhoods and you get out of more of the federal core.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: What do you mean by human scale?
[00:38:32] Speaker C: Talk about that human scale. I think whether you walk on K Street, like where we are sitting here today, or you go down into Dupont Circle or shaw or go over to northeast or Capitol Hill.
There's a scale to the city that doesn't feel overwhelming. The buildings have a certain height, the width of streets. Know there's kind of the major and minors. Right.
[00:38:58] Speaker B: Compare Chicago and New York.
[00:39:00] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:39:01] Speaker B: To Washington. Different feeling.
[00:39:02] Speaker C: All different. Yeah. And traveling globally, you'll go to a Shanghai and there's this kind of immenseness to know when you come back to DC or actually if you go to Paris and obviously with the origins of the DC plan where it has kind of that connected. Yeah, absolutely.
You can get a feel for some of those cues. I think what excites us about being in this city is that when we're doing projects that are repositioning an existing building or doing a new neighborhood like the yards down by the ballpark, we have to have that sense of scale in mind and appreciate it, because the way to unlock those sites is to really understand the surroundings, understand how that particular site plays in this urban fabric, because it's not just about a site, especially here in DC. It's about its connectivity to the larger community around it. So, like the yards, I think was a phenomenal opportunity. Know, here it is on the, you know, on the Anacostia river. Everyone thinks about DC as a Potomac river, but it's really a two river town. Right. And there's this navy yard that has this amazing rich history where they were building ships in World War I and World War II.
Don't think of DC as an industrial city, but that was what was happening over there. And it's become this great neighborhood, like a neighborhood where people are, there's a park for people to play, there's a water's edge people can walk on. There's restaurants and bars and know mix of retail as well as different types of residential.
[00:40:48] Speaker B: Well, the adaptive reuse of some of the buildings there was fantastic.
[00:40:51] Speaker C: Oh, thanks. Yeah, we love doing that, being able to, for us to get our hands on an old boiler maker, you know.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: Or an old lumber shed building and.
[00:40:59] Speaker C: Turn that into residential. Yeah. Or retail on the ground level, an office above. But what was interesting about that is because, you know, doing projects in DC, especially those that are touching kind of the historic corridors, there's a whole series of regulatory that you have to go through. Right. And going through that, a lot of people could think, oh, my gosh, it's such a process, but it really causes an appreciation of the city and the scale and the architecture that's there and what you're adding to that. So the human scale back to that, I think is really phenomenal. About this city. But it really was for me as a native of the area, the Olympic bid that we did, that was one that I think unpacked a whole series of issues and opportunities which we're seeing now play out. But the master plan that was developed for that was not so much about what does the Olympics look like in DC. We took the challenge that was given to us by the committee know and the bid process that was led by Russ Ramsey and Ted Leonzas and a crew of other public and private leaders in this area.
And we said, essentially what they're asking is they're really looking for what's a master plan for the future of the city where the Olympics, should it occur, could be a catalyst for that kind of development. And so we laid out this plan together with all the participating folks that were involved. And the first one did that was before us. That was another olympic pit that was done earlier. But this one was really around the immediate DC metro area. And I remember there was a Washington Post article that came out after the Olympics was decided they were going to be in LA.
And it talked about how the plan that was drawn up for the Olympics shouldn't be lost and how it really is a blueprint for the future of the city. And I was like, okay, well, that's interesting. So we've kept that in the back of our mind and we've had these opportunities to play in these projects. So when you're doing a project like the yards or you're doing a new building project or renovation or reposition, it's thinking about how does it fit into the bigger puzzle.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: So in my interviews with various leaders around the region, that plan has come up a couple of times.
[00:43:30] Speaker C: Really?
[00:43:31] Speaker B: And the context was interesting in that Amazon.
[00:43:38] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:43:39] Speaker B: Was attracted here because of some of the nature of that plan.
[00:43:42] Speaker C: No kidding. Okay. I didn't know that. That's phenomenal. Yeah.
[00:43:47] Speaker B: So the people at JBG Smith and some of the planning area people from northern Virginia, when they were trying to pitch Amazon on their proposal, using some of that storyline, storyline to attract.
[00:44:02] Speaker C: That's phenomenal. Well, it's interesting you say that because one of the real wonderful things that came out of that process, and there were some amazing videos done at the time, was it's really a city of neighborhoods.
And so we talk about human scale, but, okay, what about the communities? And there's a whole series of neighborhoods, and at the same time there are neighborhoods that are certainly thriving and there's neighborhoods that need help.
And how could opportunities at scale like an Olympics or other opportunities that would come later, help create bridges that bring those neighborhoods and connect them into the rest of the community in a meaningful way that was really about betterment.
[00:44:50] Speaker B: So over the last ten years, site, in your mind, what you think are the projects that have been bridges not only just in the city, but maybe in the region that you believe are that catalyst.
[00:45:05] Speaker C: Yeah, sure. Projects. Well, I think that there's a couple of things that I think are important. Part of this is the pathways, the connective tissue that links these neighborhoods. So being able to look at the infrastructure improvements that have helped create the Anacostia connection across. Right. So the bridge network that's been redone, also creating an appreciation of the water's edge. So that's been done both public and private. Right. Private development that helped, for instance, at the yards, public park along the way, mixed in with another development over by the ballpark. Right. And then go around to the wharf. So you really have a water's edge that is now, I'll call it habitable. You can walk on it, you can sit there and spend a day, you can live along it, and you really, you know, I remember one of the early, early site visits down to the yards, and there was nothing, it was abandoned, industrial, and there was a lot of pollution. And I go down there now, and it's really a source of pride for what we were able to do, but it wouldn't have happened. And none of this would have happened. I think this was probably part of the power of the olympic bid effort was it brought together public and private sector for a common goal.
And that was powerful because it was no longer at that particular moment about DC, Maryland, Virginia. Right. It was let's all be together and sit around the table and figure this stuff out. And some of those meetings were incredibly inspiring because it was looking at the future, not the past.
[00:46:52] Speaker B: When was that unveiled that plan? Do you remember?
[00:46:55] Speaker C: It was like 2013 through 2015.
[00:46:58] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, that was right before the Amazon search.
[00:47:01] Speaker C: Basically.
There's a drawing I have on my wall that's one of the ones where it really reimagines. It's a looking from the east side of the city out over, past a little bit east of RFK, up above, looking west, and you see all this.
[00:47:18] Speaker B: Stuff east Capitol street looking down that.
[00:47:20] Speaker C: Looking down east Capitol looking towards the monuments. But in that you see the Anacostia river, both sides of the riverbank, you see the path network, you see the bridge reference that I made earlier. You see the development all the way across to the Virginia side.
And I look at that and there's a lot of pride when I see those images. Yes, we did not get the Olympics. Hopefully one day we will. But a lot of what was set out in there, to your point, has helped really reenergize aspects of this community.
[00:47:57] Speaker B: So Genzler recently published the eight trends shaping design in 2024.
[00:48:02] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:48:03] Speaker B: Perhaps highlight them and share your thoughts about them in context of the DC area markets with examples your firm has engendered.
[00:48:10] Speaker C: Yeah, sure. So we have this wonderful publication where we put it out as a firm. We came up with the idea of design forecast several years ago when we had been putting out like, annual reports, and we're like, annual reports are looking backwards. Right. Design forecasts would be an idea. Let's look forward. So one of the things, I'll give you a couple of the trends that we talk about. One is the notion of, like 20 minutes cities. It's the idea of bringing together within a radius live, work and play in a way that from the business community, they're plugging into the fabric that's there. There's a range of living options that allow people that would be working in that area to be able to also live in that area.
[00:49:03] Speaker B: Why 20 minutes?
[00:49:04] Speaker C: 20 minutes was, it's actually come out in so many different, funny way. I remember when we started talking about it, that was coming out in different circles as well. It's walkable, it's achievable from a transit scenario. You're not having to rely on some of the long commute, whether I say vehicles, but it could be different means of transit that push so much time on the individual.
[00:49:28] Speaker B: So Jody McClain told me in her interview with.
[00:49:31] Speaker C: Yeah, Jody's fantastic.
[00:49:33] Speaker B: She looks for 17 to 18 minutes increments with regard to staying at the shop property. So she wants to keep her customers there, but she also wants to be within 17 minutes of most of her customers and her projects.
[00:49:46] Speaker C: Yeah, Jody, I think a perfect example of that is union market. Right. And we've had a wonderful opportunity to work with her and her team there and also other developers there. And I would consider that a perfect example of this. But also I can remember the union market where my uncle had a warehouse down there. And here it is now as a desired place to be going, whether you're going there to eat on a Saturday or to actually live or to, say, work at the signal house building that we designed. Thanks. Yeah, it's great project, but it was a different approach to it, had to fit into that community. Another one, conversions so resurrecting stranded assets so that for know, it was really a moment during the end of the pandemic when we had a colleague in our Toronto office who was just looking at these opportunities to convert office underutilized office buildings into residential.
And he was similarly to what I was talking about earlier, where we were rethinking the design process in the mid 90s. He was rethinking the process to study this stuff. He's like, why does it take so long in the marketplace for people to know whether this is right, this building is right or not? So he developed an algorithm that analyzed properties quickly. And it's not just about the building, but it's also about that building's location and its position in its community. And that really was like, spread like wildfire. And we all of a sudden were getting approached by developers that say, hey, I have a 50 building portfolio in these different cities. What buildings would be right for conversion to residential? And we could do this analysis very quickly and come back and say, oh, you know what? These 24 buildings would be ripe for it. And this is why in a very consolidated time frame. And it's not, by the way, it's not just now we're seeing some real great projects emerge from this. It's not just about office to residential. It's also about, think about stranded assets in general. Big box retail that become new experiential destinations, regional malls. Yeah, right. And they become like some of them we've turned into amazing health and wellness clinics or experiential or sport related. Right. So stranded assets in general, the conversion opportunity, I think, is huge. The other thing, design forecasts, we talk quite a bit about now is experience multipliers and thinking about. Yeah, it's kind of the taking advantage of kind of the crisis stack and looking at experience multipliers and thinking about how people can interact with a place or a space. And if you do it in a way and you create these layers, there's opportunities to create a richness.
[00:52:45] Speaker B: Dive into that a little deeper.
[00:52:47] Speaker C: Sure. Yeah. So think I'll use an example that we're seeing more frequently now with some of our sports clients who recognize that actually the value isn't just about the sports team, it's actually about the experiences that can be created in and around the venue. So how can that just not be, I should say, kind of the venue that's used periodically for a sports event, how can that really be an engine for a vibrant sports and entertainment mixed use district? That's experience multipliers. So you certainly have a venue for, say, hockey or basketball or a venue for football or soccer.
But all of a sudden now you have a whole vibrant surround that is entertainment. Beyond that could be live music mixed in. Think of the wharf. It could be great restaurants and different venues with office and residential mixed in. Think of the hub on the Causeway project that we did. If you think of TD Garden, that arena was basically just the arena that had a whole slew of transit issues in and around it and entry and exit issues. And so the hub on Causeway was taking the land right around that, creating a new front door for that arena that linked together and solved some of the transit issues. Interesting. Created a vibrant active ground plane with different types of venues in terms of restaurant and different types of experiential entertainment type zones and office above. And there's residential there as well. And now it's a great scene. That's an experience multiplier.
[00:54:36] Speaker B: It seems to me what you're talking about is a hospitality mindset. So in essence, you're looking at what is the customer experience.
So when somebody comes to a place, what's in their mind, what do they want to experience?
What would be optimal for that customer.
So reverse engineering that thought process to me is what you want to accomplish in real estate in general and do.
[00:55:04] Speaker C: It in a way where you're creating a little bit more of surprise and delight.
[00:55:09] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:55:10] Speaker C: And when you can do that, that's.
[00:55:11] Speaker B: What a hotel operator wants.
[00:55:13] Speaker C: And then you think about what does that mean for beyond a singular engagement? It's people that want to come back. That's right. So, you know, I'll give you an example because I think you're absolutely right on hospitality. Hospitality infused into workplace, into residential. That's an experience multiplier. The Marriott headquarters which we were designing, loved it. Thank you. Yeah, it is plugging into an existing urban context. Right. And there's a twelve story hotel that we did along. Next to it is the 22 story new Marriott building where they put their offices in. But what they do every day is hospitality, of course. So that space should just ooze hospitality. And one of the things I loved about their leadership that they committed to is that the ground floor, and it was going to be very experiential for anybody. So there's a great public plaza. The restaurants and bars that are part of the hotel spill out to that. There's a cafe, coffee shop that's part of the headquarters building that spills out to that as well. And then there's this great opportunity to tell the Marriott story. So there's a cultural overlay. Know, here's this, know, it's the largest hospitality brand in the world. And they're here. They're right in our back door and their backyard, and then there's this great place. So my favorite thing when we opened this was, I remember going there just right before the grand opening, and there's all these people that were sitting, outdoor dining at the hotel, because the hotel opened right before the main building, and there was a family. The family happened to walk into the headquarters building.
They didn't know that it was an office building. And they walked in because it's communal, you can walk through. And they walked into this area, which is kind of like this passageway, which has this whole cultural wall, and it leads to this coffee shop. Right. And their kids were sitting there, like, just immersed in this.
[00:57:16] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:57:17] Speaker C: Right. And I was like, okay, well, that's something different.
All that has to work together.
And I find that as a firm now, we're really having these opportunities across the board. So this could be in India, this could be in Tokyo or on the streets of London, where we're getting these opportunities to think about that. What does it mean to mix these practices together and layer these experiences in a way that thinks about architecture as more of a stage for powerful experiences.
[00:57:56] Speaker B: So other opportunities in Washington that you're seeing in that respect, what are you seeing as far as those other elements?
[00:58:04] Speaker C: Yeah, we're seeing it, I would say, in the sports and entertainment world, for sure.
You mentioned the wharf. We're seeing it in the development around the ballpark, which we had a chance to do that master plan work ages ago, long before any of those residential buildings were in. It was just the ballpark. And it's a wonderful feeling for us to go down there from anyone here and see how that's grown and know that, you know what the master plan set out an idea that you could have these experiences game day or not, and it could still be a wonderful place to be.
[00:58:47] Speaker B: Well, the east end of Washington grew. I moved here in 1985.
[00:58:51] Speaker C: Oh, wow. Okay.
[00:58:53] Speaker B: So if you went east of 14th street in 1985, it was no man's land, basically, in Washington, DC. And then what we saw was an assembly of sites in the office sector, north to mass and then down basically to the mall going east.
And one area that really blossomed right after the financial control board kind of went away and Tony Williams became mayor, was gallery place and that whole area there.
And now we're looking at a potential change in that area due to the fact that the owner of the Wizards and the capitals decided to want to move to Virginia, although that may not happen now with some of the financial issues, but who knows? But now there's a new vision being considered for that part of the city. Is Gensler involved in that process, or is there any involvement in that? Are you thinking about it for anybody?
[00:59:56] Speaker C: We look at the city as. And when I say city too, it's also, again, from those experiences that I mentioned earlier on, it's Maryland, DC, Virginia. We look at it as kind of the region. And, for instance, I'll give you an example.
We've had a Baltimore office for years. Our Baltimore office is right next to the inner harbor.
You certainly have seen what's happened to the inner harbor. Right. And so now we have the opportunity to be really a lead voice in that master plan and that development of the inner harbor that will then stretch over towards the stadium.
[01:00:38] Speaker B: Is David Bramble working with you?
[01:00:40] Speaker C: Yes. Okay. Yeah.
[01:00:42] Speaker B: And I'm going to be interviewing him soon.
[01:00:44] Speaker C: Oh, he's a phenomenal visionary, and I think that we look at that as, okay, that's not just Baltimore, that's this whole area. Right. And so success there really is an enabler for further connectivity in this area. So in DC, there's going to be movement of different venues, different educational opportunities. Look at the museum. Right. And how that's been repurposed. So being able to think about cities with a level of agility from a design standpoint, and knowing that when we have projects, there are opportunities to ask key questions early on. And one of my favorite questions that we've been asking a lot lately is when there's an existing building on the site, like one that was down at, you know, that was down at the White House. And it was like, should we tear this down and build a new building? Which was what was being asked of us. We're like, maybe not. Maybe it's a better, sustainable story to not think about always building new.
[01:01:54] Speaker B: Well, that opens up an interesting line of questioning that I want to maybe think about. And this is a vision I've had as a real estate person. And thinking about the federal government's occupancy in the city is now sub 40, sub 30% even.
And there are large owned office buildings south of the mall, south of the Smithsonian. There's probably half a dozen buildings that are over half a million square feet down there that are probably less than 20%, if not 10% occupied during the day.
So they're way underutilized. They're on federal land, so there's no tax income for the city from it.
So my big idea there is for the GSA to do a swap with the city for the land, put it back in the tax rolls, somehow pay for the demolition of those, basically turn over that land, either lease it back somehow and structure it, but open the door for a huge RFP opportunity there, similar to the wharf of the Hannakosti waterfront commission, and redevelop everything from sea southwest down basically through Lafont Plaza in down towards the wharf down probably from third or Fourth street all the way over to, what is it, twelveth? Let's say that whole swath just redeveloped that whole area. Can you redevelop those existing buildings? I don't know. So the question is, can you reuse those buildings? I'm not sure you can. The HUD building is perhaps one of the ugliest buildings I've ever seen in my life, other than the FBI building, which people think is even, you know, those are brutalist designs. Can you repurpose brutalist buildings?
[01:03:49] Speaker C: Well, we did one actually talk about it where the MPA is, motion Picture association, which is 16th and I. Okay. And that was kind of the classic brutalist grid building. Okay. And it turned its back to the street at the ground level. And motion Picture association wanted to stay in the building, but they also wanted to make the building user friendly. And so what we looked at is it was actually a phenomenal study because you talked about earlier about architecture being this kind of blend of some disciplines. Well, the building, the entire grid on the front was like a giant truss, so you can't go hacking away the structure, otherwise the building is going to come down. So how do you embrace that?
Give it an overlay and a different way of thinking about how to break down that scale and then where it meets the ground, how do we actually. Where it was literally a sunken inset ground level that you couldn't even reach to actually make two front doors to the building, one on 16th and one on high street, and create a landscaping and site strategy and a new skin strategy down there that really just make this thing very accessible and inviting.
And it worked. And you had to have people that were willing to play ball. You also had to have going through the city folks that were willing to say that, okay, well, actually, this can make this building better contributor to that urban fabric than what it was before. But to your point, there's all those buildings over there and it does need some creative thinking, frankly.
[01:05:43] Speaker B: No question.
[01:05:44] Speaker C: Where the wharf is, all that area, it was federal. So it was APPp project that made that all work. So that's what we need potentially over here. But there is that question, I think it's an interesting one to think about, which is some of these buildings, when we look at them, they may not pencil out.
So are there ways to incentivize the development from a public financing side?
[01:06:15] Speaker B: Well, my thought is if you convert that to private land, that's the way to do it. Because then you get private sector investment in the property.
[01:06:23] Speaker C: Yeah. If you can do it with federal incentives, even better. Yeah.
[01:06:27] Speaker B: There you are. So you clean up a mess and it's a win win across the board. It's going to take a tremendous amount of leadership and creative thinking and the right people to meet with the right people. You have to get the White House involved, you have to get Congress involved, you have to get the city government involved. They all have to be on the same page and think through how this is going to create a lot of value for the city and for the federal government and the city government, everybody and the region.
[01:07:00] Speaker C: I mean, it has to be looked at holistically. And to your point, though, there's a lot of these buildings that are not occupied. They're not functional either.
Yeah.
And they're big buildings.
[01:07:15] Speaker B: Right.
[01:07:16] Speaker C: They're big buildings. Yeah. I do think, though, that for DC, there will continue to be that opportunity to reimagine inevitably. Right. Yeah.
[01:07:30] Speaker B: So you spoke recently at the Uly Washington Future Forum about the future and espoused the phrase architecture of optimism, perhaps elaborate on that theme and cite opportunities for urban planning that will excite real estate residents, workers, tourists, and just wanderers to the value of the built environment.
[01:07:52] Speaker C: I really enjoyed doing that talk at Uli because I really have found through my work with colleagues here at Gensler that we've been playing in that world of optimism for a while. And to figure out how does it manifest itself in the built environment, I actually think is a phenomenal opportunity to kind of explore and think differently about how we look at design.
So if you look at the definition of optimism, it's to be able to bring hopefulness and confidence about the.
And how do you do that in architecture? So I'll give you an example.
I was in Miami last week and we were having some meetings there, and one of the days we met, we used the space at a new school that we had worked on. It's a new 6th through twelveth grade campus, and it was about a five to six acre site. And sites in Miami are getting harder and harder to find because it's one of the few growth markets around. And in that school, I remember when they first approached us to design this right in the middle of the pandemic, when people weren't even in schools, right? And they said, we want to do this new school, privately funded new venture.
We want parents to feel like they would want their kids to be here. We want it to be a need blind campus, and we want it to be something where the students feel that wherever they're going, wherever they're looking, that they're in the middle school and they look over to the high school. That's aspirational. They want to make it through middle school because they want to be in that building over there. Right? And the parents who drive up, they want their kids to be in there. So how do you create that architecture of optimism? And I remember we looked at the site, and we're looking at this amazing old tree that was at the center of the site. And you had to get past all this, like, some of this overgrowth to see it. And it was like, wow, okay, that should be the heart of the campus. And so the campus really is a series of buildings that kind of work their way.
They're oriented around this courtyard, and this courtyard becomes kind of this magical heart. Beautiful softscape and hardscape. There's outdoor classroom. That's a part of it. There's all these outdoor eating areas, areas, students to sit on the lawn, and the view corridors from one building to the next are all done. So the students sitting in the common area in the middle school, when they look out that window, they're looking across that beautiful courtyard, and they're seeing an enhanced multilevel common room in the high school. Interesting, right? So the middle school feels like a high school. The high school feels like a college.
And the common spaces, the dining areas, the spaces where the multipurpose room that fits together feels like you could be in a food hall.
And so to your earlier comment about hospitality, it's a chance to think about that multiplier. How do we bring the best of our education talent, the best of our hospitality talent, master planning to the table? So everyone's pulling from their skill set to try to create something different. So back to that architecture of optimism. To me, that's an example of doing it. And it feels like the best projects these days aren't one liners. They're multiple chapters of a book.
[01:11:45] Speaker B: So is there a site in Washington that you would use as a centerpiece for something like that, or that thought process?
[01:11:55] Speaker C: Well, there's sites that I've certainly traveled around as I've grown up in the city, in the surrounding area, driven around many times. And I'll tell you a couple. One that I always look at and I'm like, I think about, for instance, the Kennedy center to east, towards 23rd street. And you have these hallways, highways that prevent you from getting from GW's campus to the water.
Why not look at going over that, right? Taking some of the roadwork, create a new kind of western lawn for that part of the city. The same thing is over as you get towards, as East Capitol street goes out and kind of crosses over. I've driven over that so many times. And that water's edge over there feels like it could be an amazing series of path networks and parks that mix in different types of venues.
[01:13:00] Speaker B: Could you tie into the national arboretum there? Or is that.
[01:13:03] Speaker C: I actually think you could because a lot of people don't even know that's there. Right. And you drive over in that way and there's opportunities that the communities there definitely deserve better from a planning standpoint and from an architectural standpoint. So being able to stitch that together.
[01:13:20] Speaker B: Take a redevelopment of the RFK environment.
[01:13:25] Speaker C: To do that, it would certainly help. Yeah, that's a key puzzle piece there.
And that really goes to the federal side earlier, rethinking what that oversight should be such that there is an opportunity for DC to explore different uses for that site. But it goes beyond that site because if you go north and you go kind of wrap around the rest of the anacosto riverfront? And I remember driving along that and walking along that. It's like there's possibilities here. Possibilities here. And it's not just about architecture and development, it's about public space.
[01:14:13] Speaker B: Land use.
[01:14:14] Speaker C: Yeah, basically land use, restorative wetlands. There's significant chances there to do opportunities to do something better.
[01:14:25] Speaker B: Well, do we have Williams slash Andyaltman around to say, okay, this is how it's going to get. And that thought process where the big visioning kind of thought process that has to be at the scale of the city government or you're not going to get the federal people involved? I don't think in that unless NCPC is involved, but you're going to have to have somebody in a leadership role to instigate that. I would think. I don't know.
[01:14:53] Speaker C: Yeah, I think you get it doesn't necessarily have to be just one person, but it can be a couple of people that are willing to put their ideas out there in a way that it may be rocky at first, but if we can all just kind of endure that, there's real potential. I think we talk about that in the design forecast, which is really thinking about the challenges that are there today. They're also, if we can look at them, they're opportunities, surely. Right. And so from a design standpoint back to the optimism is just recognizing that there are those opportunities. So how do we take some of those challenges and really make them the bright lights in challenge times?
[01:15:40] Speaker B: Well, speaking of that challenge.
[01:15:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:15:42] Speaker B: Your office is at the corner of 21st and K Street, downtown Washington. It is a given that the CBD needs revitalization with your design sensitivities. Assuming you were given a budget of a billion dollars to make physical improvements to downtown Washington's infrastructure, what would you do?
[01:16:02] Speaker C: Well, it isn't all just about architecture in the buildings. It's really thinking about what's happening on the streetscape outside. Right? Yes.
We have a project that we're doing with Avenue of the Arts in Philadelphia. So if you know Philadelphia urban planning, Broad street, right. City hall all the way down, know there's an opportunity there. You have, just like we do here in DC, there's some wonderful destinations, and those destinations know the streetscape that goes and leads to them and connects them is not really one that you feel very comfortable walking on. So we did a strategy and a design vision for the Avenue of the Arts, reimagining that to make it something that is walkable, that there's pause points, that there's vegetation.
[01:16:52] Speaker B: Was this for the city of Philadelphia?
[01:16:54] Speaker C: It was for the Avenue of the arts group that was then taken to the city to get interest. And so we did the plan last year, and so it's just moving through that now. But what I loved about the sessions that we did for design, it wasn't us running off in a corner and designing. It was in these rooms where there's all these stakeholders at the table.
[01:17:18] Speaker B: Is that equivalent to a bid here in Washington, or is it a little different?
[01:17:23] Speaker C: Type of a little different. But there's similarities in the sense that it's the institutions that are like the different venues, performance houses, et cetera, theaters, and it's developers. It's some of those from the kind of the public sector. Those were the people that were at the table. And what's great is also, if you think about, I look at 21st and K reference, the future of mobility, things are going to change. So we shouldn't be hard and fast and say that that roadway has to stay the know with the rise of electrification, we did a phenomenal research, joint research project with BMW designworks that's now out there in the public realm that looked know with the rise of electrification, how do we think differently about our streets? And also what was separating cars and people and buildings doesn't necessarily need to have that same hard line anymore. It's a blurry line. So how do we take back more parts of the streets for people and how do we think about, you know, what, the building actually doesn't have to be parking on these levels and the occupied space is up here.
So I think there's opportunities look at the 21st and K intersection to think differently about the streetscape and then also think differently about that built environment edge. If we start to think more about some of our great urban planners, master planners within Gensler have really talked about the qualities of an outdoor room, and some of these intersections are outdoor rooms. And if you think about streetscape and with the streets in terms of the vehicular path potentially getting compressed, how could.
[01:19:29] Speaker B: That change the use of parks in the city?
Farragut Square, the mall itself and the.
[01:19:40] Speaker C: Circles, Thomas Circle, Dupont Circle.
[01:19:43] Speaker B: Amazing.
[01:19:44] Speaker C: We have amazing parks, parks, are they.
[01:19:47] Speaker B: Utilized appropriately at this point and could be utilized better?
[01:19:51] Speaker C: Well, they definitely. So many of them could benefit from a rethink for the same reasons I mentioned, because mobility is changing and the way people are moving through basis, it's going to be different. So you think about also the last mile, how many people are out there using scooters and bikes?
How do you create safe places for walking versus those on that different on a two wheel or a one wheel versus a four wheel?
[01:20:17] Speaker B: So getting back to the economics of the question that I asked, if you had a billion dollars, what would you do with it? Where would you put most of your.
[01:20:24] Speaker C: I'd be thinking of ways that we can incentivize experimentation and putting some coin in it as well. Not just the streetscape, but also the distressed assets that are along these big streets. So how do we experiment if that's not going to work as an office building converted to residential? What are some other uses that it could be?
[01:20:47] Speaker B: I mean, you look at Pennsylvania Avenue and it's probably one of the least, even before the pandemic was one of the least traveled streets, because you know what they did? They closed Pennsylvania Avenue between 17th and 14th street in front of the White House before that happened. And that goes back, I don't know, 20 years ago.
It was a much different environment. So there's a three block area in front of the White House, you close it. If you closed a section of K Street, let's say, what would that.
So street closure, is that an actual.
[01:21:26] Speaker C: Value, creator or not? It feels like even with the Avenue of the arts example that I mentioned, or even we've been working with Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame there and reimagining that with similar big ideas on the table, future mobility, changing the potential streets, giving back more of the streets to people.
It says that all ideas should be on the table at this early stage. Right. Why rule something out? Right?
I drove in today, I drove along Canal Road, and I now looked at how do we think about that experience? Canal on the tow path.
Is there ways to think about that area as kind of a finger park coming out of the city in a different way that it is now? Now, people, you're on the path or you're driving.
[01:22:20] Speaker B: Right?
[01:22:22] Speaker C: That's it.
[01:22:23] Speaker B: Interesting.
So I just finished reading the power broker by Robert Carroll about Robert Moses, who was considered by some the architect of New York infrastructure in the 20th century. He built more roads, bridges, parks and large public structures than any other public official, perhaps, in US history.
Yet he had significant blind spots regarding the market, the impacts of his projects, displacing over half a million people in some of his projects. I asked you before the interview, you said you had not read the book.
[01:23:00] Speaker C: I haven't.
[01:23:01] Speaker B: But the book that contrasts that style is Jane Jacobs death and the life of the american cities. I'm guessing you've read that book, right?
[01:23:09] Speaker C: I think that was required reading in one of the classes, yes. Right.
[01:23:12] Speaker B: Do you believe the cities are now more human scale and have completely evolved away from the grand schemes of the Moses that Moses espoused?
[01:23:22] Speaker C: Yeah, it definitely feels like cities are increasingly about pedestrian experiences and how can we make them know streetscapes? More people friendly, less auto centric, less autocentric. It was interesting when we started working with BMW, with designworks, which is their more avant garde design studio, and it was a phenomenal collaboration because they were recognizing the pain points. So they build cars, they design cars, and a lot of cities don't want the cars in them. Right. So what does their future look like at the same time? We were looking at mobility and looking at that, what does it mean in the built environment when all of a sudden the car doesn't need to be necessarily down in the lower levels, wasting space? I could be using my car for electric car. I could be using that as an extension of my space.
That's a really weird idea, but why not right. So we started to think about what happens if you start to think differently about the cities.
And you go to a city like Munich. I was in Munich two weeks ago, and I stayed at a hotel that was right down in the Marion plots, and our office is right there as well. And I was like, wow, what an amazing. It's mostly a pedestrian core.
And so people are walking all over throughout the day, crisscrossing. They're not worried about being hit by a car. There's bike lanes. People are really owning the streets.
[01:25:00] Speaker B: Is that a recent phenomenon in Munich, or has it been that way?
[01:25:02] Speaker C: I think Marion plots has been that way for a while, but it extended that out. And so I was able to walk blocks and blocks without worrying about a major artery, vehicular artery, coming through. And I'm thinking, for our people that are working in Munich, what an amazing experience to be coming.
[01:25:19] Speaker B: I've read that Barcelona is like that.
[01:25:22] Speaker C: I was in Barcelona a year ago, and there are parts of Barcelona that are like that.
I was in Mexico City about a month ago and visiting our office there. And there's parts of Mexico City that were phenomenal pedestrian experiences.
And it doesn't have to be over there.
[01:25:47] Speaker B: Well, the mall in Washington is a phenomenal experience.
[01:25:49] Speaker C: It's a phenomenal experience. Right.
[01:25:53] Speaker B: But the connectivity is the question.
[01:25:55] Speaker C: Right, right. Well, how do you do it in a way you're not creating islands. Right.
So the mall is amazing once you're on it, but you still have crossing constitution, Constitution Avenue. That's exactly where I was going. Yeah. Right.
Or independence. Right. You got these big barriers. But to some of the principles we were talking about earlier of taking back some of the streets for people and thinking about that outdoor room and the scale and ways to look at how do I move and stitch across there's some phenomenal opportunities.
[01:26:34] Speaker B: Well, with the pandemic's impact on Washington, DC and the lack of people coming back to the city, isn't now the time to say, okay, it's time to shut some roads down and see what happens? Which is obviously going to cause tumult in a lot of people's thought process, but at the same time, you might create value that you didn't have before. So how do you sell that idea of doing something on a radical nature?
[01:27:02] Speaker C: Well, it does feel like there's opportunities to put up some trial balloons and try things out without saying it's a mandate. We're going switching from this to that right away and then also just study patterns. I think one of the things I love about how we approach design is it's not just going about and saying, let's just get a program and start designing a solution. Let's design that building, or let's design that space. It's really thinking from an ethnographic perspective of what's the user experience going to be like?
How do you marry some of the goals that are out there and watching people move? I remember we were working with Duke University some years ago, and it was to do a study of one of their buildings. And rather than just start with a design and just jump right in, we had one of our team members just go and observe. Just observe how people were moving through the day. And then we created this really long matrix. It was really kind of a graph, and it looked at the different spaces, how they were used during the day, and what we were hearing and observing from the people throughout that day. And what it did was when you step back and look at it, it clearly highlighted where the pain points of that building were. So what we said to them was, you know what? You don't need to actually renovate this entire building.
You're going to get the highest and best use of your dollars by concentrating them here, here and here. That's where it should be because that's going to be where it's needed. So back to your thing.
Pilot projects and being able to observe.
[01:28:49] Speaker B: That's first principles.
[01:28:50] Speaker C: Thinking. Very good.
[01:28:52] Speaker B: It's like I've heard this on path making.
If you're in a college, you may not have a paved area, but you just look at where those paths are and that's where you pave, because that's where people already walk. They just do this naturally.
[01:29:11] Speaker C: It's a natural thing. Right, exactly. Then you go back and make a path. Right. Well, you had mentioned about the Uli talk that I had given, and we do this city pulse survey. Okay? And so in our 2023 city Pulse survey, in our report that we did that, gathered up the findings, we found that most people were going into the CBD of cities to think about shop, dining, socializing or hanging out.
So it's like, okay, well, if that's the case, how do we look at back to that Munich example, right?
What facilitates that? And so certainly architectural solutions, but there's also larger planning strategies that can work in if all of a sudden there are those plazas, those areas where people can congregate and feel safe, right. And feel that they can connect with others or they can queue. If it's coming into a venue, is.
[01:30:08] Speaker B: There a large residential population right there nearby, walking distance from there. Well, that makes a difference as well.
[01:30:15] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a mix. I mean, it's definitely their residential, but there's office, like I said, our office is right there as well. And one of the things I thought was interesting, we see this in Paris, too. We were actually seeing that we have an office near the Arctur trio in Paris. And all these buildings that are, you would look at them and say, that's not right for office. What's happening? Offices in those buildings? Why? Because whether it's a law firm, a creative services firm or whatever, they're wanting to be there. There's activity, there's life throughout the day. And yes, you certainly could have an office out at La defense, but being down at the center of that area feels different.
It feels more experiential. And with our research that we were putting out on the heels of the pandemic, we were posing that notion of how do you make office a destination, not an obligation.
I think the Marriott project is an example of that that came out right where people are going there because there's an array of amenities that create a totally different workplace environment, a reason to be there and a reason to interact with others. And then there's that ground plane that I mentioned where people can be interacting, that whether they're there for Marriott or not, they can feel comfortable being there.
[01:31:49] Speaker B: So you've just talked about this, but I'm going to get in a little more. Looking at your business, how do you look at new opportunities because of your reputation? Do developers seek you out for projects?
[01:32:00] Speaker C: Typically, yes. I would say both we have developers and clients that seek us out, but we also have, we have 70% of our businesses repeat business. It's just great client relationships. When Art Gensler founded the firm in 1965, he really focused on clients and really building lasting relationships. And that's one of the things that we are really proud of, is that these clients that we're working with are long standing clients. And the array of practices that we're in allow us to say, we may have done an office building here for you, but over here you want to actually do a new multifamily building. Let's look at that together.
Or it could be a consumer brand and we've done their headquarters, but we're also doing a new prototype retail space for them.
[01:32:52] Speaker B: That's great.
So Paul Graham is a software engineer and a venture capitalist who writes thoughtful essays. There are links to two of them. I gave them to you. One is called how to get new ideas. And the other one is called Taste for makers. The first essay discusses the concepts of anomalies and fractals.
Perhaps discuss those ideas and how they influence you if they do. The second essay is a thorough explanation of taste and design and its influences. While this could be a course curriculum, perhaps cite your perspectives of the concepts outlined here, emphasizing your particular design philosophy.
[01:33:36] Speaker C: The first one that you mentioned around the anomalies, the fractals. Right. It's interesting. I remember sitting in math class in high school, and I think it was calculus. And you get those equations and you create these great shapes on a graph. And I remember a teacher saying, now imagine that I'm looking at a 2D graph on a page, right? Or a 2D shape. You're like, imagine that. That's 3D.
What would that look like? And this is back in the day of paper and pencil, right? But I remember imagining those shapes as 3d volumes. And since I had been interested in design since for so long and early days of Legos, it was actually very easy to kind of imagine that, and that curve became what looked like a vase. Right. And so I think there was something that was in the first essay that also connects in with the second, which is the notion of simplicity.
Right. About just good design, appreciating simplicity. And I think for us, we have found that's one thing that we talk about a lot throughout the firm. It's like simplicity, right. Let's just step back. And some of the best design work comes when you edit, right. And to not be afraid to parrot back more is not necessarily more. Right.
[01:35:14] Speaker B: But that second essay gets into a lot of different aspects of taste. So how would you define good taste in architecture?
[01:35:27] Speaker C: Well, you and I were talking at length about experiences, right. And when we create a place or a space together with a client, that prompts a positive, like an overwhelmingly positive experience out of someone or a reaction, and they walk away, or they walk by with a smile on their face, whether that's a new office for Instagram or a new basketball arena in Texas at the University of know, you can equate taste to experience.
And I find that when we get into those projects and we're able to deliver on those experiences, it's hard not to associate good taste in that respect.
[01:36:23] Speaker B: Interesting.
So I think it's a perspective thing, myself. I think that everyone has their own. I mean, some people like broccoli and other people don't. Some people, like, eat meat. Some people like curvy, linear shapes. Some people like more rigid. So to me, it's a personal thing. But what you're saying based on the experience thing I'm trying to interpret here is it really depends on the client's needs and what they believe is good taste, and you're trying to kind of emulate that, maybe, or help them think it through and say, you might want to think about it this way because I think it's going to work better for you in the long run from a practical standpoint. But also, if you step back and think about it, looking at it, don't you think it's something that works for you?
[01:37:18] Speaker C: It definitely has to work. I liked your comment about the kind of personal nature of that, because it is personal. There is a subjective nature to this. And actually, that's what I think is a phenomenal challenge. So let's say we're creating that new basketball arena called the Moody center at University of Texas. And I had a chance to tour it two months ago, and I walked in, and immediately when I think of arena, what would have been like a concourse that would have been cluttered with concession spaces and bathrooms and whatever, I walked into an atrium.
Natural light's flooding in, and there's a beautiful big glass wall and a big plaza that I walked across to go in. And then the vertical circulation that's normally kind of stacked or pushed off is celebrated. And I went upstairs and I'm like, you know what? This is fantastic. It was a phenomenal experience.
And some days that's a concert in there, some days that's a basketball game, and there's different places to watch those events. And I was talking to our team, and they're like, well, we've been here for concerts and we've been here for basketball games. And I'm like, tell me, what are you observing? What are you seeing? And they talked about how the space is utilized differently, it has an agility built into it, and how the people's experiences for a concert are very different. Positive, but very different than experience for a basketball game and how the space actually can transform for that. And I thought, well, that's really interesting, because if you take what you're saying about taste, so how that person is experiencing that taste of that venue for a concert, very different from Pescopal. Right. And they're both walking away with a connectivity to that. Right. And it's positive in both respects. It's interesting, but very different. Yeah. Right.
Wow, that's an amazing opportunity for us to be able to play on that scale.
[01:39:40] Speaker B: So what resonated with me with what you just said is that buildings are living things as well.
So in essence, they adapt like living things do to their environment. So if the environment is different, for instance, a basketball game relative to a live rock concert, let's say the feeling is completely different. So, in essence, the buildings adapted to that different environment.
[01:40:10] Speaker C: Right. Yeah.
It is fascinating when you think about not just as buildings that can really be stages for life, kind of for and for living stages for living. To think about how when we layer in sustainability strategies, biophilia and principles related to that into these spaces.
Not only that, but it's ever changing in how light penetrates into the building, how people move through the building.
We were involved in an airport project in Jackson Hole. We do a lot of aviation work. It's a mass timber building.
And I was reading a review of the building, and they talked about how this is an architectural critic, how they found the space so compelling, and that it actually brought a sense of.
I think they used the word calm to their travel experience.
Calm and travel experiences aren't usually very harmonious. Right.
So I was like, wow, that's amazing. Right. So to be able to do that and why, in that case, it talked about the feeling of natural light coming through the views, the views of the mountains beyond, the warmth of the wood. Right. The mix of the material palette. It's a simple palette that talked about, but yet it was very much tactile.
[01:41:44] Speaker B: And this is an airport.
[01:41:45] Speaker C: Yeah, it's an airport.
[01:41:47] Speaker B: That's interesting.
[01:41:49] Speaker C: Yeah. Spaces that we don't often think about as calm or that you're pausing, you want to move through them potentially as fast as you can. Right.
[01:41:59] Speaker B: That is interesting.
[01:42:00] Speaker C: And I think for us as a firm, it raises an interesting opportunity as we look at the built environment going forward, which is how can the places and spaces that we're being asked to develop and create have that flexibility built into them, that we can think about them from a little bit more to the essay about the timelessness inherent in the design.
And how can you do that with a simple approach, simple palette, simple expressions. Right.
Not to strive for greater complexity.
[01:42:50] Speaker B: It's interesting that looking at american history and then looking at european history, and then you talked about eastern cultures.
Did they design for infinity, or did they design to get something built just for the immediate need?
[01:43:06] Speaker C: And that's it.
[01:43:07] Speaker B: Ten years from now, we're going to tear it and redone or something that's adaptable, that had good bones to it that you could just readapt to. So, I don't know. In the US, I think we've seen a lot of change over the years. This city seems to be as much of an eternal city as any other. Like Paris or maybe Rome.
[01:43:29] Speaker C: I don't.
[01:43:30] Speaker B: Rome is the eternal. Washington was built that way, but somehow it just doesn't feel that way. And I don't know what that is. But anyway, this is to comment.
[01:43:41] Speaker C: Yeah, I think there's a uniqueness to Washington, DC in the metro area around us, right, where, first of all, it's three different jurisdictions.
There's the kind of natural pathways of the rivers that really define opportunity as well as edges. And there's also a topographic condition that people often don't appreciate in the city.
And I know some of the projects that we've done, for instance, in Virginia, where you're able to all of a sudden appreciate the vantage points of the city that often are overlooked. So at the same time, DC is a city that seems like it reinvents itself.
Interesting.
And it feels like now we're being asked that question.
[01:44:36] Speaker B: Another one?
[01:44:37] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:44:41] Speaker B: So, as a follow on, how are you inspired creatively? Is this something that you can be taught, or is it innate in creative professionals?
[01:44:49] Speaker C: Well, from a personal standpoint, I get inspired when I walk through our offices. I love it. I love visiting our offices around this firm, walking through, meeting people, and whether they're the seasoned vet or the new college grad, the skill sets that they bring to the table and learning about what makes them tick.
I find such a wonderful rush, but I love doing it at crossing cultures.
I find that increasingly, we're becoming very much a borderless firm, and we work on projects and connect one another across borders and geographies and cultures and climates in ways that few do. And it's absolutely inspiring and energizing to see that.
For me, personally, I also find that the creativity has to come and get nurtured from other avenues. I love guitar, so I occasionally make noise. I also really get, and I know a lot of people at Gensler do this as well because we travel so much, get inspired by looking at the world around us and bringing that to the table. And there's so many ways to do that now to capture what inspires us, what excites us, and bring that in and layer that into projects, and that creates these layers of richness that I think can make that particular project sing.
[01:46:23] Speaker B: That's great. How do you hire new architects? What do you look for in budding architects?
[01:46:30] Speaker C: We definitely look for people that want to collaborate, that can be really expressing the we versus I culture that we espouse people that have an innate curiosity, because we really have this culture of curiosity here, and we embrace people that are coming in that are not wanting to just take their pen to paper or mouse to screen and drive an idea.
It's about putting your ideas in context with others and seeing what comes out of it.
[01:47:12] Speaker B: What you said about the interview process coming here told me that this is a people oriented firm, not a design oriented firm.
[01:47:20] Speaker C: It's a people first culture for sure.
[01:47:23] Speaker B: And that guides your.
[01:47:25] Speaker C: Yeah. And the other thing I think is people that want to continue to learn, because I've often looked at us as kind of like, I call it a campus in a box. All our offices have courses that are running through as a curriculum on a regular basis. These could be taught by people that have certain skill sets within the office, or we bring in other people from outside that have that particular interest or skill set, and it creates a learning environment.
But that learning environment doesn't always have to be formal. It can be informal. It can be the mentoring and coaching that goes on. I've been very fortunate in my career that I've had amazing mentors, and they've really tried to create instances for me to step out of the shadows and try something, see if I can succeed and if there's challenges or if I don't, constructive feedback that helps. And I think actually that's something that is really integral to our culture as a firm, is that coaching and mentoring and giving people opportunity.
If I look back 28 years ago, I wouldn't have prescribed this career path. I couldn't have.
But it's been a heck of a ride.
[01:48:55] Speaker B: That's great.
So how do you manage through the cycles in real estate with all the ups and downs that they have? How do you handle that aspect?
[01:49:06] Speaker C: Through the diversification of our work. And that has know, we're fortunate, you and I here, to be sitting in Washington, DC, which is a city that because of the public sector work, the private sector work, the local work, the national work, the international opportunities, it is a city know through these different crisis moments in the past, has been a bit insulated.
The highs aren't necessarily the extreme highs that some cities get. The lows aren't necessarily the lows that some cities get. And we found that diversifying, which we did in the late 90s, really, really helped us. So to your comment about hospitality, phenomenal to all of a sudden say that as offices are getting challenged, let's bring that hospitality thinking in and all of a sudden the resultant workspaces are totally different.
So that I find to be opportunistic for us.
[01:50:12] Speaker B: That's great. So, personally, what are your biggest wins, losses, and most surprising events in your career?
[01:50:20] Speaker C: Well, I mentioned the Duke relationship early on. That duke relationship, which started with that little feasibility study in Raleigh, ended up leading to a new campus in Shanghai, right outside of Shanghai. It's actually Quinxan China, right outside of Shanghai. So we had the opportunity, I mean, when do you find an opportunity to do a campus, a full campus for a top university from scratch? So it's called Duke Quinxan University. So they partnered with a chinese university, and we designed a whole campus, master plan, architecture, interiors. And I remember it was an amazing journey back and forth to China so many times to work on this with a great team here and a great team there.
And I remember going there shortly after it opened, and I didn't tell anybody that I was from Gensler. I just walked along the campus back to that idea of just observing, talked to faculty, met up with some students, walked through the buildings, and everyone had this look of the pride of place, that they were happy there. The outdoor spaces were phenomenal. The indoor spaces looked out and embraced the outdoor spaces.
And I remember vividly walking into one of the common spaces, and there's these paintings tacked to the wall. And I found someone that worked in that building. I said, who did these paintings? They said, well, it's actually the schoolchildren from the nearby elementary school, and it's paintings of special moments on that campus. Interesting that those little kids walked on that campus and that they were inspired by that. So that's a project that I think of as a great success. Certainly the Shanghai Tower, which we did.
So, second tallest building in the world, largest building in Asia, was a phenomenal experiment that was like reinventing the super tall tower. What does a skyscraper want to be in the future? And that was an incredible success story.
I mentioned challenges, the Olympics that we didn't get. Well, we didn't get it.
But out of that came ideas that could really seed future thinking.
And I think we are believers that in the opportunities that are successful, phenomenal. But in the moments when it isn't, there are certainly kernels that can be captured, that are learnings that can benefit us going forward. That's great.
[01:53:03] Speaker B: Any surprises? Anything that kind of came out of left field that you didn't expect?
[01:53:07] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I'll talk one right now. The growth of our sports practice, it's unbelievable. We started this 15 years ago, and we really have centers of excellence in Austin. DC and LA.
But these sports opportunities, collegiate and pro, are happening globally, and they are at all different scales. It could be a basketball performance center for college teams, could be a new stadium for soccer team in LA, could be a new basketball arena. It could be a new football stadium.
They're coming in a way that's like, wow.
And all of them that are the bigger pro venues, whether they'renovations or new venues, are really thinking about not just a venue. Back to that earlier dialogue about sports and entertainment districts, and that's great. So think of all the practice area leadership that can play at that table. So that's been a really pleasant surprise. So because of that, this week, we're actually opening a Kansas City location because it's a talent hub for sports. And we're finding that there's a lot of interest in our sports practice because it's very different than the other sports practices that are out there. It's a people first attitude. It's about these practices all weaving together to create that multiplier.
[01:54:37] Speaker B: Well, that city had success last evening.
[01:54:40] Speaker C: Sure did. It's going to be a heck of a parade on Wednesday, I'm sure.
[01:54:44] Speaker B: Yeah. And they have an. I've been there a few times, and one of the coolest architectural setups I've ever seen is country club plaza there, which is a 1940s shopping area, which is really interesting. The history of that. I don't know if you've seen it.
[01:55:00] Speaker C: Or not, but images. Yeah. And the space we're opening up in is. It's like quintessential Kansas City, like old warehouse.
[01:55:09] Speaker B: Oh, really?
[01:55:10] Speaker C: Yeah. Kind of stuff. And it's like, that feels right.
[01:55:14] Speaker B: That's cool. So what is your life philosophy with business, family, and giving back to the community?
[01:55:21] Speaker C: So very fortunate that I married a woman that I've known since nursery school.
[01:55:28] Speaker B: Wow.
[01:55:29] Speaker C: And whose last name was the same as mine before we got married. So she was a Goldstein before she was a, you know, we have two great daughters, but just as my parents did with me, which is encourage exploration and really feed the passions, feel like we're trying to do that as well. And our family is largely in this area, which is great. So it's not just about architecture and design in this city, but it's recognizing that it's architecture and design in a city that our families and our extended family all live in this area, too. So it's bettering the communities for them as well.
And from a standpoint of giving back a couple of things, I love the academic environment, and I know several of my colleagues at Gensler here have been involved in teaching for a, you know, shortly after the murder of George Floyd. We recognized that maybe we should think about teaching in a different way and connecting and building a bridge to the next generation and perhaps really thinking that, you know, what diversity in this profession needs to be looked at through a much harder lens.
So we created a program. We went to the seven HBCUs that have accredited design programs.
[01:57:02] Speaker B: That's great.
[01:57:02] Speaker C: And said, hey, can we be in the classroom with you? So we're on our fourth year of doing this, and we are in the classroom with them, and we call it a mentor program. So we have over 50 gensler leaders that are in the classroom working with faculty, teaching studio classes, and creating a bridge for several students to come and work, but also for ideas to be shared back and forth. Cool. Yeah.
[01:57:38] Speaker B: Is Howard one of them?
[01:57:39] Speaker C: Yes.
So that's your local one here, Howard. UDC, Morgan State, outside of Baltimore. So three right in this area. And then giving back is also not just about our core here. It's also about really challenging ideas that are out there. So we did a study with the city, for instance, that looked at how could you claim back some of those areas of the road that we were talking about earlier and create parklet spaces? And that led to drawings and guidelines for how to think differently about the streetscapes. That's cool.
[01:58:20] Speaker B: So what advice would you give your 25 year old self today, Jordan?
[01:58:25] Speaker C: I would say to embrace the off ramps.
So the career path and the journey.
You're on this highway and there will be off ramps. And I remember I've been fortunate. Diane Hoskins and Andy Cohen, that had been the CEOs for 18 years prior to stepping into this role for me, are now our global chairs. They both were really early mentors and encouraged. You know what? If you see an off ramp, that's interesting and you're not sure where it could lead, take it. And so that's led to a lot of opportunities.
So I would say, don't be afraid of those off ramps. And at the same time, they're not going to all be successful.
So if you don't succeed, that's okay. Learn from it. Just keep going. Focus forward. And as I tell my kids, don't live life in the rear view mirror. Right?
[01:59:24] Speaker B: Keep going, keep going. There you go. If you could post a statement on a billboard on the Capitol Beltway for millions to see, what would it say?
[01:59:33] Speaker C: Don't look, keep driving. I would say, actually, it would go back to focus forward because it feels like there's a bright future for all those in the architectural and design profession. It's going to change. There's going to be disruption, but it's going to lead to something very different and opportunistic for so many people.
[01:59:54] Speaker B: Jordan Goldstein, thank you, John.
[01:59:57] Speaker C: A pleasure. Great dialogue and thank you.
[01:59:59] Speaker B: Join it.
Bye.
