Simon Joaquin Clopton, MS

31st July 2018

As a current graduate looking to enter the industry, you're an interesting case. You've had experience in other industries – residential construction, venture capital, and sustainability consulting and education, but you're exploring returning to construction. Some are going the other way. What's the prevailing sentiment for you and your peers? What's the outlook? The attitude?

Clopton: As a current graduate looking to reenter the industry, my perspective may vary from my peers, but both are positive. Having grown up working in residential construction, my shift back to design and construction is as much a happy homecoming as it is a new and exciting phase in my professional life. I consider myself lucky to be entering at a time when we can finally build the proverbial better mousetrap. And, we can back up our assertions with demonstrable results. The AEC industry is at a crossroads. Materials science, advances in design, data science and environmental urgency have the potential to bring about great change. Today we can build with net positive impacts. As we refine processes, costs will drop, and efficiency will rise. All this is wonderful in theory, but with a bit of data crunching we can show the value proposition too.

Back in 2000, LEED seemed ambitious and restrictive, now it's commonplace. I look forward to the evolution of unicorn projects like Apple's new campus, and Georgia Tech's Kendeda Building. That level of sustainability will become commonplace. Energy and resiliency modeling in programming and predesign will be the norm. The economic benefits for financing and lifetime cost projections will be part of builders winning bids – with supply chain sustainability as a selection factor like lowest total cost. It'll take a transition, but if we're doing it right, doing good and doing well should become joined at the hip.

I'm a realist. Pushing the envelope can come across as crazy idealism. Some approaches fit better in one application than another. For example, modeled on simple economic metrics alone, renewables and energy storage perform better in certain utility markets over others. Being able to show what works where under real-world conditions improves project pipelines. On the construction side, the best laid VDC, 5D BIM and lean planning can be challenging to implement, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. The shift towards a smarter, better design and construction sector is happening. It's an exciting time to enter the industry.

Are you sensing a trend toward nontraditional careers?

Clopton: Yes and no. The AEC industry is shifting to new technologies. Proficiency in multiple design software, financial modeling, and desktop-to-cloud mobile platforms would have been crazy talk 10–15 years ago, now they're common resume bullet points. Tools like drones and augmented reality have the potential to increase AEC productivity. Whether someone considers themselves an analyst, data scientist or builder – if they get the job done better, they bring huge value. As far as attracting and retaining a younger workforce goes, I suspect we'll see an uptick in recruiting and retention, based on the above.

Having heard some of the issues discussed in this book and perhaps experiencing them through your own work, what's your take on managing design? Can it be done? How?

Clopton: Managing the design phase can and must be done. We need a solid workflow from preprogramming through handoff and O&M. Done right it's a value add to everyone involved – designers included. As part of my Spring 2018 semester at Georgia Tech (GT) I took an architecture special problems course. Architecture students had been designing an addition to the Hinman Building courtyard and the time had come to build it. Without going into minutiae, the design was beautiful, but was nowhere near ready to build. Constructability, compliance with design criteria, paperwork, site conditions, delivery method, and other details hadn't been accounted for. A lot of our work went to maintaining the schedule. The late-phase heavy lifting could have been streamlined had it started day one. That would have taken pressure off the designers. We had an overall design vision and goals at the start, but they weren't tied to a schedule and the nondesign requirements. Involving the management team and trades at the start would have been a game changer. Design management done right shouldn't be a restrictive slog. It should help designers focus and move from vision to an operational project built as intended.

So, you had a design management baptism by fire?

Clopton: Yes. Though I think challenging projects are great learning opportunities. As we moved into construction we got into a balanced, collaborative workflow. I'm a proponent of real-world projects being integrated into AEC higher-education and would love to see them as part of regular curricula. Given the project's positive outcome, I'm confident had holistic scheduling, collaboration, and early stakeholder involvement been done day one, things would have been easier.

Share your personal vision of an ideal career opportunity. Why? What are you doing in 20 years?

“There has to be value on both sides of the equation. If not, we're doing it wrong and the shift won't stick.”

Clopton: I had the opportunity to go back to school to get my MS in building construction/program management with the goal of increasing sustainability and value in the AEC industry. There has to be value on both sides of the equation. If not, we're doing it wrong and the shift won't stick. My ideal career would involve problem solving, continued learning, and the chance to make positive impacts. Team, culture, and stability are key. Ideally, all that would combine to provide opportunity at multiple project stages.

What drives you?

Doing something I enjoy. Interesting, meaningful work, and the chance to interact with and learn from great people to support my family all drive me. The ability to make a positive impact does too. I have a do-gooder streak and want to make a difference, but I'm pragmatic. These can be balanced for better business and more fulfilling work.

In the book I challenge emerging leaders to become change agents. How do you feel about that? Ready? Prepared? Wondering why we didn't fix things for you over the past few generations?

I'm eager for the challenge of becoming an industry change agent. Ready – yes, prepared – yes. I'll continue to learn more and rely on a team to complement my skillset. As far as fixing things over the past few generations goes, a lot's been done. Our industry will always be at some stage of Tuckman's evolutionary cycle. That's good. Great strides have been made in project delivery, sustainability, and technology – and statistics show the AEC industry will improve equity and diversity between now and 2050. The changes we'll see over the coming decades will be astounding. A huge opportunity.

INTERVIEW

Emily Grandstaff-Rice, FAIA, LEED AP BD+C, ID+C, WELL AP, NCARB, NCIDQ

Senior Associate, Arrowstreet, Boston, 2018 AIA Director-At-Large

9th February 2018

You are the one of most active political voices among the interviewee group, active in many initiatives including the Equity by Design movement. How did you get there? What are your issues? How does advocacy affect your design approach?

“I'm an architect and …”

Grandstaff-Rice: I come to the table with an understanding that politics goes several ways. Having grown up in St. Louis, I understand political actions are locally based and recognize it's important to receive people's ideas in context. Well-meaning may come from different sides, but we're working toward the same goal. That's how I see architects moving conversations forward. It's not about winning or losing, but the larger goal of how to improve the environment, health, and wellness. Sometimes happiness is a goal, and that's great! How can I use architecture as a tool to have a better impact in our day-to-day lives? Creating buildings manifests itself in different ways. Not just today, but 30–50–70 years from now. The urban realm is important. How do buildings present themselves to the public? Are they welcoming? How do they meet the ground?

How did that history influence you as a practitioner and leading voice for equity in architecture?

Grandstaff-Rice: Equity issues can have multiple meanings: equal access to buildings, services, areas, but also within the profession. I had to work through what it means to be a female architect. I didn't come in wanting to be a great female architect, I just wanted to be an architect. That's it. I dealt with things others didn't. So, I want to make it better for the next person. That goes to informing them about legal rights and being a leader, so I can be an example.

I took a strength finder test a couple years ago. Its insight said I always want to make things better, which drives me to advocacy, being a citizen and an architect. I tell the story of Sir Ken Robinson, the educational researcher and advocate who spoke at an AIA conference a couple of years ago. I was taken by his speech. It was about how schools kill creativity. How we all have these creative senses, but the framework inhibits them. He advocated that we all have many jobs. I could say I'm an architect, but I'm more than that. I'm a mother, teacher, citizen, resident, volunteer. I was in line waiting for him to sign my book. “Emily!” he said, “What do you do?” “I'm an architect!” I said. “That's it?” he replied. I sat through his whole speech and still fell into a trap. I think architecture would be a better profession if we stood up to that question, when people ask, “What do you do?” What he wanted, and what I've learned since, is for me to say, “I'm an architect and I advocate for better schools,” or, “…and I create welcoming lobbies that allow the public and staff to engage,” or “I'm an architect and I care about the environment and energy efficiency and I speak about it in my community.” It's the “and” that's important. Part of being an architect lies in our ability to be explicit about what we do. So, “I'm an architect and…”

My first job was after my senior year in high school. I had a major conflict after my 3rd year and needed a break. I did a co-op in New York at Perkins Eastman, then studied abroad in India, so I had a gap in my formal schooling. That shaped my understanding of what it means to be an architect. Then I worked with EYP in Albany. After graduation I moved to Boston and worked with a small practitioner, Adolfo Perez, doing high-end residential, then to Cambridge Seven for 13 years. They were large shapers of my career.

I remember Arrowstreet being known for user and community engagement, public advocacy, and inclusiveness. These were emerging notions in the anti-establishment 1960s, in a firm that studied its process.

Grandstaff-Rice: You're on the right track. The firm has been around for 50 plus years. Yes, it's had a responsibility to community and research in practice. We want to be at the forefront of research, but grounded. Within budget, yet inspirational. Adam Grant, a professor at Penn, talks about innovation. Sometimes those who get there first create, and sometimes those who follow do it better. My point is, we innovate with a grounding in architecture, environment and practice.

A reality-based, approach. You've seen the dawn of computers in practice. How does technology shape your work? Do machines get the best out of people or add complexities? Love 'em or hate 'em?

Grandstaff-Rice: My first job was in 1994. It was a 3-person office. On the first day, there was a new tool called HOK Draw. They wanted to try it and hired me to do that but still do hand drawing too. Lettering! That entire summer I forced myself. Technology! I feel like I'm the last generation to see the other side, before laptops. When I got out in 2000, the shift had been made. I see myself as a bridge. I feel lucky to have seen it. That goes back to the education-communication metaphor. I want people to understand I lived through that. The empathy it gave me has helped.

How do you manage designers?

Grandstaff-Rice: My background is in education. I could have been a teacher rather than an architect, but I'm where I need to be. Education fascinates me. It's a form of communication. It lets us learn about the world and those we share it with. Education is that language, or way of connecting. My undergraduate thesis was about metaphors. I'm fascinated by the idea you can reflect a concept in different ways. Creating a common thread, but letting it work its way through other things. Architecture is a metaphor for ideas. It has its practical purposes: shelter, and thermal conditioning, but also a vehicle that inspires. It brings feeling, instincts or notions into different expressions. I'm always chasing that idea: ways we can use something to do something else.

After I got my professional degree, I got a Master's in educational technology. I worked with cultural organizations to communicate about informal learning environments about pedagogy – adult learning. My thesis was about mandatory continuing education – yes, the driest thesis ever to come out of Harvard – and levels of expertise. There's the baseline, interns, and levels of mastery. Brian Lawson and Kees Dorst's book Design Expertise talks about this. You move to project architect, then senior designer. There's proficiency, advanced experts, and mastery. The master knew everything. Very few get to mastery. I operate on the proficiency line, then pick something new to become expert at. People kid me because I'm still adding initials after my name, but it's the joy of what I do: learning.

We all have strengths and weaknesses. We don't take enough credit for things we're expert at. When I manage a project, I recognize people's different stages. Some are in the Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi “flow.” I try to find the one thing that drives this person. If they're motivated by it, then go for it. Versus someone who's already an expert. I advise them to find someone to mentor. To pull from the entire array makes us richer. I fall in the middle: generalist to specialist.

Managing a team is a design process itself. My job is to let you take the risks and be your safety net. That lets us customize solutions with checks and balances. Talk to me, and we'll find a solution. Know I'll be there to back you up if it doesn't work. I want people to show up with a sense of “I'm making a difference.” Personally, or for the community.

Your bio talks about your interests in social economy and environmental urgency. How do they affect your work?

We must recognize we're designing buildings for someone else to use. Part of that is knowing our work will change movement patterns, financial models, communities. The idea that architecture changes things. Phil Bernstein would say, “Our time and skill have such an impact on the GDP, yet we don't get any benefit from it. We get a small slice, yet the building lives on.” We talk about that with clients and in the office. More than just the money, it's about that what we do affects others. Environmentally, should we do buildings that use fossil fuel? That's an ethical question; we can do better and move the needle.

To a degree, we've earned our stereotypes as self-serving “Howard Roarks,” doing buildings for ourselves. As builders, we're looking for good teammates. If we're not listening to our customers, we won't have much to design. What's your mindset on the management-creativity continuum?

Grandstaff-Rice: Someone told me: “You're not the typical project manager.” I said, “Good!” We're all designers, we just design in different realms. The split between management and design did us a disservice. We all have input on form, message, and economics. We're integrated, even though we do different tasks. We have different roles, responsibilities and input on how buildings get shaped. Why? Because we're all trained as architects, but because we're all users of buildings. Some clients come with preconceived notions or development plans. If we can't bring them along in the journey, we do them a disservice.

Matthew Dumich's office has an incredible mastery of tools. It enables their performative work but takes specialists and someone to orchestrate them all. Beverly Willis talked about that too. Arrowstreet is among the few current firms doing practice related research. Most of it seems technical. Can it inform the questions and themes in this book: How to manage design?

“The split between management and design did us a disservice.”

Grandstaff-Rice: My graduate degree in educational technology at Harvard gave me a language and facility to talk about research outside the realm of architecture. In science, formulating a thesis and testing it is outcome based. Trial and error, looking for causation. In education, research is observation and data based. The analysis comes from your ability to evaluate in impartial, curatorial ways. Social science. Having an academic basis is a benefit. I did data collection but had to justify it to the Harvard Review Board, because I dealt with human subjects. I learned questions always have an element of bias, even if you work consciously to strip it away. You can't ask leading questions, you must ask clarifying questions.

What I consider research is the data – scientific testing of architecture systems. But research is also understanding my client, site issues, context, imagery and how elements work together. What do I want to learn, and how can I test that, so the next time somebody does it, they can learn from it too? That's giving back. How can I advance the larger practice of architecture? To me, it's all research. It's about understanding. And does it help a larger conversation: are we doing the right thing?

How do we make time to be empathetic ? For the last 20 years, I've been a stranger in a strange land: an architect working within a construction company. When the pressure's on, we go with what we know, and trouble comes in. We take short cuts and go to our defaults and biases. We stop listening and rush. Conflict and errors result. How can we be flexible and “in the moment enough” to see it happening and fix it, given not enough time?

“To be continued …”

Grandstaff-Rice: Resilience makes things stronger. But you can't just fix one segment – it's got to be fixed for everybody. That means financial, weather, and community resilience. Boston's Chief Resilience Officer used to end our conversations by saying, “We'll keep in touch because we'll be intentional about it.” Many times, I end conversations with: “To be continued.” It's my catch phrase to continue with people.

We revert to bad habits because there isn't bandwidth for it all. We balance by being intentional. When we see default behaviors, we pause, then act. It's not contrived, it's intentional. You can't do everything, but you can decide what's important.

All the players need to get better at being resilient and intentional. I just learned about a phenomenon called the Zeigarnik effect : the psychological tendency to remember an uncompleted task more than a completed one. It’s why beach books leave you hanging at the end of each chapter, to keep you turning pages – and how serial TV shows work. We love having something to look forward to. Our attention is heightened – that unfinished thing won’t leave our mind.

Grandstaff-Rice: As architects, that's what we do. We create buildings with open-ended futures. We don't know how they'll hold up or evolve over 50 years. Time will take its toll. That's uneasy for many of us. We want to innovate, but don't have to innovate everything on every front. Pick the idea that makes a difference, that motivates you. That's how you focus. Have check-ins. Set goals. Reassess. Track progress. Notice it. That's a first step. Then you can address it.

Those principles are a great place to end: positive, forward looking, open ended.

“We'll be intentional about it.”

Grandstaff-Rice: One of the reasons I'm an architect is to be fulfilled. I need a product, a building. I couldn't be an accountant. I need closure, even though the story goes on after I touch it. I'm not sure we answered your questions, but I'd rather be a conundrum than a one-liner. After an AIA presentation I made, Randy Deutsch tweeted one person's feedback: “Messy but brilliant.” I like it that way. I want you to draw your own conclusions. With me, it's not always a scripted dance, but we always learn something. So, “to be continued.”