June 17, 2025 • 57 mins
From studying at Yale to leading global megaprojects like Changi Airport and Hudson Yards, Forth shares what’s changed in the profession, why architecture is a service business, and how to lead without losing the joy in design.
00:00 - Intro01:15 - Why Architecture?01:51 - Forth's upbringing and route into architecture04:43 - Key lessons from Yale University07:24 - Is architecture school effectively preparing graduates for practice? 10:25 - The story of Forth joining KPF (a great story)14:51 - The hardest years of Forth's life (transition into leadership)16:30 - The 2 keys for architectural success (best advice Forth ever received)18:23 - Forth's advice for leaders20:55 - How to navigate running a large, international practice22:50 - How a team-based culture shapes KPF25:10 - Running project teams like small businesses (super interesting)30:34 - What is it about large projects that you love?35:17 - The evolution of KPF and navigating macro changes40:03 - The value of staying connected beyond architecture43:05 - Why many leave the profession and why that’s okay45:15 - Open House New York and sharing design with the public48:22 - Advice for young architects: grow at your own pace53:06 - Has your career turned out how you imagined?
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
You'll never not be a successfularchitect if you have two
things. If you have those two things,
you're going to be successful. It's not a foregone conclusion
that our profession exists 50 years from now.
So we all have kind of an obligation to each other and to
future generations to do the right thing. 4th Packly is an
experienced architect and principal at KPF in New York.
He's LED an incredible career designing and delivering some of
(00:20):
the world's most impactful urbanprojects, including Hudson's
Yard in New York and Changi Airport in Singapore. 4th is an
expert assembling and leading large teams to deliver ambitious
developments that will continue to define their cities for
decades to come. How have you felt the practice
has evolved over those 20 years?Well, there are the things
inside of the practice that haveevolved, and then there's just
(00:41):
like the macro stuff that's happening to you as a firm of
individual. Like when we started Hudson
Yards, the first sketches we didfor the area, the iPhone hadn't
been invented yet. And then like 10 years later,
there's Hudson Yards. What do you think the audience
could take away from your journey in architecture?
I'm not sure anyone should learnanything from me, but I will say
(01:01):
the one thing is like. 4th, thank you so much for joining
me. Thanks for having me.
So just as a starter and a question I'd like to ask all the
guests, why architecture? What is it about this career
that keeps you getting up in themorning, that keeps you coming
(01:21):
back for more? Yeah, I guess it's the same
answer that I sort of the reasonthe the reason that propelled me
into the profession to begin with, which is just the desire
to have an impact on cities, on neighborhoods, on, you know,
make positive contributions to people's lives.
So at a firm like KPF where you,you know, the impact is broad
(01:43):
and global, you know, wake up every morning and try to do
that. Yeah, lovely.
In in your sort of early days, you know what what is your that
sort of route into architecture that you you had, you know, what
was what was the, the upbringingthat led you down this path and
you know, the important people that kind of led you there.
(02:05):
I don't come from a family of architects or a family of
artists. I, my, my mom was a banker, my
dad was in the commodities business, but I grew up in
England. They're both American and I, my
childhood grew up in England. And because of my dad's job, we
were travelling a lot like he was, he was in the sugar
business. So we'd go to the Philippines,
(02:26):
Hong Kong, you know, parts of all over the world, basically
Caribbean, etcetera. And through his job, got to
travel, got to see a lot of cities, got to go through a lot
of airports, got to stay in a lot of hotels, and just got the
building bug from that. And luckily had, you know,
parents who were supportive of it and, you know, schooling that
(02:51):
supported creativity and was able to eventually parlay that
into a career. How much, I mean, that's
obviously a very sort of novel upbringing that not many of us
have. And, and how much of that has
sort of, you know, LED you to a,a practice that is incredibly
international with the, you know, does projects all over the
(03:12):
world And, you know, is, is thatkind of an intentional thing do
you feel? Yeah, it's funny.
I look back on it now and of course it all like makes sense.
I don't think it was, I don't think it was that intentional
when I started. But I think the, you know, KPF
mission of KPF is to make impactful urban architecture.
(03:34):
And that's why hopefully everyone comes in everyday to
the office and he's focused. And I think the upbringing of
travel with a dad in the business world and it and it's
an entrepreneurial dad like I was in the, you know, he would
take me to meetings, he would take me to a client dinners.
I was very much part of the family business.
And it allowed me to have a comfort in boardrooms, which I
(03:57):
think a lot of architects don't get that training actually.
For a company like KPF to be able to like walk into a
boardroom, be comfortable givinga presentation in front of 20
people to go out to dinner. If you feel comfort around all
sorts of different types of people, like not just
geographically, Asia, Middle East, Europe, Americas, but also
(04:18):
economically, socially, culturally, to just be sensitive
to the world around us, which ofcourse you have to be as an
architect anyway. But I think particularly as an
architect engaged in mixed-use large projects, particularly
with like lots of corporate clients, you have to have that
kind of level of comfort. So and I look back at it, yeah,
(04:39):
like absolutely makes sense. But of course, set set out to do
that. In your, in your early days, I
mean, obviously you're a, you'rea graduate of, of Yao and again,
that's a prestigious school of architecture.
What I mean, what is a, what is a, an education in Yale really
like to leading you to, you know, a career in, in
(04:59):
architecture And what are those kind of key lessons that maybe
you learnt at, you know, university that you've kind of
taken through? Well, I went to Yale undergrad
as well as grad. I left when I left London.
I, I moved to the United States to go to university.
And that first four years at Yale was liberal arts education.
(05:20):
And so that, and I didn't do architectural design anything.
I was I stumbled into architectural theory and history
as a degree. I was one of four people at Yale
who graduated a degree and I wrote my thesis on airports, you
know, so it was, it was in retrospect, like a very loose
education, right, allowed me to do kind of to explore what was
(05:43):
of interest to me. And so that was a very different
experience to my graduate experience at Yale, which was
obviously went from, you know, aclass of 1200 people to a class
of 40 the the Yale School of Architecture program.
And it still is to this day. But it was very much rooted in
building and like a very pragmatic approach to
(06:06):
architecture. I don't think it's an accident
at Richard Rodgers or Foster that these guys out of that
school, like it was every secondyear at architectural, everyone
builds a house. And so I went from like doing
architectural history theory, like writing about airports, the
history of airports, having no business being in architecture
or design, but kind of coming out right after September 11th,
(06:29):
the United States. It was kind of a weird
commercial recession. And Bob Stern and the Dean was
like, Hey, why don't you just stay, go all the way through,
can't find a job, you know, become a real architect.
And so I was lucky because he was at that time, he had just
started in the Graduate School and he was very involved
(06:49):
pedagogically with even the undergrad.
So he was, I was very lucky to be kind of floating around this
liberal arts education and to beable to be in conversation with
the Dean and that kind of be able to switch from this loose
education to this very pragmaticeducation.
And I do think the, that Yale School of Architecture, you
(07:10):
know, everyone who comes out of there knew could have been a
sole practitioner, right? It basically taught the the
taught you the fundamentals of of of running an architecture
business of being an architect and building.
I think, I think that's a, that's a kind of fascinating
conversation to be had because Imean, in the UK at least, we
(07:30):
have continuing debates about, you know, the place of
architecture school and the graduates that that sort of come
out, the value that they can provide and the education that
they're receiving. And I suppose the common, the,
the common sort of thought is that, you know, university, at
least in the UK, isn't preparingpeople for, you know, practice
sort of thing. And I wonder whether you could
(07:53):
just talk a little bit on that. You know, when, when talking of
Yale, it sounds like they are preparing you for a career in,
in, in architecture and you're producing a, a student that's
kind of ready to be moulded. So.
I thought at its best they were.Of course, now I look back at it
and I'm like, Oh my God, I wish they'd prepared people better.
Right? Like, I think, I think this is a
(08:16):
dilemma that all architecture schools face.
I think I, I've seen just over the years, even since I've grown
in the 20 years I've been practicing, you know, the
emphasis on the schools change over time.
It was a weird when I went to school.
I don't know if this is the samein the UK, honestly, but when I
went to school it was just at the start like the Guggenheim
(08:36):
Museum and that sort of the ideaof Frank Gehry and Starkitex and
R.E.M. Coolhaus and Saha and Bob Stern
was bringing these people into the school like they were
teaching at school. And so it felt like, you know,
there's always this push and pull in architecture between the
Academy and the profession. And, you know, when is when is
the action in the schools and when is the action in the
(08:58):
profession? And it very much felt like the
start of schools recognizing that they needed to engage
professionals actually that thatthat some of the action was
happening outside of the Academy.
And I think as a student, even at the time, we were like kind
of aware that that was taking place.
And I would say maybe this is a very, this is coming from a very
biased place, but I don't, I don't see that.
(09:21):
I still see a lot of the action taking place outside of the
schools, right? Like a lot of what's driving the
profession is not, you know, piein the sky academic thinking how
to. I mean, we have an affordability
crisis in New York that is just as great a problem as it is in
London is just a great a problemas it is in Singapore.
(09:42):
And I don't see any of the, any of the dialogue that's occurring
in the schools elevating into society.
And similarly, I don't see any of the starchitects or the, the,
you know, the people in the profession are dealing with that
either. So it's kind of morphed over.
I've watched it kind of more from when I entered Graduate
School and they were, you know, the starchitects just starting
(10:04):
to do museum commissions and things like that.
Now they're doing luxury housing, right?
So it's just been it's been a weird thing to watch this kind
of creep in the profession that honestly, I I hope, I hope
corrects or, you know, moderatesa little bit over the next
decade. Yeah.
(10:24):
So you know, you've, you've completed your education at Yale
and you you come into KPF now you're 20 years on a principle
at KPF. What is it about?
I mean, because obviously there are lots of people that's
probably going to be listening to this that aren't going to
spend 20 years in a practice. And, you know, probably ask that
(10:46):
question of, you know, what is it about that practice that
resonates with you that, you know, the ethos, the, you know,
the original setting up of the original founders and how
they've, you know, imbued an ethos into a practice.
And I suppose it's it's, it's it's about how does that align
with you as a person that's madeyou stay there and become part
(11:09):
of, you know, you are part of now the practice.
Yeah, and I, I mean, I don't think anyone sets out to stay
anywhere for 20 years when you're in your 20s.
But so I graduated from, from Yale and I went, I took a job
working in Hong Kong, the local local company in Hong Kong,
building a lot of casino work inMacau at the time, big airport
(11:30):
projects, big hotel projects. And Bob Sturd, who I mentioned
was furious because it was around that time and of course
the economy had switched and people were literally like
writing to Herzog and writing toR.E.M. and, and getting jobs
without interviews. Like it was rooming.
And he was like, what are you doing?
This is crazy. And I just want to work on big
projects. And so I went to the region of
the world that was building these big projects and, and I
(11:54):
liked it. I had a great time.
And I, I was working on 2 projects at the time. 1 was
Casino a Venetian, the Venetian in Macau, which was a kind of
carbon copy times 4 in scale of the one in, you know, doing like
kit of parts and figuring out how to put facades together.
I mean, real like not glamorous architecture, but fun.
(12:16):
Like you got a lot of responsibility and you were in
the field building stuff. And then the other project I was
doing was I was detailing AKPF building a retrofit of the
landmark in, in central Hong Kong.
And so I kind of started like I was doing that.
I was working in, in Macau and Ihad my whole life flashed before
(12:37):
in my eyes. And I was like, Oh my God, I'm
going to end up in Macau and like doing Christinas the rest
of my life. This is not what I want.
And I so I met a partner at KPF,Paul Katz and I interviewed back
here in New York. And my intention was just to get
back to New York and like, oh, like admit to Bob Stern that I
made this huge mistake and just to get back and do some work.
(12:59):
And, and this firm that at the time had just finished with
Punky Hills and Tokyo's transformation transformative
project Tokyo, it had just finished the Nagoya train
stations, huge mixed-use thing. They were project and I knew of
the work because I was working in Asia and working on their
projects. And I went to the interview and
Paul interviewed me, looked at My Portfolio and said, I know
your work, we've been working, you're hired.
(13:21):
I'm going to call HR. They're going to give you a
call, like go downstairs. They're going to call you when
you get downstairs. The offer is going to be
offensive. You call me and we'll sort it
out. And I went downstairs.
I still remember this downstairsonto the street.
They called me and like a flip phone, you know, and got an
offer. And then I called pawns like
this is offensive. This is like the lowest salary.
(13:43):
Come on. I know like, you know what, I'm
capable. And then I and then like 10
minutes later got a call from HRbeing with the revised offer and
I walked right back into the office and started work.
And it was like that kind of like entrepreneurial spirit in
this huge firm. You would never expect this huge
the time it was like 200 and 5300 people, a firm to be able
(14:03):
to be that nimble and entrepreneurial, right?
And so my expectation was I would stay for a year or two and
get my feet walking me and then figure out what I was going to
do with my life. And I just love the work.
I was, you know, going back and forth between New York and Asia
and we were building, you know, I did as a very young architect,
I was getting to work on these amazing projects, Mandarin,
(14:24):
Macau and them. And we did 12 other projects in
in Central Hong Kong and Beijingand the tallest building in
Guangzhou. And, you know, just opportunity
after opportunity after opportunity.
I never had time to think about leaving.
And this the, the economy was growing, the firm was growing,
and it was a fun place to learn.So here I am, 20 years later.
(14:47):
Yeah, sounds like a joy. Yeah, how?
How was that transition into management?
Because again, you know, we havelots of conversations and
architecture about that transition from being a, you
know, on the job architect us, us kind of knowing our knowing
the ropes as an architect and then being thrown into, you
know, being promoted and thrown into management.
(15:07):
I mean, it sounds like you're, you know, your upbringing gave
you that sort of, you know, understanding of of the
boardroom, as you mentioned, Butit must have been the kind of
learning curve to kind of, you know, understand how to manage
people, how to manage a practiceof that science.
Yeah, I mean, you're, you're an architect.
I I, I mean, I think, I don't know if you agree with this, but
(15:31):
it's like the hardest part of mycareer was that moment where I
was both expected to lead A-Teamand do the work.
And just like, how does this even possible?
Like I'm responsible doing all these drawing sets and I got to
tell these two other three otherfour other and other people what
they did wrong. And while I'm making mistake, I
mean, it was just, it was the worst kind of couple of years in
(15:53):
my life. And I always say to people at
KBF, this is the hardest part ofyour career.
And the only way I know how to do it is just get through as
fast as possible. But get out above the water and,
you know, see the lake and it's just, it's just so, so hard.
And then once you get your head above the water, you start to
realize things that you thought were really complicated are not.
(16:19):
If you break them down and scaleand you use analogies to kind of
understand how the business runs, you can kind of figure it
out. Like I, I don't know, I would
say like Kate, but Bob Stern also said to me, you'll never
not be a successful architect ifyou have two things.
Empathy for your clients becausethey're taking huge risks,
(16:41):
they're defying gravity, they'retaking out huge loans, they're
putting their wife Dory on as collateral.
So you got to have empathy and then you got to have optimism
too. Like you have to convince people
to build this 500 meter tall building.
You have to convince them that it's the right decision to build
office and not hotel and to makeit blue and not yellow.
And if you have those two things, they're going to be
(17:02):
successful. But of course, it's much more
complicated than that because you're dealing with creative
people, right? And every person in the
architecture business is creative from the countdown to
the, you know, everyone. So but it is fundamentally a
service business, particularly the kind of work that KPF does.
Like it's no really like the business model is really no
(17:25):
different than like a plumbing business.
Someone calls you up to a job, you got to go do it as as best
you can, as fast as you can and make sure nothing breaks.
You don't have to come back and they're happy and they call
their friends and they tell you that they tell them to use you
to fix the pipes. And so that's how I like
approach our business is like thinking about our business.
(17:47):
It's helpful to me. Remind me about like how to the
fundamentals of a service business, right?
Because sometimes I think when you get in these creative
moments and you get caught up inall of the impact you can make,
you, you tend to forget just at the end of the day, it's a
service business, you're a licensed professional and you're
servicing a client, right? So it's always kind of important
(18:10):
to just remember that. Yeah, I mean, I love, I love
that analogy of empathy and optimism.
Yes, I. Never.
I just never forget it. It's like the best advice
anyones ever given. Yeah, yeah, it's wonderful as a,
as a, as a principle. What are the sort of values that
you try to lead with? What are the values that you try
and, you know, imbue into your staff and like you say, working
(18:33):
with creative people, you know, a huge collective of creative
people with their own hierarchies in a business like
KPF, You know, how how is it that you get the best out of
them for your clients? Yeah, I think ultimately and
Gene Cone, our founder and Paul Kaze used to tell me this,
ultimately as an architect, you are the your culture and your
(18:57):
firm is the projects that you win and the build that you
built. And so you can get up and you
can talk about mission and you can talk about culture and you
can do, you can make a million business plans.
But if you don't win the work that you want, you don't become
the firm that you want. And so I have always been very
focused on making sure that particular the partnership is
(19:20):
really focused on winning the work that we want, that
reinforces our mission that the partners want to work on, the
partners want to engage on and that feels part of our, our
Common Core values. And so, you know, you can talk
about live work balance and all this stuff, but ultimately we
want people to come in every dayto work and know a know what
(19:41):
they're working on, but also like why they're working on it.
What is the mission of KPF? The mission of KPF is to do
impactful urban architecture. We believe in built.
We believe in the power of the basic building blocks of an
office building, of a residential building, to make a
neighborhood better, make a citybetter, to elevate societies,
right? And so if everyone's coming in
(20:03):
every day with that in the back of their head and they see the
partners working hard to achievethat and they hear it enough and
they see it reflected in the work that they're doing, you
don't have to, you don't have tosay that much, right?
Like it's it's better to just speak through.
(20:24):
Speak through the portfolio and the, and the work, right.
Well, I, I don't know. I thought I've always, and we're
complicated. We've got, you know, 27
partners. So we're not a, we're not a
single name. You know, we've founded 3
founders. There's, it's always been a
partnership. It always will be a partnership.
And so the mission has to be broad enough and important
(20:45):
enough that you can collect all these different voices and they
can all have a a say in contributing to that mission.
How, how do you navigate that? I mean, because obviously with,
with such a sort of international base and I know
you've personally been involved in, you know, numerous
international projects. What is that sort of navigation
(21:06):
process? Because obviously KPF have a
presence in numerous, you know, geography sort of locations,
London and the like. How do you how do you sort of
split yourself and and the sort of responsibilities?
Yeah. So we have evolved.
So the firm is almost 50 years old now.
We're on our 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation of leaders.
(21:29):
And the we've evolved from a firm that was very focused on
the US to a firm really like geographically about a third of
our work is in the Americas, a third of our work is in the is
in Europe and the Middle East and the third is in Asia.
And it's roughly, you know, kindof been, that's been the kind of
target for the least the last 10years.
And really we've been achieving it over the last five like
(21:53):
pretty regularly. And so the ambition is to be a
global firm. We have two design Centers for
those three regions. So we're doing design work out
of New York, design work out of London, but we've got partners
around the world and that are executing, executing that work.
And so, yeah, like it's, we've always felt like limiting the
(22:15):
locations where the design work happens to 123 places at most,
allows us to have common conversations about the
intentions of the design. And So what I mean by that is
like, we're not, you know, when we open an office in San
Francisco, it's to deliver thoseprojects in San Francisco.
It's not to, it's, it's not so that we have California partners
(22:38):
working on California projects or London projects working on
London, London partners working on London projects.
I think the partners have alwaysfelt like, it's like, I
certainly, I love coming to workand working on a project in
Shanghai, a project in Texas, a project in California.
And so we've never really wantedto stop that from happening, but
(22:58):
also want to service our projects and service our
clients. And so we have to have a, a
global breath. But ultimately every Friday, all
the partners sit around the table at lunch every Friday and
we air work and we talk. And you can't do that if you're
spread out in too much. I think, I think that's one of
the, I mean, you pick up on it. You know, the, the one of the
(23:19):
greatest things about being an architect is that variety, you
know, and whether that variety comes in location or project
type or, you know, stage of project.
You know, the, the actual role of the architect is so broad.
And you know, your experiences everyday are completely
different, which I, I mean, personally I find wonderful.
I mean apart from area schedules, which are terrible.
(23:39):
Yeah. But it's tricky because it's
like like we don't have sector leads, we don't have geographic
leads. Like we are the basic building
block of our firm is the team. So we purpose build teams for
the project, right? And so, and then the project
finishes, the team stays with the project, the project
finishes, we disband. And so expertise is formed to
(24:03):
deliver bespoke solutions to individual projects.
There's always 22 partners on a projects and no one is ever,
it's my project, it's always ourproject.
And so we have to do a number ofthose things to make sure the
culture stays in place. But it, it is not without cost,
right? Like it would be much more
efficient. And it's caused us to our growth
to be slower than maybe some of our competitors because we, we
(24:25):
don't have a matrix organizationwhere we've got like geographic
leads, driving sector leads. And we don't have any of that
stuff. We have conversations and like,
hey, you take that one, I'll take this one.
You work with her, I'll work with him.
And it's inefficient, but it it holds on to design culture when
(24:45):
we don't have one, like voice, right?
Would would you say that's a sort of value proposition that
that sets you guys apart? I think that's where we've put
our, for better or worse, that'slike where we planted our flag
and like, we're going to make sure that that's successful one
way or the other, right? Like we've, we've made our bed,
(25:07):
we're going to sleep in it. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, your, your career has obviously been full of, you
know, incredibly sort of large, complex urban LED schemes, you
know, Hudson Yard in New York and the projects you mentioned
in, in, you know, Hong Kong and elsewhere.
I know, I know you've spoken widely on the sort of
(25:31):
collaboration of design teams and, and the the have have
taught on, on those sort of business ideas as well.
I wonder if you just spend a little minute kind of talking
around that sort of subject and why you kind of why that's the
kind of interest point for you and, and what you see as the
sort of, you know, important skills of architects in kind of
(25:53):
leading those things in, in sortof the formation of those things
and you know, really getting thebest out of it.
Yeah, We've always felt, at least it's always been told to
me and I sort of always tried toimpart it on to others, that
like KPF at its best should be aplace where you can, you can
become the kind of architect youwant to become faster and better
(26:14):
inside the firm than in the overall profession.
And so if you, if you hold on tothat idea and then you think of
the basic building block of the firm as being the team,
essentially, you know, we're 550people, it's roughly 100
projects in the office. If you think back to your like
primary school education, 100 people in a class, you kind of
(26:35):
know 100 people's names and you've got like 10 people who
are really close with and then ten that you're really like, I
don't know about. And that's kind of like the way
we handle the projects, right? And so each one of those
projects, each time we form a team, we're kind of like
incubating a small business, right?
So you got like 100 small businesses running around the
(26:55):
office with accountability for design, quality, pride,
profitability, all that, all that stuff.
That's the thing that creates the the that's thing that
actually translates on the promise of being a better
architect faster inside the firm, right?
Is creating that entrepreneuriallost, right?
(27:18):
Where it becomes really interesting is you got 550
people globally. You got 100 projects globally.
Some projects have two people onthem and some projects, you
know, we're doing Changi Airport, it'll be the biggest
airport in the world. It's got 7 other architects.
You know, we're working with Thomas Heatherwick's team.
We're working with four or five other local architects in
Singapore. That's talk about a small
(27:40):
business. That's a medium sized business.
That's a 70 for us. That's a 70 person team, right?
Or Hudson Yards at its peak was 70 people, 1 Vanderbilt peak 50
people worked on a project Victoria Dockside in in Hong
Kong, by far the most complicated project I've ever
worked on in my career. You know, at its peak we had 25
people like each each each one of these teams just at KPF are a
(28:03):
small business, right? And so that's where it gets kind
of great because you can learn how to run a small business,
running a four person team and you can grow and people trust
you And those let you do two of those small businesses and then
you grow again and you get a tenperson team.
And then one day you wake up andyou're like the project director
(28:24):
of Changi and your, your design collaborator is Thomas
Heatherwick. And you've got five other
partners from KPF who are also with you running the project.
Not one, not 2, but 5. And it's a small business.
And so you learn how to collaborate, You learn how to
create shared accountability, shared responsibility.
(28:45):
And at its best, it's super exciting, right, 'cause no one's
telling you how to run your job or how to make money.
You're figuring it out as you gowith smart people who are more
right than wrong. And that's the, that's what I
mean. It's like the the the
incremental growth of a career, right?
Yeah, No, I think that's a, it'sa kind of fascinating way of
(29:06):
putting it and and not somethingthat I've kind of heard a
principle kind of talk in that in that way before.
Because I mean, obviously, you know, you have, you know, you
probably have a lot of young people join the practice and to
kind of map out their career journey like that is, I mean,
it's incredibly exciting. You know, it's, it's because,
because obviously it's a, it's ahard profession to come into.
And you know, we have all the sort of negative connotations of
(29:28):
architecture, you know, in the, in the early days of our careers
and stuff. But it sounds, you know, it
sounds like a an incredibly enticing and and tangible kind
of route, if you will, a young person in your practice.
It's it's hard to make sure thatit continues to happen, right?
Like it's hard work to make surethat you can create opportunity
(29:52):
as the firm grows, you have to continue, you just have to
create that much more opportunity.
So that's the, that's kind of been the, the challenge at the
firm is really like, how do you,how do you scale up that
opportunity? And we're not always perfect.
It's not like a perfect place towork and no, no place.
But you know, I think there is agenuine, I see it like Jamie,
(30:15):
our president, I see it in the board, I see it in our
partnership, like the partners as a group are pretty committed
to making sure that the opportunities that they had and
were given by the founders are passed on.
That's, that's a cool place to work.
It's a nice place to make a career.
Yeah, in terms of the the scale of the projects that you're
(30:36):
working, I mean, you know, you mentioned a, a, a team of two to
a team of 70. What is it about?
I mean, you mentioned earlier that, you know, large projects
get you excited, you know, what is it about the scale, the
complexity, the the location, ifyou will?
You know, what is it about thosetypes of projects that that kind
(30:57):
of entice you and even with their sort of complexity, their,
you know, numerous stakeholders,their bureaucracy and and all
the sort of negative parts. Yeah, I think I've always been
OK with delayed gratification. Like our career is like, so it's
(31:17):
so hard to be an architect today, practicing today.
And I I have so much actual empathy for particularly like
our younger staff and or precisethe people we talked about the
people who are doing the work and telling and kind of trying
to organize the work at the sametime.
Because if you were doing an apartment renovation, you're in
and out and 6 to 12 months and it still doesn't compete at all
(31:43):
with the Internet. It doesn't compete at all with
the iPhone and all this sort of like instant gratification, but
it's a year of your life. Like Changi Airport.
That's I, yeah, I was there at the I, we started that job.
My for the first phone call we got on Changi, right, was my
daughter's was born, which is 10years ago.
(32:03):
We won the project seven years ago when my son was born.
I was in the in the the hospitalroom.
We got the call. So I'll never forget like those
miles when we open the project, my kids won't be living in my
house, right? Like it is like, not only will I
have helped bring this building into the world, I will have like
(32:25):
nurtured two adults into the right.
So it's like you have to be super comfortable with taking
the small wins like every day taking this and then and then
just being super grateful that you work in a place where there
are like lots of people, like 70other people are coming to work
(32:47):
working harder than you every day on all aspects of the
project, right? Like that, like one of the great
things about KPF, I'm sure it exists in, in your practice and
other practices. It's just like, if you don't
want to do something, there's always someone at KPF who does
want to do the thing you don't want to do.
(33:08):
Who's who thinks architecture exactly like you mentioned
Excel, right, or area schedules.Like there's, there's 10 people
walking around here. That's all they love Excel and
like, so that's kind of the fun realization is that like there's
lots of, you know, you go into architecture school.
I had a classmate, we were doinga we were like choosing.
(33:29):
It was my first year in architecture school and I was
like really struggling with likehow to be a designer coming out
of this theory history background.
And there was this chair class and it was like a chair design
class and I, and I remember her,I said Jeron, like, I really
don't want to take this class. Like I don't have any chair that
I want to build. Like I designed build like, and
(33:50):
she was like, for you're an idiot.
Like not every architect has to design A chair.
Like don't be that kind of architect.
Like a light bulb went off in myhead and I was like, Oh yeah,
like I don't have to. There doesn't have to be a
fourth Bagley chair in the world, right, for me to be an
architect. And like, I feel that way about
KPF. Like we're all doing different
(34:11):
kind of big projects. And as long as people are
becoming the kind of architect that they want to be and we're
covering everything, everyone's going to do a better job
becoming the person that they want to become rather than
having to, I mean, so on a big project, you don't have to do
everything. You can really like become that
architect and drill down. And so I like that and I and
(34:34):
it's fun to be in a place like that where you can collaborate
with other architects and not just inside the practice, but
outside the practice. It's lovely.
It's like a wonderful thing, youknow, especially if you had a
career for 20 years in the same office to get to have ideas from
Thomas Heather way. I can get to have ideas from a
61 and RSP and Sorbonne and all these other firms that we're
(34:56):
collaborating with on Changi andnot, not to mention, you know,
Hudson Yards or Victoria Docks that we had a hundred different
practice design practices working on one project.
And like, if you just are a sponge for those ideas, it's
amazing, right? Exciting.
Just get all that. It's just like Graduate School
on steroids. Fascinating how how have you
(35:17):
felt the the practice has evolved over those 20 years?
You know, obviously you've been part of it and part of, you
know, the team kind of steering that.
I mean, obviously scale wise hashas radically changed, but you
know what, what are the things that continue and what are the
things that have changed? Well, there are the, there are
the things inside of the practice that have evolved and
(35:39):
like going from, you know, having the founders very
involved in practice to not, it's obviously a sea change in
any design culture, right? And there are the things about
going from when I joined, I think there was a London office
and a New York office and maybe they just started Shanghai.
And then I was sort of helping Hong Kong.
(36:00):
And now we've got Singapore and Seoul and San Francisco and like
all these other. So there's all that stuff.
And then there's just like the macro stuff that's happening to
you as a firm, as an individual.Like when we we started Hudson
Yards, the first sketches we didfor the area, the iPhone hadn't
(36:21):
been invented yet, right? And then like 10 years later,
there's Hudson Yards. When we started work in Covent
Garden, the iPhone hadn't been invented.
If a nation of Covent Garden, there was no way for us to
anticipate the societal changes that those that technological
invention would bring to the world.
(36:41):
And yet we were still coming to work every day and designing a
building and documenting a building and getting those
buildings built while these other things were changing.
And you know, I was, it's impossible to be engaged in the
act of like city building without feeling the enormous
pressure of, I don't know what you call it, like
(37:03):
deglobalization, right? Like the 1st 20 years of my
career is all, everything was inthe service of connecting the
world and seamlessly and growingour practice and making sure
that our teams in Hong Kong weretotally synced with our teams in
New York and London. And, and now we live in this
world, this like fragmenting world.
And that's not our firm. That has nothing to do with the
(37:26):
kind of culture that we're trying to build in our firm.
But it's everything to do with our future, right?
And probably everything to do with us as, as individual
architects, building buildings, wanting to build buildings in
China, wanting to build buildings in Europe and South
America. So it's just like when you start
your career, it's just no idea that these things are going to
(37:47):
happen. You can't imagine.
I can't even plan for tomorrow, you know?
How? How do you plan for tomorrow?
Then you know, what are you planning for tomorrow?
We've done, it's like, it's likewe do business plans after
business plan after business plan and, and at least in the
last, since COVID, everything iswrong.
It, it's just like everything backwards, right?
(38:09):
So it's just, we've sort of likegiven up trying to guess and
estimate. And, you know, and it's tricky,
like we, when we, we had to kindof like 2 years into COVID and
we realized 100 out of the 500 people that were at KPF had
never stepped foot in our office.
And it's like, how do you talk about a culture of a firm when
(38:31):
that's going on, right? And then suddenly they all come
back and it's like, it's like freshman year and everyone's
meeting each other. And what is that?
That's like a whole new culture,right?
So I didn't think all these all these macro events are really, I
think like architects tend to view of themselves as the center
of the universe, but really likewe're really agents of societies
(38:52):
that are changing. They're being kind of these
changes are being mostly forced on US.
One of the pieces of advice thatGene Gene Cohen gave me before
he passed, like, you know, maybethis is like 10 years ago now,
was, you know, a lot of architects see their careers,
(39:15):
they see themselves moving in their careers like stepping up
junior to a associate, to a director, to an owner.
And they don't imagine that the practice that they're working on
is also evolving. The people that there's either
that are sitting to either side of them are also doing the same
thing and going in different directions, right?
So you can have all the best intentionalities about the
(39:36):
architect you want to be and thestuff around you can be doing
something totally different. So it's just about finding a
place where your where your mission, your personal mission
is synced with the articulated mission of that firm and the
quality and the the quality of the portfolio that that firm is
(39:59):
trying to create, right. We, we spoke earlier about,
about Yale and your sort of youreducation there.
I know you've sort of continued that relationship into your sort
of later career. I know you've had work published
there and you've, you've gone back to teach as well.
How, how important has that beenin your career having that
(40:22):
retaining that connection, retaining that sort of the
connections with your sort of peers from that time as well?
And you know that sort of ongoing relationship between
practice and education. Yeah, I mean that that stuff is
like foundational, right? It's sort of like your first,
your first kindergarten class where you're learning to
socialize. Like I found the first year of
(40:42):
architecture school is almost a identical process of like
figuring out how to be an architect around other
architects. And so it's foundational, it's
memorable, you know, you making relationships that last.
And I am committed, you know, tothe to the school and to, you
know, contain my involvement of school.
(41:03):
I would say like equally as important, if not more important
is just getting out into the world, you know, by talking to
people on airplanes, reading books that aren't about
architecture, friends that aren't architects, having
clients that you can go on vacation with and learn from.
(41:24):
And so it's like it's important to because the school provides a
safety net and a foundation for which from which you can build
your career. But in order to grow a practice,
in order to grow as an individual, you also have to
like make new friends, right? And read new books and stuff
like that. So try to recommend to people in
(41:47):
the practice that they also do that.
Like when we go, you know, down in Texas, I'm like, talk to the
person next to you. You never know who, you never
know who's sitting next to you on an airplane, right?
Like I, I don't know. I don't know if they had these
like squish mellow things in, inEngland, but they're, you know,
I ended up on a British Airways flight from London to Miami like
a couple months ago and I sat next to the inventor of the the
(42:09):
squish mellow stuffed animals, you know?
I mean, my daughter's got one. Yeah, and it's like, it's like
if you don't talk to the guy, you never meet him and hugely
interesting guy and, you know, you just, it gets you like that
much more engaged in the world around you.
And so I don't know, I think that's just as important as the
school to me. It's just like making you
(42:29):
friends. No.
I think that's fascinating. I mean, I always have the
conversation out of my sort of peer group.
I think I'm the only one that didn't marry an architect.
You know, my wife is is the is the least architecting sort of
person you'll ever meet. You know, just have very fun
memories of dragging her around Paris, pointing at different
buildings and her sort of considering divorce at sort of
early, early points. I mean.
(42:50):
I feel like that's super important because you have to
have, it's super. I do that with my, my wife.
I'm like, that's a KPF building and she's like, and then we're
like now I grow like I'll try harder on that one.
You know, it's like good. It's like good to have that.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because if it's if you're
just talking to architects aboutarchitecture, it all gets a bit
navel gazing, doesn't. Yeah.
(43:10):
And then the other thing is like, of the 40 people I
graduated Graduate School with, very few of us are still
architects. It is a, it is a graduate
program that spawns all kinds ofcareers and furniture making and
develop real estate development and all sorts of other avenues.
(43:32):
And so I found it's actually important to stay in touch with
those people because there's very few of them actually, you
know, still practicing architecture.
And you do need advice all the time, right?
Because you're constantly finding things you've never
encountered before. Why do you think that is?
(43:54):
You know, is it is it just because of the the education
gives you a sort of broad designunderstanding that gives you the
tools to do those things? Or is it, is it the
dissatisfaction in the profession or a bit of both?
Maybe I don't. Know, I think it's a little bit
of both. I think the education pre, I
don't want to say predetermines,but the education assumes the
(44:16):
educational curriculum assumes that not everyone's going to
become an architect because the people who are teaching it are
not have gone through that process themselves.
And have you know, I, I always graduate.
I obviously gravitated towards aprogram that was focused on
building and even inside of Yale, I was very focused on the
(44:37):
professors who had built buildings, right?
Just intuitively was drawn to those people more than the
others. And maybe that's because I came
out of this other undergraduate background.
But, and I find myself to this day attracted to architects who
built like I'm interested in talking to other architects who
(44:59):
have found ways to build buildings.
And certainly, like at KPF, likeeverything at KPF is in the
service of good design, but alsoin good design that gets built
and executed. And I, I saw recently that you,
your involvement in open house in New York, which I wanted to
talk to you about because obviously in, in, in London, we
(45:21):
have the open house scheme as well.
And it's, I think it's very wellloved by a lot of Londoners and,
and you know, particularly architecture students.
I wonder what your thoughts are on the value of things like that
in communicating, you know, whatgood design is to the public,
how people kind of relate to that, how people understand
(45:44):
what, you know, architects do and and to the point you make
about your wife, how people sortof appreciate or you know, not
appreciate good architecture. Yeah, I mean, I that I'm really
excited to be on that board, to be asked to join that board.
It, it is an organization which goes, which transcends way
beyond architecture, you know, mission really to like celebrate
(46:07):
the opening up of buildings to the public.
And it, for me, it's like a perfect alignment with, you
know, the career I've tried to build and the firm that all of
us in the partnership are tryingto build a KPF, the mission of
KPF, which is to like use buildings to elevate the urban
experience. And so, you know, it's the board
(46:28):
that I'm on. It's a organization I'm totally
committed to because I just think that like that the
festival nature of Open house, this like joyful celebration of
opening up the doors of all these buildings to the city is,
you know, it's just so it goes so much, so much further beyond
architecture and intake. You know, real like issues of
(46:49):
public accessibility and what itmeans to live in a physical
neighborhood in a physical city in today's digital world where
we're just bombarded by images of buildings and stuff like that
and just the act of like openinga door, right?
But like opening multiple doors at the same time to me, just so,
so excited. And as an organization at KPFI
(47:11):
think we're really committed to those types of
multidisciplinary, publicly, outwardly facing organizations.
You know, we're obviously involved, many of my partners
involved in the A, A, A and moreprofessional organizations, but
organizations like Open House, that's the Urban Design Forum,
the NLA and London ULICTB Council for tall buildings,
(47:35):
urban habitats, these these organizations which try to bring
the built realm to the people are I'm personally excited about
it. Open house has just been, it's
just been an amazing so far. It's been an amazing experience.
And really I'm just totally thrilled to be able to like help
push that organization forward. I wish that there were more
communication actually between London and New York and Mexico
(47:57):
City, Hong Kong. And, and that's something I
think, you know, over time, hopefully I'm, I'm hopeful that
the organizations can kind of domore of because, you know, the
idea of these festivals that arejust popping up around the world
and all these major cities is pretty exciting to me.
Yeah. So I mean, yeah, I think it's a
it's a wonderful initiative. Just just to end on what, what
(48:20):
do you think the audience, you know, which will probably be,
you know, architects, early careers architects and other
people in design, What do you think they could take away from
your journey in architecture? What are those sort of key
lessons? I'm not sure anyone should learn
anything from me, but I will saythe one thing is like don't be
(48:40):
in a hurry, right? Like, and it goes back to this
like you got to get comfortable with delayed ratification.
Don't be in a hurry to get a drawing set out.
Don't be in a hurry to get a rendering out.
Don't be in a hurry to build toomany buildings that the
profession is a battle of attrition, right?
(49:01):
And it's, it's don't, don't set out to be anything other than to
build your building 1 building at a time.
And then because it, it'll happen anyway, right?
Like particularly at a firm, firms like KPF where they're
multi generational and things are always moving, Society's
(49:22):
always moving culture inside thefirm.
Always. We just focus on being the best
version of the architect that you want to be.
And remember that there isn't one type of architect, just as
there isn't one doctor, you know, or one lawyer.
We're in a professional servicesbusiness.
There's lots of ways to be an architect and get comfy with the
(49:43):
kind of architect you want to be.
And really don't spend your lifeworrying about work life
balance. Spend your life becoming the
kind of architect that you want to be.
And just just remember that. And if you feel yourself, if you
feel yourself getting pulled into Macau and like a life of
(50:03):
casino facades in river Delta, like don't be afraid to make a
change, you know, like it's OK. It's not the end of the world.
It's the your first job, not your last job.
It's your second job, not your second to last job.
Like you can course correct. But just remember that the
profession attempts to move you towards specialization.
(50:24):
And so if you feel yourself being moved, whether you're in a
five person firm or a 500 personfirm, if you feel yourself being
moved into a specialized thing that you don't want, you, you
have to change. You have to make the change.
Because a culture like KPF or the AIA or any kind of anything
(50:46):
is never going to care more about your career than you.
And ultimately you're responsible for becoming the
kind of architect you want to be.
So I would just say be like super attentive to that over the
long run, the long medium run. And as you build out these
portfolio buildings, you know, and that's, that's my advice to
(51:07):
someone who wants to build buildings.
Of course, there are architects who never build buildings
either. And that's and serves the style
purpose. I would like to see the
profession as a whole. Like I am concerned about the
state of the profession. And I watched in this country in
particular what happened to Mechanical Engineers with like
lowering fees and lowering scopeof services and kind of like
(51:31):
like a cannibalization of that, that particular profession and a
down grading of the quality of the deliverables and things and
the fees. And I am concerned that the same
thing could happen to the profession of architecture too,
if we're all not careful. And so I do want to make sure, I
(51:55):
do feel, I think the partners ofKPF, we all feel like a real
responsibility to pull the profession up as much as we can
and to make sure that it exists 50 years from now, 40 years from
now, there's, you know, our cities are under siege
politically, economically, societally, our profession is
under siege from those same things.
(52:16):
And so it's not a foregone conclusion that our profession
exists 50 years from now. So we all have kind of an
obligation to each other and thefuture generations to do the
right thing once we get into these positions where we can
build good buildings, charge good fees, and make sure we're
(52:39):
building a profession, not just but that we're building a
profession that society needs. So that goes back to
conversation about like affordable housing or whatever
its resiliency, sustainable, like all these huge crushing
issues that I do feel that architects should be a bigger
part of solving completely professionally.
(53:00):
Yeah, no, completely agree. Just lastly on on, on reflection
because we've been doing a lot of reflection.
How so your career has it as it turned out how you imagined?
Was there, was there a plan or is it, you know, is it
intentional? Is it just adaptation and how
(53:20):
much of that that course correction that you alluded to
earlier, have you done yourself sort of thing?
Yeah, I mean, if you had asked like 18 year old me, I guess I
would have thought I would be writing books on architect.
And if you would have asked like24 year old me, I'd probably
think I'd be like working on airports.
(53:43):
And and then I think if you would have asked me, 26 year old
me, I probably would have thought I would have been like
somehow had my own business, youknow, so my career has been
roughly adjacent to what I set out to do.
It's certainly been like infinitely more satisfying than
(54:04):
I ever imagined it could be. So from that, in that respect,
like I'm just very grateful to have been able to work on the
projects I've worked on, to workwith the people at KPF that I
worked with, to work with the clients.
Like one of the great things about KPF is you have great
(54:26):
clients too, right? So you're learning from great
professionals and real estate business.
So in that sense, maybe I'd likeover overachieved and over like
I, I sort of feel like just grateful in all those ways.
Of course, like when you're in the middle of the trenches of
running a design firm together with your partners, it feels
(54:46):
like everything's going wrong. It feels like just the wheels
are coming off and all the stuffand you know, you're jealous of
your other people's building when you're you're unhappy with
your building. And but that's the state of
being an architect, right? Is like looking up a building
and seeing a mistake and knowingyou'll do better next time.
So I think in in the midst of a career, it feels like you still
(55:10):
got so many problems to deal with and so much buildings you
have to get right. But, you know, I guess just
reflecting on it, I'm, yeah, I'mlike extremely glad that I stuck
with it. Extremely glad.
And I just think I just go back to this lastly, like that, you
know, like sitting as an undergraduate typing away on my
(55:31):
thesis, never imagining, you know, the Internet.
Like, I mean, you start your career while you be an architect
without the Internet in the middle of it and you've got like
more processing power in your phone.
Your client has more access to you than you'd ever imagined you
(55:53):
would be. So it definitely the profession
definitely keeps you young. Like I, I think of like my
first, my very first like summerjob.
My dad was like, if you really want to be an architect, go work
for this guy. And I like went to like Orlando,
FL and the guy this like MA lineand he's up and down.
I'm like drawing that guy went out of business because he
didn't use AutoCAD. And then my, my, the client,
(56:15):
the, the company I work for in Hong Kong, like they didn't go
from AutoCAD to Revit. They went out of business.
And it's like now it's like we're in AI.
It's like you got to use it. You got to find a way to use it.
You got to use the new technology.
You have to adapt, but just try to do it in a way that propels
not only your practice for it and you as an individual for,
but the whole profession forward.
(56:35):
And that's the thing I think we haven't as a profession globally
got in our head around quite yet.
It's like how we going to make these neutrals work for us and
work for societies making because there's so much work to
do to make society better. Thank you so much for joining me
forth. I mean, yeah, just a fascinating
conversation and a wonderful reflection on your career.
(56:56):
Thank you very much. Great.
Well, it's great to meet you. Thank you so much.
I appreciate it.
You'll never not be a successfularchitect if you have two
things. If you have those two things,
you're going to be successful. It's not a foregone conclusion
that our profession exists 50 years from now.
So we all have kind of an obligation to each other and to
future generations to do the right thing. 4th Packly is an
experienced architect and principal at KPF in New York.
He's LED an incredible career designing and delivering some of
(00:20):
the world's most impactful urbanprojects, including Hudson's
Yard in New York and Changi Airport in Singapore. 4th is an
expert assembling and leading large teams to deliver ambitious
developments that will continue to define their cities for
decades to come. How have you felt the practice
has evolved over those 20 years?Well, there are the things
inside of the practice that haveevolved, and then there's just
(00:41):
like the macro stuff that's happening to you as a firm of
individual. Like when we started Hudson
Yards, the first sketches we didfor the area, the iPhone hadn't
been invented yet. And then like 10 years later,
there's Hudson Yards. What do you think the audience
could take away from your journey in architecture?
I'm not sure anyone should learnanything from me, but I will say
(01:01):
the one thing is like. 4th, thank you so much for joining
me. Thanks for having me.
So just as a starter and a question I'd like to ask all the
guests, why architecture? What is it about this career
that keeps you getting up in themorning, that keeps you coming
(01:21):
back for more? Yeah, I guess it's the same
answer that I sort of the reasonthe the reason that propelled me
into the profession to begin with, which is just the desire
to have an impact on cities, on neighborhoods, on, you know,
make positive contributions to people's lives.
So at a firm like KPF where you,you know, the impact is broad
(01:43):
and global, you know, wake up every morning and try to do
that. Yeah, lovely.
In in your sort of early days, you know what what is your that
sort of route into architecture that you you had, you know, what
was what was the, the upbringingthat led you down this path and
you know, the important people that kind of led you there.
(02:05):
I don't come from a family of architects or a family of
artists. I, my, my mom was a banker, my
dad was in the commodities business, but I grew up in
England. They're both American and I, my
childhood grew up in England. And because of my dad's job, we
were travelling a lot like he was, he was in the sugar
business. So we'd go to the Philippines,
(02:26):
Hong Kong, you know, parts of all over the world, basically
Caribbean, etcetera. And through his job, got to
travel, got to see a lot of cities, got to go through a lot
of airports, got to stay in a lot of hotels, and just got the
building bug from that. And luckily had, you know,
parents who were supportive of it and, you know, schooling that
(02:51):
supported creativity and was able to eventually parlay that
into a career. How much, I mean, that's
obviously a very sort of novel upbringing that not many of us
have. And, and how much of that has
sort of, you know, LED you to a,a practice that is incredibly
international with the, you know, does projects all over the
(03:12):
world And, you know, is, is thatkind of an intentional thing do
you feel? Yeah, it's funny.
I look back on it now and of course it all like makes sense.
I don't think it was, I don't think it was that intentional
when I started. But I think the, you know, KPF
mission of KPF is to make impactful urban architecture.
(03:34):
And that's why hopefully everyone comes in everyday to
the office and he's focused. And I think the upbringing of
travel with a dad in the business world and it and it's
an entrepreneurial dad like I was in the, you know, he would
take me to meetings, he would take me to a client dinners.
I was very much part of the family business.
And it allowed me to have a comfort in boardrooms, which I
(03:57):
think a lot of architects don't get that training actually.
For a company like KPF to be able to like walk into a
boardroom, be comfortable givinga presentation in front of 20
people to go out to dinner. If you feel comfort around all
sorts of different types of people, like not just
geographically, Asia, Middle East, Europe, Americas, but also
(04:18):
economically, socially, culturally, to just be sensitive
to the world around us, which ofcourse you have to be as an
architect anyway. But I think particularly as an
architect engaged in mixed-use large projects, particularly
with like lots of corporate clients, you have to have that
kind of level of comfort. So and I look back at it, yeah,
(04:39):
like absolutely makes sense. But of course, set set out to do
that. In your, in your early days, I
mean, obviously you're a, you'rea graduate of, of Yao and again,
that's a prestigious school of architecture.
What I mean, what is a, what is a, an education in Yale really
like to leading you to, you know, a career in, in
(04:59):
architecture And what are those kind of key lessons that maybe
you learnt at, you know, university that you've kind of
taken through? Well, I went to Yale undergrad
as well as grad. I left when I left London.
I, I moved to the United States to go to university.
And that first four years at Yale was liberal arts education.
(05:20):
And so that, and I didn't do architectural design anything.
I was I stumbled into architectural theory and history
as a degree. I was one of four people at Yale
who graduated a degree and I wrote my thesis on airports, you
know, so it was, it was in retrospect, like a very loose
education, right, allowed me to do kind of to explore what was
(05:43):
of interest to me. And so that was a very different
experience to my graduate experience at Yale, which was
obviously went from, you know, aclass of 1200 people to a class
of 40 the the Yale School of Architecture program.
And it still is to this day. But it was very much rooted in
building and like a very pragmatic approach to
(06:06):
architecture. I don't think it's an accident
at Richard Rodgers or Foster that these guys out of that
school, like it was every secondyear at architectural, everyone
builds a house. And so I went from like doing
architectural history theory, like writing about airports, the
history of airports, having no business being in architecture
or design, but kind of coming out right after September 11th,
(06:29):
the United States. It was kind of a weird
commercial recession. And Bob Stern and the Dean was
like, Hey, why don't you just stay, go all the way through,
can't find a job, you know, become a real architect.
And so I was lucky because he was at that time, he had just
started in the Graduate School and he was very involved
(06:49):
pedagogically with even the undergrad.
So he was, I was very lucky to be kind of floating around this
liberal arts education and to beable to be in conversation with
the Dean and that kind of be able to switch from this loose
education to this very pragmaticeducation.
And I do think the, that Yale School of Architecture, you
(07:10):
know, everyone who comes out of there knew could have been a
sole practitioner, right? It basically taught the the
taught you the fundamentals of of of running an architecture
business of being an architect and building.
I think, I think that's a, that's a kind of fascinating
conversation to be had because Imean, in the UK at least, we
(07:30):
have continuing debates about, you know, the place of
architecture school and the graduates that that sort of come
out, the value that they can provide and the education that
they're receiving. And I suppose the common, the,
the common sort of thought is that, you know, university, at
least in the UK, isn't preparingpeople for, you know, practice
sort of thing. And I wonder whether you could
(07:53):
just talk a little bit on that. You know, when, when talking of
Yale, it sounds like they are preparing you for a career in,
in, in architecture and you're producing a, a student that's
kind of ready to be moulded. So.
I thought at its best they were.Of course, now I look back at it
and I'm like, Oh my God, I wish they'd prepared people better.
Right? Like, I think, I think this is a
(08:16):
dilemma that all architecture schools face.
I think I, I've seen just over the years, even since I've grown
in the 20 years I've been practicing, you know, the
emphasis on the schools change over time.
It was a weird when I went to school.
I don't know if this is the samein the UK, honestly, but when I
went to school it was just at the start like the Guggenheim
(08:36):
Museum and that sort of the ideaof Frank Gehry and Starkitex and
R.E.M. Coolhaus and Saha and Bob Stern
was bringing these people into the school like they were
teaching at school. And so it felt like, you know,
there's always this push and pull in architecture between the
Academy and the profession. And, you know, when is when is
the action in the schools and when is the action in the
(08:58):
profession? And it very much felt like the
start of schools recognizing that they needed to engage
professionals actually that thatthat some of the action was
happening outside of the Academy.
And I think as a student, even at the time, we were like kind
of aware that that was taking place.
And I would say maybe this is a very, this is coming from a very
biased place, but I don't, I don't see that.
(09:21):
I still see a lot of the action taking place outside of the
schools, right? Like a lot of what's driving the
profession is not, you know, piein the sky academic thinking how
to. I mean, we have an affordability
crisis in New York that is just as great a problem as it is in
London is just a great a problemas it is in Singapore.
(09:42):
And I don't see any of the, any of the dialogue that's occurring
in the schools elevating into society.
And similarly, I don't see any of the starchitects or the, the,
you know, the people in the profession are dealing with that
either. So it's kind of morphed over.
I've watched it kind of more from when I entered Graduate
School and they were, you know, the starchitects just starting
(10:04):
to do museum commissions and things like that.
Now they're doing luxury housing, right?
So it's just been it's been a weird thing to watch this kind
of creep in the profession that honestly, I I hope, I hope
corrects or, you know, moderatesa little bit over the next
decade. Yeah.
(10:24):
So you know, you've, you've completed your education at Yale
and you you come into KPF now you're 20 years on a principle
at KPF. What is it about?
I mean, because obviously there are lots of people that's
probably going to be listening to this that aren't going to
spend 20 years in a practice. And, you know, probably ask that
(10:46):
question of, you know, what is it about that practice that
resonates with you that, you know, the ethos, the, you know,
the original setting up of the original founders and how
they've, you know, imbued an ethos into a practice.
And I suppose it's it's, it's it's about how does that align
with you as a person that's madeyou stay there and become part
(11:09):
of, you know, you are part of now the practice.
Yeah, and I, I mean, I don't think anyone sets out to stay
anywhere for 20 years when you're in your 20s.
But so I graduated from, from Yale and I went, I took a job
working in Hong Kong, the local local company in Hong Kong,
building a lot of casino work inMacau at the time, big airport
(11:30):
projects, big hotel projects. And Bob Sturd, who I mentioned
was furious because it was around that time and of course
the economy had switched and people were literally like
writing to Herzog and writing toR.E.M. and, and getting jobs
without interviews. Like it was rooming.
And he was like, what are you doing?
This is crazy. And I just want to work on big
projects. And so I went to the region of
the world that was building these big projects and, and I
(11:54):
liked it. I had a great time.
And I, I was working on 2 projects at the time. 1 was
Casino a Venetian, the Venetian in Macau, which was a kind of
carbon copy times 4 in scale of the one in, you know, doing like
kit of parts and figuring out how to put facades together.
I mean, real like not glamorous architecture, but fun.
(12:16):
Like you got a lot of responsibility and you were in
the field building stuff. And then the other project I was
doing was I was detailing AKPF building a retrofit of the
landmark in, in central Hong Kong.
And so I kind of started like I was doing that.
I was working in, in Macau and Ihad my whole life flashed before
(12:37):
in my eyes. And I was like, Oh my God, I'm
going to end up in Macau and like doing Christinas the rest
of my life. This is not what I want.
And I so I met a partner at KPF,Paul Katz and I interviewed back
here in New York. And my intention was just to get
back to New York and like, oh, like admit to Bob Stern that I
made this huge mistake and just to get back and do some work.
(12:59):
And, and this firm that at the time had just finished with
Punky Hills and Tokyo's transformation transformative
project Tokyo, it had just finished the Nagoya train
stations, huge mixed-use thing. They were project and I knew of
the work because I was working in Asia and working on their
projects. And I went to the interview and
Paul interviewed me, looked at My Portfolio and said, I know
your work, we've been working, you're hired.
(13:21):
I'm going to call HR. They're going to give you a
call, like go downstairs. They're going to call you when
you get downstairs. The offer is going to be
offensive. You call me and we'll sort it
out. And I went downstairs.
I still remember this downstairsonto the street.
They called me and like a flip phone, you know, and got an
offer. And then I called pawns like
this is offensive. This is like the lowest salary.
(13:43):
Come on. I know like, you know what, I'm
capable. And then I and then like 10
minutes later got a call from HRbeing with the revised offer and
I walked right back into the office and started work.
And it was like that kind of like entrepreneurial spirit in
this huge firm. You would never expect this huge
the time it was like 200 and 5300 people, a firm to be able
(14:03):
to be that nimble and entrepreneurial, right?
And so my expectation was I would stay for a year or two and
get my feet walking me and then figure out what I was going to
do with my life. And I just love the work.
I was, you know, going back and forth between New York and Asia
and we were building, you know, I did as a very young architect,
I was getting to work on these amazing projects, Mandarin,
(14:24):
Macau and them. And we did 12 other projects in
in Central Hong Kong and Beijingand the tallest building in
Guangzhou. And, you know, just opportunity
after opportunity after opportunity.
I never had time to think about leaving.
And this the, the economy was growing, the firm was growing,
and it was a fun place to learn.So here I am, 20 years later.
(14:47):
Yeah, sounds like a joy. Yeah, how?
How was that transition into management?
Because again, you know, we havelots of conversations and
architecture about that transition from being a, you
know, on the job architect us, us kind of knowing our knowing
the ropes as an architect and then being thrown into, you
know, being promoted and thrown into management.
(15:07):
I mean, it sounds like you're, you know, your upbringing gave
you that sort of, you know, understanding of of the
boardroom, as you mentioned, Butit must have been the kind of
learning curve to kind of, you know, understand how to manage
people, how to manage a practiceof that science.
Yeah, I mean, you're, you're an architect.
I I, I mean, I think, I don't know if you agree with this, but
(15:31):
it's like the hardest part of mycareer was that moment where I
was both expected to lead A-Teamand do the work.
And just like, how does this even possible?
Like I'm responsible doing all these drawing sets and I got to
tell these two other three otherfour other and other people what
they did wrong. And while I'm making mistake, I
mean, it was just, it was the worst kind of couple of years in
(15:53):
my life. And I always say to people at
KBF, this is the hardest part ofyour career.
And the only way I know how to do it is just get through as
fast as possible. But get out above the water and,
you know, see the lake and it's just, it's just so, so hard.
And then once you get your head above the water, you start to
realize things that you thought were really complicated are not.
(16:19):
If you break them down and scaleand you use analogies to kind of
understand how the business runs, you can kind of figure it
out. Like I, I don't know, I would
say like Kate, but Bob Stern also said to me, you'll never
not be a successful architect ifyou have two things.
Empathy for your clients becausethey're taking huge risks,
(16:41):
they're defying gravity, they'retaking out huge loans, they're
putting their wife Dory on as collateral.
So you got to have empathy and then you got to have optimism
too. Like you have to convince people
to build this 500 meter tall building.
You have to convince them that it's the right decision to build
office and not hotel and to makeit blue and not yellow.
And if you have those two things, they're going to be
(17:02):
successful. But of course, it's much more
complicated than that because you're dealing with creative
people, right? And every person in the
architecture business is creative from the countdown to
the, you know, everyone. So but it is fundamentally a
service business, particularly the kind of work that KPF does.
Like it's no really like the business model is really no
(17:25):
different than like a plumbing business.
Someone calls you up to a job, you got to go do it as as best
you can, as fast as you can and make sure nothing breaks.
You don't have to come back and they're happy and they call
their friends and they tell you that they tell them to use you
to fix the pipes. And so that's how I like
approach our business is like thinking about our business.
(17:47):
It's helpful to me. Remind me about like how to the
fundamentals of a service business, right?
Because sometimes I think when you get in these creative
moments and you get caught up inall of the impact you can make,
you, you tend to forget just at the end of the day, it's a
service business, you're a licensed professional and you're
servicing a client, right? So it's always kind of important
(18:10):
to just remember that. Yeah, I mean, I love, I love
that analogy of empathy and optimism.
Yes, I. Never.
I just never forget it. It's like the best advice
anyones ever given. Yeah, yeah, it's wonderful as a,
as a, as a principle. What are the sort of values that
you try to lead with? What are the values that you try
and, you know, imbue into your staff and like you say, working
(18:33):
with creative people, you know, a huge collective of creative
people with their own hierarchies in a business like
KPF, You know, how how is it that you get the best out of
them for your clients? Yeah, I think ultimately and
Gene Cone, our founder and Paul Kaze used to tell me this,
ultimately as an architect, you are the your culture and your
(18:57):
firm is the projects that you win and the build that you
built. And so you can get up and you
can talk about mission and you can talk about culture and you
can do, you can make a million business plans.
But if you don't win the work that you want, you don't become
the firm that you want. And so I have always been very
focused on making sure that particular the partnership is
(19:20):
really focused on winning the work that we want, that
reinforces our mission that the partners want to work on, the
partners want to engage on and that feels part of our, our
Common Core values. And so, you know, you can talk
about live work balance and all this stuff, but ultimately we
want people to come in every dayto work and know a know what
(19:41):
they're working on, but also like why they're working on it.
What is the mission of KPF? The mission of KPF is to do
impactful urban architecture. We believe in built.
We believe in the power of the basic building blocks of an
office building, of a residential building, to make a
neighborhood better, make a citybetter, to elevate societies,
right? And so if everyone's coming in
(20:03):
every day with that in the back of their head and they see the
partners working hard to achievethat and they hear it enough and
they see it reflected in the work that they're doing, you
don't have to, you don't have tosay that much, right?
Like it's it's better to just speak through.
(20:24):
Speak through the portfolio and the, and the work, right.
Well, I, I don't know. I thought I've always, and we're
complicated. We've got, you know, 27
partners. So we're not a, we're not a
single name. You know, we've founded 3
founders. There's, it's always been a
partnership. It always will be a partnership.
And so the mission has to be broad enough and important
(20:45):
enough that you can collect all these different voices and they
can all have a a say in contributing to that mission.
How, how do you navigate that? I mean, because obviously with,
with such a sort of international base and I know
you've personally been involved in, you know, numerous
international projects. What is that sort of navigation
(21:06):
process? Because obviously KPF have a
presence in numerous, you know, geography sort of locations,
London and the like. How do you how do you sort of
split yourself and and the sort of responsibilities?
Yeah. So we have evolved.
So the firm is almost 50 years old now.
We're on our 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation of leaders.
(21:29):
And the we've evolved from a firm that was very focused on
the US to a firm really like geographically about a third of
our work is in the Americas, a third of our work is in the is
in Europe and the Middle East and the third is in Asia.
And it's roughly, you know, kindof been, that's been the kind of
target for the least the last 10years.
And really we've been achieving it over the last five like
(21:53):
pretty regularly. And so the ambition is to be a
global firm. We have two design Centers for
those three regions. So we're doing design work out
of New York, design work out of London, but we've got partners
around the world and that are executing, executing that work.
And so, yeah, like it's, we've always felt like limiting the
(22:15):
locations where the design work happens to 123 places at most,
allows us to have common conversations about the
intentions of the design. And So what I mean by that is
like, we're not, you know, when we open an office in San
Francisco, it's to deliver thoseprojects in San Francisco.
It's not to, it's, it's not so that we have California partners
(22:38):
working on California projects or London projects working on
London, London partners working on London projects.
I think the partners have alwaysfelt like, it's like, I
certainly, I love coming to workand working on a project in
Shanghai, a project in Texas, a project in California.
And so we've never really wantedto stop that from happening, but
(22:58):
also want to service our projects and service our
clients. And so we have to have a, a
global breath. But ultimately every Friday, all
the partners sit around the table at lunch every Friday and
we air work and we talk. And you can't do that if you're
spread out in too much. I think, I think that's one of
the, I mean, you pick up on it. You know, the, the one of the
(23:19):
greatest things about being an architect is that variety, you
know, and whether that variety comes in location or project
type or, you know, stage of project.
You know, the, the actual role of the architect is so broad.
And you know, your experiences everyday are completely
different, which I, I mean, personally I find wonderful.
I mean apart from area schedules, which are terrible.
(23:39):
Yeah. But it's tricky because it's
like like we don't have sector leads, we don't have geographic
leads. Like we are the basic building
block of our firm is the team. So we purpose build teams for
the project, right? And so, and then the project
finishes, the team stays with the project, the project
finishes, we disband. And so expertise is formed to
(24:03):
deliver bespoke solutions to individual projects.
There's always 22 partners on a projects and no one is ever,
it's my project, it's always ourproject.
And so we have to do a number ofthose things to make sure the
culture stays in place. But it, it is not without cost,
right? Like it would be much more
efficient. And it's caused us to our growth
to be slower than maybe some of our competitors because we, we
(24:25):
don't have a matrix organizationwhere we've got like geographic
leads, driving sector leads. And we don't have any of that
stuff. We have conversations and like,
hey, you take that one, I'll take this one.
You work with her, I'll work with him.
And it's inefficient, but it it holds on to design culture when
(24:45):
we don't have one, like voice, right?
Would would you say that's a sort of value proposition that
that sets you guys apart? I think that's where we've put
our, for better or worse, that'slike where we planted our flag
and like, we're going to make sure that that's successful one
way or the other, right? Like we've, we've made our bed,
(25:07):
we're going to sleep in it. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, your, your career has obviously been full of, you
know, incredibly sort of large, complex urban LED schemes, you
know, Hudson Yard in New York and the projects you mentioned
in, in, you know, Hong Kong and elsewhere.
I know, I know you've spoken widely on the sort of
(25:31):
collaboration of design teams and, and the the have have
taught on, on those sort of business ideas as well.
I wonder if you just spend a little minute kind of talking
around that sort of subject and why you kind of why that's the
kind of interest point for you and, and what you see as the
sort of, you know, important skills of architects in kind of
(25:53):
leading those things in, in sortof the formation of those things
and you know, really getting thebest out of it.
Yeah, We've always felt, at least it's always been told to
me and I sort of always tried toimpart it on to others, that
like KPF at its best should be aplace where you can, you can
become the kind of architect youwant to become faster and better
(26:14):
inside the firm than in the overall profession.
And so if you, if you hold on tothat idea and then you think of
the basic building block of the firm as being the team,
essentially, you know, we're 550people, it's roughly 100
projects in the office. If you think back to your like
primary school education, 100 people in a class, you kind of
(26:35):
know 100 people's names and you've got like 10 people who
are really close with and then ten that you're really like, I
don't know about. And that's kind of like the way
we handle the projects, right? And so each one of those
projects, each time we form a team, we're kind of like
incubating a small business, right?
So you got like 100 small businesses running around the
(26:55):
office with accountability for design, quality, pride,
profitability, all that, all that stuff.
That's the thing that creates the the that's thing that
actually translates on the promise of being a better
architect faster inside the firm, right?
Is creating that entrepreneuriallost, right?
(27:18):
Where it becomes really interesting is you got 550
people globally. You got 100 projects globally.
Some projects have two people onthem and some projects, you
know, we're doing Changi Airport, it'll be the biggest
airport in the world. It's got 7 other architects.
You know, we're working with Thomas Heatherwick's team.
We're working with four or five other local architects in
Singapore. That's talk about a small
(27:40):
business. That's a medium sized business.
That's a 70 for us. That's a 70 person team, right?
Or Hudson Yards at its peak was 70 people, 1 Vanderbilt peak 50
people worked on a project Victoria Dockside in in Hong
Kong, by far the most complicated project I've ever
worked on in my career. You know, at its peak we had 25
people like each each each one of these teams just at KPF are a
(28:03):
small business, right? And so that's where it gets kind
of great because you can learn how to run a small business,
running a four person team and you can grow and people trust
you And those let you do two of those small businesses and then
you grow again and you get a tenperson team.
And then one day you wake up andyou're like the project director
(28:24):
of Changi and your, your design collaborator is Thomas
Heatherwick. And you've got five other
partners from KPF who are also with you running the project.
Not one, not 2, but 5. And it's a small business.
And so you learn how to collaborate, You learn how to
create shared accountability, shared responsibility.
(28:45):
And at its best, it's super exciting, right, 'cause no one's
telling you how to run your job or how to make money.
You're figuring it out as you gowith smart people who are more
right than wrong. And that's the, that's what I
mean. It's like the the the
incremental growth of a career, right?
Yeah, No, I think that's a, it'sa kind of fascinating way of
(29:06):
putting it and and not somethingthat I've kind of heard a
principle kind of talk in that in that way before.
Because I mean, obviously, you know, you have, you know, you
probably have a lot of young people join the practice and to
kind of map out their career journey like that is, I mean,
it's incredibly exciting. You know, it's, it's because,
because obviously it's a, it's ahard profession to come into.
And you know, we have all the sort of negative connotations of
(29:28):
architecture, you know, in the, in the early days of our careers
and stuff. But it sounds, you know, it
sounds like a an incredibly enticing and and tangible kind
of route, if you will, a young person in your practice.
It's it's hard to make sure thatit continues to happen, right?
Like it's hard work to make surethat you can create opportunity
(29:52):
as the firm grows, you have to continue, you just have to
create that much more opportunity.
So that's the, that's kind of been the, the challenge at the
firm is really like, how do you,how do you scale up that
opportunity? And we're not always perfect.
It's not like a perfect place towork and no, no place.
But you know, I think there is agenuine, I see it like Jamie,
(30:15):
our president, I see it in the board, I see it in our
partnership, like the partners as a group are pretty committed
to making sure that the opportunities that they had and
were given by the founders are passed on.
That's, that's a cool place to work.
It's a nice place to make a career.
Yeah, in terms of the the scale of the projects that you're
(30:36):
working, I mean, you know, you mentioned a, a, a team of two to
a team of 70. What is it about?
I mean, you mentioned earlier that, you know, large projects
get you excited, you know, what is it about the scale, the
complexity, the the location, ifyou will?
You know, what is it about thosetypes of projects that that kind
(30:57):
of entice you and even with their sort of complexity, their,
you know, numerous stakeholders,their bureaucracy and and all
the sort of negative parts. Yeah, I think I've always been
OK with delayed gratification. Like our career is like, so it's
(31:17):
so hard to be an architect today, practicing today.
And I I have so much actual empathy for particularly like
our younger staff and or precisethe people we talked about the
people who are doing the work and telling and kind of trying
to organize the work at the sametime.
Because if you were doing an apartment renovation, you're in
and out and 6 to 12 months and it still doesn't compete at all
(31:43):
with the Internet. It doesn't compete at all with
the iPhone and all this sort of like instant gratification, but
it's a year of your life. Like Changi Airport.
That's I, yeah, I was there at the I, we started that job.
My for the first phone call we got on Changi, right, was my
daughter's was born, which is 10years ago.
(32:03):
We won the project seven years ago when my son was born.
I was in the in the the hospitalroom.
We got the call. So I'll never forget like those
miles when we open the project, my kids won't be living in my
house, right? Like it is like, not only will I
have helped bring this building into the world, I will have like
(32:25):
nurtured two adults into the right.
So it's like you have to be super comfortable with taking
the small wins like every day taking this and then and then
just being super grateful that you work in a place where there
are like lots of people, like 70other people are coming to work
(32:47):
working harder than you every day on all aspects of the
project, right? Like that, like one of the great
things about KPF, I'm sure it exists in, in your practice and
other practices. It's just like, if you don't
want to do something, there's always someone at KPF who does
want to do the thing you don't want to do.
(33:08):
Who's who thinks architecture exactly like you mentioned
Excel, right, or area schedules.Like there's, there's 10 people
walking around here. That's all they love Excel and
like, so that's kind of the fun realization is that like there's
lots of, you know, you go into architecture school.
I had a classmate, we were doinga we were like choosing.
(33:29):
It was my first year in architecture school and I was
like really struggling with likehow to be a designer coming out
of this theory history background.
And there was this chair class and it was like a chair design
class and I, and I remember her,I said Jeron, like, I really
don't want to take this class. Like I don't have any chair that
I want to build. Like I designed build like, and
(33:50):
she was like, for you're an idiot.
Like not every architect has to design A chair.
Like don't be that kind of architect.
Like a light bulb went off in myhead and I was like, Oh yeah,
like I don't have to. There doesn't have to be a
fourth Bagley chair in the world, right, for me to be an
architect. And like, I feel that way about
KPF. Like we're all doing different
(34:11):
kind of big projects. And as long as people are
becoming the kind of architect that they want to be and we're
covering everything, everyone's going to do a better job
becoming the person that they want to become rather than
having to, I mean, so on a big project, you don't have to do
everything. You can really like become that
architect and drill down. And so I like that and I and
(34:34):
it's fun to be in a place like that where you can collaborate
with other architects and not just inside the practice, but
outside the practice. It's lovely.
It's like a wonderful thing, youknow, especially if you had a
career for 20 years in the same office to get to have ideas from
Thomas Heather way. I can get to have ideas from a
61 and RSP and Sorbonne and all these other firms that we're
(34:56):
collaborating with on Changi andnot, not to mention, you know,
Hudson Yards or Victoria Docks that we had a hundred different
practice design practices working on one project.
And like, if you just are a sponge for those ideas, it's
amazing, right? Exciting.
Just get all that. It's just like Graduate School
on steroids. Fascinating how how have you
(35:17):
felt the the practice has evolved over those 20 years?
You know, obviously you've been part of it and part of, you
know, the team kind of steering that.
I mean, obviously scale wise hashas radically changed, but you
know what, what are the things that continue and what are the
things that have changed? Well, there are the, there are
the things inside of the practice that have evolved and
(35:39):
like going from, you know, having the founders very
involved in practice to not, it's obviously a sea change in
any design culture, right? And there are the things about
going from when I joined, I think there was a London office
and a New York office and maybe they just started Shanghai.
And then I was sort of helping Hong Kong.
(36:00):
And now we've got Singapore and Seoul and San Francisco and like
all these other. So there's all that stuff.
And then there's just like the macro stuff that's happening to
you as a firm, as an individual.Like when we we started Hudson
Yards, the first sketches we didfor the area, the iPhone hadn't
(36:21):
been invented yet, right? And then like 10 years later,
there's Hudson Yards. When we started work in Covent
Garden, the iPhone hadn't been invented.
If a nation of Covent Garden, there was no way for us to
anticipate the societal changes that those that technological
invention would bring to the world.
(36:41):
And yet we were still coming to work every day and designing a
building and documenting a building and getting those
buildings built while these other things were changing.
And you know, I was, it's impossible to be engaged in the
act of like city building without feeling the enormous
pressure of, I don't know what you call it, like
(37:03):
deglobalization, right? Like the 1st 20 years of my
career is all, everything was inthe service of connecting the
world and seamlessly and growingour practice and making sure
that our teams in Hong Kong weretotally synced with our teams in
New York and London. And, and now we live in this
world, this like fragmenting world.
And that's not our firm. That has nothing to do with the
(37:26):
kind of culture that we're trying to build in our firm.
But it's everything to do with our future, right?
And probably everything to do with us as, as individual
architects, building buildings, wanting to build buildings in
China, wanting to build buildings in Europe and South
America. So it's just like when you start
your career, it's just no idea that these things are going to
(37:47):
happen. You can't imagine.
I can't even plan for tomorrow, you know?
How? How do you plan for tomorrow?
Then you know, what are you planning for tomorrow?
We've done, it's like, it's likewe do business plans after
business plan after business plan and, and at least in the
last, since COVID, everything iswrong.
It, it's just like everything backwards, right?
(38:09):
So it's just, we've sort of likegiven up trying to guess and
estimate. And, you know, and it's tricky,
like we, when we, we had to kindof like 2 years into COVID and
we realized 100 out of the 500 people that were at KPF had
never stepped foot in our office.
And it's like, how do you talk about a culture of a firm when
(38:31):
that's going on, right? And then suddenly they all come
back and it's like, it's like freshman year and everyone's
meeting each other. And what is that?
That's like a whole new culture,right?
So I didn't think all these all these macro events are really, I
think like architects tend to view of themselves as the center
of the universe, but really likewe're really agents of societies
(38:52):
that are changing. They're being kind of these
changes are being mostly forced on US.
One of the pieces of advice thatGene Gene Cohen gave me before
he passed, like, you know, maybethis is like 10 years ago now,
was, you know, a lot of architects see their careers,
(39:15):
they see themselves moving in their careers like stepping up
junior to a associate, to a director, to an owner.
And they don't imagine that the practice that they're working on
is also evolving. The people that there's either
that are sitting to either side of them are also doing the same
thing and going in different directions, right?
So you can have all the best intentionalities about the
(39:36):
architect you want to be and thestuff around you can be doing
something totally different. So it's just about finding a
place where your where your mission, your personal mission
is synced with the articulated mission of that firm and the
quality and the the quality of the portfolio that that firm is
(39:59):
trying to create, right. We, we spoke earlier about,
about Yale and your sort of youreducation there.
I know you've sort of continued that relationship into your sort
of later career. I know you've had work published
there and you've, you've gone back to teach as well.
How, how important has that beenin your career having that
(40:22):
retaining that connection, retaining that sort of the
connections with your sort of peers from that time as well?
And you know that sort of ongoing relationship between
practice and education. Yeah, I mean that that stuff is
like foundational, right? It's sort of like your first,
your first kindergarten class where you're learning to
socialize. Like I found the first year of
(40:42):
architecture school is almost a identical process of like
figuring out how to be an architect around other
architects. And so it's foundational, it's
memorable, you know, you making relationships that last.
And I am committed, you know, tothe to the school and to, you
know, contain my involvement of school.
(41:03):
I would say like equally as important, if not more important
is just getting out into the world, you know, by talking to
people on airplanes, reading books that aren't about
architecture, friends that aren't architects, having
clients that you can go on vacation with and learn from.
(41:24):
And so it's like it's important to because the school provides a
safety net and a foundation for which from which you can build
your career. But in order to grow a practice,
in order to grow as an individual, you also have to
like make new friends, right? And read new books and stuff
like that. So try to recommend to people in
(41:47):
the practice that they also do that.
Like when we go, you know, down in Texas, I'm like, talk to the
person next to you. You never know who, you never
know who's sitting next to you on an airplane, right?
Like I, I don't know. I don't know if they had these
like squish mellow things in, inEngland, but they're, you know,
I ended up on a British Airways flight from London to Miami like
a couple months ago and I sat next to the inventor of the the
(42:09):
squish mellow stuffed animals, you know?
I mean, my daughter's got one. Yeah, and it's like, it's like
if you don't talk to the guy, you never meet him and hugely
interesting guy and, you know, you just, it gets you like that
much more engaged in the world around you.
And so I don't know, I think that's just as important as the
school to me. It's just like making you
(42:29):
friends. No.
I think that's fascinating. I mean, I always have the
conversation out of my sort of peer group.
I think I'm the only one that didn't marry an architect.
You know, my wife is is the is the least architecting sort of
person you'll ever meet. You know, just have very fun
memories of dragging her around Paris, pointing at different
buildings and her sort of considering divorce at sort of
early, early points. I mean.
(42:50):
I feel like that's super important because you have to
have, it's super. I do that with my, my wife.
I'm like, that's a KPF building and she's like, and then we're
like now I grow like I'll try harder on that one.
You know, it's like good. It's like good to have that.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because if it's if you're
just talking to architects aboutarchitecture, it all gets a bit
navel gazing, doesn't. Yeah.
(43:10):
And then the other thing is like, of the 40 people I
graduated Graduate School with, very few of us are still
architects. It is a, it is a graduate
program that spawns all kinds ofcareers and furniture making and
develop real estate development and all sorts of other avenues.
(43:32):
And so I found it's actually important to stay in touch with
those people because there's very few of them actually, you
know, still practicing architecture.
And you do need advice all the time, right?
Because you're constantly finding things you've never
encountered before. Why do you think that is?
(43:54):
You know, is it is it just because of the the education
gives you a sort of broad designunderstanding that gives you the
tools to do those things? Or is it, is it the
dissatisfaction in the profession or a bit of both?
Maybe I don't. Know, I think it's a little bit
of both. I think the education pre, I
don't want to say predetermines,but the education assumes the
(44:16):
educational curriculum assumes that not everyone's going to
become an architect because the people who are teaching it are
not have gone through that process themselves.
And have you know, I, I always graduate.
I obviously gravitated towards aprogram that was focused on
building and even inside of Yale, I was very focused on the
(44:37):
professors who had built buildings, right?
Just intuitively was drawn to those people more than the
others. And maybe that's because I came
out of this other undergraduate background.
But, and I find myself to this day attracted to architects who
built like I'm interested in talking to other architects who
(44:59):
have found ways to build buildings.
And certainly, like at KPF, likeeverything at KPF is in the
service of good design, but alsoin good design that gets built
and executed. And I, I saw recently that you,
your involvement in open house in New York, which I wanted to
talk to you about because obviously in, in, in London, we
(45:21):
have the open house scheme as well.
And it's, I think it's very wellloved by a lot of Londoners and,
and you know, particularly architecture students.
I wonder what your thoughts are on the value of things like that
in communicating, you know, whatgood design is to the public,
how people kind of relate to that, how people understand
(45:44):
what, you know, architects do and and to the point you make
about your wife, how people sortof appreciate or you know, not
appreciate good architecture. Yeah, I mean, I that I'm really
excited to be on that board, to be asked to join that board.
It, it is an organization which goes, which transcends way
beyond architecture, you know, mission really to like celebrate
(46:07):
the opening up of buildings to the public.
And it, for me, it's like a perfect alignment with, you
know, the career I've tried to build and the firm that all of
us in the partnership are tryingto build a KPF, the mission of
KPF, which is to like use buildings to elevate the urban
experience. And so, you know, it's the board
(46:28):
that I'm on. It's a organization I'm totally
committed to because I just think that like that the
festival nature of Open house, this like joyful celebration of
opening up the doors of all these buildings to the city is,
you know, it's just so it goes so much, so much further beyond
architecture and intake. You know, real like issues of
(46:49):
public accessibility and what itmeans to live in a physical
neighborhood in a physical city in today's digital world where
we're just bombarded by images of buildings and stuff like that
and just the act of like openinga door, right?
But like opening multiple doors at the same time to me, just so,
so excited. And as an organization at KPFI
(47:11):
think we're really committed to those types of
multidisciplinary, publicly, outwardly facing organizations.
You know, we're obviously involved, many of my partners
involved in the A, A, A and moreprofessional organizations, but
organizations like Open House, that's the Urban Design Forum,
the NLA and London ULICTB Council for tall buildings,
(47:35):
urban habitats, these these organizations which try to bring
the built realm to the people are I'm personally excited about
it. Open house has just been, it's
just been an amazing so far. It's been an amazing experience.
And really I'm just totally thrilled to be able to like help
push that organization forward. I wish that there were more
communication actually between London and New York and Mexico
(47:57):
City, Hong Kong. And, and that's something I
think, you know, over time, hopefully I'm, I'm hopeful that
the organizations can kind of domore of because, you know, the
idea of these festivals that arejust popping up around the world
and all these major cities is pretty exciting to me.
Yeah. So I mean, yeah, I think it's a
it's a wonderful initiative. Just just to end on what, what
(48:20):
do you think the audience, you know, which will probably be,
you know, architects, early careers architects and other
people in design, What do you think they could take away from
your journey in architecture? What are those sort of key
lessons? I'm not sure anyone should learn
anything from me, but I will saythe one thing is like don't be
(48:40):
in a hurry, right? Like, and it goes back to this
like you got to get comfortable with delayed ratification.
Don't be in a hurry to get a drawing set out.
Don't be in a hurry to get a rendering out.
Don't be in a hurry to build toomany buildings that the
profession is a battle of attrition, right?
(49:01):
And it's, it's don't, don't set out to be anything other than to
build your building 1 building at a time.
And then because it, it'll happen anyway, right?
Like particularly at a firm, firms like KPF where they're
multi generational and things are always moving, Society's
(49:22):
always moving culture inside thefirm.
Always. We just focus on being the best
version of the architect that you want to be.
And remember that there isn't one type of architect, just as
there isn't one doctor, you know, or one lawyer.
We're in a professional servicesbusiness.
There's lots of ways to be an architect and get comfy with the
(49:43):
kind of architect you want to be.
And really don't spend your lifeworrying about work life
balance. Spend your life becoming the
kind of architect that you want to be.
And just just remember that. And if you feel yourself, if you
feel yourself getting pulled into Macau and like a life of
(50:03):
casino facades in river Delta, like don't be afraid to make a
change, you know, like it's OK. It's not the end of the world.
It's the your first job, not your last job.
It's your second job, not your second to last job.
Like you can course correct. But just remember that the
profession attempts to move you towards specialization.
(50:24):
And so if you feel yourself being moved, whether you're in a
five person firm or a 500 personfirm, if you feel yourself being
moved into a specialized thing that you don't want, you, you
have to change. You have to make the change.
Because a culture like KPF or the AIA or any kind of anything
(50:46):
is never going to care more about your career than you.
And ultimately you're responsible for becoming the
kind of architect you want to be.
So I would just say be like super attentive to that over the
long run, the long medium run. And as you build out these
portfolio buildings, you know, and that's, that's my advice to
(51:07):
someone who wants to build buildings.
Of course, there are architects who never build buildings
either. And that's and serves the style
purpose. I would like to see the
profession as a whole. Like I am concerned about the
state of the profession. And I watched in this country in
particular what happened to Mechanical Engineers with like
lowering fees and lowering scopeof services and kind of like
(51:31):
like a cannibalization of that, that particular profession and a
down grading of the quality of the deliverables and things and
the fees. And I am concerned that the same
thing could happen to the profession of architecture too,
if we're all not careful. And so I do want to make sure, I
(51:55):
do feel, I think the partners ofKPF, we all feel like a real
responsibility to pull the profession up as much as we can
and to make sure that it exists 50 years from now, 40 years from
now, there's, you know, our cities are under siege
politically, economically, societally, our profession is
under siege from those same things.
(52:16):
And so it's not a foregone conclusion that our profession
exists 50 years from now. So we all have kind of an
obligation to each other and thefuture generations to do the
right thing once we get into these positions where we can
build good buildings, charge good fees, and make sure we're
(52:39):
building a profession, not just but that we're building a
profession that society needs. So that goes back to
conversation about like affordable housing or whatever
its resiliency, sustainable, like all these huge crushing
issues that I do feel that architects should be a bigger
part of solving completely professionally.
(53:00):
Yeah, no, completely agree. Just lastly on on, on reflection
because we've been doing a lot of reflection.
How so your career has it as it turned out how you imagined?
Was there, was there a plan or is it, you know, is it
intentional? Is it just adaptation and how
(53:20):
much of that that course correction that you alluded to
earlier, have you done yourself sort of thing?
Yeah, I mean, if you had asked like 18 year old me, I guess I
would have thought I would be writing books on architect.
And if you would have asked like24 year old me, I'd probably
think I'd be like working on airports.
(53:43):
And and then I think if you would have asked me, 26 year old
me, I probably would have thought I would have been like
somehow had my own business, youknow, so my career has been
roughly adjacent to what I set out to do.
It's certainly been like infinitely more satisfying than
(54:04):
I ever imagined it could be. So from that, in that respect,
like I'm just very grateful to have been able to work on the
projects I've worked on, to workwith the people at KPF that I
worked with, to work with the clients.
Like one of the great things about KPF is you have great
(54:26):
clients too, right? So you're learning from great
professionals and real estate business.
So in that sense, maybe I'd likeover overachieved and over like
I, I sort of feel like just grateful in all those ways.
Of course, like when you're in the middle of the trenches of
running a design firm together with your partners, it feels
(54:46):
like everything's going wrong. It feels like just the wheels
are coming off and all the stuffand you know, you're jealous of
your other people's building when you're you're unhappy with
your building. And but that's the state of
being an architect, right? Is like looking up a building
and seeing a mistake and knowingyou'll do better next time.
So I think in in the midst of a career, it feels like you still
(55:10):
got so many problems to deal with and so much buildings you
have to get right. But, you know, I guess just
reflecting on it, I'm, yeah, I'mlike extremely glad that I stuck
with it. Extremely glad.
And I just think I just go back to this lastly, like that, you
know, like sitting as an undergraduate typing away on my
(55:31):
thesis, never imagining, you know, the Internet.
Like, I mean, you start your career while you be an architect
without the Internet in the middle of it and you've got like
more processing power in your phone.
Your client has more access to you than you'd ever imagined you
(55:53):
would be. So it definitely the profession
definitely keeps you young. Like I, I think of like my
first, my very first like summerjob.
My dad was like, if you really want to be an architect, go work
for this guy. And I like went to like Orlando,
FL and the guy this like MA lineand he's up and down.
I'm like drawing that guy went out of business because he
didn't use AutoCAD. And then my, my, the client,
(56:15):
the, the company I work for in Hong Kong, like they didn't go
from AutoCAD to Revit. They went out of business.
And it's like now it's like we're in AI.
It's like you got to use it. You got to find a way to use it.
You got to use the new technology.
You have to adapt, but just try to do it in a way that propels
not only your practice for it and you as an individual for,
but the whole profession forward.
(56:35):
And that's the thing I think we haven't as a profession globally
got in our head around quite yet.
It's like how we going to make these neutrals work for us and
work for societies making because there's so much work to
do to make society better. Thank you so much for joining me
forth. I mean, yeah, just a fascinating
conversation and a wonderful reflection on your career.
(56:56):
Thank you very much. Great.
Well, it's great to meet you. Thank you so much.
I appreciate it.
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