Design Principles Pod
Architecture. A hot topic, a buzz word, a realm for the rich and famous, or the thing that your step uncle does? We will be unpacking the good, the bad and the downright reality of the architectural and construction industry. With insights from industry professionals and personal anecdotes from our three hosts Ben, Gerard and Sam, you will be given a look behind the closed pages of those fancy looking moleskins. Tune in and redline out.
Design Principles Pod
A Bit Of This, A Bit Of That: Year-End Design Debrief
Year-end is when the honest stuff bubbles up: what we built, what broke, and what we’ll try differently next time. We raise a glass to the community that’s carried this show and jump straight into the craft and chaos of design life—part celebration, part hard-won field notes.
We start with the real costs and protections behind small studios: trusts, liability, and why construction firms fold faster than architects who keep overheads lean. From there, the stories turn tactile. A shaky three-storey demo becomes a lesson in salvage economics, where windows and steel pay the bills. Then comes the headline experiment: hydroforming a stainless-steel sauna for a client with six tonnes of water. We break down triple welds, reinforcement, polishing, spray foam to shift the dew point, and smart vent placement so the hottest air stays breathable. It’s a blueprint for making odd ideas safe, efficient, and beautiful.
That hands-on build sparks a bigger provocation: what if cladding and structure are the same thing? We connect hydroforming to arches, keystones, and tensioned timber, arguing for performance-led form over decoration. Along the way we tackle the eternal software debate—Revit, Archicad, and the surprising power of simple stacks like Google Forms and Sheets for time, variations, and site workflows. We make the case for physical models that carry the concept from week two to the final pour, and for digital twins that guide renovations, farm fencing plans, and long-term maintenance without drowning in subscriptions.
If you’re hungry for design that survives contact with the real world—pricing, risk, salvage, systems—and still leaves room for bold form, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves building as much as drawing, and drop us a note with the one tool or habit that saved your studio this year.
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We want to thank Parrot Dog for being an amazing partner this year. Great Beer and Great Conversation go hand in hand and we couldn't have asked for a better pairing. To close the year, they're dropping two limited releases for those that enjoy a holiday tipple. LR35 is a West Coast IPA loaded with Simcoe, Mosaic, Cryo Mosaic, Strata and Cryo Columbus hops, showcasing puntry citrus, tropical, berry and damp characters, while the other, LR36, is a hazy IPA brewed with Dulcita, Crush, and Citra Hop varieties, showcasing juicy stone fruit, tropical and berry characters with a lush mid-pallate and low bitterness to finish. Grab these now and enjoy in the sun as the year wraps up. Welcome back to the Design Principles Pod. As we close out another huge year, we just want to start by saying a big thank you. This show has grown far beyond what we expected when we first hit record, and that's entirely because of you guys, the listeners, who train on on site, in the studio, on the commute, or while trying to push a deadline that probably should have been extended a few weeks ago. Your feedback is honestly what keeps us going. Every DM, review, message, or bit of critique helps shape where we're taking the conversation next. So if you haven't already, let us know what's worked, what hasn't, and what you want more of in the new year. Makes a bigger difference than you think. Today's episode is a bit of a loose one, bit of waffle, half-formed ideas and mild rants, and a general debrief as we wrap up 2025. Nothing heavy, just a chance to reflect and reset before everyone clocks off for a well-earned break. Wherever you are, we hope you get some downtime, good drink in hand, and a chance to reset with the family and people that you love and care about the most. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and thanks for being part of this journey with us. Let's dive in.
SPEAKER_01:So we're we're definitely pro-merch. Not even that expensive.
SPEAKER_04:Buying the bulk. When you think of it from an advertising budget point of view, you know, like a grand on 50 hats, it's not that bad when you can then have like people wearing them all the time. It's like a permanent billboard.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, I've already put my hand up for one of your hats. Yeah. Sign me up.
SPEAKER_04:That that'll be your gift from me, Gerard. I actually I don't know who I've got for Secret Center. Gerard's joining. Gerard's joining us for the Christmas party. We've just we've just collected all the architectural orphans in Wellington. Nice. And a couple of builders and a couple of engineers.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What are you doing?
SPEAKER_04:We're doing some beach games, followed by a gingerbread making, uh gingerbread house making competition.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome. That's that's an architecture, Chris.
SPEAKER_04:Not a lot of prefab, but you've got to pre-fab your sheets. Because we couldn't we looked heaps of places to see if you could just buy gingerbread sheets, but you couldn't do it. So we've got a you've got a BYO gingerbread sheets to I've got to learn how to.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my god. There's not enough architects in this world. Bring you can just bring a sheet of steel. I'm surprised you can't get that from warehouse stationery or a French uh art shop.
SPEAKER_04:We could buy it, but it was crazy expensive for you know 20 sheets of gingerbread or something.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Plus the best part about gingerbread men is eating the dough.
SPEAKER_04:Gerard, I'm looking forward to seeing how you hydroform a gingerbread house.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Wow. By blowing beer into it? I don't know. Filling it with frosting. A parrot dog supplying you with uh a supply of beer. Uh we'll probably go and ask them to hook us up.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Nice. Sponsored by Design Principles Podcast.
SPEAKER_04:And then we're going to play bowls after that. Yeah. Angle. Yeah, it'd be good. It'd be good fun. We've actually got the Lyle Bay um Lyle Bay Business uh bowling competition this Friday to see who holds Lordship over the bay for the coming year. Training nice. I watch them, I watch them every day as when I walk through on my way home, but can't say it can't say older bull. It's such a good little bowl spot eye. That's awesome, man. It's super vibrant. There's so much stuff's going on there all the time. It's really cool.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'll just copy briefly. Yeah. Walk through there to my old workshop, which was Road Recyclers just opposite the leaning tower of Were you there?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that was my first workshop. I remember going there actually. You just had like a bunch of containers. Yeah. Still got one down there.
SPEAKER_02:It's now my paint room. Nice. The genesis of Dro Dombrovsky workshop. Or at the time it was called QCAT because shipping containers have like QCAP and then which is just a derivative of cubic capacity. But somebody had mushed all the letters around and while I just pulled the dot out and it kind of looked like a really nice word visually. Nice. So if you get a invoice from me, it's I'm QCAT limited.
SPEAKER_04:Is that why your emails at well one of your emails that doesn't work and keeps bouncing back to me is at QCAT?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that one's that one's gone now. My advert is at TechGoogle. What made you change? Authorship. It's like probably for the same reason you want like a company that doesn't bear your name, bear your name, get it? So the opposite reason. So well yeah, like kind of leaning into the art object end of things. So I think authorship's relatively important rather than being like faceless QCAT Limited. But the company's still bought QCAP Limited. Trading as direct time prosecutor. Interesting, interesting setup. I had my accountant was supposed to do it, and then yeah, it took like a couple years and I realized they hadn't done it.
SPEAKER_01:Well you can do it. I did it and it's pretty easy. You can just swap over your existing company, change the name basically. Just have a have a ladder, a ladder of companies, shell corporations in different countries.
SPEAKER_04:Just hide, rewire all your funds through things. Well, oh yeah, the trust setup's interesting, eh?
SPEAKER_01:Do you guys have trusts set up? Do actually I did it um set it up when I was still at makers.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Two trusts, one for personal assets and one for investments.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_01:And then you've got tough work though.
SPEAKER_04:Monitoring. Yeah. And then we've got a trustee company.
SPEAKER_00:The fact is, they're just not wealthy enough to own a trust. It's like a desert in there. It's all right.
SPEAKER_02:It's still a landscape. I'm pretty sure there was like a quite a long time ago how how architects should hide them.
SPEAKER_04:So yeah, it's not so much hiding them as it's protecting them from liability.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, which is why we got them and why I'll always have them, because we have construction companies. Yeah. You're you know, you're you're a lot more vulnerable. Architecture firms, yes, definitely has its risks. Not nowhere near as much as construction, though, I don't think, personally. You don't really hear of that many c architecture firms going under that I hear about a construction company folding every other day.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that's true. I think it's easier to fold a construction company than an architecture firm, though.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but you also you probably get a lot more fortune. No, I think they just run out of cash flow and they literally go bankrupt.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and then just go, boop, close Phoenix.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and you got staff to pay and you've got materials to pay. So it's a very cash flow heavy company, whereas architecture is not. It's like your bills get paid, you get paid, and that's it. If your bills get paid. It's pretty simple. You don't even have material, you might have some overheads, but all you gotta do is have enough money in the bank to get a rainy day fun, yeah, and you're good to go.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's interesting stuff. It's stuff that I feel like they should teach more in uni or maybe even classes outside of uni. Maybe the NZIA should hold. They probably do.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, they do in a way. There's you know, I'm not hundred or a hundred or something practice notes that you're open to peruse at your leisure.
SPEAKER_01:Man, we should do some practice notes next year. We should do like a practice note each and then come on here and talk about our practice notes.
SPEAKER_04:So boring though.
SPEAKER_01:But yeah, pricing jobs, man, after all these years, I s I still have a lot to learn.
SPEAKER_04:I get asked. I read one the other day. I had to give a give an expert uh an expert witness on something and had to um I just didn't know what to do. Just read the practice note. It was pretty it was pretty helpful actually.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. By practice note, you mean chat GPT? No. Legitimately use a practice note. ChatGPT, read this practice note. So proud of yourself.
SPEAKER_04:Summarise answer my question. Do you know what's funny? Is legitimately I did read it and then afterwards I went, why did I do that? Why didn't I just get it summarized? But yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the summaries are super handy actually.
SPEAKER_04:Yep. That got big learning. That's so powerful.
SPEAKER_01:Nice. Oh, nearly at the end of the year. What are we yarning about today?
SPEAKER_04:It's a long preamble, long preamble into uh an unplanned discussion. It's just a wrap-up, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01:It's probably I s I know what I want to hear about. Right, Gerard. Gerard Gerard's thing. I've got something cool to say as well. Demo to house today. Did you find anything cool in it? Nope. It was a digger, a big digger, big house. And uh yeah, it was fun. Did you get to drive the digger? So that's a milestone. Uh definitely not. Nope. But it was pretty funny. They must have had kind of a fresh guy on because I came in, I was like, Oh, take some photos. And the digger driver had just stepped out of the digger and he was like, Oh, I'm not gonna do any more. I I don't actually feel comfortable, you know, pulling the rest of the house down. Because it's like a three-story, old, real old, a terrible three-story building. But it's it was kind of like kind of close to the neighbor's property, so he must have got a bit nervous. And the boss was there and he was he was like giving him a lecture, and he's like, Oh well, what happened is you know, you stopped and you you got out and you thought about it for too long, and if you just if you just continued the flow and you just got in there and got it done, you would have been alright. Meanwhile, there's half a house.
SPEAKER_04:Meanwhile, there's half a house just swaying in the wind. God, I was like, that's such a funny call.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Man, no, the ass the there's so much hardware in those things that they are still so rigid, even when you know the structure's been pulled out away from under them. And anyway, like this this guy came along and he had obviously had a lot of experience and it was gone in like a minute.
SPEAKER_04:Crazy.
SPEAKER_01:So, yeah, those things in gnarly. Do you salvage any of it? Well, they do, right? They take it all away and then they recycle it all. They pick through it. They pick it all apart.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, right. That's quite good. That's good to hear. Well, you hope that they do.
SPEAKER_01:No, they do. They do. That's that's like how they make most of their money. Selling off salvage, yeah, it makes sense.
SPEAKER_02:I did say that was cool. Summer of demo in Christchurch back after the earthquakes. Did you? Yeah. Residential bridge zone. Friend was in the in the city. I was just going, we would like smash out a house in a day or two. Damn. The tricky ones were the um the polystyrene houses, ducko finish. Yeah, yeah. Just flying everywhere. Nah just the tipping cost of dumping polystyrene with the stucco on the outside is so high. We were there with like shovels and stuff, like chipping the chipping the polystyrene away. Yeah, trying to separate the two. Because I think you're paying by weight. And if polystyrene's in there, like cost of dumping that by weight is I don't know, probably your whole profit margin. But yeah, they would they would pull all the windows out and I guess all the steel would go to the recycles. Everything kind of got itemized to a pretty pretty large degree.
SPEAKER_04:It's quite refreshing to hear, eh, because I'd always figured that those guys just wouldn't care and they'd just come and pull it down, chuck it in a tip, move on. But it's good to know that, you know, that that is being done. Like when we demoed that place in Queenstown, I think they salvaged something like 80% of it, which was which was pretty cool.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, they definitely do. And they were like, we were like, Oh, you know, can we get in there and take this and take that? And they were like, No, that's you know, it's like the cream of the cub, it's ours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's like you give us the whole thing and we'll recycle it all, you know, you're not taking any of it.
SPEAKER_04:Guess you gotta get in and take what you want first before they yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We took the fireplace.
SPEAKER_04:Well, there's an old like coal rangy type thing or yeah, like a mess big old mass port thing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. What are you gonna do with that? Well, actually, one of our architectural graduates here took it and he's just putting it in his house. Damn. Because he lives like he's got like a farmhouse like out of town, and it's cold, apparently.
SPEAKER_04:In Auckland, surely not.
SPEAKER_01:Well, uninsulated perhaps.
SPEAKER_04:I'm about to relive life, early life in in the South Island again. I know, Dunedin. Are you getting down? Yeah, it's locked in, yeah. We're moving in February. You got any jobs on down there? Not in Dunedin. Well, one in Dunedin, lots on in Central, so chance to sort of grow, hopefully. But it's gonna be a long long time.
SPEAKER_01:Office in office in Wellington, Central Otago, and Dunedin.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I mean the Central Otago office is only when I'm there and buy an appointment. But um we can roll up to my house if you want, but probably scarcely me of BNB guests. It's kind of exciting. It's gonna be it's gonna be interesting to work. It's gonna be like quite interesting to work in a new space, like a new city. You get so used to the operation of a place, you know, like how the Wellington market works and consenting works and everything. So I've got I'm looking forward to that. I think it'll be interesting. If I can get some jobs.
SPEAKER_02:Anyway, tell us about your project. Yeah, a little little update on it. Me talking up a big game and uh saying I was gonna hydroform a building. I've started. That's good. It's eight sheets, six six tonne of water. Six ton of water?
SPEAKER_01:No. Really? Yeah. Did you recycle it? Did you drink it all after? Oh Christ. All into the cistern.
SPEAKER_04:Was it does it did it threaten to pop? No.
SPEAKER_02:I think there's for the scientists out there, maybe there's some out there that no fluid dynamics better than the rest of us. But the pressure per inch on the weld is probably reduced at that larger scale when you've got so much water and then so much weld. But I also triple welded everything, which was probably unnecessary. But for the sake of sorry. But yeah, we've been polishing it up and now starting to frame the inside. I have a camera, so those who tube it's like you might see what it is.
SPEAKER_04:Damn. It looks like a big parcel. It looks shiny. Maybe that's your window.
SPEAKER_02:That inside's getting shinier. I think we're off to a thousand grid on that side.
SPEAKER_03:Nice.
SPEAKER_02:Whoa. Yeah. Got a guy helping up who's looking bloody good. Yeah, just starting to layer it all up. Oh like things like spray foaming the inside. I guess steel is gonna it's gonna be like shipping entire for the outside. It's gonna condensate like all the hell on the inside. But if you spray foam it, then you move the dew board. But have you got any real chimney in there? Nah it's gonna be electric. Yeah, yeah. Infrared. No, it's it's got coils and got the stones. It's essentially like a bucket with a bunch of heating elements running through it. So a little two-man sauna, two-person sauna. Yeah, I think you could put three in there. Probably three comfortably. Four if you like. Sweaty bodies. And a tight squeeze.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Hang some have you got a little sausage rack where you hang the sausages? Yeah. Over the sauna. And some bear holders. You need some cup holders in there. Yeah, there was there was a request for a speaker shelf. Oh yeah. That's smart.
SPEAKER_02:Are you have you got a client or are you just doing it? No, no, this is for a client. Cool. Nice. Which is great. I can't really afford to self-fund this one.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Gigantic saunas. Yeah, the sheet metal alone is what like just under seven grand, including just like eight sheets of three mil, three one six.
SPEAKER_01:Did the hydroforming go as planned, or did you kind of want it to bulge more or were you kind of happy with how it turned out?
SPEAKER_02:I did it twice. The first time it sort of started folding in places, which I didn't really careful. So then I went and bought some bars and welded them to the sides. And then had another go. So I'm pretty happy with it. But there's I think there's refinements that I'd make in the process for the next one.
SPEAKER_04:Do you think it'd be easy by the cost obviously of the material? Do you think it'd be easy to go bigger?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah, my mind goes places like I'm thinking of like how can I hydroform a house? I just need a client with a lake out front. And then we can like wound the floor. Floor weld it together. And then you push with subsides, push it out onto the water, pick it out the roof, and then just like a couple of vents, sink it, like the vents hydroform it underwater. Pop around, a couple buoys on there, and then just pump some air into it and refloat it. And then drag up like you would have ship in the shipyards and that seems way too technical.
SPEAKER_01:I literally would have been like place beside lake, pump water into it, and then just underwater back into it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. I'm as savvy as you've been. I think at that at that stage, there's so much gravity at play, like pushing the bottom down at the same time. So you you get like kind of the Irwin um fat house that kind of sags down.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like you'd start to get it. So you want to you want it kind of floating as well.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but if you did it underwater, then it'd be equalized and it would hydroform the same everywhere. So I think that's interesting. You could maybe control the shit. Should test that. Yeah. Just need a pond. A swimming pool.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Pond and a daring client. I like it. How heavy area are they, Gerard? Like how how heavy is the sauna?
SPEAKER_02:This one's a should actually calcul I could calculate it quite accurately just on the how much steel it's put on. But uh I would guess maybe four or five hundred kgs? Not crazy.
SPEAKER_04:And have you so like easily high ebbable.
SPEAKER_02:You could ask ChatGBT how much three sheets of three metal stainless weighs. Have you considered how the sweat gets out? Yeah, well, it's a sauna, so it's well, this goes back to my spray farm chat. There's only one company that services Wellington for spray farming in your walls, but they run operate out of a truck, which I believe comes from Auckland. So it must be a fair bit, fair bit of kit involved. The minimum charge was two and a half grand. Excluding gist. So I found a guy in Auckland that's sold me a kit. So I'm Wellington's newest um spray farm installer. Actually?
SPEAKER_01:Have you got like a have you got like accredited and stuff? No way. He doesn't even have his welding ticket.
SPEAKER_04:Welding license, yeah, that's true. Here you go, Gerard. 69 point 69.12 kilograms.
SPEAKER_01:So call it per sheet.
SPEAKER_04:Per sheet. So call it 70 kilo.
SPEAKER_02:Considerably chocolate. Well including all the I've got some bar in there. Heavy.
SPEAKER_04:But not crazy heavy.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's lighter than I thought. Like It kind of kept me up at night stressing about how it's gonna get it around the back of the house because I can hive it over the fence, but there's a tree in the way. So unless we helicopter, it's gonna be works. Done it before. It would be pretty exciting to see a a glistening shiny cube flying through the air.
SPEAKER_04:I wonder if they'd be allowed to do it. It'll be like shooting like sun ray lasers off the reflection. Like strong light.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Just like burns a giant arc through. If you get it up and running for the Christmas party. Park it there.
SPEAKER_02:People should do like a helicopter disc disco ball or something.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Like fly fly around with a giant disco ball under the side. Slash sauna. Slash sauna. Disco ball sauna. Um yeah, so spray foam and then vapor barrier, and then cavity behind your cedar, like a 10mm cavity. Oh yeah. And then you have a drying vent, which is up high, and then you have your main exit vent, which is down like relatively low, by maybe 500 mils to ground. Yeah, I've been watching too many passionate sauna operators on YouTube learning about where to put vents. So your air intake is directly over top of your heater, so then the pushes the air. So your the heat that you're breathing in is ideally oxygenated air.
SPEAKER_04:Interesting.
SPEAKER_02:Because if your air intake was just down low and your exit vent is down low, that coal bear is just gonna run straight out.
SPEAKER_04:I'm gonna come and pick your brains. I haven't wanted to hydroform one, but I've wanted a buildbone sauna for ages. In a world where design speaks louder than words, what story does your space tell? At Ortex Acoustics, they believe great design is more than aesthetics. Every product they create strikes a perfect balance between form, function, and sustainability. Made to enhance how space sounds, looks, and feels. From using recycled materials to pioneering carbon negative wool, their commitment is to help you shape environments that inspire people and respect the planet. Explore the future of acoustics design at Ortexacoustics.co.nz Nice.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, are you guys finishing with a bang this year? Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:No, it's like the hard ramp up to the end of the year, right? Like it's crazy busy, but then you look at your calendar and there's a lot of social activities going on as well. That kind of help adds kind of adds to the stress.
SPEAKER_01:We've got none. No resume party though. You have so many social activities.
SPEAKER_04:Well, we just live in a social community here in Lower Bay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'd love to get down there before I head back to Paris. It's like a month's time now, so time's a ticking, really.
SPEAKER_04:We've got a big chunky uh stack of parrot dog creep to work through.
SPEAKER_01:I could come down. I could squeeze it in. I literally have no so wait, we check your calendar. You probably don't have any days available. Oh, it's some weekends available. Today. Well, yeah, I've got no plans. Christmas party at some point, but other than that, I'm chill. Or come down. Yep.
SPEAKER_04:Can we get a um just quickly back to the sauna drug, can we get a test run before it ships out?
SPEAKER_02:With pea dog. With some pea dogs. Bears and saunas. Bears and saunas.
SPEAKER_04:We could do an episode from inside the sauna. Progressively getting sweater and sweatier. Actually, that's just a good form.
SPEAKER_01:We'll set up a cold plunge next door.
SPEAKER_02:In and out. It smells delicious. And all these cedar samples beside me. I was thinking about hemlock because it's quite a pretty wood and a little bit lighter. So we're trying to go for that chill, calming look. But sitting up sitting beside a cedar sample for a week kind of won me over. Just smells too good.
SPEAKER_04:Is there any rules of to what like timber uh I assume other than being dimensionally stable tea you can use? Maybe rules of thumb. I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, anything that's going to not last in high, like moist areas. Like you want to do something pineapple. Probably uh probably want to probably use MDF. Yeah, you probably don't want to use MDF.
SPEAKER_02:Some of that hypothetical board. As soon as you turn the sauna on the walls just melt. Wax. Who was the guy who made the wax building? Was that Alex Chinnick? The guy who made the building with the facade falling off. Artist. Um but he I'm pretty sure it was him that made a building out of wax. Every brick and everything made out of wax, and then he just left it to like slop. Slip down, yeah. Alex Chinnick. A entire building made out of wax. Did he live in it? It's cool. Yeah, if you light a candle, yeah, wax house. People have done some epic things though. You should see his the boat that he's just done. I think it's one of those canal boats in London or somewhere in the UK. But he's done like a loop with it. The guy's probably one of my favourite sculptors, I reckon.
SPEAKER_01:Yo, that's suck. Oh, it's way bigger than I thought it would be.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Oh, it works at scale. Like it's it's amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Way bigger.
SPEAKER_02:It's pretty incredible.
SPEAKER_04:That's a um that's a real mashup. That's a real coming together of art and architecture.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. If you look, Google win another tab, urban fat house. Sure, whatever way you spell that, Google will figure that one out.
SPEAKER_04:This is great podcast content when we're just googling things that people can't see. We've been describing it though. Wax house. Do you say wax house or fat house? All I got was all I've got is um fat burning supplements. That's all that's come up for me. It's fat house. I spell Irwin Roll. That's sick. It looks like a Michelin man house. Or like maybe a snowman's house.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Like this guy's probably a partial reason why I want to do a hydroformed house, this building. What's his made out of? That's brilliant. I think just like stucco. It'll just be plaster of paint. It'll be film props.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Which I don't know. It's twofold. Sorry to, you know, I'm always ranting about hydroformed. I think the appeal to me is twofold, like a conceptual, interesting art element of yay fat shiny building. But then so much of architecture now is like decorating a structure, build it out of timber and you clad it, you kind of have to go back to like stone to when cladding and structure were one. Hydroforming is cladding and structure is one. Because as soon as you distort the steel, you get all that added strength. So that's that's my big architectural rant on why hydroforming's purest form. Yeah, it's pure architecture. It is structure and architecture.
SPEAKER_04:It's like that um conversation we had with Joel Ben there, you know, and he was saying we were saying it'd be funny if the project started with the engineer. Yeah. And then the architect and then and then the architect had to work around that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he wasn't for it though. Yeah. Would be would be interesting experiment for sure.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, in a way, it's what Gerard does. Just an exploration of different structural methods. Like what could you reinvent that's still strong? But starting with the artist.
SPEAKER_04:His whole thing was about not about reinvention, it was about using tried and tested systems, but in innovative ways. Which I actually like that approach. You know, there's his own reason to try and have to reinvent everything, just be creative with the tools that you have.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, which is classic, you know, blink market using cheap materials to make beautiful buildings for the joy of car, but beautiful buildings.
SPEAKER_04:It's not even cheap materials. It's like, why don't we build arches with keystones anymore? You know, why why have we had to reinvent structural systems that work really well? I love to see a good keystone arch.
SPEAKER_01:Earthquakes. Yeah, but we don't even build arches with brick. Why not? We should do more buggers. And put brick on the brick on them. Where's the where the brick is the biggest cop out, really?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Get to a get to a pottery. My first uh introduction to driving creek was rebuilding a arched brick roof. So somebody built like the brick curve structure that you you then pull out after you've done the made the archway. Oh yeah. All the bricks were just rebuilding ones when it like slopped in a little bit. But all the bricks have that little angle to them. So they were all keystones. Yeah. As opposed to like it's super common in uh pottery kilns anyway. Maybe just kilns. Because I guess you need that thermal expansion, so you need it to be able to move around. So it's still a pretty strict requirement of the structure. Whereas maybe not in a building, you don't really want your arch to move around too much.
SPEAKER_04:Yes and no though. Like a little bit of ductility. It helps with the to a degree. Helps with the earthquakes.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, what was that? Um New Zealand structural experiment a while ago, I'm pretty sure. Where they had some timber and then just a big tetchen rope. I think they just use strops. I mean, it was relatively well-sized.
SPEAKER_04:It won uh it won an award two years ago. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That's a good example of texture and structure. Structure being tied to architecture.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, photo uh mimir, I think. Yeah, the one you mean?
SPEAKER_02:The photos are just put out in a paddock. Yeah. I assume they had like a shaking test bed mechanism for it. Science. Who knew? Who knew it was like song? So it's gonna be a nightmare to edit. It's a three-ball. It's such a good rambling waffle that somebody driving along. Somebody's about, you know, right now, somebody's driving home from to see the family. Mindless waffle with the obs.
SPEAKER_04:They tensioned it with sailing winches. Yeah. It's essentially like a triangular arch. It's pretty sick. Nah architecture. Jeremy Treadwell. Anyway. It's cool. New systems. Don't use new systems.
SPEAKER_02:Use new systems, don't use the new systems. Well, I don't think either of these system either of these ideas we're talking about are new high performance. Probably been done for a long time.
SPEAKER_01:Would you consider living in a hydroformed house though, Gerard? Something about it. Yeah, yeah. That was a loaded question. Of course you of course you would. It's like it's a trade. Get to your point before I uh I mean just like, I don't know. I just I can't shake the feeling that it's like gonna madly overheat or something like that.
SPEAKER_04:You know, heat up like an oven. It'll be rife with problems, but it'll look cool.
SPEAKER_02:It'll definitely look cool.
SPEAKER_04:Isn't all the best architecture ultimately bad functionally anyway?
SPEAKER_02:It seems to be all the celebrated ones are problems. Falling water's getting rebuilt as we speak.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, the whole the whole modernism era is full of just terrible problems.
SPEAKER_02:That was built on a on a river though, so it helps destroy the world.
SPEAKER_04:Have you heard that story about I can't remember what home it was not? It's not falling water, it's a different home, but that story of Frank Lloyd, right? We finished a house for the clients and they had this was quite recently after they'd moved in anyway, and they're having a big dinner party and it was raining outside and the roof was started leaking. This is like three months after they'd moved in and it was dripping on the dining table. They called up called up Frank Lloyd, right? And they're like, you know, just built this brand new house, roof's leaking. What are you gonna do about it? And he just goes, put a bucket under it, hangs up. Brilliant.
SPEAKER_02:Yep. How many of his projects did he do site admin for? God knows. A few of them he just drew them and then bugged off.
SPEAKER_04:It seemed to be the way back in the day, uh, you just like the creative aspect of the profession was far more celebrated and prevalent than the admin side, and now it seems to be all about doing the admin side. Yeah, I go to lectures and people ask admin questions.
SPEAKER_02:What timekeeping software do you use? Can't we talk about my design? Google Sheets.
SPEAKER_01:I wish someone would just come along and there there's definitely a podcast on internal systems, though. I reckon we can make it pretty dialed. You'd have those pretty dialed, wouldn't you, Ben? I've got some, but like I need I need time. I need time to spend on making more, which is I'm gonna make another one tomorrow. That's why it was kind of like fresh in my mind. But man, it's it's a lot of admin. And then most of them never work. Because then like you don't end up using it. You just like don't you just don't end up doing it again. What are you doing?
SPEAKER_04:Like you have been for the last So what are you building tomorrow though? Like what program are you building tomorrow?
SPEAKER_01:No, like literally just like a classic kind of Google formed spreadsheet setup to track day works or variations or you know, site site stuff.
SPEAKER_04:That's the interesting thing, though. There's so many specialist softwares. God, this conversation's gone everywhere.
SPEAKER_01:Anyway, there's so many specialist softwares.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, they're so expensive though. Yeah, exactly. That's it, right? They're so expensive. Actually, Google Forms, Google Forms and Chats do so much work for you. Like that's all we use. No, okay, we're tiny and it's quite easy to, you know, manage three people's times and outputs and stuff. But even if we were bigger, I can't really see there being a better system. Like it just does everything we need it to do without any of that like peripheral headache shit.
SPEAKER_01:I know. I think like a key part to running an architecture firm is managing software subscriptions, like being real selective about where you're gonna spend your money, because there's no way you can afford full Revit licenses when you've got a firm under like five LT baby. It's so expensive. It's ridiculous. It's actually a joke. Hurts me. It hurts me. Like AI to come to the rescue on? Well, on creating bit of software or doing it just doing the work for you or making it redundant.
SPEAKER_02:Like I do half my design under detailing stage, yeah. Like you get to really refine. So it'd be a shame, I think, to give it all up. What do you use, Gerard? Do you use Revit? Um Revit for when I'm hanging out with Ben and Archicad when I'm hanging out with me. I'm stubborn.
SPEAKER_01:I refuse to I refuse to learn ArchyCad. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Well, it used to be the cheap alternative, right? And then they changed the whole subscription system. Yeah, they're more expensive now. Now it's more expensive than Revit, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Lovely. Well, I haven't updated my Archicad since I got it, really. So I'm not a very old ArchieCad, but it works fine. I love it. That's good.
SPEAKER_04:But do you ever roll back to oh, I still remember cutting my teeth on, you know, prompt, you know, type prompts, AutoCAD. You ever roll back to 2D? There's something nice and pure about detailing that way or drawing that way.
SPEAKER_01:I think like I think that for like so much stick for this. But like for when you're like learning a design process, you should only be allowed to use AutoCAD. You can get like you can you can get you can get caught up in the you know the 3D aspects for and just waste so much time and energy, I think. Anyway. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I can spend just rolling around.
SPEAKER_01:Model making like you do, Sam. If you want the 3D side.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Yeah, I'll go get some.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe that's my New Year's resolution. Make more models. I might be living in a shed soon, so plenty of space for model making. What shed? On the farm? On the wedge? Nah, in pond in Ponsonby, actually. The one the one one we lost is come back round. So fingers crossed.
SPEAKER_04:Just want to say some models. Proof proof that I actually do what I what I talk about. He's a cute little cute little extension to a heritage uh uh heritage cottage in Arrowtown.
SPEAKER_01:Nice. Do what when do you do name them while you're doing them? Uh yeah, this one's called the Sage Cottage. Okay, like it.
SPEAKER_04:This is uh it's concept design for a house in Queenstown. Whoa. It looks like a spaceship.
SPEAKER_02:Is this the one you're talking about a while ago? The big pre-cast block.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah. That's what that wall, that's what that wall was gonna be. It's now just stack bombed. But I just couldn't get anyone to um provide me with any waterproofing details for those blocks. I still want to use them somewhere. I just need to block. You know those massive, like kind of like giant Lego blocks. People who use them heaps in like yards, you know, like service yards and stuff to put wood chips or stones within those type of blocks. Yeah, I wanted to use that as the whole exterior wall. Like 600 deep by 1200 by 900 or something.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I don't think you can waterproof it, but you could probably just use it as a cladding and then you just build a frame with some wrap on it and then land it up against it.
SPEAKER_04:Here's another one which has this like hyperbolic, hyperbolic membrane roof. That one never got built. And straight on the other side. Yeah. This is the looks familiar. It's a cool it's the cool mid-century house that we're designed for.
SPEAKER_02:The mid-century one.
SPEAKER_04:That never got built.
SPEAKER_02:This is exploitable gas copter. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And then this one's cool. This one's this one's this oh this one's under if you take these two models and mash them together, that's the new house in Monica that we're doing. Man, that's cool. I think. And then this one's my favorite one of it. This is the Dart. Again, not square and planned. It's square and planned, but it's got a offset hip. So the hips like pivoted out into the back corner. Just creates a cool roof form.
SPEAKER_03:Hmm.
SPEAKER_04:Nice. It's cool when you do a model and then the thing does get built. Like, this is my concept model for the Karaka Tower. I did this before, like, you know, week two of working on the project. But it's like bang, bang, bang, and there's bang. That's what literally it. That's it. That's what it that's what it became. Whoa. Yeah, cool, eh? It's real cool. It's quite nice when you when you come up with that concept and then you manage to like work it the whole way through. And it's nice to have that little reminder of where you started. That's why I like doing the models. And I always just when I'm working on a project, it usually just leaves them on my desk. So it's just always like that constant visual reminder of what you're working towards.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. I was just saying, Sam, my new year's resolution. Make more models. I'm gonna buy you a scalpel. Oh yes. That sounds amazing.
SPEAKER_04:Only need white card, Yuho glue, and a scalpel.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean like uh my living and current living environment is not ideal for model making, but hopefully that improves soon. You can see the cutting cutting thing on behind me. Yeah, mine's just a couch and a TV. This is literally our living room. This is the sweatshop of all sweatshops.
SPEAKER_04:Do you reckon you guys will get some bricks and mortar? Some what? Sorry. Like office space. You got you guys have an office? You do have an office. Us? Yeah. You're right. No.
SPEAKER_01:Never, probably.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I reckon. Why not?
SPEAKER_01:That's nice having street presence. Yeah. I'll have street presence, but I'll I'll always kind of like opt for the integrated home work, home slash workshop via. I don't know. Yeah. I'm a huge fan. I don't want a lawn. I don't want a lawn. I don't want a yard. I want like concrete space where I can like build things and then I can like also live there.
SPEAKER_04:I just like that separation, you know.
SPEAKER_01:No, I like the lack of separation. You like to just we're like full immersion. Live your entire life in one space. It's doesn't feel as intimidating because you're just kind of like always chipping away with always kind of doing something or but then you can't separate yourself from it. Well, I've never needed to, Sam. I'm still keen to keep going your work so much. Love the grind. Yeah, fair enough. Love the grind. Stressful, but it's good. Yeah. And if I want to leave, I'll just I don't know, I spend a lot of I'm spending a lot of time in in France at the moment. So does that count? Ooh lala.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Uh I don't know. Separation. Brad, your thoughts?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I've always done a separation, but I don't know where I'm currently living doesn't really have a lounge or anything, so I've not been there very often. So I'm either here or at all geese or a cafe or a pub.
SPEAKER_04:The pub being your lounge isn't the worst.
SPEAKER_02:That's all right. Bring back the communal living room. Yeah, the coffee shop, the public space. Yeah. No, I I would like shit on it. Where your separation is maybe a hundred couple hundred metres. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Roll back down to South. So more than just a staircase? Roll back down to South and Gerard and you'll be able to get there. Easy.
SPEAKER_01:Come to come to Pyro. That's where the cheapest farm in the country is. Slash was. So you meant by successful farm? Yeah. Super successful. Yeah. Um no, I'm gonna go down there this weekend and do some fencing. Did you buy a farm before Yeah we bought one a while ago, remember? I I swear we talked about this. The cheapest farm in the country. I don't know if I knew this. I don't know that's where the tractor I was so serious about the tractor and the truck. We have so many drugs for the only thing we've been doing it we put like a driveway in and it took us a month but now it's got a driveway. Success. It's like Bearley it's called Bear Land. Is that where you got the name from?
SPEAKER_04:No well that came after but yeah. Is Bear Land your landscaping subsidiary?
SPEAKER_01:No it's the farm. It's just the farm. It's the agriculture. Nice. Planted like a hundred olive trees that was pretty fun. Half of them I think didn't make it through winter but um it was far to find yeah but we've decided we're gonna get some livestock so gotta go sort that. Farm architecture is actually really interesting. I've always wondered about being a farm architect. Are there like farmers that buy farms then literally pull down all the fences and redesign the whole thing? I guess they probably are I think they just do it on the fly.
SPEAKER_02:Some of them are just ridiculously inefficient, you know so I was brought up on a well when I was and we bought a sheep farm lots of sheep farms under the codel yeah and they'll now turn it into a dairy farm but that was pretty much re refenced. And then the next farm I went to it was pretty much all refenced.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah maybe my old man could be your farm architect. Yeah no I don't need one I the first thing I did was model it in Revit. Model the farm yeah put all the little fences in two modern put all the little fences in and did you planned out the gate. Yeah but I've got the posts at the center I love doing that like more about just like I would like every house I own from here on out I'll literally like the first thing I'll do is I'll model the house and then I'll like get it exactly how I want it and I'll kind of just like chip away at that over time and then I'll make any updates in the model and jazz built I just don't know what it is. I like the idea of having a digital model.
SPEAKER_04:I don't I don't disagree with you like looking at buying this place down in an old mouse Mason and Wales house if we are successful I'm quite excited to model it because we need to do some renovations to it and it'd be quite cool to have that digital twin. And then like have the digital twin to test things and then review them in real time in situ.
SPEAKER_01:And there's still a part of me that really wants to get a proper digital twin up and running you know like be able to like control it the whole house from your digital model. Definitely can't do it in Reddit technology will get there one day.
SPEAKER_04:Could you imagine that? I don't want that I don't want that wardrobe there someone's in bed you just like the door's locked switch them around head out of the model don't delete the toilet while someone's using it I mean yes how long are we going to drag how long are we going to do for well we could there's a probably a midsection we can cut out that got a bit slow.
SPEAKER_01:Some of it works nice oh well yeah been a big year for us all really has yeah looking forward to a break. Yeah yeah the very the very small one that have coming up New Year's new year new things Sam moving away Gerard you've got some big activities planned and I guess I do too
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