- Today I'm here to introduce Ashley Dias and Thomas Newsom.

I hope that you guys don't mind that I'm gonna be reading their bios.

But starting with Thomas, growing up Thomas was inspired by his father, an electrician passionate about the process of reverse engineering.

From him, he learned about aspects of everyday objects that most people don't usually see.

With an appreciation for detail and a hands-on style, Thomas earned his architectural license while simultaneously working for a design build firm.

Today, Thomas brings those talents to the practice of healthcare architecture.

A fan of finding architectural solutions to functional problems, Thomas enjoys interacting with his clients and conceptualizing results in front of their eyes.

He finds fulfillment through being an expert at what he does, and possesses a vast knowledge of and passion for codes and regulations.

Thomas' sharp eye for detail extends beyond architecture, and into competitive sports.

In his free time, you can frequently find him on the court officiating for local basketball leagues.

If he wasn't an architect, his dream job would be to be a referee for the NCAA or NBA.

So please give a hand to Thomas.

(ambient ringing) Can you guys still hear me?

- Yes.

- [Thomas] Yes sir.

- Alright, well let me introduce also Ashley Dias.

Out of design, Ashley has a passion for photography, and she's thankful to be in the world at the same time as cameras.

But it's not just clicking the shutter button that revs her soul, it's the whole process of finding, capturing, editing, and presenting a photograph in a way that tells a compelling story.

Ashley thrives in healthcare planning, and strives because of similar drivers, working both micro and micro-perspective muscles, composing problems in a solvable way, and helping clients make major decisions about their future.

To her, the challenge of master planning is framing data and analytics into a set of compelling stories, and contrasting scenarios that facilitate confident choices.

Her favorite part of the planning process is when the client has a clear direction and is ready to tackle what's next.

So with that, I would like to introduce Thomas and Ashley for the class.

Thank you Thomas, thank you Ashley.

(Herman Guerro Santos applauding) - Yes, thanks for having me.

- Yes, thank you very much for having us.

- [Ashley] So I'll get us started.

Thomas and I will kind of, much like we did in the project, I'll kind of start from the beginning, and then he'll really finish it and make it strong.

What you see on the screen is one of the projects that we did together, between our two offices.

And that's the story we want to tell for you guys today, and what makes it interesting is that I live in Dallas, Thomas used to live in Dallas, but now he's a major part of our Houston office.

And we collaborated between the two offices on this project for a variety of reasons.

There's more to this project than what's on the screen, but one of the biggest components of it was this project called a specialty care center at Renown Health.

But a little bit about Perkins&Will, just so you know for your own edification, if you have interest in joining us one day.

We are a very large architecture practice.

I think according to revenue, and in my opinion, quality and awesomeness.

We are rated number two on revenue of all, probably architecture firms globally, right?

We're also very strong in healthcare, it's a predominant part of our entire practice, and it's a huge part of Dallas and Houston's offices.

But we have offices all over the globe, and certainly all over the country, as you can see right here.

And I think I speak for both of us that we're very proud to work for Perkins&Will, because what I think is a difference maker for us is that we're delivery oriented, and that we really are concerned about where the client needs to go, and helping them get there.

We're very design oriented, we're putting out beautiful environments and pieces of architecture.

And we have some great planning skills.

And it's rare in my opinion that you find an architecture firm that's excelling in all three of those spaces, so I'm super proud to be a part of Perkins&Willl.

But a little bit about Renown Health too, and by the way, let me pause.

Are you guys seeing?

I'm just making sure, cause I'm not super privy to Zoom as much as I am Teams.

You're not seeing all of your faces on my screen, are you?

Okay, I'm gonna take that as a no, that you just see my PowerPoint.

A little bit about Renown Health, that's the client that we worked for on this project.

Very large organization, a healthcare provider in Reno Nevada.

They have a nearly a thousand beds between two campuses.

One of the campuses is the Regional Medical Center, and then the other one is South Meadows Medical Center.

Regional is their more robust, highly collaborative, multidisciplinary, if you've got a serious issue, you're probably going to Regional.

If you will need more of a community care, convenient care, you're going to South Meadows.

It's a much smaller facility, it's community oriented.

But great organization, the biggest and probably the best provider of care in the Reno area of Nevada.

And Reno has a lot going on.

I've got up here on the screen two maps.

That's really the patient origin of Renown's inpatient population.

And it gives you a sense of Reno, cause Reno is a tourist destination, obviously for gaming.

It's not as big as Vegas, obviously, but it's a gaming industry, or it's gaming town, that is a major industry to the city.

And it's also the gateway to lake Tahoe, and skiing in that part of the country.

So you can see from those maps that their patient origin is regional, but it's also beyond that too, because so many people from out of Reno are coming to Reno.

And another thing to mention about Northern Nevada, which by the way, here's a little lesson for you.

It's not Nevoda, it's Nevada, and a client corrected us on that at the very, very, very beginning of our time that it's Nevada.

So always make sure you say your client's city or whatnot correct.

We started our work with, that's why I skipped a point, Northern Nevada actually has a lot of in-migration happening right now from California.

A lot of folks from California are moving towards Northern Nevada from like the San Francisco Bay area.

So they're seeing an influx of population, and therefore this organization, Renown Health, is having to prepare for the future to determine who all do we need to serve, and how do we need to be organized in terms of our facility assets to serve our growing population.

So the beginning of our relationship with Renown started in a master plan.

We did a four month master plan with them to take a look at their strategy, what is the you know, what are their current volumes, where are they going, how can we forecast that out?

What are the operational improvements that might make for you know, stronger throughput of any other clinical services?

And then once we cobbled that all together, what does that mean then for what their facilities need to be in the future?

So our master plan looked at strategy, operations, and facilities, but really created a roadmap for the future.

And when we put on the screen here is just a little snippet of our report, but we give em a pretty healthy report at the end of this.

There's many more pages than this, that include stacking diagrams, and color floor plans, and capital requirements, and cost estimation, and 3D models.

Did a lot in four months, and what we did achieve of all the things we did, what we achieved is helping them make some decisions about the architecture that they needed to start to either improve or create for the future.

At the beginning of the, and there's a lot that we did, but we're going to zero in in the master plan on the South Meadows campus.

And we started to do some studies about you know, they've got a little bit of an aging inpatient environment at that campus, it needs to grow, some things are landlocked.

So we studied how do we take, potentially use their campus, create a freestanding outpatient building that could eventually one day potentially expand to become the hospital.

So that's an initial study that helped us wrap our arms around what this campus wanted to be.

What were the priorities for this campus?

But eventually, after we did studies, we kind of got to a concept more like this.

And this is the concept that we started to deploy architecturally after the master plan.

And it was the best of both worlds in some ways.

So you see the purple diagrams there, and hopefully my pointer shows you here.

This was the sort of the first phase, the first phase was a outpatient building, like a four story outpatient building that was attached to the hospital.

And the intention of this was so that the first floor of the hospital could actually expand into this outpatient building, and expand services like pharmacy and lab, and improve their dietary and dining conditions, expand their imaging services, so they could create an outpatient environment and expand their specialty care services, but they could also improve the support services of their hospital.

And then eventually when they were ready to have the capital to expand even further, the second phase as you can see down here was okay, eventually you could replace your inpatient beds by sort of leapfrogging and adding another building, and you could start to decommission the older space.

So that's what master plans are really about, is what's the first step, what's most important right now, and then where can that lead us to in the future?

We don't have to have it completely figured out, but we need to have a direction.

So we kind of started at that block level, and then we started to detail out, well what could this building really be, what's really in this building, what does the first floor look like, how do we manage the site?

But in the master plan we had a lot of fun.

We started to explore what we could do with the architecture, potentially putting in a canopy that would connect all of the architecture together and create a grand entry.

It was a pretty healthy, robust master plan in the sense of how far we got with thinking about the architecture, which is probably what helped them make some strong decisions.

And you see the color plans that I alluded to at the little earlier, where we started to block program the spaces.

So in the first floor, the lab, the pharmacy, dietary imaging expansion, this canopy that connects the old and the new architecture and sort of creates a contiguous aesthetic from the front, and a grander aesthetic too, because they've got competitors in the market that they want to make sure that they are still top of mind for the consumer.

But the other levels would be an expansion of surgery, and then clinics above.

(meeting attendee speaking indistinctly) Sorry, does someone have a question?

It sounds like somebody might need to go on mute maybe.

Okay, so this is where we get into debt.

So the Dallas planning group predominantly did this four month effort, but this is just the beginning of our relationship with Renown Health.

And this is the point at which Thomas and Houston team kind of became involved.

Once these master plan were approved, and the board said go forth, we began our architectural design as a two office team.

And Zach, I know Zach Raleigh worked on both of these campuses when he spent some time with us one summer.

And if you have any extra question this post this broadcast, Zack might be able to answer some for you.

But the South Meadows campus was predominantly focused on by Houston, but not entirely, right?

This is where the two office model was not just okay, master plan's done, go forth Houston.

We had to work together, right?

We had to kind of hand the baton off.

One of the relationship, and two of the scope.

And why did we choose to do a two office model?

Well, one of it was the amount of work that came out of this master plan from Renown Health was a seriously healthy amount of work, and we wanted to deliver quality work, and so we shared between what we call our Texas practice, and we actually work really well as a quote, Texas practice between these two offices.

I think most of the people in both offices know each other, so it works to share the workload.

We also have a very strong design team in Dallas, and we have a really strong production team in Houston.

And so for the South Meadows campus, design and early planning was sort of handled out of Dallas, and then as it got real nitty gritty, that's when Thomas and his team who really excel at that part of the work started to take it over.

But we were both involved.

Thomas and I, and the teams from both offices throughout the entire process with South Meadows, just our altitudes changed, right?

But a relatively smooth process, no real hiccups in terms of handing that baton off.

And I think that speaks a lot to the Perkins&Will culture, and then frankly the opportunities that technology is affording us, to be collaborative across geographies.

- [Thomas] Yeah, I'll just comment on that real quick, Ashley.

I think we had an advantage, an unfortunate but fortunate advantage with the whole pandemic event.

It really tested our ability to work together collaboratively without being in the same room as one another, both from office to office and with the client.

So we really got to put those tools immediately into practice.

But for things that we had been doing, but we really had to kind of focus on those things to be able to accomplish the work, and it really turned out really well.

- Yeah, we were in the thick of it in March of 2020, and we all remember March of 2020.

Well Thomas, I can click through these.

There's a lot of just sort of explanation diagrams here, you just tell me when to hit next.

- [Thomas] Sure, will do.

I will just start out by saying first off that the client for this project, Renowned Health, has been a great client.

They've been engaged in the project from the very beginning, and they certainly look to their experts to help guide the process, but help guide the design, and they have been really wonderful to work with.

But let me just walk you through the project, just real quickly here.

So we've got on the campus, we have a mixture of both new construction and renovation, with various components all around the existing building and the existing site.

The, as you can see, the new construction is the big blue box in the middle, and then all the other components surrounding that.

So we had, additionally we had a building that was once used as a assisted living, that is going to be demolished to make room for access to the support areas of the new building, which just happened to be in the crescent shape of the existing building, as you'll see in this diagram.

You can move forward, Ashley.

So on the first floor of the building, the SCC or the Specialty Care Center, where it's housing some of those support service functions that Ashley had made made mention of.

We've got a relocated and expanded laboratory, a relocated and expanded modernized dietary area.

And in addition, we've also helped them create a space for cardiac cath services, which is a service they don't currently have on that campus, which just happened to be located next to their diagnostic imaging in this area.

And then there's various components as you can see, around in the purple areas for renovation, that is kind of dependent on the new relocated functions laboratory and such, create space for these renovated areas.

So we're doing a little renovation and imaging, and they've got a first floor of their inpatient wing was long-term acute care, is changing the licenses to a general acute hospital.

So lots of different pieces that kind of make this thing interesting and challenging at the same time.

Next slide.

- I am on second floor for you.

- Oh, there you are.

So second floor, so we're creating an ASC, or ambulatory surgery center that's adjacent to the existing surgical center, or surgical suite in the hospital.

And in addition to that, we're relocating.

They currently have a disjointed sterile processing in their existing buildings, we're consolidating and expanding that into the second floor, and on the back part of the new building, adjacent to the ambulatory surgery center.

And then we've got various other renovations on the second floor that are fallout from that new construction.

So third floor.

We've got renovation again in the patient wing, we've got shelf space and the new building.

Fourth floor, we've got shelf space in the new building.

So we've got the ability to expand with outpatient clinical functions in the top two floors of the building.

- One of the things interesting about this, the blue building, right, is it's gonna be developer financed, right?

So that's another sort of complexity to coordination with the client, is we're developing a building, and programming a building for Renown Health, but then there's a developer financer that's also involved.

So it's been, I've certainly learned a lot from this project.

- Yeah, and that's not in a bad way, but that's added a lot of complexity to the project because we recognized early on that we would likely have multiple contractors involved in the project.

So adding that complexity to an already challenging project, but adding on a new building to the face of the existing building has made it more interesting to kind of work through.

So just kind of walking through the images of the building, what Ashley made mention to, this canopy that's intended to be kind of a grouping, or a cohesive establishment of like kind of the public area of the building.

It's kind of just bringing all the pieces together to fill the gaps of what is currently a little bit of a disjointed front elevation, but it's the design of it is interesting and transparent, and this makes a nice little connection between the existing building and new, and organizes the entrances to where it makes sense for a patient to access the drop-off standpoint.

So you'll see, we've got a curtain wall design on the new building, it wraps all four sides of the building, there's areas for public space, and balconies and such to really take advantage of the mountainous views that surround the project site.

- It truly is.

Reno is a beautiful part of the country, great vistas.

That's more of the canopy there.

- More views of the canopy there.

I think it's interesting to see when you look back at the master plan document, when we're working on you know, the conceptual massing of the canopy, how it's evolved into really more of a very lightweight and transparent structure to some extent, but really connects all the pieces together really well.

So kind of just stepping through the interior, one of the primary goals was to update the public areas of the existing space, where we had a cohesive design between the new, back into the existing area.

The view you're seeing here is the first thing you see when you walk into the specialty care center, the reception area.

Looking back and to the right is existing building, down the lobby way to the left is our new dietary area.

If you go to the next slide, you can see through the lobby down the new area to the dining, and serveries kind of wrapped around the corner there.

Next slide.

There we've got some more views of that lobby area.

Looking back at the primary public elevators, we've got a design feature kind of opening up the second floor space to the first floor, to connect the two spaces aesthetically.

- This image is reminding me, one, how proud of the interior design folks I was, because to me it's just stunning work that they came up with, but both the exterior design and the interior design, that aspect, maybe obviously was a point where the concepting that occurred out of Dallas' design team folks that as they were crafting the ideas of the interior, and they were crafting the ideas for the exterior, it was the group in Houston working with Thomas that were really figuring out, how do we actualize that into a piece of architecture?

How do we technically make these things work, right?

And that's where so much of the collaboration occurred, is here's the beautiful idea, now how do we make it happen?

And that's what caused the two opposites to have to work together so much, is ideation to actualization.

- Another view back towards the lobby of this sort of dining area, over to the ledge, you can see the server area.

This is apparently where you wrestle with your kids out in the lobby.

(Ashley chuckling) Next slide, you'll see into the servery area, a bright, bold, new, light area, compared to what they currently have, and their existing facilities.

So it's really, really open and nice.

So kind of moving on to the transformation, renovation.

There's as functions, support services, and things move over to the new building, that made way for opportunities for renovation in the existing building.

The image you're seeing now is kind of the end of the new building lobby, and start of the renovation area of existing lobby.

So we've got that, we have contiguous design elements, the ceiling and floor and wall, they kind of twist their way through the new building, to existing building, to give the feeling that you're in one facility, There's a view looking from the existing public area back into the new building there.

- That's a good wide view.

- And then next slide.

- Yeah.

- A little bit more of that view.

So a lot of transformative renovation is occurring in that lobby space.

We're relocating registration areas, and making way for really more of an open public avenue.

Next slide is kind of deep back in the bowels of the public area of the building, back near the existing dining, and we've got a two story volume space that's currently the dining area, that we'd be converting that to a family lounge, and you can see it's nice and bright.

Then we had cosmetic renovations.

Next slide.

Cosmetic renovations in their existing inpatient wing, like I indicated before, they were changing an LTAC floor to a general acute med-surge floor.

And then we've got other renovations on additional patient floors.

Just really with the primary goal of modernizing and freshing up the facility, but also migrating from what's mostly a semi-private patient room model to a private room model, and fully refreshing each of the patient rooms to enhance the patient and visitor experience, but also create a nice fresh environment for the hospital staff to work in.

- He has a healthy amount of projects right on the South Meadows campus, when you talk about all the little pieces and parts in the existing, including all three of these units, which you can kind of see in this image, right, that where that chair is, this gray chair, that's where the other semi-private bed would be, and speaking of surge, surge hospitals, George, the headwalls are still there, there'll be sort of hidden.

So if they ever had to sort of operationally surge for some sort of reason, they certainly could, but they're going to run this hospital as an all private model going forward.

So just between going all private, and then the cosmetic work, and then the addition of the new specialty care center, you're talking about a serious transformation for this campus.

I think oh, that's all.

That's all we had to share so you had a sense of the project, and kind of our thinking was now that we've talked about the concept, the technical aspects of it, what questions could we answer for you guys?

Or where would you like us to share a little more?

- Ashley, we do have some questions from the students.

And the first question is to Mr. Newsom, Thomas.

How did you gain your knowledge in architecture, and how can you share a problem solving skills with others?

- [Thomas] Wow, that's an interesting question.

Well, I'm the non traditional architect.

- Watch out.

- [Thomas] Yeah, sure.

I'm the nontraditional architect.

I actually don't have an architecture degree, but I grew up in the industry practicing, so I'm 31 years in architecture business, licensed for 20 years, my entire career has been healthcare architecture.

I started in a design build firm a number of years ago, graduated from design-build clinic type work, to hospital work back in the 1990s, mid nineties, and have done nothing, or pretty much all hospital design work ever since.

So I am kind of, I'm a rule follower, you might've heard from my bio I'm a basketball official.

That kind of is my outlet for expressing my rule following by enforcing the rules.

So having design sensitivity, have gained skills and planning and such over a period of time, just with the many years of working in hospitals, so... - [Ashley] And I'll tell you, this architect over here could not be more thankful for architects like Thomas, because he and I really handed off the baton around design development.

And I think design development is where the rubber really, really, really meets the road.

And there were so many times we'd be in a meeting and just Thomas just understands the technical side of architecture, and what's allowable and achievable.

There'd be so many times I'd sketch something and I'd look up and be like, is this even possible, can we even do this?

Like, and he knows, he knows.

So I'm super thankful for Thomas and his skills as an architect.

- Fantastic.

- [Thomas] I'm not sure if I fully answered all the question, was there a second part to that question?

- There is, and this is following up Benjamin Caballero's question to you first, Thomas.

What unique perspectives and solutions have you found best address the healthcare problems caused by the pandemic?

- [Thomas] Oh, wow.

Ashley, I may have to punt this one to you while I think about-- - [Ashley] What was the first part of that question, related to the pandemic?

I think I missed the first part.

- What unique perspectives and solutions have you found that have best addressed the healthcare problems brought about by the pandemic?

- [Ashley] Oh gosh.

You know, we should tell them, it's not South Meadows, but so much about the HVAC.

- [Thomas] Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

- [Ashley] And you might be able to speak to that one a little bit better if you remember the Tahoe Tower solution.

- [Thomas] Yeah, actually we've seen several hospitals, especially around Texas, but of course across the country, who their primary goal was to, how do we address the mechanical issues in the building so that we are, we're addressing airborne infections that are not necessarily isolation patients?

So the first thing is to get the air out of the building.

So one challenging part to that is the regulations don't necessarily support some of the solutions that were coming out, so there was a lot of bending, and I don't want to say acquiescing, but really a collaborative working with the authorities, that were in jurisdiction to allow us to be able to do some things differently from a mechanical perspective, to help exhaust what is normally a positive pressure patient room.

So many hospitals across the country have been kind of looking at this, how do we address this?

So the kind of the impact to the building is you just need to either scrub the air or get the air out, and that's really the main thing that folks are doing.

And some cases we'd see you know, the social distancing in patient waiting areas and things like that, or screening upon entry of the building, or limiting access, which is not necessarily really great for a patient who's, if they're entering the hospital, they're now isolated from their support network.

So a good workaround solution to be able to deal with that, it was to deal with the mechanical aspects of the building, to be able to protect the patients, and staff, and visitors in the building in the same space at the same time.

So we've seen a lot of things like HEPA filtration, air scrubbing, direct exhaust, modifications to create negative pressure environments, and general acute patient beds, where we weren't able to do that before.

And that comes with operational procedures that need to occur to change the normal operation of a positive pressure general acute room to something that's pandemic appropriate, so... - Ashley, we have a request from the TV crew to stop sharing your screen so that they can see both of you on the screen.

- [Ashley] Happy to.

- Also, we do have a question, again from Benjamin.

Ashley, how do you use photography and storytelling to derive solutions that best address health problems and motivate others to help?

(Ashley chuckling) - Well, I think those bios might've been found off of our website, and they're trying to show the more human side of us beyond architects.

So I don't actually use photography in my professional work, but I think the sentiment of what you do as a photographer, where you're framing an image, you're framing a story, you're trying to take that story and clarify it, and make it beautiful, right?

That's the same.

And then you would have to edit it, and work on it, and improve it and refine it before you really want to present that photo as a piece of art to the world.

Well ,I think about that same methodology as a photographer is the same kind of thinking that I bring to my planning and strategies work, which planning and strategies is really what I describe as anything that is pre-design, pre-architecture, right?

Where we're an organization knows they need to do something related to their facilities, they either need to replace it, or expand it, or improve it, but they're not quite sure what yet, right?

Well that's a space that I like to live in, and it's very early where they're trying to make decisions.

And so therefore, in order to make a strong decision, you have to sort of frame the problem, right?

What is the problem?

Let's break it down, and let's put it back together, and let's edit it, and let's crop it, and then let's publish it to the world, right?

So that's a little bit where I think that bio from our website about me, it was trying to go about my love for photography.

So it's not an actual practice, and I think that's what I heard in the question, but if I didn't answer that right, please help me clarify.

- Good, yeah, that seems to answer the question.

Before we go onto the next question, Ray Kalakas actually wants to follow up on something that you just said.

Ray.

- Hey, I wanted to thank you Greg.

I wanted to comment on something Ashley said, and has continued to say, actually several times in your comments, that I really want to call attention to for the students.

You mentioned the importance of your front end work with programming, planning, strategy, they all sort of blur at some level, but they have to do with helping the client make good decisions.

The first time I worked on a programming project with a real client, the person who led the effort told me, taught me the most important thing you can give a client is the ability to make a durable decision.

And ever since that time, I've thought of just about everything that we do in our profession as helping clients make durable decisions.

You can change the scale on that conversation a hundred different ways, but it's about that durable decision.

You just talked about framing the problem so that they could make good decisions, and you know, Pena's method of problem seeking.

It's all about framing the situation to make that durable decision.

And you said it effortlessly, as if everybody would immediately grasp the importance of it, but that's a powerful, powerful concept, and it's one of the most valuable things we in the design professions can offer to clients.

I just wanted to shine a spotlight on it, thank you for bringing that up.

- Aww, well thanks Ray.

And you know, I'm glad you mentioned Willie Pena, cause that just occurred to me that I might want to mention Willie Pena, which Pena, right, he's HOK guy but by way of CRS, and I'm sure you all know about CRS, seeing as there's the CRS center now.

But that was Willie Pena's the problem seeking, right.

And that to me, and I think if there's anything that you take away from your college or graduate experiences, like what your fundamental philosophies that you can continue to hone?

And one of them for me that I learned in school, and try to carry it forward, is that you can't solve a problem that you don't fully understand, otherwise you'll just option things to death because you just don't understand the problem.

So that's why I really love pre-design, and I'd like to think, and there's been a lot of changes, I'll be perfectly honest.

And Thomas can probably speak to them better than anybody because he's been in the nitty-gritty of making these beautiful patients architecture, but there's been a lot of change, but fundamentally, and I don't know, maybe should weigh in on this Thomas, we have set the client on a course that they are able, they're carrying out.

The details are changing, there's programmatic changes, what we're doing, but fundamentally what we chose in the master plan is what they've been trying to execute as a vision.

- [Thomas] Yeah, that's been very consistent on this project from early on until now, and yeah, and I think that that's goes back to the benefit that Ashley her team have to offer in the creation of that master plan document.

The owner really has grabbed hold of that as the vision for this facility for the foreseeable future, and you know, the definition that that went into that document, all those problem seeking, and the ability as Ray said, to make durable decisions through that process has really simplified our work on the backend because we know what the scope of work is, we know what the goals of the facility, of the institution are.

So it makes it easier for us to carry the torch and be consistent.

- It is interesting that-- - Thomas-- - Oh yeah, we'll put a period on that, we can come back to it later, go ahead.

- Okay.

Thomas or Ashley, a question from Laurel Kurin.

Was the project specifically built to any specifications, such as lead, or well, or fit well?

- That's you, Thomas.

- Short answer, no.

However, our values at Perkins&Will are in line with sustainable practices, well building design, so we're always designing in things that may or may not be a goal, ultimately of the owner for certification for those types of things.

But we certainly want to be responsible, both to the environment, and to just the wellbeing of the building occupants.

So we always have that in mind as we're doing things.

- And I have one more question from Zach Raleigh, Ashley and Thomas, one of the main responses to the pandemic was social distancing.

Did the need for social distancing affect the design of the lobby spaces outside South Meadows?

- Hmm, that's an interesting question.

- And I'd have to say that the answer to that is no, not necessarily.

You know, one of the things that you see a lot in the lobby area design of hospitals is more of a lounge type you know, we've gotten away years ago from the bus stop type seating arrangements in hospitals and healthcare facilities.

So just by nature of the flow of the design, we've got you know, lounge spaces that allow for being able to distance folks just by their very nature.

So I wouldn't say it influenced necessarily any of the design in that regard.

- It's certainly influenced how we executed design though.

Once the pandemic got in full throttle we tried to maintain, we had a great relationship with this client going into the pandemic, we really enjoyed each other too as human beings.

And there's just something to being in a room with each other, but we couldn't do that with everybody, right, it wasn't safe.

So we would travel with skeleton crew so that we can manage the relationship, any nuances, or clarities, or hallway conversations that needed to happen after.

So Thomas, myself, one of our project managers here in Dallas, and our managing director would go, like three or four of us would go, but then the rest of the team would log in to design meetings from their computers so that we could be as safe as possible, but manage the relationship.

- In the design of the project were you able to do pre-occupancy analysis through full-scale mock-ups, or is it based upon best practices?

- I'm not fully aware of all the steps that went into the early parts of the planning of the project.

I don't think that any full scale mock-ups were necessarily done.

There was a lot of discussion around best practices, and our experience in various other facilities.

Ashley, I'm not sure if there was any other influencers.

- Yeah, no, no, we didn't do any.

Actually, we didn't do any physical mock-up work on this project, I don't believe.

I mean, we certainly did modeling and renderings galore.

I mean, I've never seen a project that's done so many renderings.

You guys through this presentation saw maybe 5% of what we created.

- Are there any other questions from the students or from our Zoom participants?

I know Ashley, you put a point in one of the conversations, I mean, we can go back to that.

- Oh gosh, I've forgotten what we were parking lotting in there, it has escaped me, but it looked like George-- - That's where we need the live transcript.

- George, yeah right, we'll go back later, we'll figure it out.

George looked like he was trying to ask a question.

- Yeah, wonderful presentation, and I have a question.

Could you talk about the human aspects of the new practice methods that we're using by spending time on Zoom?

I'm sure some of you are on Zoom most of the day, versus the antiquated take a trip by plane, stay in a hotel, go to a restaurant, maybe see an art show on the side in another city.

But could you summarize what this has done to people, and how is it different, and what do you think about it all?

- I think we're gonna see a hybrid going forward in terms of the onsite factor.

You can't get away from going to the site.

I mean, we're architects, right?

We have to see what environment we're impacting, we've gotta be able to analyze it, do surveys.

But one of the things that I remember happening in this process, because of the whole team wasn't traveling out anymore, but I was one of our travelers, is I would have to go take measurements or take pictures of things, like can you see in that existing space, what's behind that apron?

Is there, what, it wall-hung, is it floor mounted?

You know, things like that.

So I think we still have to go on site, but we're gonna probably prioritize how often, and who really has to be a warrior, right, to hit the road, be a road warrior.

Not everybody has to, and maybe not everybody has to all at the same time.

Like when I'm traveling, versus when Thomas needs to travel might vary greatly.

So priorities.

- I think relationships are a big deal, and one advantage that we have in this project is our relationships were established with the client well before the pandemic occurred.

So we already had built in some relationship and camaraderie with the various folks on the client side that really kind of helped make the transition from in-person to more electronic communications a lot easier.

I don't think you can take that element out of a project dynamic and be super successful because there's just so much that you can do on Zoom that you just can't, you can't have that, build that client relationship without some person to person interaction.

But I do think that kind of the down-line of that just internally, with a shift from the traditional in-person architecture in the office to more technology-based, as I fear a little bit for the up-and-coming architects, the young folks missing out on some of that direct mentorship with the experienced folks, because it's really difficult to build that sort of comradery internally, electronically.

You know, everybody can get over-Zoomed and probably be invited to way too many meetings, but not necessarily get the hands-on mentoring that has come with traditional relationships.

- And the studio idea, if someone enjoys it, now there are people who don't enjoy it, is a really building relationships with the diverse personalities of profs that students come in contact with, and the profs who come in contact with the students.

There are no two students alike, at least I've never found any, maybe somebody else has.

And so it's very invigorating, but I shudder to think if we didn't have Zoom these last two years, or FaceTime.

- It was a saving for sure, in terms of staying on schedule and continuing to make progress through such a horrible disruption, but I don't think it's a full-scale sustainable model.

It's helpful, like again, it can keep timelines in check, and costs and check, but we still have to be with each other, and we still need to be with our clients.

(ambient beeping) - Yeah, I agree, and it's all relative.

But I find how much I miss seeing the students every fall and in class, but that's a whole other story.

- I'd like to thank all the speakers today, Ashley Dias, and Thomas Newsom for their fantastic presentation, and to all the students, faculty, and guests who joined us in the lab as well as online, thank you very much.

I look forward to seeing you next week.