On Episode 78 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with Dan Frasier, co-founder of Cornerstone Commissioning Inc., about building control systems and continuous commissioning.
Tag: design
Interior Designers: More than Meets the Eye
On this episode of The Edge of Innovation, we are talking with interior designer, Amanda Greaves of Amanda Greaves and Company, about what it takes to be an interior designer.
The Competitive World of Interior Design
On this episode of The Edge of Innovation, we are talking with interior designer, Amanda Greaves of Amanda Greaves and Company, about the competitive world of interior design.
The Psychology of Interior Design with Amanda Greaves
Today on the Edge of Innovation, we are talking with Amanda Greaves of Amanda Greaves and Company, an interior design firm on the North Shore of Boston.
Show Notes
Amanda Greaves’ Website: www.agcinteriors.com
Find Amanda Greaves and Company on Facebook
Link to SaviorLabs’ Free Assessment
Sections
What Does a Designer Do?
Understanding a Client’s Taste
How Psychology Helps Designers
How Checklists Help
Asking the Right Questions
Dealing With Resistance
The Psychology of Interior Design
Paul: Hello, everyone. This is Paul Parisi with the Edge of Innovation podcast, and we’re here today with Amanda Greaves of Amanda Greaves and Company. So not the whole company here, just Amanda. Are you a figurehead or do you actually do work?
Amanda: Both.
Paul: You do? So you’re both a fig— that’s a good answer. So what does Amanda Greaves and Company do?
Amanda: We are an interior design firm, and we are all of two and a half strong.
Paul: What do you mean half?
Amanda: We have a small dog named Daisy. And that is my associate’s dog. But we do interior design for residential, hospitality, and commercial projects.
Paul: Okay. And how long have you been doing that as Amanda Greaves and Company?
Amanda: As my company, I started it. Yeah. I started my company in 2010, but I’ve been practicing design since about 2002.
What Does a Designer Do?
Paul: Okay. We have a pretty eclectic group of people who listen from very technical people to just ordinary persons off the street. Or strange people too, I’m sure,and unordinary. Whatever. So you do interior design. Does that mean you come to my house and tell me what curtains I need to pick?
Amanda: It’s a little bit more involved than that. So from a design perspective…Let me put it this way. There’s a lot of “designers” out there — and I use that with air quotes — that call themselves “designers” and they are more of a decorator. So the decorators—
Paul: Okay. So there’s a differentiation here.
Amanda: There is. Decorators are, by any stretch, they are just as important as everybody else on the team, but from a decorating perspective, you’re talking more about the furniture and the pillows and the window treatments and such. From a design perspective, I prefer to get in at the early stages of the planning stages and, with the education and the experience and the certification that we have as designers, specifically, we have the ability to — not physically but on paper — move walls and create plans and create lighting layouts. And we select a lot of the hard finishes. So for us, I look at design from how we do it, is everything that’s physically connected to the interior of a building, if you were to pick it up and shake it, everything that falls out, such as chairs and accessories and stuff, that’s more on the decorating end. And for me, the design aspect is everything that’s still physically attached.
Paul: Okay. Now how does that…? We just recently interviewed Ben Nutter.
Amanda: He’s an architect out of Topsfield.
Paul: Yeah. How does that mesh with what an architect does?
Amanda: So architects are more inclined to deal with the entire structure itself. So they do a lot of the exterior. They deal with foundations, you know, a lot more of the code aspects for clearances and references. They deal more with the town when they do for permitting.
Paul: Yeah. Ben covered that and talked about that.
Amanda: Yeah. So there are a lot of occasions where architectural firms and design firms, where their services overlap. So there are some architects that just create the vanilla box, if you will. So they will make sure that you have your subfloor, your walls are up. There’s plaster on the wall, and you have a ceiling above you. And then the designer comes in and adds everything else.
Paul: Really? You mean, so the wall, the floor coverings…?
Amanda: Yep. So we would add the hardwood flooring, all of the trim. So your baseboard, your crown moldings, whether you’re carpeting, the paint colors on the wall, all of that. But there’s a lot of architects that like to take it even further, and they will do the majority of the hardscape that’s physically attached and leave things like the fixtures — such as plumbing, lighting, decorative accessories — to the designer.
Paul: So it sounds like it’s very collaborative.
Amanda: It needs to be. It needs to be, because if I as a designer have a vision for, let’s just say, a living room, and I want a grand piece of artwork over the fireplace, and the architect coordinates with the HVAC guy to put some sort of a ducting right above the fireplace, that’s not going to work with my art.
Understanding A Client’s Taste
Paul: Okay. So now as we get into this, I’m thinking about…we’ve already talked about design versus decorating and the ordinary person on the street understands that now, but probably wouldn’t have 10 minutes ago. It wouldn’t have been as stark as it is, maybe, to you because you work on it every day. So how do you deal with…You must work with the client, the ultimate user of the facility or the room, or whatever it is. How do you deal with their taste? I mean, because do you get to know them or do you look at what they like? It just seems like a tremendous… It’s like, how do you pick a dress for somebody? How do you pick a shirt for somebody?
Amanda: Yep. So one of the benefits that I find be working as an interior designer, the people that are fortunate enough to hire us — whether it’s in a residential aspect or a lot of commercial buildings, the clients that have hired us are more focused on their business, and they just want to make sure that where they’re working is aesthetically pleasing, and they just show up, and it’s all done, and it’s great.
In order to understand the taste of a client, we have a lot of checklists. So, lots of times, clients will come to me with an idea, and they’ll say, “I’m traditional,” “I’m very contemporary,” “I’m eclectic,” “I have no idea,” or, “I think I like Shaker style houses,” but what they’re really referring could be Craftsman style.
So for me as a designer, my initial job is to do a little bit of a psychological understanding. Who are you? How quickly can you make decisions? Is it you, or is it you and your partner? Is it you and your family? Are there multiple investors involved in the project looking at it from a commercial or a hospitality standpoint?
So before I give anybody answers to anything, I need to understand who the players are. I do a little bit of a personality assessment, and they may come to me with a completely blank slate, and say, “I don’t know what to do.”
And then I’ll start asking, “How many people in your family? How many people in your office? Do you have pets? Does it matter? What do you plan on doing in your kitchen? Do you like to cook, or do you eat out all the time?”
So the answers to those questions start to create the scope of how large the rooms need to be, the style that we’re looking for. We worked with one commercial client, and he was a bit of a Renaissance man, and his concept was more contemporary and streamlines, but he wanted to have the softer aspects of it. So we did a typical cubical, but it had a wood cap on the top instead of doing it like you would assume an office building would be like. And we added some rustic accents for furniture and such in the larger areas.
Paul: And then, so you did this. You delivered it. What did he say?
Amanda: He loved it.
Paul: So, was he able to identify the little subtleties that you added in, or did it just work for him?
Amanda: For him specifically, I was actually — oddly enough that I used him as an example — he came to me, and he said, “Amanda, if I had been able to do this myself, I couldn’t have done it better,” which for me, was one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten. Not every client says that. Not every project goes smoothly in the sense of you think you know someone when it gets started, and then when you really get into it three months, four months, 12 months down the line, there’s, “Oh, I forgot to tell you this.” Or, “Oh, by the way, this is what we’re doing, and the scope my change.” I’m fortunate when some clients have the ability to see what I see beyond me having to put it on paper.
Paul: You mean “see,” understand what your vision is.
How Psychology Helps Designers
Amanda: Yeah. And again, it’s a matter of me interpreting what they are interested in seeing for themselves and then me telling it back to them. So how I interpret it may not be the say way as you would interpret it. For example, I had a client, multiple different investors in this project, and he said, “I don’t like blue.”
Paul: That’s a pretty big color to rule out.
Amanda: It’s a pretty big color and I had to figure out the reasons why, and was it a specific blue. Is it teal that he thinks is blue? Is he colorblind? Does he just not like the feeling because it was in his grandmother’s house or something like that? And so I have to dig. I have to dig to be able to find the answers.
Paul: Was that as easy as saying, “Well, why?” Did you ask him that blunt a question?
Amanda: Yeah. “Why not?”
Paul: Yeah. And what did he say?
Amanda: “I just don’t like it.”
Paul: “I just don’t like it.”
Amanda: And then that goes into…I have a minor in psychology.
Paul: Okay. I was going to ask that. So when you do this sort of psychoanalysis, do they have… Do you have a couch? Do they lay down?
Amanda: There are times where I wish I was laying on the coach asking the questions.
Paul: Or is it just sort of part of your understanding of the interaction? Or do you actually have a checklist that you might go on? You know, go in the back room and check out. Okay, he’s crazy. He doesn’t like blue. So how formal is it? I mean, it might be, in your mind, very formal, but I might never perceive it if I’m sitting down with you.
How Checklists Help
Amanda: When I started my business seven years ago, I created every checklist under the sun because, as an entrepreneur, I wanted to make sure that if I was doing this, I was doing it right. And I started my business plan in 2009, and it’s still not done.
Paul: Of course not.
Amanda: Because, as anybody listening that’s an entrepreneur, they’ll understand the evolution of self along with the evolution of your business. And so to finish it would have been grand, but I needed to make money. So I had all the checklists, and I went out, and I got my clients, and I realized that, even if you have a checklist of 10, 15, 30 items, every single person you deal with has a very different personality. So it’s a matter of being able to think quickly on your feet, adjust the conversation as it flows, being able to, to change your aspect of questioning, you know, your line of questioning, if he clearly tells you that he doesn’t like blue, and there’s no reason for you to know anything else. So, you know, you have to kind of, okay, “Well, do you like red?”
Paul: Right. I see.
Amanda: But the checklists, I have them. I think I used them within the first six months. When I have new employees come and work with me, I have them look them over so they understand why.
Paul: It’s probably internalized by now for you.
Amanda: By now, it’s more just… My name is on that door, and so the representation of myself is who I am as a person. So my ability to communicate with your clients, whether they’re new or potentially new or I’ve had them for three or four years, is creating that dialog where we can understand each other. And that, for me, is more important than figuring out exactly what they want from the first meeting.
Paul: Right. Of course, because you want to be able to have something that’s durable, which is that relationship.
Amanda: The relationship. Exactly.
Paul: So did you specifically get a minor in psychology because you knew you’d be being this?
Amanda: No, no.
Paul: So that seems very, very exciting or serendipitous.
Amanda: It’s very serendipitous. I actually just spoke at Endicott on sometime last week to one of their graduate classes. And there were half a dozen students that are in career changing mode. One was an English major with a business minor. There was a stay-at-home mom that had studied design 15 years ago. There was a woman coming from advertising. There was another woman with a psychology minor, and there was another one who was actually a designer, interior designer minor, and she just carried through to the graduate class.
And all of those fields in life are very important for the interior design aspect. So I was able to speak to every one of them individually as I was talking about the overall encompassing facts of my business. So having the psychology minor was more, “Hey, I think I’m interested in this.” And I didn’t realize the value of it until I really started working in the industry back in 2002. But not until I genuinely started by own business did I really see the value of it.
Paul: Well it sounds like there’s a lot of things, certainly in interior design that are subject to interpretation. It’s not like, did you move the bricks from point A to point B? No, I mean, it’s not quantifiable like that. So that’s fascinating. I think that all our listeners could take a good notion there, that you need to think about psychology in anything you do. I mean, I really… It’s obvious once you say it. But, you need to be deliberate about that.
So were the checklists, were they psychological checklists or were they, “Do you like brick, or do you like carpet?”
Asking the Right Questions
Amanda: Well, there are still some checklists that I use, and it is a matter of, for example, if we’re doing a master bathroom, there are certain questions I need to ask my clients. One of the first ones, which sometimes get interpreted a little strangely, but, “What do you do in here?” You know, if somebody comes to me and says, “I want to redesign my master suite,” okay great.
“What do you guys do in here? What’s the purpose of this room?” It could very well be they have three kids and two dogs, and on Saturday mornings, this is where cartoons happen, and they want to be able to have hot chocolate and a Keurig without having to go downstairs, and they want a fireplace because this is where they spend all of their family time.
Or it could be the complete opposite. It’s a very hardworking couple. And they value their time and their private spaces to do what they do. So asking those types of questions, you get to know people very quickly as to who they are and how they live their lives. But the checklists specifically are, we need to talk about plumbing fixtures, tiles, light fixtures.
Paul: I see. Reminders of the litany.
Amanda: Which creates the scope of what we need to do.
Dealing with Resistance
Paul: So have you, in asking these questions, have you ever met resistance or friction with people?
Amanda: Yes. And usually, if that happens within our initial meeting — because I don’t charge for initial meetings because it’s more me asking question after question. Let me figure out how you are. If I meet with resistance, and if the chemistry isn’t there between myself and a potential new client, we assess the situation. We understand whether they will be good for us just as much as we could potentially be good for them. And in situations where I have felt that it wasn’t going to be a good fit, I will refer them to another designer or another firm.
Also published on Medium.
Architecture & Technology: Then & Now
Today on the Edge of Innovation, we are talking with Benjamin Nutter from Benjamin Nutter Architects, an architectural firm based in Topsfield, Massachusetts, about technology and how it’s changing the architectural field.
Show Notes
Benjamin Nutter Architects’ Website: benjaminnutter.com
Find Benjamin Nutter Architects on Twitter
Find Benjamin Nutter Architects on Facebook
Benjamin Nutter Architects Portfolio
A Definitive Guide to 3D Printing
What Is 3D Printing and How Does It Work? | Mashable Explains Video
Video of a 3D Architectural Model being made
Link to SaviorLabs’ Free Assessment
3D-Printed Architectural Model
Sections
Running into Problems on the Job
Technology in the Architectural Field
The Drafting Process
The Next Big Thing in Technology – 3D Printing
Architecture & Technology: Then & Now
Running into Problems on the Job
Paul: It’s amazing to take a pile of lumber or construction materials and make it into a house is just an amazing thing. And you help with the plan. But I’m sure that they hit plan issues. How often does that happen where you drew the plans up, and they go out there, and something is not working because of who knows what? I mean, there’s lots of different things. So it’s a collaborative effort, I think.
Ben: Yes. Well that’s an interesting question in the sense that in the last, say, 12 to 18 months, for whatever reason, I just had an opportunity to kind of reflect back and think back on the volume of construction that we’ve accomplished just in my small firm. And I think over those 30+ years, it’s probably north of $125 million worth of construction. And that’s a reasonable number.
Paul: That’s 1/8 of a billion dollars.
Ben: Yeah. I never thought of it that way. But yes. So and then I also was able to recall when there have been the very few errors or omissions, if you will, that we’ve ever had — whether it was myself or someone else — have been the sum total of four windows, one foundation that we had to do some concrete cutting on. It’s about four to six examples of times when I said to a general contractor, “Okay, we screwed that up.” So three of those windows, I bought replacement windows for them, and those three windows ended up in my house, which is one way to learn a lesson. But it’s been very minor. I mean, it might have a total value of ten or fifteen thousand dollars.
Paul: Wow. That’s incredible.
Ben: So I’m obviously very happy about that. But I’ve always felt that one of the things that really drives us and is really important to us is that we’re not only very creative, but we’re also very thorough. And that’s probably not only a lesson learned from when I was a child working on my parents’ property and sort of understanding the accountability lesson, but also, for four years, I worked in a firm that was architecture and construction. So that combined both professions under one umbrella, and it kind of ramped up my appreciation for if you’re going to draw it, you need to be absolutely certain that it can be built. And I was involved in the process of all of the material ordering and window specs and so on. You know, it’s all well and good to be creative, but if you cannot put a thorough set of construction documents out to the general contractor and the trades, it’s not good information for them, and it could be, it could be a very expensive.
Paul: I was just going to say, based on the number of things you’ve had to fix, the low number six or seven times or five times, contractors must love to work with you because they know the plans are going to be executable. I mean, the last thing a contractor wants is to have to redo stuff.
Ben: Right. Yes. And that’s the last thing we want them to do either. And you’re right. And we have great working relationships with a core set of general contractors. And we have had, on occasion, we’ve had comments back from framing contractor or other people that, “This is the best set of drawings we’ve ever worked with.” And those are obviously…it doesn’t happen all the time, only because you don’t necessarily always get that feedback. But when you do, it’s very helpful because then we understand that we’re providing them with information that’s appropriate and is allowing them to do their job well.
Paul: It’s important to… Because if you weren’t, you’d like to know that. And you probably would.
Ben: Right. Yes, we would.
Paul: But it’s really nice to know that the processes and systems and work methodologies you’re doing are resulting in things that are useful. And as we’ve said before, those contractors, those people that do the building, they’re incredibly talented. So to get them to say something that this is good is high praise. That’s really neat to hear. And I’m sure it made you feel good, but, you know, it’s really nice to know that — whether they say it or not — you’re producing things that are ultimately useful, you know, hugely beneficial to their work.
Ben: Yes. That’s right. Yeah. It’s a very satisfying end result all around. And the more times we can repeat that, the happier we are.
Technology in the Architectural Field
Paul: So now, you started well before computers were contemporary at all. I mean, they just… So you worked with a pencil.
Ben: Yes. Yeah, in fact, it’s almost frightening to think so. But when I first entered college, they were still doing math on a slide rule. And by the time, you know, my second year, we actually had a calculator that probably cost an arm and a leg but at least would add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
Paul: So… Wow, that’s just… So you were doing math to calculate rise and run and all those different things on a slide rule. And then you moved to a calculator. I mean, even a calculator seems primitive.
Ben: It does.
Paul: So when you drew plans in the old world, you’d have to erase them and change them.
Ben: Yes.
Paul: I mean, there wasn’t any other way.
Ben: No, there wasn’t. Yes.
Paul: So, it must have been much more laborious.
Ben: It was so different. Yes. And actually, when I worked at Royal Barry Wills office, there was a gentleman there at the time who had been in the profession for decades as a draftsman. And he used to comment that he would get paid as much to erase as he did to draw. And it was so accurate because in that day and age, you couldn’t just… that’s one of the really great things about computer-aided design now, what we refer to as CAD, because you can do revisions so quickly, and it’s great in both the design process and as you’re doing a set of construction drawings.
Paul: So, now you brought up the point of the draftsman, were you drawing the plans or was the draftsman drawing the plans at Royal?
Ben: Way back… Right. So at Royal Barry Wills office, generally there would be a principal, so that would be one of the lead people in the office. So for example, Dick Wills, he would have a lot of interaction with the client and would do conceptual drawings, which were generally on trace paper, and that would be…that’s a flimsy kind of paper that you draw on, for both floor plans and doing exterior elevation drawings.
Paul: So let me stop you there. I don’t want to derail that. But why is it transparent, semitransparent?
Ben: Oh, it’s so that you could…. Great question. It’s so that you could put one piece of paper over another. So you’re making…as you’re doing sketches for a floorplan, for example, you might put a first pass of thoughts down, for organizing a first floor, for example, but then generally you would explore that and find out, well what if I… Maybe the house should be flipped. Maybe the garage should be on the other end. So you have the flexibility to take that transparent paper and flip it over or upside down or backwards or roll another piece on top of it and try a different arrangement between the garage and where the kitchen is. So it allowed you to do a progressive set of explorations of your design solution. And I have to say that for some of us in the office, even in 2017, it’s still a very productive way to do some of the design. It’s kind of a very fluid way to explore design. So that’s kind of the reason for that.
Paul: Well, I’ve always wondered that, you know. Why wouldn’t you just write it on white paper. But anyway. Okay. So we’re back to Dick Wills, and he would be the principal, and he’d make up the sketches and work with the client. And then what would happen?
Ben: And at the end of that process… So he’d do a concept design, meet with the client, probably do some revisions to that as a sort of more sophisticated solution that would be considered more of a final set of design drawings. And then those of us in the drafting room, if you will — at the time there were five or six of us—
Paul: So you were doing drafting at that time.
Ben: Yes. Right. So then we would take that design, floorplans, and building elevations and begin to convert that into a set of construction drawings — foundation plan, floor plans, exterior elevations. Building sections are when you basically take the giant chainsaw and cut the house in half so you can draw how it’s built — floor joists and rafters and so on. And all the details associated with that — roof trim and window trim, chimney details, whatever is required — that would be part of the responsibility of the draftsman. And then you would also begin to work quite a bit with the client at that point as well.
That process is different for us know, or at least in my office. Each one of the project architects becomes involved with the client right at the beginning of our project as well, whether it’s a renovation or new construction.
And there is a couple of reasons for that. One is that I feel like then everybody has ownership on that project from day one, which, to me, provides an opportunity for that individual who is the project architect, to be more excited about that process. And it also is two sets of eyes, ears, and experiences, and imagination applied to that client project. So it’s a little… The overall process is not dramatically different in its sort of intention, but what’s very different is in the application of going from design, through the design process, and to a set of construction drawings.
The Drafting Process
Paul: So you had a specific pool of drafts-people draftsmen at the time. But that sort of has collapsed, I would imagine because you all use CAD now?
Ben: Yes.
Paul: And you can make the changes and… In other words, I don’t have to hand it off to somebody else. I might, but just for scheduling purposes, but we’re all able to do that. And I mean, it would have been pretty weird to take a set of plans, to take somebody else’s set of plans and go in and erase and change it. Is that right?
Ben: Right. That would be very rare.
Paul: 30 years ago?
Ben: That’s right. That would be very rare, and it would only be a circumstance where maybe somebody was out on vacation, or they were sick for a few weeks, and you had to do something like that. Generally, you took responsibility for those, and we still do that now unless it’s a time crunch or something of that nature. But, yes. And it is. The way that we can provide various design and detailed solutions by way of computer in the 21st century is just remarkable to me compared to when I started doing this.
The Next Big Thing in Technology – 3D Printing
A 3D-Printed Architectural Model
Paul: Well, what do you think is the next big thing in that? Because, you know, you were doing drawings on flat pieces of paper. And then we moved into CAD where we basically mimic that. Then we moved into 3D where we could extrude and do elevations and shading and coloring and all. What’s going to happen next, do you think?
Ben: Well, some of it, in a way, has already started to happen in that there is also more technology available create 3-dimensional actual models.
Paul: Oh, that’s interesting.
Ben: We do not have that capability in my firm. But there are firms where they probably have the equipment to take their drawings and virtually create a 3-dimensional model.
Paul: So like with a 3D printer they would print it?
Ben: Yes. A 3D printer. Right.
Paul: Wow. I wouldn’t have thought of that.
Ben: Right. That is going to… And it’s quite well used in industrial design for example and has been for a while. But that, I’m sure, will trickle down as the technology and the cost of the 3D printers becomes more affordable. More of us will have access to that. That’s a great tool.
The other thing that has changed and certainly is — again, we’re doing relatively small work as far as size of each project. But if you’re doing a 30-story high rise somewhere, the basic premise is the same, but the way you go about it is quite different. And in those firms, many of them are now using a product called Revit. And with Revit, you can have an end result that is both three-dimensional modeling, computer modeling, as well as the two-dimensional construction drawings. So one software program provides you with the opportunity to, to accomplish both of those. Whereas, in our case, we use one, an AutoCAD product to do 2D, and we use a 3-dimensional computer modeling software for our 3D.
Paul: So I find myself, with technology a lot of times, being surprised that that didn’t exist.
Ben: Mmm… I suppose.
Paul: So wait a minute. You’re telling me… Now, thinking about it, I know you use two different packages. But I’ve never really gotten into that detail. But there really aren’t a lot of packages that you do both of them in?
Ben: No. And I suppose that’s probably just the evolution of the capability of software.
Paul: I guess that’s the danger of assuming something. So you draw things in an AutoCAD product, the 2D stuff.
Ben: That’s correct.
Paul: And then you don’t have to redraw it in the 3D. Do you?
Ben: We do.
Paul: Really. Now see that just doesn’t seem right. It’s 2017.
Ben: I know.
Paul: I mean, come on.
Ben: I’m sure that that will evolve to make that even… That will become an affordable package for small firms. And the only reason we are not using a product like Revit is that it’s another investment, and it’s also some time for our people to sort of come up to speed with using that as opposed to what we currently do. So that’s where I would imagine the biggest difference will be over a decade or whatever timeframe it is.
Paul: Probably shorter than we know.
Ben: Probably. Yeah. I bet it will be the opportunity for us to work in a CAD or in a software package that would be similar to a very large firm, and then the opportunity to have an affordable 3D printer.
Paul: Yeah. Interesting. So, now you could probably 3D print some of your stuff, if you just sent it out. Right?
Ben: Yes.
Paul: So you have that capability now, it’s just a matter whether you have a printer.
Ben: Yeah. And we’ve done that, but we don’t do it very often.
Paul: Right. So what was the reaction of the people who saw the 3D print?
Ben: Well, one of them happened to be… Ironically, it was for my own house because I had a friend who was working in a firm that was on kind of the leading edge of creating, the 3D printers. And they wanted to kind of find out how can we work with architects of all shapes and sizes. And so we created the 3D model, computer model, I should say, just to be clear. So we created the 3D computer model and gave it to them. They had somebody then convert it to the software that ran their 3D printer and made the model of my house, which is fascinating for me to look at or people who come in the office.
Paul: Was this before you built your house or after?
Ben: No. It was after. It was after. Right.
Paul: It would have been interesting just the emotional… I mean, what in the world. Is that, is that right? I want to change that.
Ben: Well, you bet. You bet. And there’s no doubt that the ability to do 3D computer modeling has also allowed us to become even better at what we do because we can see things more easily 3-dimensionally and, again, it’s back to both the subjective and the objective. The subjective, do we think it looks better that way, but objective, is there any little sort of hidden, “Oh, that’s not a good roof shape in that location.” So it’s really fun to work in this profession in this time.
Paul: Do you still have that model?
Ben: I do.
Paul: We’d like to get a picture of that to show our audience. I think they would like to see that. That would be cool.
Ben: You bet.
Paul: Because, I mean, I’m very keen on 3D printers, and I’m just so glad I haven’t bought one, you know. It’s this funny thing. You know, the longer you wait, the better they’re going to get, and it’s amazing. One of my brothers is doing some really cool stuff. He lives in Ohio. And there, the public libraries have 3D printers that you can use for free, just pay for the material. That’s a really cool idea.
Ben: That’s a progressive thought. I like that.
Paul: Yeah. I said, “Wow!” So we gotta make that happen. But, so if you don’t know what a 3D printer is, we’ll put some links in the show notes about that and a link to what Ben has done. We will have all Ben’s contact information and links to his website in the show notes. And you can reach out to him for questions, etc. And, get a look at some of the incredible buildings that just fit so well. I think that’s one of the biggest comments I’d have about the architecture I’ve seen you do is it fits so well into its environment.
Ben: Thank you.
Paul: And that’s, I think that’s high praise. I mean, that is not just… I haven’t seen the inside as much, but they just fit so well. And, we live in New England and it’s a rural area, and it is one of the most beautiful places in the world. And we take it for granted a lot, I think. But I had a good friend who went overseas to school and came back, and he’s like, “Wow. New England is just spectacular.” And it really is. And if you haven’t had a chance to visit here, you know, get a chance to look around and see what it is. But, there’s some great examples on your website and other things. And I’d like people to take a look at that.
So we’ve been talking with Ben Nutter, Benjamin Nutter Architects in Topsfield. I hope you’ve enjoyed the time. Hope everybody has enjoyed listening.
Ben: Thank you very much, Paul. I’ve enjoyed doing this.
Paul: Thank you, Ben.