#349 - ’Experiencing Infratecture‘, with Slade Sheaffer

Cormac Phalen:
00:00:09
We want to welcome a guest and let me try that again and clear my throat and

Evan Troxel:
00:00:15
Welcome back to the Arcispeak podcast, where Cormac clears his throat to kick things off.

Cormac Phalen:
00:00:19
there you go. You know what? I'm probably going to keep that in just for the

Evan Troxel:
00:00:22
you go. Nice. Yeah, there

Cormac Phalen:
00:00:25
It's weather's actually changing here. Cause we have weather, unlike the desert of Phoenix.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:00:32
107 degrees today.

Cormac Phalen:
00:00:35
Oh, I'm sorry. It was only 70 here.

Evan Troxel:
00:00:38
Yeah, I felt like that here, too. Oh,

Cormac Phalen:
00:00:42
we have a guest today, Slade Sheaffer from Air St. Gros. We wanted to welcome, Slade on the show because as all of our listeners know, we had just started to finish up our, summer of travel. And last episode, Evan was talking about his and, previous episodes I was talking about mine. And fortuitously, our Interwebs, we'll call it, within the office. We share stories and whatnot. And Slade had posted where he was on a, and I'm not going to give any of it away as Slade, you're going to get to do all of the talking for this, but some summer travels of his own. And I thought it was a great time to bring him on so that we could talk a little bit about it, specifically about. You know, the importance of travel, but you know what he was doing when he was traveling as we've talked about in the past about how we, enrich our careers, enrich our knowledge, as architects through travel. And so Slade, first, welcome to Archispeak.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:01:43
Thank you. Very happy to be here.

Cormac Phalen:
00:01:45
And now I'm going to throw you right into the fire and have you explain a little bit about your travels, how those travels came about, who sponsored those travels, and go from there.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:01:58
Sure. Well, I'll give a little spoiler. So I went to Denmark, and the Netherlands with a little stop through Germany. But I had some very specific objectives and the choice for why I went to those countries, was pretty specific. So. If I take a step back, to grad school, I went to Arizona State for my, Master of Architecture. Graduated in 21, so, I'm one of the lucky cohort that got to spend about a semester and a half in class and then do the rest virtually. But, my final semester there I opted to do an independent study instead of a traditional studio. And my choice, my sort of pandemic coping mechanism had become cycling. So I've spent a lot of time on my bike, in Phoenix especially. And Phoenix has this really robust network of canals. But we are also very famously very auto centric city. It's not necessarily the best place for people who want to bike, like, practically. There's a huge cycling community, but those people just go into the wealthy neighborhoods where there's all these hills and not too much traffic. So, in my time cycling during the pandemic, I found all these canal networks that, really can make really robust pedestrian and cycling sort of pathways. And I'd also discovered that they were very fragmented, so you'd constantly be hitting major street intersections where you'd have to wait. To cross these six lane roads, and in some cases you might have to cross, like, one road and immediately cross another road. In other cases you might have to cross the interstate and, like, go half a mile south just to get back on that same canal. So, my master's project was kind of looking at how you could, connect all these pathways and make it a little bit more feasible for people to actually use them for cycling and commuting. So first that was sort of just an infrastructural solution. But my thesis advisor Phil Horton at the design school, he sort of pushed me to actually pick a few independent sites to start developing real architecture, because as cool as it would be to develop some sort of modular bridge system, there's sort of architectural limits on that. So I ended up picking this one specific site where a canal crosses sort of two streets within about 50 yards. And I kind of designed this like big bridging amphitheater that also doubled as sort of a observation tower a bridge over the streets to make the canal network continuous big advertisement billboard, which is the only thing that's currently on the site. And it was this really fun project that, Ultimately it was me, like, trying to combine a bunch of uses into this piece of architecture that functioned not only as an amphitheater, but as, like, four other things, or five other things. And also create, microclimate that, that helps the local hot Phoenix weather be a little bit more tolerable in the summer. So anyways, that was sort of my master's project. Had a lot of fun with it. I called it Phoenician Bikitecture. Of course combining some words there. So, didn't really know what to do with that after grad school. Moved on, I was working at a different firm at the time, and then joined Air St. Gros in 2022. This last spring I'd been wanting to do this since grad school. I taught a junior level design studio at the design school at ASU. Which was really fun, and of course, I learned a lot in that experience on its own. But our studio's brief was, I think there was like ten different sections of this studio. And, we were supposed to have them design libraries just branch libraries, but also give our own twist to it. So, really the first thing that came to my mind was my master's project. And During that project, I had looked at a lot of case studies of these other buildings that combine multiple functions, often bike related. So, Bjarke Ingels group did the Shanghai Bike Denmark Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo in 2010, was this sort of morphing shape that you could cycle up and around the outside of it. I had looked at Heatherwick's vessel in New York. This series of stairways creating this sculptural element. I'd looked at also Biggs Copen Hill in Denmark, which we're going to talk a little bit more about which is a waste energy plant in Copenhagen, which, of course a very flat city otherwise. And big came to the city and said, what if we shape this? It's like a big hill and let people ski on it, so it doubles as a hiking slope and a ski slope. And it's also this waste energy plant that supposedly is only emitting, you know, safe particles. I won't get into the science of that because I don't know how that works. But it did smell a little bit like trash when I was there, so a little bit of a spoiler, but a very neat experience otherwise. So anyways, I looked at all these case studies and I go back to my students. And the concept, or what I ended up titling my studio course was what I called Infratecture. Combining infrastructure and architecture. We can get into the, there's some sort of naming issues with, if you go to the roots of those words. But, I was kind of looking at it very simply, just combining infrastructure and architecture. So that's where that infrastructure word came from. So that was what I called the studio's topic. And I was trying to push my students to come up with these multifunctional spaces, so that the libraries they designed would also be some sort of roof garden, or bridge, or some sort of public space, or amphitheater. You know, mixed results from the students. There were some really cool projects, but if I'm, if I teach this studio again, I think I'll learn a little bit more from it. But, so anyway, so that's the long background of this. So, that studio was last spring, and I think in about February, I got an email from Phil Weddle who's an architect here in Arizona. He heads up the Arizona Architecture Foundation, which is basically just a group of good reputation professional architects in the valley. Most of them are FAIA. I don't exactly know how they Do their membership, but they basically just sponsor a series of lectures mostly for the design school at ASU but also travel grants They started with a travel grant for students at the design school that I think's been going for over 20 years now. And then it looks like about 6 or 7 years ago they started up this new travel grant for architects who were licensed in the previous calendar year. Which, of course, I'm sure that's a pretty small pool in any state in Arizona. That's only probably about 20 people every year who earned their license. So, Right. from the get go I figured I had a pretty good chance of winning this award if I took it seriously at all. From that 20 ish architects who probably got their licenses the previous year, I'm sure half or less even consider submitting a proposal, and maybe even less end up submitting one. So anyways, I spent quite a bit of time putting together a proposal. The first thing that came to mind was this topic that I was teaching my students that semester. And I had just presented them, like, the case study assignment, where I wanted them to look at all these different projects. And, as I had presented these case studies to these students, I think I, there was a list of 25 I gave them. And, of the 25 of these buildings I, first of all, I took a step back from just bike focused, of course. I was looking more at just any buildings that sort of had this multifunctional. You know, multiple uses, something combining landscape and infrastructure and architecture beyond very often, using the roof in some creative way. So this list of 25 projects I couldn't help but notice that there was about, I think, just over half of them that were either in Denmark or the Netherlands or by a Dutch or Danish firm. Bjarke Ingels and MVRDV kind of being the Two big outliers there. You see all these, you know, BIG and MVRDV are both known for their kind of almost kitschy, like, very loud graphics, but also incredibly compelling work. There's a reason they're both very well known. I, I couldn't help but notice the density of these projects that were popping up in these two countries. And the more I started looking into it for this proposal, I just kept finding more and more case studies where you'd find like these, you know, terraced spaces that are part of a building that become this really compelling public space. And that kind of led to my desire to travel to these two countries to actually go check out a bunch of these case studies. Because I pretty quickly figured out that you could kind of string together and see most of those case studies I had presented in person in, in, in person. pretty close distance to each other. So that was the genesis of this. I suppose I should say what this prize was. This is called the Robert Samish Prize. So that's what the travel grant is. So I think that was in about February, I submitted this proposal and then heard back that in around March that I was one of three finalists. So they asked us all to prepare a much longer presentation to, to go give to the Arizona Architecture Foundation board. Which I did, and which was both intimidating because that was a number of pretty well known FAAA members in the valley that I was aware of but it went really well they were incredibly receptive of my idea which you know, I dove not in, I'd sort of developed this thesis that the reason Denmark and the Netherlands Had so many of these projects really came down to the urbanism that these two countries have become known for. So both of these countries, you know, they're pretty close geographically, culturally a little bit different, but they both were on the brink of auto centricity, just like the U S in the 60s, 70s. You can find all these pictures of these now famous pedestrian plazas that are just like parking lots filled with cars. There's a city called Utrecht in the Netherlands. I'm gonna apologize in advance for all of my butchering of Pronunciations. in Danish and Dutch because they seem to be kind of, tricky languages in their pronunciation, but so Utrecht has this, like, ring road that was basically a freeway, same as, you know, fill in the blank American cities, and it had been a canal before that and they've since restored it to a canal, I believe in 2015 ish, they finally restored it to its canal state. So, the same goes for any number of spaces in these cities that had been parking lots or freeways or major, stroads that are now, like, mostly pedestrian or bikeways. So, I pretty quickly figured out that was the case. I think pretty closely linked to why their architecture has started to develop like this because they're Really not trying to waste any of their public spaces. They're trying to give them everything they can back to people to use so

Evan Troxel:
00:13:04
Nice.

Cormac Phalen:
00:13:05
Yeah. It's been very encouraging to kind of see, studied a few of these projects, just for my own, amusement, I guess, really about this almost reversal of, the Automobilization of Europe in specifically in the Netherlands and Denmark, but, even some of the places that I lived in Germany that, basically saw kind of like the air of their ways and have been reversing it, even in some cases, they're looking at the architecture itself that was very auto centric and even reversing it to, be more of what the city's character was prior to, kind of like the refacing back in, like, say the, post war era that was, very much, all about the auto centric developments.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:13:53
Right

Evan Troxel:
00:13:54
And a couple of things have come to mind as you've been speaking, Slade, regarding this kind of mixture of infrastructure and architectural projects, right? Like Cormac and I have visited the High Line. together and probably separately too, but talking about mixing so many different use cases and really bringing like this richness to the project, right? It's not just about infrastructure, like so many infrastructure projects are, right? They're just this, really functional device that does whatever it's supposed to do. That this is another level, right? And it took architects to do that. I think, right. It probably took even more than that. It probably took this, I mean, I can't even imagine like the presentations and the studies and the collaborations of different individuals to be involved in making something like that happen. But you can see from the success of it how important these kinds of projects are. And again, to kind of reverse something, or to take something that was one use and completely transform it into something else. And maybe on a much smaller scale, I've been able to do a couple of, like, the trails to rails conversions of what used to be a railroad path that they've turned it into like a DG bike path. And they go for a, like the one that I was on in South Dakota a few weeks ago, it's like 209 miles long. It's super long. Right. And it never goes above a certain percentage of grade. It's really wonderful.

Cormac Phalen:
00:15:21
Well, let me add to that one. So I, where I tend to spend my money on donations is Rails to Trails Conservancy, and actually their ultimate goal, now they're trying to get this, as they've had, but their ultimate goal is to basically have a coast to coast bike trail that is converted rail trails. And so, they've got a pretty ambitious goal. So I'm going to tell both of you, support, as bike riders support them because they're, it's an actual, it's an amazing organization. A lot of, like around the. Baltimore DC area, we have things like, the CNO canal and things like that, that are actually part of the rails to trails and then, areas around that The East Coast has got obviously a lot more because we have a lot more defunct smaller rail systems that they're converting. But, the this amazing goal to, have something that connects coast to coast as a pure bike trail is, pretty amazing. And sorry, I kind of diverted that, but you said rails to trails, and I'm like, wait, shameless plug for somebody that I give my money to.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:16:26
Yeah, i'm all for it

Evan Troxel:
00:16:29
Well, were there any other, before you jump into kind of talking about the locations you visited on your trip, were there any other kind of case studies that you looked at in the U S because I'm thinking like, as you're talking about Copenhagen, area and Denmark and the Netherlands, I can only imagine there's people in the audience screaming at their speakers, like, what about this one? What about this one? And so I brought up a couple, but were there any here in the U S that people may be familiar with that you were kind of citing as case studies for these? Infrastructure architectural projects,

Slade Sheaffer:
00:16:59
Yes, and shockingly It seems like, of course you can find more and more examples of projects, that could fit loosely into this typology, and I kind of ended up identifying a number of different, like, sub genres of this type of project, but New York, I think it won't surprise you that there's a lot of good projects popping up there. Heatherwick's Little Park, I believe it's called, With the sort of tulip, Shapes. The Highline is basically the classic example, taking this old misused piece of infrastructure and turning it into this incredible piece of public landscape architecture, public space. The Vessel as well, which I sort of branded that one in the, quote unquote vanity flavor of infrastructure projects. Which I visited a couple more of those Vanity type projects, which, you can argue about the public value of, those ones specifically, but they still create conversations, so I'm, I think they're still interesting. I went to a very similar project of that, which I'll get to in the forest of Denmark, that was one of my favorite places I've ever visited. It was, It was mind blowing. So I'm sure the vessel despite the fact that it's like ticketed and it's not really truly public space, you can argue about the, accessibility of it and whatnot. I'm sure it's still an incredible place to visit just sort of based on the pure geometry and sort of novel experience of it. So New York, I think, but, that could bring you to another conversation about, some level of density. required for these projects. I actually was fortunate to talk to an architect at MDRDV and a urbanist at Mekadu. And both of them kind of provided insights, that their designs are all based on, especially in the Netherlands and Denmark's the same, of course, those were both Dutch firms that I talked to, but they said they don't have any easy projects anymore or any easy sites because They just don't have the space so I think that kind of perhaps forces them into that mindset of thinking outside of the box. How can they turn these things into more than one use? Whereas us Americans might just be stuck in the unfortunate mindset of, here's the building and then let's put all the parking in this other space we have.

Cormac Phalen:
00:19:12
Well, we're sort of, I mean, you're very spot on because, I mean, we're sort of stuck in this sprawl mentality. It's like, oh, why reuse that building when we can just, go ahead and use this and, clear cut this area here and build it down. I'm curious, and maybe you'll get into this a little bit, but of the examples that you've cited, say, in your U. S. Infrastructure, Am I using it right?

Slade Sheaffer:
00:19:34
Yes, yeah.

Cormac Phalen:
00:19:35
All right. And what you saw in Europe, I mean, I can only imagine that, there was a little bit more willingness to be adventurous with the, you know, the creations, you know, the merging of programs, versus, the, a little bit more conservative attitude that, we have in the States where, it's, okay, this is a power plant, Let it be a power plant, in that kind of thing and, I guess it's still kind of part of that sprawl mentality of, just let the thing be the thing and don't merge the two, it was the old and this is way before your time, but there was this whole Commercial advertising Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. It's like, don't get your peanut butter in my chocolate and vice versa. And so it was just like, segregate it, keep it, separate. And, And I see in one of the things that I appreciate about some of the big projects that probably visited was the willingness to merge and to explore and identify the need for, these to be multifunction spaces.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:20:34
Sure, um. A couple initial comments on that. First of all, these Copenhagen, for example, they are forced to just, everything's a bit closer together. Their cities are, by nature, more mixed use, which we're slowly trying to get back to in the US. But, on the flip side of that, like, the Copenhagen project that we'll talk about waste to energy plant, it still is very much in this industrial area of Copenhagen that's It's not necessarily super dense by measures of the rest of the city. So it's not like that one was forced to be a ski hill by the fact that it's like surrounded by a bunch of other public spaces or anything like that. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere as far as the city goes. Um, I think the other side of that or perhaps what's guiding that, I had a comment from the architect at MVRDB that I spoke to. you know, I kind of asked him like, how do you get the clients to buy in on these wild ideas? And to some degree he said, well, people don't work with us if they're not willing to

Cormac Phalen:
00:21:41
Right,

Slade Sheaffer:
00:21:42
have some radical thoughts. So, that's not kind of the catch 22. It's like, if you're not big or MVRDV or a firm like that, how do you get a client to buy in? Now, of course, in those countries, you're starting to get several of these other firms producing similar types of work that are, equally as compelling in ways. But I think, to some degree, that's kind of just like the cultural momentum building that we don't necessarily have here yet. But,

Cormac Phalen:
00:22:06
Glad, you used the word yet.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:22:08
well, that's part of the trip here. And, you know, at Ayer St. Gross, we're mostly in higher ed. I love campus architecture and campuses because I kind of see them as urbanist havens within our auto centric cities. So, if there's any place to sort of experiment with architecture and push concepts like this, I think it's probably campuses.

Cormac Phalen:
00:22:30
Yeah,

Slade Sheaffer:
00:22:31
love to see us starting to implement this kind of fun idea on the campuses where people do walk and bike to get around everywhere, you know? And then maybe those ideas can slowly start permeating outwards from the campuses.

Evan Troxel:
00:22:46
Yeah, I think just as a side note, the thing that you're talking about is like, it's their brand, right? You talk about these firms, it's why people go to them in the first place. Nobody goes to Frank Gehry expecting to get something else, right? And that was something that kind of, the light bulb went off a long time ago, you know, two decades ago, when it was like, how does he get to do projects like this? And it's like, By doing projects like this, right? Like that's the only, you have to show, and then people want to come to you for that you know, total aside, but I think it's the same concept that you're talking about.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:23:19
and as, as far as getting the momentum started, at least you know, Big was born out of I believe Bjarke Ingels worked at, oMA before, so that's, sort of another Dutch Danish link, but in, in the Netherlands, they You know, they were starting to build their cities around the car, and then they had these huge protests in the 60s, 70s, that were actually really interesting, that I hadn't heard about until I researched for this that they basically called in Dutch, stop the kinder, stop the kinder mord stop murdering the children, and it was because a number of children had been hit by cars and whatnot, and it just took this cultural cataclysm for them to like turn their cities back to people and bikes. And then in, in Denmark, you had Jan Kjell, who still does a lot of really awesome work, but that was sort of their cultural cataclysm. So both of those countries were sort of shocked back into this. And it seems like 20, 30 years down the road, this type of architecture started popping up. So it seems like to me, that was kind of the evolution, the next evolution of this. that urbanism that is, is maturing for those countries, but is really only just starting for X number of other places.

Cormac Phalen:
00:24:34
So do you want to dig in to some of the places. that you've visited?

Slade Sheaffer:
00:24:38
Sure here I'll share I will share this screen.

Evan Troxel:
00:24:42
This is where it's going to be for the listeners who are listening to the audio version, we're going to share some imagery here so you can check it out on the YouTube version

Slade Sheaffer:
00:24:50
Yeah, so, I started in Copenhagen I'll make the note here, I actually took my mom with me on this trip, which was really special. She had never been to Europe before. So, when I told my parents that I had won this prize My fiance works in the schools, so I was planning this for late August, and, or mid August, and so she wasn't going to be able to go because her school year had already started. My mom kind of joked, Oh, my friends said you should bring me bring me with you. And there was something in her voice I was like, she's joking, but she's also kind of serious. So I went on this aggressive campaign to convince her to come with me. And I finally did. It took many weeks, but I'm glad, really glad she, she came along. I think it was a great experience for her. Of course it was a bit go, go, go. Cause I had all this. That's a long list of places to see, So. she did a really good job keeping up with me, though.

Cormac Phalen:
00:25:44
But how many times do you get to have the opportunity to kind of share your passion, your career, your, what your chosen path is with your parents? I mean, cause unless you come from, say, a family that are architects, they don't really know what we do. And it's kind of fun to actually have that opportunity to take her along and kind of show her. Hey, this is what Slade's doing with his life.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:26:11
Yeah, absolutely. Known for my family's architects so she didn't, you know, I did a lot of talking to her trying to tell her about all these places and the reasons I was, we were going to these places. So this map I'm showing you here, there's a diversion to Cologne that wasn't originally in The, plans, but my mom, she's Catholic, I grew up Catholic as well. There's a fantastic Cathedral. in Cologne some amazing history about how it survived the war and whatnot. So I made that sidetrack as soon as my mom signed on to the trip because A, I personally also love Gothic cathedrals, that's part of how I became convinced that I wanted to move to architecture. I'd done a study abroad in college in Paris, Barcelona, and London, and we stopped at like, Chartres, and Notre Dame, Paris, and these gothic cathedrals were spaces that just, like, blew my mind, of course, so, was very happy to make that stop for my mom that wasn't necessarily in the domain of my studies otherwise, but was a personal highlight as well. So, shall I dive into more of the actual itinerary. So it started in Copenhagen. I think we spent five days there. I actually have so for the listeners, I'll hold up here. I print out this big itinerary that I made on Google docs with, all my hotel links and whatnot, but also the long list of projects that I wanted to visit. So, Copenhagen I'm just going to go ahead and fire off some of these projects. Most of which I was able to visit. So Copenhill, which we'll talk about as well. Camp Observation Tower mentioned that kind of earlier. That's a tower in the forest. Karen Blixen's Plaza, that's a project by COPI. That's a university plaza that basically has bike parking underneath these sort of artificial hills. It's really compelling in these almost cave spaces. The Danish Maritime Museum, which is also by BIG. Unfortunately, I did not get to visit that one. It's a little too far out of the way. The Opera Park by Kobe. That's this amazing park built on top of a parking garage, of course. The Mountain by BIG is another residential project, where every single residence has a terrace and the whole thing is basically sloped like a mountain. One of the, my favorite projects was the Eight House by BIG, which, That one was actually probably One of the ones I was most surprised by. It's basically, it's shaped like an 8 from above, and it's a series of apartment buildings, but there's this public promenade that snakes its way up the entire form and takes you about 6 stories high just by walking up, a 5 percent slope. And it kind of blew my mind that, A, it was public, B, you could walk around the whole thing, and see it creates this incredibly intimate experience, and it's, it's like walking on almost a tight European street, except that, you're on the street next to someone's little patio, and then on the other side, there's a six story drop down to the plaza, which is also public below. So that was a really compelling building on its own that I did not I didn't even know if I'd be able to access it. So that was a pleasant surprise. Let's see, some other projects I visited. The Orstad gym gymnasium by 3XM. the IKEA Copenhagen. So I'll talk about that project as well Israel's Plods, which is this incredible plaza that also covered over a previous parking structure. Park and Play, which is a parking garage with an incredible basically play structure on the roof that's also public. There's a few other projects here that I could keep listing and I could keep going on, but as you can imagine, it was kind of hard to get to all of these. So, the way I would do this is I think both in Copenhagen and Amsterdam I took a couple of days each where I Basically just hopped on a city bike and biked around for about 3 or 4 hours. Sometimes to this one project in Copenhagen I had to bike about 10 or 15 miles out of the way to get to this one, but it was totally worth it. That building was gosh, what was that one called? Basecamp Lindby. Again Apologies for my Danish pronunciation, but this building is incredible. It's like this snaking form. It's some sort of student dorm but also I think co housing with I believe there's also elderly housing there as well. And it's a snaking form where there's these plazas on the inside, but right at the entrance, both wings of the building are at the ground, and you can walk up the left side or the right side. And it turns into this hiking path that spans the whole length of the roof and snakes around, and I believe it's like 800 meters long if you walk this walking path, which of course I did. It was amazing, and I, I took a bunch of pictures there. None of the pictures of that one quite do justice, but you can find these really cool, like, aerial views of people, like, running around this track. It's incredibly compelling. It's almost, you know, it's like you're, when you're up on this roof, because the parapet's low enough, it almost feels like you're just on a natural hill in the middle of this big flat city. Really intriguing space.

Evan Troxel:
00:31:25
One of the things that Cormac and I have done is had a Series of podcasts about outdoor spaces. And like, what you're talking about doesn't compare to what the kinds of amenities that we're including in all different kinds of podcasts. building types in the U. S. as like outdoor spaces in quotes, right? It's like, you know, there's a pergola and there's a gym with a wall that opens up. You're talking about like a hiking path across the roof of a building that takes you up. It's completely another level. And

Slade Sheaffer:
00:31:58
in its audacity, for lack of a better word. Challenging the status quo to Copenhill which I'll talk about as well. Just like, how much a challenge, actually, like, you have this huge roof space of this giant building, why don't we make this something incredible that people will visit? Like, and this was way out in the suburbs, but people go out and visit this building because it's now this crazy hiking path.

Evan Troxel:
00:32:23
the cost involved in that is not insignificant at all. I guess, significant, I'm sure. And so for them to actually invest in that, is amazing. Like it's literally amazing. I think we've all been on projects, right? Where it's like, you can't get, you know, 10 square feet of green roof on because maintenance doesn't know how to take care of it or whatever. Right. And what you're talking about here is something that is. for beyond the occupants of the building as intended, right? It's like the public can go up there and use this space. And that's absolutely incredible for that kind of thing, just to be, I don't know, want to say it's normal. I'm sure it's not normal, but for it to, but you're talking about several projects that have incorporated something like this. It's really amazing.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:33:11
Right, which is why I was so excited to see, and you know, I think one of the other things like walking around Copenhagen, I found a number of these like, terrace seating spaces that somehow like fed up to some roof. Just walking around or next to other projects that I was going to see, just that I kind of didn't even know were there. So it's like this really has started to permeate their their Vernacular, almost, for what new building is.

Evan Troxel:
00:33:37
you said earlier about college campuses, higher ed really being kind of a great place to practice this kind of thing. I've had that exact experience and where I used to live in Southern California at the Claremont Colleges, there's several college campuses that are all linked together. And I would go running there while my kids were in swimming practice, and I would do what you're doing, I would just go explore, and run, and it made it, the running way more fun, because I could get up on top of buildings, because they were open, and I could go up to the roof gardens, and through the stairwells, and I could do that exploration, And to your point, like this was a great place in the U. S. to experience things like this in a much smaller scale, but still not a really small scale. Like we're talking about, square miles of campuses that were linked together with lots of intricate pathways and elevation changes and architectural changes and tons of landscape variation. And it was really incredible. These places do exist, like you're talking about here as well, but they're not these showpieces, like, like what you're talking about here.

Cormac Phalen:
00:34:46
one of the things that you don't know is and Evan had, kind of mentioned that and he's worked in higher ed as well. So we shared a lot of that in common before he switched to the other side. And and as we all know, I mean, we're. in higher ed, we're always looking to create these spaces that, are kind of these indoor outdoor spaces, these community and collaborative spaces that, reach beyond, the four walls. And I'm looking at something like this. And as we were sort of talking about earlier is, something that, you know, we can create in our campuses. And as you were kind of like mentioning, can be those incubators for some of those spaces as we start to think about those. Because then, as we were even talking about with the with this kind of like re urbanization or, however we were calling it, kind of like the reversing of the car centric development to more of a pedestrian and kind of urban centric development. It starts it, you always have to start somewhere. And I think you're spot on that, we have this opportunity to, create something that we can evolve to something else.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:35:54
Yeah, certainly. I mean, like, clearly a project like this, And most of these projects, to some degree, it's almost like their landscape architecture and civil engineering and architecture professions have like started to reconverge.

Evan Troxel:
00:36:12
Yeah.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:36:12
And, I think that kind of happens in a truly successful campus project to some degree too, or at least, cross your fingers that happens. So,

Cormac Phalen:
00:36:20
Yeah.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:36:21
maybe we could move that way in in the US to some degree. With luck.

Cormac Phalen:
00:36:28
Yeah. it's kind of forcing people out of that sprawl mentality, but, that's always an uphill battle that you never know.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:36:35
Certainly.

Evan Troxel:
00:36:38
the attract, they're trying to attract people in a much different way than they ever have before, right? Before it was like, you're coming here to get a degree. No, now you're coming here to live life, figure out your first, your next steps, like you're getting a degree to, you're going to be working, like there's all these things that they're really trying to attract people to come to spend their money at that university, right? And so there is an incentive there to develop really. Great spaces, and I think one of the le one of the statistics I've heard lately is like people, stu, I mean Cormick, maybe we mentioned this even, it was like, students make their decision in the first 30 seconds of being on a campus. It was something like that. And it's, and what is that? That's like, what, this is the initial thing, like, what do I see right when I land there? And that, to me, shows the importance of what architecture can do for your business, right? Because it's like, we design that stuff, right? We design the view as well as the actual facilities and the classrooms and how they all work and everything. So, there is, that space is heated up big time.

Cormac Phalen:
00:37:41
yeah, well, and also think about this, so, And this is, us putting our, idealist cap on, which, that's what we got into architecture for, right? Is, you create this, I don't want to call it user experience, but let's just call it user experience for lack of a better term. When students from outside of, the local, college area are coming to this and they're, they start to see these spaces, they start to, kind of create these emotional connections, to the four years that they spend here. And then they go off to other places throughout the country, maybe go back to their hometown, and they're like, you know what, I wish I could have a space like that. And then that's where that seed kind of like starts to germinate. It's like, hey, now we have this opportunity to, influence urbanism in a way that, these now future, or now business leaders that, where these future business leaders living in spaces like what we're seeing on the screen,

Evan Troxel:
00:38:37
just come to expect it

Cormac Phalen:
00:38:38
exactly.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:38:39
Yeah, that's the optimism of it. There's a number of ways it could permeate, you know?

Evan Troxel:
00:38:43
Right. Totally. so this was, this is a great project. What other kinds of projects did you get to visit in that area?

Slade Sheaffer:
00:38:53
So I'm gonna share So This is the Camp Adventure Tower. This is the one I was mentioning earlier. This is by Effect Architects. It's in the forest of, about an hour south of Copenhagen. And similar to the Vessel, it's kind of a Vandy project, but Almost hits in a completely different way, where the vessel is surrounded by the most urban of urban contexts. Literally surrounded on three sides by skyscrapers. The, Yeah. This place was conceived as a completely new way to, experience the forest. Which, as you can see here, like, there's even these trees in the middle of it. So, it's a, I'm sure there's an actual shape name for this. I just don't have it in the text. Top of my head here, but it's, these are all straight structural steel members, so if you twist it, you get that hourglass shape, and that's that's the shape of this, it starts as, wider, it gets skinny in the middle, and that's right about where you emerge over the treetops, which is pretty special because you're emerging both over the tops of the trees in the middle of the space, and the actual canopy of the forest around. And then suddenly, you have this incredible view of the Danish countryside, like, miles out in each direction.

Evan Troxel:
00:40:06
Incredible.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:40:07
And you get out to this, Observation deck, and they have, of course, little markers pointing directions to, like, where different cities are in the world. Really incredible experience, and sort of the precursor to this experiencing this space, is you walk through about three quarters of a kilometer of the forest. Just on a really nice, like, boardwalk, so it's almost like priming you for this experience of then ascending above the treetops. Really an incredible incredible space. So this one is, it's fully in that vanity category, but like, completely justified in my mind. Like, it's a very minimal footprint on the forest below. And it sort of brings people to experience nature in this way that I hadn't ever really before, and I spend a lot of time outside too, so,

Evan Troxel:
00:40:52
I mean, do you consider projects like this, the Space Needle in Seattle or the Eiffel Tower as vanity projects? I mean, I mean, yes and no, right? But those, it's like, it gives people this incredible experience through the built environment, right? And that to me is, a worthwhile pursuit. I mean, it's not very often that these happen, but man, like I, like, there is that kind of category. I know what you're talking about. I mean, especially we hear that a lot with the vessel, right? Because of various activities that have happened there and really unfortunate activities that have happened there. But at the same time, like, like there, there still is, Like a usefulness of, especially something like this, man. Like the setting is everything here, right? It's like, this thing is about letting you experience this thing that you can't experience in another way which the forest, like getting above those treetops, right? Like that is absolutely incredible,

Slade Sheaffer:
00:41:48
Yeah, so this one was one of the highlights among many let me return to my little highlight reel here. So, this project segues me to talking about Something similar to the High Line. So, there's this incredible new space developing in Copenhagen, that seems to be a years long collaboration, and it's very close to completion. Basically, it's an elevated park that's gonna stretch something like a kilometer, that pretty much just spans over rooftops. So, I don't have a picture handy to show you where this began, but you're walking along this pretty main street in Copenhagen and kind of walk by these towers and there's this very conspicuous public space and these sort of ramps that start winding up into the space and there's some trees, but you can tell that it sort of slopes upward to this platform. So if you walk up this nice winding experience and it's this really nice landscape space. All like ADA ramps, very low slope ramps. You end up at this elevated platform suddenly separated from the streetscape, and suddenly you're in this big almost urban valley where you're, there's this park that stretches probably about two or three hundred meters with this series of little enclaves and sort of, like trellis elements. So you walk along that for probably about three hundred meters And then you come between these other two buildings and sort of snake between, some like, sort of oculus pieces that look down into the building below, which I'm not sure what it even was. And then as soon as you walk around that, you find this really cool lattice of bridges that are like creating almost like a spiderweb shape over a very busy street below. And just beyond that You find yourself at another series of sort of, switchback ramps with this really nice landscaped area, also between two buildings. Mind you, you're probably about 20 or 30 meters above the street surface this whole time. And suddenly, you get to this edge, and there's about 200 meters uncompleted, where you can tell they're getting ready to start building something. It's an empty lot currently. And just on the other side of that 200 meters and there's also a temporary barrier there, which is why I know that they're gonna finish this thing. On the other side of that 200 meters is the brand new IKEA store that just opened, which is built by Dorte Mandrup. And this IKEA, which I must admit, I did not actually go inside the store, but that's beside the point. The IKEA rooftop is this incredible, lush garden space with uh, complete with a cafe, a And it has these openings down to these huge bike parking areas below, and the street that passes beneath. And then it has these very inviting stairways and elevators that bring people up from the street to this public rooftop. But it doesn't end there.

Evan Troxel:
00:44:48
But wait,

Slade Sheaffer:
00:44:49
but wait, There's more! So, this photo you're looking at is actually just past the IKEA, so at the top of this sort of sloping area, is where the IKEA starts. So this is sort of looking back on everything that we had just come from. These two towers here are called the Cactus Towers also a big project. And this here you can see that it starts sloping back downwards, and there's this series of ramps again with the walkway, and of course some very playful slides, which I did travel down myself, of course. This little Oculus here, You see, travels down to a bunch of bike parking and the street level. And then if you. turn around from where I took this photo it continues between another building, which I'm not sure who was the architect of that, but this excellent building, which I believe was like their public waterworks or maybe their transit building. It was some municipal building with this series of like sky walkways between the two wings. And this nice public landscape space continues sloping down between those two buildings until it finally hit ground level again. So at this point, it's been about a kilometer. Of course, there's that gap that I mentioned that's probably about 200 meters. I don't know what they'll build there, but I know that they're planning to complete it, because it's going to create this incredible new, basically kilometer long elevated parkway. That's like, Similar to the High Line, except even bigger it's creating this

Cormac Phalen:
00:46:14
sounds like it.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:46:15
larger, more varied public space. Really incredible, so that was maybe one of my biggest surprises, cause I kind of had hints that this was there, but I didn't really know understand the scope of this project.

Evan Troxel:
00:46:27
I mean, the ambition and the appetite for these projects is absolutely mind boggling, right? Because we just don't get to experience that very often.

Cormac Phalen:
00:46:37
it, could you just imagine any American city actually, committing to, Hey, let's connect all of our rooftops with a series of gardens that, you

Evan Troxel:
00:46:47
gotta go to Singapore or something for that.

Cormac Phalen:
00:46:51
But that's the, but that goes back to, us talking about is like, what would it take for, us in our way of thinking of urbanism to actually push beyond that. I mean, we have the examples of, the High Line, which, could easily have been the impetus for this, but they're like, hey, here's an example, but let's do one better. And.

Evan Troxel:
00:47:12
Which is fantastic,

Cormac Phalen:
00:47:14
Exactly, which is amazing. And, once that 200 meter infill is done, I mean, can you just imagine this whole space is just, now I, it's now on my itinerary of things to do, because it's just, to just say, Hey, we've committed to doing this. And. think about like the implications of how it will help like, reduce, reduction of the heat, you know, heat island effect and things like that, because now you're reducing, this area of, superheating roofs and things like that, you're starting to like actually activate these spaces in a way that you could, otherwise think that it's just like a, a bunch of flat roofs and, you know, mechanical units.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:47:57
Absolutely. Shall I talk about one more Danish project that I've been hinting at this whole time? Which is Copenhill.

Evan Troxel:
00:48:06
Oh, you actually got to put skis on.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:48:08
So, this is fast forwarded here, but I will note it took me a long time to learn how to ski on the plastic, because it skis very icy, so, it was a bit tricky at first, but I skied there for about two hours, and by the last 30 40 minutes I had the hang of it pretty well.

Evan Troxel:
00:48:23
Do Arizonians actually know how to ski?

Slade Sheaffer:
00:48:26
That's a good question We do, I go ski about two hours north from here in Flagstaff, but Yes so obviously this was a really cool experience that I've been looking forward to for a long time. Just incredibly novel in every way, and then of course when I was done skiing I ran back up the thing because there's this like amazing hiking path as well, because I wanted to see that side too.

Evan Troxel:
00:48:48
Is there a lift? Is it an elevator? Like, how do you get up to the top?

Slade Sheaffer:
00:48:52
So there, there's an elevator, and I believe it's free to the public actually, to go up to the plaza up there, cause there's actually like a small cafe, and you can just go, it's basically a free observation deck. Which they tell you on, with your skis, you're not supposed to take the lift. I did a couple of times, they were like, yeah, it's fine. But, there's also a series, there's like a couple of the magic carpets on the bottom part, and then like the upper slope, you can see it kind of does A U turn, almost. The upper slope has one of those, like, T lifts that you put between your legs.

Evan Troxel:
00:49:23
And you said you skied on plastic, but for those who can't see this, it's because of the time of year you were there. But during the winter months, they actually they have, and I assume it's fake snow. Does it really snow there? I don't even know. Do they

Slade Sheaffer:
00:49:36
I think it does snow in Copenhagen. I don't know how good, like, accumulation they get, but I think the idea is you can ski year round even if, like, the snow accumulation isn't very good because there's this plastic surface beneath.

Evan Troxel:
00:49:48
That's so cool.

Cormac Phalen:
00:49:49
So let me ask this question. Here you are in August there. How packed was it? I mean, did, was it well attended there?

Slade Sheaffer:
00:49:59
No, not at all. was kind of shocked at, like, I mean, there was quite a few people, like, walking up it. The number of people skiing, though, like, I wasn't, I was not competing for the lift at, like, there was probably a 30 minute stretch where I was basically the only one on, like, this upper part of the mountain.

Evan Troxel:
00:50:15
On

Slade Sheaffer:
00:50:15
Um,

Evan Troxel:
00:50:18
on the, the, the

Slade Sheaffer:
00:50:19
yeah, well, I don't know if it's, like, I don't know, A, I don't know how much Danish people actually use this place, but B, I also kind of wonder if it's like more in the winter that they would go. But I did get the vibe, I, I talked to the the guy who rented my skis. He said they get a lot of Americans a lot of tourists, so I think it, very much has become like a tourist destination, as I'm sure it was always intended to be. But, I, like this family you see on the screen behind me, I think they were like from Italy, maybe. I, so I'm curious, I don't know how many Danish people actually use this place, but, you could go there and ski around if you wanted, so.

Evan Troxel:
00:51:00
Season pass.

Cormac Phalen:
00:51:01
Hmm.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:51:02
I'm sure they do, yeah, I think, you know, it was pretty cheap, I think it was, well, I think it was like 50 bucks for a couple of hours if I did the The conversion from Danish Kroners, but for what you get, I thought it was absolutely worth it for the experience. I actually bought this Insta360 camera, so I could do these 360 shots. So that's how I made this video as well. So the hope is that eventually I'll be able to like, find some medium I can upload. All these 360 photos, and, people will actually be able to navigate around and see what it's like to experience all these different spaces that I got to visit. Yeah.

Evan Troxel:
00:51:42
all wish we took more panoramic and 360 degree photos when we all have access to like VR headsets that are, affordable enough to actually have. I mean, that's the thing that I've heard from people who are kind of the early adopters when it comes to that kind of technology is that They take a lot more of those photos because the experience is pretty incredible and they wish they had taken more at all of the places that they had visited. So if that might be you in the future, you might start taking more pictures like that now so that you can relive those memories in a panoramic or 360 degrees.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:52:17
Yeah. I'm I felt a little bit of a fool, just like, by nature of I'm sure people were wondering what I was doing when I kept stopping and sticking my arm in the air to take photos with this

Evan Troxel:
00:52:27
You didn't look as much of a fool as people holding up their giant iPads to take photos at the National Park or whatever.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:52:33
Yeah. Indeed.

Cormac Phalen:
00:52:36
But also remember we're the profession that walks up and hugs buildings or touches them or things like that. So, you know what I mean?

Evan Troxel:
00:52:44
of ceilings,

Cormac Phalen:
00:52:45
we're totally used to looking a fool.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:52:48
I think I got more weird looks probably just for like, people who saw me like, walking circles around certain buildings and stuff, it

Cormac Phalen:
00:52:56
creep doing?

Evan Troxel:
00:52:58
Yeah, exactly.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:52:59
Yep.

Evan Troxel:
00:53:01
Cool. Any other really amazing places that you want to share?

Slade Sheaffer:
00:53:06
Sure, so, if we go back to my little itinerary here. Made a stop in Hamburg, got to see the Elbphilharmonie which is fantastic project. If you ever get the chance to visit, I actually stayed there. So that was that was really cool place to stay. There's a hotel in it. And then on to after that stop in Cologne to see the cathedral went to Rotterdam where there's this incredible project called the Markthal So this building is a apartment building that's basically shaped like a tube on its side and You know all these windows you see are into apartments except for Presumably these ones on the very top or maybe just like a public passageway or something. I don't know but Yeah, so they turn this into a giant enclosed market and then you know, this whole space Is filled with all these little booths and whatnot, so

Cormac Phalen:
00:54:01
Is

Slade Sheaffer:
00:54:02
Another pretty prime example of this infrastructure concept, creating this enclosed space

Evan Troxel:
00:54:07
So what was the original structure? Was this something that they changed the use of, or was this something they built from scratch?

Slade Sheaffer:
00:54:13
this was this was a new building. I think it's 2010 or 2014,

Evan Troxel:
00:54:18
Okay, but it's like a really incredible mixed use. And, obviously, form.

Cormac Phalen:
00:54:23
Is that a static image or is that, something that was projected? It looks static, but it would kind of

Slade Sheaffer:
00:54:30
It's static. It's some sort of I'm sure they commissioned some artists to create this, but if you walk up close it's some sort of, like, screen printed tile.

Cormac Phalen:
00:54:38
yeah. Which would still be awesome if it was digital. Although it probably like drive the residents pretty pretty batty.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:54:46
Yeah, Yeah, of course. I think one last project I'll mention this one was in Amsterdam. So, MVRDB building. This building is called The Valley, and this is also MPRDB. I think this one's had a pretty good amount of press recently. And it was interesting because the architect his name was Cass Ekbok, apologies if I pronounce his last name incorrectly. He I was put in touch with him actually by Claudia Beckstein, who is the head of the architecture program at ASU. happens to spend his summers in Rotterdam. So, I met him for a coffee in Rotterdam, and he walked me over to MVRDV's office to chat with Cass, which was really an awesome connection, so I'm very thankful that he made that connection. But, so, he was telling me about, he was one of the ones involved in this Valley Project, and As you can see from this photo, there's these really incredible, almost natural feeling canyon spaces. So, at this point I'm standing about for the listeners here, we're looking at, like, these tower aspects, but it has this very uh, faceted canyon feel, basically. The whole purpose of this building was to create a pseudo natural space in Amsterdam. But I'm standing about five stories high where I took this photo. And you kind of snake up these series of stairways and this actual reflecting pool that you see in the photo is the ceiling of the lobby below, which is pretty neat when you're down in the lobby, you can look through the water to the towers above but it's this really incredible space, but when I was at MVRDV's offices a couple of days before this Cass had told me, be critical of the space, like, see how much it's actually engaged by the public. And that was a very interesting thing for me to hear. But he's like, you know, we're creating this really interesting public space, but you have to be critical of how much It's, actually used. And to, to his fair point, it's like, you actually do have to walk up and kind of out of the way. it's not like this is a space that you would use if you were commuting to just like walk through here necessarily. This is somewhere you have to kind of get off the beaten path to experience this place. Which I think has it's sort of own intrinsic value, it's, creating this almost quiet, peaceful space within the city, a natural, like, oasis type area, but it's much less a very public forum space, like some of these other projects we've seen, so.

Evan Troxel:
00:57:15
It's, more like a speakeasy though, it's like, if and I bet people don't even tell other people about it so that it won't turn into something that it, right? If you go there for a respite, right? Like, you probably want to protect that a little bit, I would imagine.

Slade Sheaffer:
00:57:29
I went here and probably spent like 20 30 minutes at this building taking a bunch of photos, and I think I saw one other group of people, and That's it. Yeah.

Cormac Phalen:
00:57:40
Well, I mean, if you think about it, I mean, when you go to, a desert canyon or something like that, it's it takes an effort to get there, and once you're there, you're kind of immersed into the space and whether you're sharing it with others or you're, lucky enough to have it on your own. And That's sort of what this feels like. It's trying to somewhat recreate because this isn't really. I mean, in my opinion, going through the canyons of Saudi Arabia, you know, this feels like one of those with those spaces I experienced, but it was a space that I was experiencing, with just the small group of people that I was with and no one else. And, you know, but this isn't natural to, the Netherlands, this is something that's, somewhat foreign and at Evan's point, somewhat special.

Evan Troxel:
00:58:26
this is a really cool project. I mean, every one of these that you've shown is just incredible. And I'm just wondering, okay, so this is where we shift gears now. And I don't foresee this going on for forever here, like the rest of this conversation, but the thing that Cormac and I always come back to is, okay, now, obviously super inspiring, right? The experiences that you've had here like, like, let's forget about the realities of. of Architectural and Construction Projects in America for a minute. Like, how has this enriched your career, maybe refreshed your views on your choice of careers? What have you brought back from this with you? To, I mean, because the thing that we talk about is our experiences make us who we are, and a diverse team has lots of different experiences. Nobody has these experiences on your team, it's likely, right? Except for you, and now you can bring these. Some of these ideas to your projects, but also and beyond that. So I'm just curious, like your thoughts on those themes kind of in general.

Cormac Phalen:
00:59:32
before you jump into that, let me throw one more onto the, the pile here. So, you gave a lot of these as precedent studies for your students. And a lot of these were things that you were looking at, either through Google Images or whatever else before you went there. You know, as you were assigning these, so you hadn't really experienced them. In the way that you have now, and I'm curious if, when you were looking at them, when you were assigning them, and now experiencing them, what has changed in, your, kind of like views of that. You know, I'm always a proponent of like really experiencing, some of these precedent places. And so, you know, now here you are. Yeah, exactly. So, so now here you are, you've already assigned these and now you visited them. And I'm curious, like, you know, your impression about that. So there's a whole lot to unpack. So,

Slade Sheaffer:
01:00:26
Okay, So. I'm gonna start with that one, then I'm gonna go back to the sort of lessons learned here. Obviously, looking at the project photography for Indies, like, you get these beautiful, shiny images. It's just so intriguing going through spaces, because you can get a dual effect at the same time, which are almost contradicting. But, a lot, like, several of these projects I went to, in, in some ways had aged a little bit. Like, you could see where there was water staining, or they had been lived in, or that, there was wear and tear, like, I, I went to one big project that, that was like this sort of bulging plaza that creates, like, a hill in the middle of this school. They were actually re boarding it because all of the boards were, like, rotted out, which was kind of surprising after, you see all these beautiful pictures of, like, what it looked like right when it was built. So, I mean, that was kind of the case with a number of these. It was, like, Oh, it's not as shiny as clean as all the images, but at the same time, you can actually feel the true impact of like, what it is like to have this like, stark contrast with this crazy building in an otherwise like, kinda concrete jungle, you know? Like a place like this was, I mean this place was just like, it was lighting up all those, like architecture, exciting nerves that I first felt when I actually came from an engineering background. And those couple of study broads I did in college is what really pointed me to architecture. So, this was just like another way to experience that as well. And then of course, you know, like skiing Copen Hill was something I built up into my head and it was. everything I had hoped and more, like, just the novelty of it. I expected it to be incredibly interesting and it was every bit and more just strange, but I think certain other projects might have surprised me even more maybe because I had such high expectations for Copenhill. Like that eight house project I mentioned earlier with the residential project with that public promenade. I had no idea, like, how impactful that one would be and how cool it is that you have this, like, European style street that's like winding up this building in a completely new way. It was like almost taking a ancient city and like reworking that ancient vernacular into something completely modern and new. So there was like a vague familiarity to it while being also something completely strange and new. So, yeah, it was, I mean, that's why I think it was so important to experience these. places in person. Of course now any,

Evan Troxel:
01:02:55
right? It's like that whole idea of what a remix is. It's like, take this thing that everybody knows and adores potentially, right. And then give it a D a twist. Right. And. add some additional influences and make it something fresh and new. And I mean, that's what innovation is, right? It's just this evolution over time. And I think that's really cool for you to have experienced that and notice the different influences coming together to create this kind of special experience for you.

Cormac Phalen:
01:03:26
Right.

Slade Sheaffer:
01:03:26
for sure. Okay I guess lessons learned. I suppose I should talk about that. I kind of hinted on this one earlier but the campus arch, architecture side of it really like to be optimistic that I could start sneaking some of these moves into

Evan Troxel:
01:03:40
what you have to do, right? You have to sneak them in. You can't

Slade Sheaffer:
01:03:43
Well, the obvious, right, the obvious one is, and I consider this a form of infratecture, and you start, you've started to see this pop up in the U. S. already, is like those, terraced the stairway areas that double as like auditorium seating. I saw tons of examples of that in these two countries, but I've also seen several examples in the U. S., especially in, they've started to pop up in, in university buildings. So, I see the opportunity to start putting those in atrium spaces and, you know, double height spaces and whatnot. So that's kind of the easy one, but it gets a little more challenging when you try to start doing cool things with roof terraces and whatnot. I've worked on two projects recently that have roof terraces. And then like, one of them has a really crazy topographical change in the site. And, Like, I went on this trip and I'm already, like, biting myself. Like, there were some really crazy missed opportunities we could have done with some terracing or something, but, you can only do so much with those. But so that, that's the first thing. Second thing is I mentioned this whole idea was kind of birthed from the studio I taught last semester. I'm hoping to teach another studio again in the future. And probably Reuse the same topic. Obviously it'll be twisted a little bit and morphed to whatever the, that studio is. But now that I've experienced some of these places and also taught it once, I think I know how to better explain the concepts and better present like the crazy opportunities you can have with doing a piece of architecture like this. So that's the second one. Educational. And then thirdly, This all kind of goes back to, like, when I was biking around Phoenix and how inhospitable it is to cyclists and pedestrians. Even in cities like Phoenix, there are winds of change as far as urbanism and trying to make the city a bit better place for people who want to ride bikes, have transit, that sort of thing. Like, I live a couple blocks off of a main thoroughfare in Phoenix. And it's going to take years before it happens, but they're actually talking about doing a road diet on this, five lane road, cutting down one of the lanes of traffic and adding some bike lanes, adding more trees. So, I have hope that, like, I could actually start influencing, like, local urbanism and getting people to think a little bit differently about this as well. So, that's a bit more of a lofty goal, but there's all these amazing small Organizations like Cycling organizations and pedestrian organizations, whatever it might be, that advocate for these sort of things. So, this is sort of just lighting a little fire underneath me to actually get a little bit more involved with those.

Cormac Phalen:
01:06:24
But think about this. This is, you know, not only. Because of, your education, your experience in teaching, your experience in practice, but it's also, it goes back to this whole point of, the value of travel, as an architect and being able to see how other, Cities, cultures, architects, approach these, different, projects with, problem solving in a completely creative way that, you come back and now you're excited to try to, maybe implement it and sneak a little bit here, a little bit there, and then start to get it to a point where it's like, it starts to feel like, Oh yeah, okay. This is a language that we want to continue to pursue and develop and things like that. And, that's where, we go back to the optimism talk that we were, is you start to, see that germinate into, whether it's on a campus or in an urban setting or things like that, that then other people are like, Hey, I want that. I mean, honestly the the kind of like elevated park that you were showing us, we saw that, we can easily and they would probably admit that it, some of those seeds go back to, say the High Line or other, spaces like that. But looking at it as an opportunity is like, okay. How do we do it bigger? How do we do it better? How do we like, create these, amazing impacts. And that's, that's kind of the whole point of why we travel, especially in, like, My, my summer travels took me to a couple of different campuses throughout the Northeast. Took me into Canada, Nova Scotia. I was one of our colleagues Angelo. He and I got together and we, toured around the Midwest and we, visited some campuses. We visited some, some amazing, Starkitecture and things like that. But these are all things that As we talk about, in both, our firm and, in just the, architecture community in general, are these exciting ideas of how you implement your ideas, how you implement them through execution. how, you were talking about the the areas that you went to with with big where, some of the boards and things like that were starting to fall apart, and sometimes it's a little odd to, say, oh, I'm really excited to see this. And then you go there and it's not exactly what you were expecting. And, and that happens too, but then you're like, okay, well, what could we do a little bit differently or what could we do better or whatever else? But. where I'm going with that is it's just like, the value that, you know, and this is, as I said, something that Evan and I have been talking about over the 12 years that we've been doing this and sharing our travel stories, because it's always kind of exciting to see how that informs what we do.

Slade Sheaffer:
01:09:16
I agree. Our profession is about the experience of spaces, as much as. much as we uh, put things on paper or screens it's all about the experience.

Cormac Phalen:
01:09:28
absolutely.

Evan Troxel:
01:09:29
Awesome. Thanks so much for sharing all that. And it's great to hear that things like this are out there. I mean, I was also, you know, the recipient of a couple of projects like this. to go to experience stuff like this. And it was. It's a really big deal. I mean, not everybody can afford to do this, so to hear that there are kind of these travel fellowships that allow you to kind of dream big and put out kind of a moonshot idea that is ultimately super impactful. I mean, this is going to be a big thing. This is going to influence the rest of your career. This is not the kind of thing that you're just going to forget about and move on. And then it wasn't a vacation. Cormac and I've talked about this too. Like this was a trip, you had an itinerary, you were on the bike, you were getting out to see these places and experience them and spend time in them. And that takes a lot of effort and to bring it back and be able to even present that to us and our audience, I think is a huge win. And thank you so much for taking the time to do that and being open to doing it.

Cormac Phalen:
01:10:28
Yeah,

Slade Sheaffer:
01:10:28
course, Very happy to share. I'll have to, one of the requisites of the award too is, I'll have to eventually make a lecture for the design school at ASU, which I look forward to. I hope to compile it in a much more organized format. way where I can, cover a lot more of the content as well, but you got a pretty good splash of what I got to experience today, so.

Evan Troxel:
01:10:49
Nice,

Cormac Phalen:
01:10:50
Well, you know, again, as Evan said, we appreciate you coming on and sharing the story. So, thank you very much and look forward to actually meeting one of my colleagues in person someday.

Slade Sheaffer:
01:11:04
Yes.

Cormac Phalen:
01:11:05
but again, thank you very much.

Evan Troxel:
01:11:07
And Slade said that he would share the Google Doc with links to these projects. I think it would be hard for us to kind of put together what we saw today, but then we can include that in the show notes so people can click through and kind of check these out as well, because they're worth taking a look at. So, all right, man. Thanks.

Slade Sheaffer:
01:11:25
thanks so much for having me on.

Cormac Phalen:
01:11:26
Absolutely.