Return of the Architecture Social Show!

0039 - Return of the Architecture Social Show!
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Will Ridgway: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Architecture Social Show. I'm Will Ritzling and I'm with Stephen Drew. How

Stephen Drew: you doing? Bless me. Yeah, I'm all right, Will. It's getting a little bit Christmassy. It's getting a little bit Christmassy, but do you know what I was saying? Normally every year you're thinking you're working in the office and you just yawn.

I can't wait to go home. I'm gonna be all day. I'm just gonna sleep in. I'm gonna wear my pajamas till 12 o'clock. I'm gonna spend that time at home. It's gonna be fantastic. And it's that's every day now for the last year, it's been Christmas. So I'm I'm like, I'm looking forward to seeing my family, but.

It's been a bit of a strange one. So welcome everyone to the architectural social next week. We're going to do a bit of a Christmas themed one because we all need a bit of, I [00:01:00] think we need to talk about what we can buy architects, friends, and loved ones and all this stuff. But today we have an amazing cram for.

Probably our best organized news so far. I would say it's not badly organized anymore. It's it's what should we call it? It's mediocre. Yeah. We've got to see how it actually presents it yet, haven't we? Oh, yeah. It might be poorly presented. Yeah. All right. So let's go and jump in with everyone.

All right. We've got already a few comments coming in. Yogesh. All right, chaps. Yogi. Hello. Yogi, what Christmas gift are you getting me this year? Don't say a pat on the back. You remember Yogesh, don't you? I do. He joined Carpet Town. Fantastic, good to see you. Good day to you, sir. As well. It is a good day.

Here we go. So guys, let's get on with it. Big news. But just before we go into the news, because [00:02:00] we've got all this important stuff, but sadly, if any of you don't know, Will is on furlough. Nice time to be on furlough at the moment, Will. Christmas is around the corner. Have you got my Christmas gift yet?

Will Ridgway: Yeah. You have? What have you got me? It wouldn't be a, it wouldn't be a surprise if I told you.

Stephen Drew: I'm suspicious. I'm suspicious. So what have you been up to this week, Will? Have you been up to anything good?

Will Ridgway: I was going to say I finished all my Christmas shopping, but I've just realized I've forgotten one or two things.

Stephen Drew: You've finished your shopping? You haven't got I'm disappointed. I can't wait for the awkward silences in the office in January, Will. With none of my presents not there.

Will Ridgway: It's, I'm waiting for it in the delivery. I just remembered, I've ordered them just waiting for it to come.

But all the presents that I have received already, I've wrapped them all up. Got them under the Christmas tree. I put the Christmas tree up as well. Put little decorations on it. So it's looking very Christmassy. Glitter everywhere, unfortunately. But I guess [00:03:00] that's just, I guess that's just one of the things you've got to live with at Christmas.

I'm

Stephen Drew: not a fan of glitter. It gets everywhere well.

Will Ridgway: You know what I mean? Yeah, same. I'm the same, unfortunately, because we've got a fake Christmas tree. It's got a little glitter on like the edge of the branches, which look great, but every time you take, every time you move it, the glitter gets on the floor.

Yeah. So I've gotta live of that for a bit. And yeah, and I'm basically gonna send off all my Christmas cards today, and then I'll be done a

Stephen Drew: week and a half. I bet. I bet you send out lovely Christmas cards to everyone. Like a little WhatsApp. A WhatsApp gif. from you. No, don't be silly. Yeah, I reckon.

All right. Okay. Yogesh already says might buy you Cyberpunk. Yogesh, I have already pre ordered Cyberpunk and it's already coming up in our architectural news of the week. Let's crack something. No, I'm not. Yogesh you're a very good friend. Me, mate, me, and you're going to be playing that thing straight away.

So let's jump in with a poorly [00:04:00] organized architecture news of the week. All right. So there's a lot of news. We've actually got a lot here. We've done our homework because you've managed to get some awesome news. I've managed to find a few things and as well as that, remember Dr. Liz from last week.

Oh, two weeks ago, I think Dr. Liz sent me some really cool stuff as well. So I think we're going to mix it up. We're going to try and get a little bit of industry news. We're going to get a, try and get a little bit of light topic. But as Jogesh mentioned, we're cyberpunk. Let's talk about cyberpunk for a second, because this is an architecture show.

So let's talk about video games for a second. So I can't believe cyberpunk is going to be out at midnight tonight. Good thing that you're on furlough, Will. I've got my new screen coming as well. So if the door comes, you've got, I've got to get it. But Cyberpunk is this awesome game. And here's a really good article.

Okay. That I've shared, which shows, it talks about environmental designers designing Cyberpunk. So it's it's really interesting. There's a few people that I know, because. Grand Theft [00:05:00] Auto is a massive game online. They hire a lot of environmental designers that were actually from an architectural background.

And I've known a few people and seen a few people that actually get hired in the game industries from architecture. And it makes sense actually, when you look at how detailed these environments are. So this is Cyberpunk 2077, which is like this really cool city in the future.

It's pretty insane. This is a massive city. It's a few kilometers wide, and you, the players, you can go up and around this area. So they've got this whole team designing this stuff, and I find it quite inspirational. And as well as that, there's a few people that I know have gone from the game industry and have come back into architecture because A lot of these virtual game environments, they're built in 3D game engines and 3D game engines are an awesome way now to navigate buildings and to talk in design meetings about problems because you can render [00:06:00] these build, you can render these environments on the fly.

How cool is all this stuff? Look, look at that. It's insane. Isn't it? Yeah, and I, and we go, so there's a few pictures, right? So this is what I want you to think. So I definitely have a little look at cyberpunk and this article is really good. So let me just show you where, so I've got all these links.

Let me type it out now. So if you want to follow it, you can go to today's show. And if you go to this link, all these articles that we've got. Oh, no, that's the wrong link. Will, that's the wrong link. It's show. If you go to this link, you can go to today. And basically I've got all of these links there.

So if you want to check this stuff out later, you can go through it. Okay. So that's a little bit of fun news. That's a little bit of cool stuff. Let's see what the comments are coming in. Dr. Liz is here. Hey, Dr. Liz, I've got absolutely, I've got a lot of your links coming in. So we're going to go into [00:07:00] it.

And so we got here talking about architects playing with Lego, future engineers with Meccano. Correct. I know you can do serious Lego. And next week when we do the architectural Christmas show, we will definitely have a few Lego sets. Or architects will little hint what I'd like.

Will Ridgway: Yeah, I know exactly which ones as well.

I've seen them in the shops.

Stephen Drew: You don't get, don't you get me the zero to five set of Lego? Yeah, I can deal with the kid set. So let's just jump in because a little bit of fun. Maybe that's the form. A little bit of fun. And then we're going to do a little bit of serious talk. We're going to mix it up.

Will, you sent through here a little, this click on this link. So the Reba benchmark survey. So this has come out at the moment. Again, you can check it out on the link, but let's go. Have we got a few graphs here? This is really interesting, isn't it?

Will Ridgway: It's just got a nice little infograph there.

I think the is that the full document you've loaded? No, so the full document, I think, has a little bit more information involved but of course, I think we can only show you this. I thought Reba might tell us off for showing [00:08:00] subscribes.

Stephen Drew: Oh, yeah. I'm a subscriber, though, but you're right. Yeah.

Will Ridgway: But basically, as expected, it just gives a nice little overview of the year.

They do one every year. They've been doing it since 2012 and basically just track everything that's gone on throughout the year for architecture. And as you expect, it's not been, we're all very well aware that. This year hasn't been the best for architecture and this basically just confirms it.

It's actually the first year that there's not been an increase in revenue in architecture across since the survey started in 2012. Not great there because I think. Every year has been increasing around sort of 10%, something like that. At least every year. And this is the first year it's not increased at all.

It's not necessarily gone down either. It's just not increased. Salary wise, they're quite static across the board. There's no, no increases there, unfortunately, but I get no decreases. I think part ones and technologists might have seen an increase but that's just a very small minority But I think what was quite interesting for [00:09:00] me was some of the trends that were showing so private housing.

For the total, the total amount of sectors involved. So you've got healthcare aviation, private housing, for example private housing took over a lot more of that share compared to most years, which is quite interesting. And I think it's also not surprising either, because I think a lot of people over the lockdown have been more aware of the spaces in their homes and the realization that Oh, we don't, there's not enough space to work at home and keep an eye on the kids and also having room away from the kids as well.

So I think a lot of people have been, have taken more interest in having those extensions to their houses basically creating more space available. So it's actually not surprising that private housing has increased. I'll be quite honest. I think it would probably be a lot more people will take it more seriously as well next year as well.

And have, have those extensions create more space because I'm quite well aware of it. I don't have a room. I don't have room really to get away from anyone. And this year's highlighted that [00:10:00] more. I think the smaller practices themselves, so practices between. From zero, from one to 15, the majority of their work has been private housing this year.

If, if you're doing that sort of stuff, great. There's a bit more work out there, but but other sectors have obviously decreased. And yeah, I think that's like the general overview. I don't want to be able to get bogged down in the whole doom and gloom aspect of it, because we're not expecting positive news anyway.

Stephen Drew: It's interesting. You highlighted that on an interesting point, because I used to rent out, because I'm in a two bedroom flat, I used to rent out my second room to a friend. And actually, in this kind of environment, that's my home office as well. So I've got this computer and that. And I think what you're going to see is when you say about private housing, I think it'll be really interesting that, I think, especially housings of the future, but basically, you're right.

We're going to be talking about, and we're going to be Looking at a complete change. So it's, I think home offices are going to be a massively important thing. And

Will Ridgway: Maybe it's the the death of the open planned house, [00:11:00] maybe. Because I think, a lot of people want to open planned houses, but then, obviously, now you don't have a room to get away from everyone.

So I think a lot of people are reconsidering that and changing their homes for that.

Stephen Drew: I think so. And so for anyone, you can get all these links on all this stuff on the architectural social. com show. And you can find today's show and show that should be posted today. So check out those links here.

So we've got a few other things as well. Now let's go the other way. Let's get a bit of light hearted and that's right. I want light hearted. And that's, we got. Yeah. Lightheartedness. What is this, Will? Let's have a little look at this. It's COVID, isn't it? COVID! Lightheartedness! No.

Will Ridgway: No. Basically, as I was browsing a lot of a lot of websites and I think this Italian based practice.

And basically I found this video on their website and it was them designing quick insulation and basically modular, it's on the lines of modular where they're creating [00:12:00] space to do, the research to support and test COVID or treat patients, for example, and basically able to scale that up really quickly because they've basically got those.

Nice little cubicles, little trailers there. And they can just quickly scale that up. That was quite, quite cool, I thought. I think it's I don't know, I don't know when they were doing this. It might have been in the summer. It might have been a bit more recently. But it just looked, it just looked cool that, um, of people coming up with ideas to treat this pandemic quickly and and efficiently.

And that was just cool. And I thought a nice video would be cool to share.

Stephen Drew: Brilliant. This is it. I've actually lost the thing now, but we're going to get more news. I think that's great. And I think that's interesting because we've got modular, we've got healthcare, and I quite like, it's quite a nice little upbeat tone actually, isn't it?

That it's quite nice to see all these solutions kicking in. Thanks And definitely brings me with a lot of hope. I've actually, on the behalf of Lighthired News, I actually really liked this link, which was sent by Dr. Liz. And this is a book [00:13:00] that I thought was really cool that you can buy basically with Soviet cities.

So I've always, when I especially was in, it was an architecture, but especially interested in the architecture of these Soviet cities and. If you maybe we can zoom in here, but you can see how cool this stuff is. And this is one of them nice coffee table, non coronavirus related, something else, but a little box.

But look at this, right? How cool is that? It looks like something out of Star Wars. And so you have all these expressions of really cool architecture and I love love. The look of this book oh no, I should have put it next week in the gifts to get architects. I put it too early. That's a cool book though.

Do you know what I mean? This is something a little bit different. Something you can look through something that I think is really nice to have and to go for. So just having a quick little look at this stuff as well. It's a bit eye candy, isn't it? I think it, look at that. It's a, look at that.

That's something else, isn't it? As well. [00:14:00] It's just the sheer size of it. Here we go. Monumental arm. Yeah. I just think it's a really nice book to look into. So I put that in the link and you can check it out as well. It's got a place called fielddesign. com and this book is Soviet cities. I think it's 25 pounds, probably on Amazon as well.

But I really I like to look at it so that's why I thought I'd put it in. As well as that, what came out today, which is a little bit of news and worth checking out for people is maybe in the last few days, but this is the construction playbook, which is reached by the government guidance and sourcing.

Contracting public work. So we're not going to go into it too much, but I just wanted to raise attention that they've released it. And it's probably worth having a quick look at it and going through it because this is what the government is saying is literally, yeah, it's the construction playbook.

So again, the links for all this stuff, if you want to check it out, you can find it in today's show underneath architectural social. com. So that's just more to [00:15:00] make everyone aware that it's there. So we've got that as well. Now I wanted to raise a bit of attention to the NLA's YouTube channel because I like it.

Guys, you've got a fan in me. It's a really good channel. It's on YouTube. And what I like they've got a lot of three to four minutes clips, which shows some really cool architecture and you can hear from the architect as well, because I guess a lot of this online so you can see this stuff is quite relevant right now, but it's a really quite quick overview.

And, if we were playing the audio here, Chris would be talking about his building. And I love it because there's so many different. Projects on there and you can go for it. So it's a really nice way if you can especially if you're on YouTube, there's only so much you can watch of Jake Paul and all them YouTubers.

So this is a really good architectural channel to check out. NLA, if you're listening, could do get in touch. I would love to share more of your stuff and it would be good to collaborate more. Look at this. I think it's just a really nice. [00:16:00] Easy way world to watch a little bit of architecture.

And if you type so, so NLA is new London architecture. And normally they based in the building center, which is in the middle of London, and they've definitely pushed up their YouTube channel. So that's really good. Oh by the way. I don't know whether we can still speak with each other now because I'm a bit of a thing on the, on, on YouTube.

So the architecture social channel we now have 216 subscribers. So 216.

Will Ridgway: How many of those accounts are yours? 250?

Stephen Drew: Three, three of them. I think

Will Ridgway: it's growing

Stephen Drew: at a rate of two people a week. So this year, next time I'm going to be up there with a YouTube millionaires with my 400 subscribers.

It's difficult on YouTube. I tell you. So check out this channel. So here we go. So I've got Dr. Liz talking [00:17:00] about she wrote a university paper on the death of the three bedroom house, which is the majority of stock in the UK has been replaced with two bedroom house and dedicated home office. Love that Dr.

Liz definitely send me a link for next week. If you want to share that, if it's public, cause that would be good to put on the architectural news of the week. But yeah, look, it's pretty cool. Isn't it? So it's definitely a really good channel to check out. Okay. So I got to press escape this time so I don't lose everything.

So we've got that as well. The other thing that I wanted to talk about is one or two of the podcasts that I've actually done on the architectural social. So I did a cool podcast with Alicia Yao. I've known Alicia for years. She used to work with me. I used to be her line manager and we're still friends.

So that, it's just possible it's possible now we get along really well. We always got along really well, just as tight as me and you, Will, just as tight. She's gone on to do great things. She's gone on to do great things. And she works in marketing and business development in an [00:18:00] architectural practice and worked in one or two architectural marketing agencies in the UK.

So she, it was really interesting to talk about. Architecture from a business perspective, and he basically we go into it for about 45 minutes. So you can find all of these here. I'll show you where you can find this. So the link is on again in the show, but you can always find the talks I do. I'm not too social.

com talks. So it's completely free podcast. I did that one as well. And the other one I would just really quickly wanted to draw your attention to, which is on the website, which was a really cool one is with William Gaines. So we're really nice guys about ways that part one of a loss of experience. And he was on the advert for the shells.

electric car charging station. So it was really good to see his perspective on, these big companies trying to do the right thing, trying to build electric car charging stations and, paving the way to the new future. Because as you pointed out [00:19:00] in one or two of the last episodes, by 2010, 2012, 30, sorry, 10 years ago, no, in 10 years in the future, electric car charging electric cars, they're going to be a.

I think it still sounds like an alien concept in my head. It's Oh yeah, but it's going to, it's going to be a thing. So check that out because that's there as well. And you can find that. So the other thing is a free course that is on the architectural social. So you can completely sign up to it.

It's completely free. So all you have to do is go to architectural social. com. Join and check out this course. So this was built by. A lady called sauna. She runs to scale blog. And so when you're in the architectural social, it's called building an architecture of Archie brain. Okay. And so it goes about the concept of having a second brain.

And so someone is tailored it for. She's tailored it for architects and it goes into the concept and this, as I joked with [00:20:00] you earlier this is something I need to look at because I am the world's worst person at writing anything down that is like my biggest flaw by a million miles.

Isn't it Will? Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. I got to be honest. And so what this is looking at a free tools like Notion. And so Sana's actually break down this course and gone through it. So you can literally go through this. You can learn as curated principles by other things. So this is really easy, free to use interface as well.

Look at that detail going into this. The idea is you can then mark things as complete, completely free course, and you can go through it and you can build an Archie brain and you can go for that. And it gives you all the advice and it's basically, it's a little way of organizing yourself. It's using notion to whenever you learn something as well, maybe it's something you want to keep in the back of your mind.

Then you start cataloging in these, this almost like wiki page of [00:21:00] your own thoughts. Or this old intranet of your own thoughts. And so it's a really cool way. So you can find that on the architectural social. com. And I'll put a link here because you can literally click forward slash join. Then you can join and you can find this course.

It's Archibrain. That is on the architectural social, which we're a part of, but I just felt in this case, that is actually really worth highlighting out. And that was built by Sana. That's a shout out or an amazing use of her time to give back to other people. So that course is down here. You can also view that on the link as well.

So we had a new section going on to it as well called events. You can attend in your underwear because this is a modern world and. I'm actually wearing trousers, so I'm okay. But we can, you can actually attend the events in your underwear these days. And you found one or two cool events that you thought were worth highlighting, so we're clicking this one.

This one's with London [00:22:00] University. And this is on Thursday the 10th of December, which is called Wild Ways. So do you want to run through

Will Ridgway: it a bit? Yeah, it's tomorrow. I think it's the evening. I can't remember what time it is. But yeah, it's tomorrow. And basically it's about if you have an interest in urban design or maybe even just the environment and and how cities are built.

Built around the environment. I think this would be quite interesting for you. So basically as we begin to, build more in the cities, our green spaces are being taken away. And so there's more emphasis on people with gardens to keep the biodiversity of, of life and animals, there.

And I think a lot of people are. Are removing that. So it's all about how you can change your gardens or home to maintain this biodiversity so that we don't accidentally cause the migration of species out away from the cities, and push them away. Be quite interesting to see what you can do and what other people are doing at the moment as well to try and solve that problem.

Definitely have a look if you're, if that sort of thing interests you. [00:23:00] Yes, that's the expertise tomorrow. And you can book your tickets at the link. I think that's on the that you're showing. Yeah, I think it's free. I didn't actually check. But yeah it looks like it's free to register.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. I'm looking now. It's free. It's free. Well done. That's actually interesting. Well done, because I'm a quick judge of these. I'm like, sometimes some of these events can switch my brain off, because I have the attention span of very limited. Yeah, but I think you've got to look at it as strength and the weakness.

In my day job, I'm like, if you grab my attention, you've done really well. And that's where I'm always critical. I like to think about when I see a CV or a portfolio or AV architecture, if it grabs my attention really quickly, then it's good. So that one did grab my attention. So that's great. We've got another event.

Kind of in the theme again of a little bit of greenery, a bit of life, which is London, Glasgow, Manchester becoming truly sustainable. So this is with the NLA. Do you have to be a member, Will? It's worth looking into anyways, but it seems like it's open. [00:24:00]

Will Ridgway: You'd have to, you have to log in.

I don't, I'm not logged in, so I can't double check that. But I think I it's,

Stephen Drew: yeah, have a look. They good? Yeah, they're cool. They're a really good company again and you've got Pete and Mary talking and, Roger Hawkins, Brandon, Steven O'Malley. So I think that's gonna be a really interesting event as well.

We will get more and more events, but I think that's a really nice show, will. Okay. Yeah. So those are a few events. We've covered podcasts, we've covered a little bit of videos now. Maybe what we'll do is we'll have a little look at one or two projects as well, which I always love because you curated these well.

So I find it fascinating. . See what I think is good, . Yeah, no, I quite like your taste, actually. So I'm like, I'm, Ooh,

Will Ridgway: you've done this one. Yeah. Basically. I was again, having, do you know what I love? I love, practices, smaller practices that do a lot of the high end residential one off homes type thing.

I'm sick. Cause when I look when you, [00:25:00] it's like a mod, a modern theme, but it's fit seamlessly in the environment. And this caught my attention. This is in Wales, by the way, Northwest Wales, Steve. Ah, down the road from me. I'm in the house next door, which is tiny as hell. But but yeah, I just wanted this has just got planning permission, I think.

So it's relevant now at the moment. And I was just looking through some of these pictures and it'd be amazing to live there. I think the view you'd get from your bedroom would be amazing. If you scroll down and have a look through some of these pictures. Yeah, scroll down and look, there's more pictures below if you scroll down.

Stephen Drew: It's just because I got a new mouse and it's slipping as I'm sweating because we're live.

Will Ridgway: But it just, it's just like the sleek design and I think there's a, I think imagine just waking up in the morning, you get to see, I think it's near the sea there as well, so it looks cool.

If you scroll down to the bottom as well.

Stephen Drew: I live inly Dr. Liz. I live in South Wales. I love it as I'm a south, I'm a South Wales boy. But I tell you what, I always north Wales is beautiful. I'm from Swansea, so [00:26:00] Swan is it down to as selectively. Beautiful. Alright, there we

Will Ridgway: go. Go down to the bottom.

I think if you, yeah, so that just looks amazing, but I think there's a project that's cool. If you move to the if you click next on the project list at the bottom, which ones the quest? The other way around. Go the other way around.

Stephen Drew: The other way

Will Ridgway: around. Look at this. Maybe it is all your guys now.

Stephen Drew: Now we've descended. That's where it goes wrong. The moment it's not a direct click. When you've got me at the mouse, it goes. I know. I think let's just go to another one. Because you've done such a good job of all this news. Otherwise. Otherwise we'll run out of time, but strong architects is great.

And I agree, Dr. Les, fresh, there's more smaller practices than big ones. And I think it's great. That we're talking about strong architects. It's a practice I never heard of before, because I think what's a great way about this as having a little natter at lunch is that we can hopefully bring a little bit of a highlight on architectural practices, which maybe I'm not so well known, so let's have a little look at as well.

One or two more. [00:27:00] What, okay, what is an Italian play scraper?

Will Ridgway: I saw this, I was like, we have to show it. This looks like cyberpunk. It's like amazingly absurd, but cool. So basically. You've heard of skyscrapers, and this is a playscraper, and basically, from what I understand anyway, it's a bunch of tennis courts all stacked on top of each other in a skyscraper form this is a great way to save on space, because tennis courts take up a lot of land.

And so instead of putting them on a lad, they've put them on top of each other. And I just thought it'd be pretty cool to go there. Obviously it's it's just in design stages. I don't know where it's at all in its process. But I have no idea. I saw it on the website and I thought it'd be really cool to talk about.

Just looks cool. Imagine if you're playing tennis, I'd get distracted by the views. I'll be honest. That's a nice place. Yeah,

Stephen Drew: I know it's matching the elevators out. You're going to be knackered by the time you go before you even have a game. But can you imagine them views?

And you [00:28:00] definitely need that mesh here, isn't it? Because the way, how bad I am at tennis, I'd lose all the balls. They'd be in the, they'd be in the neighbor's garden downstairs. Do you know what I mean? I think there's

Will Ridgway: a, I think there's a glass panel there. I think there is.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, probably. It's like

Will Ridgway: smack the ball, it just goes out.

I hit some poor person wandering down on the path below. Oh, that is pretty cool. And so it's just I think it's they based it in Italy but yeah, I don't know where it is in the design process. I don't know if it's going to be built or not, but it just looked cool. And I thought I'd show it here.

Stephen Drew: Concept design, but this is important. You need concept designs that kind of keep pushing things. It looks like a bit like Remcooler. So I agree, especially the visualizations. Do look a little bit like REM and OMA. All right. I like that. Cool. Let's do one little more. Wow. We're just spoiled for choice here, isn't it?

And I love in your adventurous tone and all this stuff. So I'm stuck at home, but you go into. Now we're going to the Antarctic.

Will Ridgway: Yeah, now we're in Antarctica. Bases have been built in [00:29:00] Antarctica all the time, I think. And whilst this one looks really futuristic, but I think what was cool about it was that it's a I believe it's a British practice and they're collaborating with an Australian practice.

Now, because of the whole COVID, they've not been able to actually, come together. They've had to do all their meetings over Zoom. So this whole design. This whole design started off in March, so just as on D Day, basically, when things start to kick off and they've just basically collaborated together all entirely on Zoom to create and finish this design for this this project that's going to be based in Antarctica, and the project itself looks cool, it's just You know, it's quite it looks quite futuristic, I think.

But it was just cool that you don't have to be in the same room to design something anymore of people finding new ways to collaborate together. I think that's cool.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. It's it's been interesting because a few of our clients will, a big architectural practices. I think there was this conception before, especially when I worked in architectural practice and I worked [00:30:00] at a forward thinking company, but it always felt like you needed to be in to do architecture and be like.

You can't do architecture, you're not in the office, you crazy and never work. And I think that what's been interesting about this year is stuff like that, that we've had to go out of our own way and do different things. And actually what you find is that even working at home and all this stuff, actually, in some weird ways, you can save time because you're not traveling to me and you're doing things.

And I do think it's important to, it's nice to go to your office in a little bit. Obviously, you've got to be safe right now and you've got to you've got to go to save lives and you've got to be. You got to do the right thing. And what, and I do miss sometimes the human interaction, as you say, it felt like the impossible before, and actually we're learning different ways to work and its strengths and weaknesses.

I do think you have to be conscious, especially right now, though, of mental health and all this stuff at home, because even myself, sometimes you can, I think you can go in a right rut at home, and it's really important to speak to each other because, it's stuff like this, actually, it's quite nice to have this social aspect, the [00:31:00] way me and you were talking now, because you almost need these things to do to look forward to them.

And I look forward to it because you're you're doing something different. And I think one of the pitfalls of, there was sometimes working at home. Is that you can get a little bit siloed. So it's quite cool as you see in saying that here, the design team are working together and gone above and beyond and done something, which is, as you say, impossible climate.

I'll tell you what, though. That's one site. If you're on the site here. I don't think you need to worry about, two. You gonna do the two meters, but you're not gonna be collision with many, much people. Are you? I don't think coronavirus there. . I'd be surprised. Yeah. Me too.

There we go. Yo G looks like he brought an architects. They do some amazing designs for the moon. Awesome. Concept

Will Ridgway: designs for Mars as well, as in a base on Mars. I think they've done some concept stuff for that, which is cool as well.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. You're right. It's Hugh Broughton Architects.

And so Dr. Liz is saying speaking in Welsh, [00:32:00] Dr. Liz. That's I don't speak Welsh very well. So unfortunately this is an English only. So even though I'm Welsh, I'm I am a very an authentic Welsh person. I don't speak Welsh very well. I don't speak Wales very well. I don't speak Welsh very well.

I'm not going to be let back home at this rate. I'm not going to be let back home at this rate either. They're going to be like, Christmas, bye bye, forget it. You've been in London too long. So I think, look, there's some really interesting stuff here. And I'm tempted to say, we'll have a look at one or two more things, but then as well, people can have a little look at these links as they go.

I think that covers a lot here. We've got the construction a playbook. I think I'm not going to go into it now, but we've included here the spending review. You've linked that. That's a really good link for people to look at in terms of what the government's doing. And we have your like shipping containers.

I think we've covered a lot of it, actually, I'll show you one cool bit at the end, let's have a little look at one of the other things that Dr. Liz sent me, which I thought was another bit, a little [00:33:00] bit of eye candy, a little bit of cool stuff. So this is from the sometimes interesting blog. I like that.

Maybe we should do a little sometimes interesting section. But basically this is, like an an abandoned Las Vegas style I think it's like a casino in Italy. And so it's just really cool. It's a really cool blog talks about the origin of this place, how it was forgotten. And I never even heard of it before.

And as you can see here, the architecture is really cool. It's basically a little bit of a place on its own. It's a little blip in, this is not very how would you say typical. Let me go and kind of casino, especially, in Italy, you think of this thing is, it's very different.

So I thought that this is a really cool blog for you to check out, which is sometimesinteresting. com. They've got a lot of this cool kind of stuff as well. So worth checking out and you can see here. There's a big map. This is a forgotten this is a forgotten casino. So check that out. And the last thing that I want to end on, which is very important, Architectural stuff [00:34:00] is how they filmed the Mandalorian, which if you haven't checked out and don't worry.

There's no spoilers for you, but I thought this was a really cool piece of technology. So what I want to show to you guys now is that, so this is made by the unreal engine. And so I actually saw in February and really they presented at the Reba's headquarters in London. At this really cool event called the architectural underground and this is new technology that they've made.

So the unreal engine, they're pushing it. Remember, like we talked earlier about cyberpunk and these 3D games. They push it in all these environments online. And so they can actually film things now without a green screen and they can map. And what they did for the Mandalorian is that they map this environment.

In they mapped all these Star Wars worlds and then like you can see here, it's all rendered. And then when the camera moves when the camera moves, it renders the virtual environment behind. So there's huge advantages to this, right? Which means that there's no longer a green screen, which [00:35:00] projects green back at people or like this, when you're in the car, Sean Connery's going along, when they got the steering wheel and the.

The angle is still the same, so it's no longer, it's much more immersive for the actors. And so what I find really interesting is that now we've got these technologies are gone. How cool would this be for architecture? I imagine there's a room and you you're moving the camera around with you or you're filming this stuff.

I really wonder how all this stuff feeds back. So there was a good example of this technology, the unreal engine used as part of herself project with NASA. And that's something I saw. So maybe what I'll do is I'll try to reach out to him and I'll try to see if there's something in YouTube. But there's a good few examples of how this technology was used.

And one of the things that they did well is with NASA the project of has sales architecture of as stations on Mars. What they did is they visualized the weather and what they did is they use this technology to see what it would be like in weather conditions and how [00:36:00] it would feel and how the lighting was because one of these things with using this technology is that you can totally change things on the fly.

Gone are the days of rendering for two, three hours. And yeah, of course, when you render, you've got this beautiful environment, but see the way they look at all this stuff that's going on here. I really think that this kind of technology is going to be quite interesting. So I would love to see if anyone's watching this or anything like that has used this technology in industry.

It would be really cool. But again, how cool is this? It's gone to the days of green screens. You like it? Yeah, I do. I do like it. You need to watch The Mandalorian now. I'm waiting for it. Has it all come out yet? Because I was going to binge watch it. I'll be honest. Season one is all out. I think season two, yeah, I think season two is halfway.

And that's on Disney. Check it out as well. So I think from us, I think that's a really good roundup of everything just to remind you if you tuned in halfway or anything like that, [00:37:00] you can find all the links to this and our architectural social. com forward slash show. And you can see here, this is what, when you put in that link, you'll go to here.

This is a highlighted episode, which will update to today's. So you go to the timeline, you can find today's date and you can find all these links. If you've got anything you want to share next week, let's go for it. We're going to have a Christmas feel, going to have Christmas jumpers, going to have crackers.

We haven't got any, I haven't done any sound effects today. Will or anything, haven't we? We've been. I think it's because we had so much news. I think I've done no yeah, we've done nothing like that. So I will get all that going for next week. Thank you so much for everyone that followed us. You can reach out to me here on LinkedIn.

You can reach out to Will here on LinkedIn and I guess see you next week, but Oh, before we go. Before we go, Will, what's your weekly words of wisdom?

Will Ridgway: My weekly words of wisdom is don't wait [00:38:00] for things to happen to you. Go out and get it done yourself. So that's, if you're waiting to, if you're looking for a job at the moment, don't just sit around and wait, wait for the job to come to you.

Go out and grab it yourself. Same with Chris's present. Don't wait for the ideas to come to you, just go out, get them all done. Get everything done, straight away, rather than sit on it, because otherwise it'll build up and you'll get stressed and life will be miserable.

Stephen Drew: Oh, all right, fair enough. I took the tumbleweed off halfway because, I was like, I don't know where this was going and then Yeah, so do it now.

I absolutely love that advice. I didn't know where I was going either. You did really well. And on that note, do it now. We'll go out there, get my Christmas gift. Can't wait to see what you get. Thank you very much to everyone that's followed us and, yeah, see you next week for the Christmas special, the Christmas party.

Thank you. Bye bye, everyone. Take care. Bye.