Tangents by Out of Architecture

In this engrossing discussion, Abraham Burickson elaborates on how his journey in the world of architecture led him to develop the concept of experience design. 

Having worked in various architecture firms and conducted research, Abraham discovered a gap between the promise of architecture and its practice. From tangible architectural projects to uniquely curated experiences called Odyssey Works, Abraham redefines the conventional understanding of architecture. 

Discussing his one-person tailored experiences approach, Abraham delves into the philosophy behind embracing a client's life and empathizing with their reality to create designs that reflect their authentic aspirations.

Highlights:
  • Exploring Indigenous Architecture in the Amazon
  • Frustrations with Traditional Architecture Practice
  • The Birth of Odyssey Works: Personalized Experiences
  • Impact of Odyssey Works on Participants
  • Reflections on the Power of Personalized Design
  • Long Architecture Project and Phase 0
  • Connecting to our Humanity and Our Community
  • Digging deeper to get to the WHY
  • Finding Our North Star
  • The Life-Changing Power of Connection
  • Experience Design Certificate Program
  • Experience Design, a Participatory Manifesto

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Guest Bio:
Abraham Burickson, Co-Founder of Odyssey Works and Co-Director of the Experience Design Certificate Program, has spent more than two decades exploring the relationship between what we make and how it is experienced. Trained in architecture at Cornell University and in poetry and playwriting at the Michener Center for Writers, he has also studied the transformative power of designed experience with the Whirling Dervishes of Turkey, the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and with countless artists, designers, and students through Odyssey Works. He is also the founder of The Long Architecture Project, which rethinks architectural practice from the perspective of Experience Design. He has won prizes, lectured and taught widely, given a TEDxtalk, and was once hired by German television to kidnap an American skateboarding champion. His book Experience Design, A Participatory Manifesto, is now available from Yale University Press.

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Creators & Guests

Host
Silvia Lee
Host of Tangents
Guest
Abraham Burickson
Co-Director of Odyssey Works and the Experience Design Certificate Program
Producer
Erin Pellegrino
Co-Founder of Out of Architecture
Producer
Jake Rudin
Co-Founder of Out of Architecture

What is Tangents by Out of Architecture?

Welcome to Tangents by Out of Architecture, hosted by Silvia Lee. We’re highlighting some of our favorite stories from the amazing people we’ve met along our journey. We will hear how they created a unique career path for themselves from the variety of skills and talents they developed in and out of architecture.

Out of Architecture is a career consulting firm started by two Harvard-educated professionals interested in exploring the value of their skills both in and out of the architectural profession. We’re here to help you maximize all of the expertise you have honed as a designer to get you a role that fulfills and challenges you. We have the knowledge, experience, and connections to help you put your best self into the market–and reap the benefits.

The Power of Designing Experiences with Odyssey Works’ Abraham Burickson
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Introduction to Tangents by Out of Architecture
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[00:00:00]

Abraham: We didn't have words for it when we started experimenting, but this notion of experience design back in, ~you know, two th~ the early two thousands, the s ~uh, ~It didn't have a title, it didn't have a practice, but a lot of people were starting to ask questions about what is it ~ uh,~ to create experience, what is it to create conditions for experience, what happens if we move away from the thing, ~which might be a chair, or a car, or a house, ~and move towards what that thing facilitates in the life of a person, and ~so, uh, ~Odyssey Works was an experiment And that, and it was amazing that we had these radical results.

Abraham: People changed their lives. They frequently quit their jobs right afterwards, ~broke up with their, you know, or got married or,~ or moved, right? Like right afterwards, it shook people

Silvia: welcome to Tangents by Out of Architecture. Out of Architecture is a career resource network helping designers apply their incredible talents in untraditional ways. We're highlighting some of our favorite stories from the amazing people we've met along the way. We will hear how they created a unique career path for themselves from the wide variety of skills and talents they developed in and out of architecture.

Silvia: Our guest [00:01:00] today, Abraham Burickson co director of Odyssey works. And the experience design certificate program talks about his journey through experienced design before the term experience design was even around.

Silvia: I loved hearing how his practice has evolved over time. The life changing effect it can have on people and how all ways of making can be this thoughtful and impactful.

Silvia: As we kick off season three of tangents. I want to thank you all for listening each week. And I hope these stories continue to resonate with you. And check out out of architecture's newest podcast, red lines, where Jake and Erin have conversations about the darker side of architecture.

Silvia: Welcome to Tangents.

Guest Introduction and Background in Architecture
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Silvia: To get started, how would you describe yourself in three words?

Abraham: I'm experienced designer. Do I have to include articles?

Silvia: ~Um, ~I'm really looking forward to hearing,~ uh,~ the story behind these words.

Silvia: And what is your background in architecture?

Exploring Indigenous Architecture in the Amazon
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Silvia: ~I~

Abraham: ~ was, uh,~ I was trained in architecture at Cornell and I practiced, ~you know, ~I worked in big [00:02:00] firms and I worked in little firms and then,~ um,~ I went and did research in the Amazon. into cultural practices around architecture and ~sort of ~went down there because I was interested in the technologies that were being employed by the indigenous schwar.

Abraham: But,~ um,~ once I was there, I discovered things were quite different than I, than I had imagined. ~Um, ~and it really changed my view of architecture and what it is and what it does. And, ~um. ~

Frustrations with Traditional Architecture Practice
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Abraham: Eventually, I came back to school and came back to practice and was frustrated with the way architecture was practiced. ~I mean, ~it's so exciting to work on big projects at big firms and little projects at little firms.

Abraham: Actually, every project is huge because it's changing somebody's world. And so I never felt like there was a project too small. ~Um, ~but I was frustrated both because I wanted to get my hands dirty,~ uh,~ as I had in, in the Amazon, and,~ um,~ and because I felt there was something, there was some [00:03:00] divorce between what had drawn me to architecture in the first place and what,~ uh,~ and what I was doing,~ um,~ which was You know, there was this sense of walking into some, some buildings that you were walking into a world and, and there was a way of being that was possible in that world and, ~you know, ~that, that applied equally to mosques in Istanbul and to the houses of the Shuar and the Amazon and to the Johnson Museum at Cornell, which is an IM Pei Museum that I went to hundreds of times just because of the way you worked with space.

Abraham: There's this, there's this kind of,~ um,~ incredible sense that one could, one could create a different world and we could, we could enter into that and be different people. We could decide who we get to be based on the space, but that wasn't actually the, the, the practice that I found when I was working at big firms and small, ~you know, um, ~and then eventually having a private practice of just,~ um,~ residential work.

The Birth of Odyssey Works: Personalized Experiences
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Abraham: Eventually I started [00:04:00] to,~ uh,~ experiment. I was always a writer and a theater maker, and I, I got together with a friend of mine named Matthew Perdon, who was a theater maker and a, and a painter, and we were having this, this conversation, which is a conversation that's of course relevant to architecture too, which is, ~you know, ~when we create our work and we cast it out into the world.

Abraham: ~You know, ~hundreds of people see it, but we've made it for just this one person, ~you know, ~you know, we've had this idea that our ideal audience would find it and be so moved by it. And we're so excited about that. ~You know, ~this is, this is a conversation that happens a lot. Oh, we found the person who gets it.

Abraham: Why don't we just experiment with making for that one person, we thought. And so we started doing that and we created this thing called Odyssey Works that makes weekend long. week long, months long experiences for one person audiences. It was just supposed to be a little experiment, but it's been going now for more than two decades,~ um,~ because it was, it was ~kind of ~amazing and radical, and it started to answer [00:05:00] some of the questions that I'd had about architecture in the first place, which were questions about how one actually designs... experiences, how one creates the conditions for people to live in a particular way for a particular period of time, which seemed to me to be the architectural project. When we were working with artists and designers and writers and hackers and all kinds of different people and we would take over our audience member, one audience member at a time, our audience member's life.

Abraham: and create an experience that interwove with their real life in such a way that we had essentially transformed their world. And so this practice went on obviously for quite a while because it was eye opening. It was,~ um,~ there's an idea in, in architecture speak in architecture theory called performativity.

Abraham: And, ~you know, ~of course there's energy performance, but, but there's this notion of performativity. How, what is, what is the life that a piece of architecture,~ um,~ makes [00:06:00] possible? What, how does it, how does it perform in that way? And,~ um,~ and this is an idea that was pretty much, Aligned with what we came to understand as experience design.

Abraham: We didn't have words for it when we started experimenting, but this notion of experience design back in, ~you know, two th~ the early two thousands, the s ~uh, ~It didn't have a title, it didn't have a practice, but a lot of people were starting to ask questions about what is it to create,~ uh,~ to create experience, what is it to create conditions for experience, what happens if we move away from the thing, which might be a chair, or a car, or a house, ~and move, and, ~and move towards what that thing facilitates in the life of a person, and ~so, uh, ~Odyssey Works was an experiment And that, and it was amazing that we had these radical results.

Impact of Odyssey Works on Participants
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Abraham: People changed their lives. They frequently quit their jobs right afterwards, broke up with their, ~you know, ~or got married or, or moved, right? Like right afterwards, it was, it had these, it shook people and ~I,~ I had one made for me and ~my, ~my partner had one made for him and ~Um, ~and it,~ it, it was,~ it was ~kind of ~radical.

Abraham: ~We, we, ~we had ~sort of ~no idea [00:07:00] that, at our fingertips was this sort of design technology, you might say,~ um,~ that could change lives. ~Um, ~and ~so, ~I worked,~ um,~ I continued working in architecture for quite a while, but I got more and more frustrated with architecture as a practice, even when I was doing it myself.

Abraham: I had nobody to blame but me, and frustrated with the practice because I didn't know another way to do it. ~Um, ~over that time, I wrote a book,~ uh,~ with,~ uh,~ OdysseyWorks co director Aiden LaRue,~ uh,~ she and I wrote our first book, and then I've just recently written my second book, compiling these ideas of experience design, which, which we've seen in our consulting and our research.

Abraham: in our,~ um,~ educational work,~ uh,~ apply across all making disciplines. They apply equally to architecture, as to graphic design, as to immersive theater, as to human resources,~ uh,~ political action,~ uh,~ and entertainment,~ uh,~ religion,~ um,~ birthday parties,~ right,~ [00:08:00] all kinds of things. They're all, they're all methods of, of creativity that are concerned with the experience of the person on the other end.

Experience Design Certificate Program and Book (*not used here)
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Abraham: And so we've just, I've just,~ um,~ compiled a set of principles that, that underlie this practice of experience design into this book. And we've had,~ um,~ for about, for about seven years now, we've been leading,~ uh,~ classes and workshops and experience design. And we have, Now we're now going into our third year of,~ uh,~ a year long, very intense experience design certificate program, which is people by all kinds of designers, artists,~ um,~ we have engineers, we have entrepreneurs, isn't that a creative activity?

Abraham: We have,~ um,~ theater makers, we have visual artists, we have community,~ uh,~ organizers, we have all kinds of different people who come together to work under this same rubric and to see how these ideas apply across their disciplines. ~ uh,~

Silvia: [00:09:00] Luckily, I watched your TED talk this morning.

Silvia: ~So, um~ and I encourage everybody to do the same as well because there were such beautiful examples of some of the,~ um,~ pieces that you have created for people. And it's really ~like, ~it pushes the boundary of what you consider art or like a project. And I love it because I. I feel like there's no limit to what can be created, any rules that you might have considered are all broken.

Silvia: And I really love that. I'm going to try to draw a connection between a person and their own career journey, for example, their own life. And you mentioned that when people had these ~Um, ~experiences created for them. It was life changing. And I think architecture having the power, almost the control to be able to dream something into existence as part of our job or what we do is very empowering.

Silvia: And I hope people take that same vision and apply it to themselves and also create their own dreams. But I think.

Reflections on the Power of Personalized Design
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Silvia: Perhaps maybe like the real realities of life ~kind of ~[00:10:00] come bearing down and maybe get in the way or cause you to pause, but can you speak to ~like ~that power almost that experience of just like the ability to create anything from nothing?

Abraham: ~Uh, ~absolutely. I think, the grand appeal of architecture is that we can make a world, and that world is a world of possibility. I think we see it ~when we, when we.~ when we watch great world building movies or TV, ~you know, ~you watch like Westworld or, or, ~you know, ~Game of Thrones or something like that, and you can just, you just, by looking at it, by looking at the physical plant, by looking at the design, all the design elements, you feel like you could, you could incredibly step in to that life, the promise of architecture, And, For many of us, not for all of us, ~I suppose, ~but is, is that by, by creating this form, you can step into this other life.

Abraham: I remember looking at,~ um,~ looking at all those buildings of Brasilia, uh,~ uh, and, and,~ and photos and videos, and just so fascinated by modernism's intensity [00:11:00] and creativity, and And then, then eventually going down there, ~you know, when I, when I saw when,~ when the imagination ~that, that, that, that,~ that emerged from looking at those pictures is one of this kind of bold, optimistic life where you're just making something incredible,~ right,~ where you can step in and sort of have grand, have grand ideas on a communal scale.

Abraham: And then, of course, I took this long journey to Brasilia to ~kind of ~go on pilgrimage to see what it was like, and there were so many things wrong with it, right? it was a failure. Of course, I love the fact that we have failures, but,~ ~~um, but what,~ what it really drove home was the way that, it's not the thing, right?

Abraham: It wasn't the building. It was the life on the other side of the building. And,~ um,~ as I've ~sort of ~drifted from ~sort of ~traditional architectural practice, I've found myself needing to be guided more by, that kind of recognition. I'm interested in the life that we can make possible.

Abraham: That's like the North Star for this. Maybe it's about the physical plant and maybe it's about the pillows, or maybe it's [00:12:00] about the community that exists there, or maybe it's about the stories that we create, or maybe it's about,~ uh, uh, ~the food. There's so much more to it, right? The, we ~sort of ~look at these images as a kind of, as, as a gateway,~ um,~ to another way of being, to another world, and they're the most, we're such a visual culture, they're the most easy to grab onto, but actually we want to be inside that building having that dinner.

Abraham: not just inside that building. We want to be, ~you know, ~talking to that person. There is so much more to it. And,~ um,~ and for me, having that North Star guiding me has said, okay, maybe I don't have to be making architecture. Maybe I could be making dinner, or I could be making a weekend long experience, or I could be making architecture.

Abraham: I,

**Long Architecture Project and Phase 0
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Abraham: I eventually came back to my architectural practice with something called the Long Architecture Project, and I work with clients,~ uh,~ with something called Phase Zero, where we don't,~ um,~ we, we don't jump in as fast as traditional architecture practice jumps in,~ um,~ usually, and [00:13:00] for most of my career, I would meet a client Like, okay, I need a, ~you know, ~four bedroom home and I need this kind of landscaping,~ like,~ okay,~ well,~ we could have it look like this.

Abraham: We're going to have a look like that. Or have you considered such and such? ~Right? Like, ~it was already too late, right? If the question, if the North Star was what life do we want to have here? We'd already gotten past all the possibilities of answering that question, jumped into the spaces, right? Hopefully my clients had thought about it, but had they?

Abraham: And if they had, were they able to communicate with me? And could we have within our remit? a breadth of practice beyond architecture that could answer that question. So now I work with my clients on, on something called phase zero, and we get together and we tour architecture. We ask questions, they fill out long questionnaires, and I talk to the whole family, sometimes communities.

Abraham: We go on road trips. We, we ask the question, what is the life you wish to create for which this home or this building will be a [00:14:00] catalyst, just a piece of it? ~You know, ~we know the incredible amount of resources that go into making a building. We know that it's not just financial and it's not just material, it's emotional, it's social, it's, it's community based resources, it's time.

Abraham: There aren't that many opportunities in an organization or an individual's life to, to pour so much into one, to one effort. Why do we waste it on just the physical building and then hope that we get the rest of it right? Why not think about the whole thing? And so that's the work I do with my clients now.

Abraham: And we, we work from phase 0 up to schematics, and then I hand it off to a local architect. I'm not entirely hand off, we collaborate, but,~ um,~ but it's brought me back to the practice of architecture from the outside. It's also. And in many ways, it's also about a certain,~ uh,~ way of relate, way of relating to my clients and to humans that I prefer from the ordinary client, ~ uh,~ relationship that I was used to and,~ um,~ and, and,~ uh,~ and integration [00:15:00] of this notion of actually just being human.

Abraham: and using all of my faculties rather than being a kind of functionary of the building and using just that faculty.

Silvia: Yeah, I love the way that you phrase that because in school, when they,~ um,~ talk about projects, they always share the entire story of it, the impact on the community, the beauty and all the details.

Silvia: And then you start working. And you get to do none of that. And it's all like the after part. Okay. Like the details, the drawings, like the notes, the protection of liability, like none of the stuff that you fell in love with. and then everyone's just like, why am I doing this for 80 hours a week?

Abraham: ~Right.~

Abraham: Right.

Abraham: For 80 hours a week too. ~Right. ~And there's something, ~you know, ~there's one of the things that. that,~ um,~ that became ~kind of ~surprisingly clear to us when we were creating these odysseys was that, as artists, We're actually used to a mode of creation where we make something, put it out into the world, and ~kind of ~run away, right?

Abraham: ~You know, ~you write a book, it's on a bookshelf, and you're like, [00:16:00] Enjoy! Something about strangers! I hope you like it! Don't write a bad review. ~You know, ~there's a, there's this kind of divide, and I think there's something very artificial about that. And there's also,~ um,~ there's also a general kind of, ~ uh,~ workaholism, that is, that is very interesting as well and, and, and perhaps a part of this kind of focus on the thing.

Abraham: And what we found when we started creating these experiences is that we were dyna we were involved. As humans, we were in relationship with our audience members. We were, we had to be affected by them if we were going to actually think about their experience, because how could you do that? How could you be empathetically engaged with them?

Abraham: Why wasn't I this way with my architecture clients? ~Right? ~How could 80 hours at my CAD station actually,~ uh,~ have me be in relationship to the situation of my client? Especially if, if my whole sort of,~ like,~ my whole, I don't know about you, but I [00:17:00] remember, ~you know, ~in the early days of doing that, I would just, I would dream in CAD symbols, after a long day.

Abraham: ~Like, ~there would be like weeks of that. And it's just ~like, ~it was just ~sort of ~crazy. I was being ~kind of ~taken away from my humanity. And it seemed ~like, ~oh, what, why, why can't this be part of a practice? I

Silvia: love how you keep bringing back the human side of things, both in how you relate to your clients and yourself, and yes, very much so when you're in the middle of it,~ like,~ you're more a robot than a human sometimes, and you just turn things off, I feel like, just to get to the finish line, which is so unfortunate, ~ um,~ I, you also mentioned,~ uh,~ the North Star before, As you were creating things that didn't necessarily have words to them like experience design back,~ um, you know, ~two decades before, how did you keep moving forward and ~kind of ~like sharing this with the world in a space that was ~kind of ~maybe more unfamiliar today?

Silvia: ~like, you know, ~I feel like everyone. may have that dream of theirs that they truly believe in. They believe it, but not, maybe not the people that,~ like,~ they talk to. So how do you keep moving through [00:18:00] that, especially, ~you know, like, ~for the long haul?

**Connecting to our Humanity and Our Community
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Abraham: ~You know, ~the Odyssey Works experiences were, were never meant to be in the foreground.

Abraham: They just kept, they just wouldn't go away. ~Uh, ~and part of the reason was that everybody who was involved with them was affected. ~Uh, ~it was, it was very affecting, and in our early days, we didn't care if anybody knew about it. We were experimenting, and we were having powerful impacts on the communities that were involved, and I think, I think the, this shouldn't be, ~sort of, ~put in a corner, this idea of working with the community,~ um,~ because I think it's far more, of course, satisfying than working ~kind of ~for the public.

Abraham: There was a moment,~ um,~ when suddenly the press was very interested in what we were doing, and we started getting a lot of press. And it was this very strange moment. We had to represent ourselves, right? And we had to act like we knew. You know what I mean? We had to, we had to ~sort of ~be something. Whereas what we really were, were,~ uh,~ artists and [00:19:00] designers who had a question and who were experimenting with that question.

Abraham: Eventually, we found that,~ um,~ we wanted to share this with the world. We wanted to, ~you know, ~to offer this because we felt it was a very powerful offering that could really transform the way people work in lots of different disciplines.

Abraham: so

Silvia: it's ~kind of ~like You had the proof in front of you, like the impact,~ like,~ that you could see and feel within yourself that ~like, ~that was all the belief you needed in a way.

Abraham: Yeah, yeah. To ~like, ~keep going. Yeah, that was all the belief. We also had it in community, right? We were a community who were thinking together and that's so different than being an individual trying to convince the public, right?

Abraham: It comes back to this, this. This, this kind of feature, this kind of principle of relationality in, in the creative process. It's It sounds nice, but it actually is, it's radical. Like it's, it's ~kind of ~revolutionary, right? So much architecture happens [00:20:00] with so much collaboration, right? But are we on the same page?

Abraham: Is our aim the same? When I work with organizations and ~kind of ~consulting around experience design, which I do a fair amount in Odyssey Works, We,~ um,~ try to talk to them about what it would be for everybody to have the same phase zero in the organization. Actually, the way, the way these systems are structured, like there's a job description.

Abraham: And you do the job, and you try to make it meaningful for you, and we're all these kind of little vectors pointing, hopefully in similar directions, moving the ship where it needs to go, and there's a mission statement somewhere, and, and that just sounds like ~kind of, you know, ~some kind of, some kind of homily somebody made once, right?

Abraham: But,~ um,~ but there is actually, ~you know, ~in most organizations that where people feel good being there. There is ~kind of ~a common. experiential aim. There's something that they wish to put into the world. When that is aligned and explicit, when people [00:21:00] who are in an organization, in a community, can clearly state why they're there, how it aligns with their personal aims in life, why they're trying to do what they're trying to do, and how this particular project manifests that, which sounds like a lot of work on the one hand, and it is in the front end, but ~um, ~But it becomes,~ uh,~ it becomes a kind of an amazing engine, right?

Abraham: Suddenly you're in community. Before you were collaborating, afterwards you entered into community, a community process, because you were all ~kind of ~on a search together. ~Um, ~and that,~ um,~ that it just, it can't be overstated. And I think, ~you know, ~what it, can you imagine,~ like,~ we have this kind of Starkitect.

Abraham: culture, which can be, ~I mean, ~it's inspiring to imagine these geniuses out there doing these incredible inspired things on the one hand, but on the other hand,~ um,~ it ~sort of ~leaves everybody ~kind of ~hanging in the basket underneath that, that genius. And there's so many brilliant people with so much education, way too much [00:22:00] education,~ um,~ who have been inspired.

Abraham: What if they were all moving in the same direction for the same reason?

*#
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Silvia: When you, ~um, ~work with different people,~ like,~ maybe in the example of passing on your,~ uh,~ projects to architects,~ um,~ to be built or working with companies and with your phase zero, how do you ~kind of ~share your, the vision of the community with them? ~Like, ~maybe people that have other priorities or focuses?

Abraham: Yeah, ~I mean, ~it's, it's,~ um,~ it's a work in progress. ~So, ~yeah, I'm still figuring some of it out. But, ~you know, ~the The,~ um, you know, ~the primary practice for me is getting on that page, figuring out the phase zero with my clients, what is, what is it that they're trying to do in life and getting on the same page so that I'm creating towards that, and not doing this funny dance that we do where, ~you know, ~the client wants one thing and, Okay, but I get to do something that looks really cool and show it off on Instagram.

Abraham: And ~like, ~I think it'll be [00:23:00] a great building for this, for these reasons. They have these stupid priorities about having a big bathtub or whatever, ~you know, ~or ~like ~not really on this, but we're all going to get what we want. ~Right. ~As opposed, ~you know, ~that that's, that's, I think a kind of reality that I faced a lot.

Abraham: ~Um, ~But just, just achieving a kind of alignment there, which means a lot of interrogation. ~Like, ~we don't know. We don't know what our purpose in life is. We don't know what we're striving for. Our clients don't often know. They come to us, they're like, I want this kind of house. It's just like the same reason why, ~you know, ~I want to go to Paris.

Abraham: Why do you wanna go to Paris? ~Well, ~it looks romantic and the architecture is beautiful in this urban fabric. Why do you care about that? ~Well, ~there's a kind of romance around a certain way of being, a way of walking the streets, perhaps, or, or, or being in a coffee shop or having a pace of life that is leisurely and thoughtful, something like that, right?

Abraham: It takes some digging to get to the experiential aim that the, that the, that, that kind [00:24:00] of frontline. represents. We don't know what's underneath when we have these desires. We don't know why we're trying to do these things, but we can spend time getting there. And when we do, we find we're, the nice thing is we don't, we're not all that different at that core, right?

Abraham: We, we have ~kind of ~somewhat similar aims. And so it's easier to get in alignment. ~Um, ~I would love to ~sort of ~work at a,~ uh,~ my, my long architecture project tends to move around the country. So I don't have long sort of standing relationships with the builders who are doing it. We have to find a local builder and that's, that's in the, that's in, in the works, as it were, to try to integrate all the way down.

Abraham: If it was one organization, I'd be able to do that faster.

Silvia: ~And then how do you find, um, or how do you decide, like, the, the work that you do, the projects that you do? Like, Like, um, how does they, how do they all come through to culminate? Like, does that kind of, does that question make ~

Abraham: ~sense? Well, um, I don't, can you clarify a little bit? Do you mean like, ~

Silvia: ~Well, I guess like, how?~

Silvia: ~I'm trying to think like a advice to give for our listeners, like how to like get started, but also like, because~ I feel as architects, we have so many interests, we can do anything we want to do everything. ~So how do you, I guess this is somewhat related to the North Star question, like~ how do you decide what to keep pursuing?

Silvia: And ~like, ~Thank you. work through and ~like ~stick with, ~or like how for you, what was that experience like? Yeah, I ~

*Finding Our North Star
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Abraham: ~you know, ~at the risk of, of sounding like a 1970s self help book, ~you know, ~that North Star thing is really true. And I think with [00:25:00] architecture, we get so, we get so pulled away first by school, which is inspiring and exciting, but also norming, right?

Abraham: We get normed into a way of a certain set of values and, and, and, ~you know, you know, ~what's cool, what's not cool, ~you know, ~depending on our school and our peers and all that. ~I mean ~the peer pressure in architecture is incredible. ~Um, um,~ and then in the workplace we just, ~you know, ~have all the challenges of being in a workplace but, ~you know, ~we can, it's super important to go back to the question of, ~you know, ~and you might have been five years old when you first decided you wanted to be an architect, I was.

Abraham: I wanted to be an architect. I was fine. I didn't know. I just heard the word. I was like, that's great. You mean I can make that thing. Yes. ~Right. ~But I had to actually go back to those times and say, what is it and then be willing to think divergently about how to achieve that. And I think that that leads people in so many fascinating places.

Abraham: I have a friend who's who,~ um,~ is also an escapee from architecture, and he [00:26:00] realized he was interested in,~ um,~ creating experiences, in gamifying experience, in putting play into the wider world, and he created this thing called the Headlands Gamble, and he became, he had become a computer programmer, he ended up being the running the team that fixed healthcare.

Abraham: gov. We can remember a more innocent time when that was the biggest problem we were facing. and,~ uh,~ he created this thing called the Headlands Gamble. He developed this tech for it that,~ um,~ that made it possible for people to travel around the San Francisco Bay Area in, in a car. and go to these sites and ~kind of ~unravel this mystery in various different locations from San Francisco up, ~you know, ~to Oakland, to Marin.

Abraham: There's like a horse race and there are actors all over the place. He developed the technology that would make that possible and then he created the experience. He was designing, there was tons of design there. There were props and there were actual spaces to design. And mysteries and game mechanics, all of these [00:27:00] things were, that was, they were scratching the itch that had brought them to architecture in the first place.

Abraham: It wasn't the same as the itch. That brought me to architecture in the first place, but he recognized that and said, okay,~ well,~ I'm going to, ~you know, ~it took him a while, it took him a while to get there, but then he realized this is what he really wanted to do. And I think it's so interesting. He was following that itch, he was following that North Star, and that's what I've been doing.

Abraham: And I think, ~you know, ~one of the amazing things about architects is when they get out of architecture, ~ uh, uh, ~they invent things. ~Right? ~There's this, there's this kind of amazing, this amazing tradition of architects ~sort of ~creating new things in the world because they've, they've left a tradition and are wandering with a, with a kind of an itch.

Silvia: And then with your odysseys that you've created,~ um,~ how do you decide what to do in a way that like, if you can do anything, and I'm sure many things will relate to that person, how does that whole journey get created? Like, how do you decide this is the thing?

Abraham: Yeah, we get together as a team and [00:28:00] digest all the research, the interviews, the material, we listen to the movies, the music they love, we watch the movies they love, we, or they hate, we, we read the books that they've been reading, we, we, we look at transcripts of interviews.

Abraham: with,~ uh,~ their, their mom and their ex, um,~ um,~ and,~ uh,~ and, and then we put it all together and we just talk about them and we understand how we relate to them and, and we, we have a kind of rule of thumb that we don't get started until somebody's dreamed about that person. ~Um, ~and once, once that's happened, that's kind of a, a kind of ~um, You know, ~okay, once in a while it doesn't happen, but that's, that's ~sort of ~a measure of the fact that we've internalized that person.

Abraham: It's like falling in love. It's like falling in love without the romance side of things, right? We've internalized them enough to say that we can be our most empathetic selves around them with information. And then we ask the question, what do I wish for this person? And we share [00:29:00] that, and that becomes...

Abraham: our Phase Zero, our North Star, if you will,~ uh,~ for the project. Because if we can respond to what we wish for that person, then we're, we're making something that we think is worthwhile. We're also artists. We also are interested in things. We are not not part of it. We are not just God's manipulating humans, right?

Abraham: We are interested in creating certain kinds of things, but we're only interested in doing that relative to an empathetic understanding of that person. And so then, once we've done that, we start creating, we create a diagram. ~Um, ~because the diagram is a necessary notational mode of communication for experience design because there is no standardized mode of communication for experience design.

Abraham: If we don't have something, we end up using the wrong one. Notational method. We make a script, which is really best suited for a [00:30:00] play or a screenplay, or we make a plan or we just, we just write it all out. And these things all have their benefits and they all have their traditions, but those traditions are not experienced design.

Abraham: So we create a, a. ~Um, ~a diagram that makes it very easy to see at a glance what the experiential aim, what the phase zero of this thing we're creating is. And then we start to hang everything off of that so that it can all be aligned. With that goal, and that is something that everybody becomes literate in on the team, and we have a core team, and then we have collaborators and we have other collaborators.

Abraham: It's ~sort of ~different levels of remove and different levels of investment.

Silvia: ~Um, ~I just started recently teaching 2nd year's studio. ~Uh, ~actually, thanks to Erin. ~Um, ~and

##
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Silvia: everything you've just said, the whole process is exactly like the way that I would ask my students to approach their projects and the way that we as architects understand our projects.

Silvia: You research, you understand, you embody everything, and then [00:31:00] you ~kind of ~put something out there that you want to happen, you want to create that doesn't ~ uh,~ exist already. So I feel like everything you said in the lens of architecture,~ like,~ is so concrete. Right?

Abraham: It's architecture. It's architecture practice.

Abraham: It just doesn't necessarily involve... ~You know, ~footings and permits, although it might. And

Silvia: I think that's actually what makes,~ like,~ making a building so difficult, is because you're trying to do all of that ~ like,~ while baking a building, and it's like, it kills, it feels like it kills each other.

Abraham: yeah, you get lost in the weeds, right?

Abraham: There's a real question, how do you maintain the focus on that, or star on that phase zero when you're lost in the weeds? At least in, ~you know, ~an architecture school. All you need to build is the model. Unless, I guess,~ I guess, ~didn't, didn't, at Taliesin West, didn't the students have to build their first year dorms?

Abraham: But other than that,~ uh,~ you generally just have to, have to build your model. And now, ~you know, ~you just do that on the laser cutter. ~I mean, ~not that it's not, not that it's not challenging to use the laser cutter. But, ~you know, ~you get there very quickly. [00:32:00] Whereas, ~you know, ~the, the arc of, The arc of the process with architecture is built architecture is so onerous that,~ um,~ if you haven't laid it out clearly at the beginning, it becomes very hard to maintain it.

*The Life Changing Power of Connection
---

Silvia: And what, with the Odyssey's, what do you think is so life changing to the person? ~Like, ~what about the, what you have created affects them so much?

Abraham: ~Well, ~it's different for each person, obviously,~ um,~ but there are certain commonalities,~ um,~ not least of which is that somebody made this for them. ~Uh, ~and that's incredibly powerful.

Abraham: And we know it's powerful because when, ~You know, ~somebody who, ~you know, ~if your sweetheart makes something for you, plans a day for you really well, it's ~kind of ~transformative, right? ~Well, ~what if that person wasn't your sweetheart and they were a bunch of artists and they did it with, like, all this skill and time and spent six months on it, et cetera?

Abraham: ~Like, ~just by, just based on scale, it would be incredibly powerful. And [00:33:00] that's in part because we live in a world where things aren't really created. for us, things that the designs that are out there. Don't love us, ~you know, ~in a way, right? And, and we, we, we wrestle with them. We wrestle with our houses, right?

Abraham: We try to make them our homes, right? And there's a, and we do, and I think we do a good job at it. But what if, what if the house wanted to be our homes from the beginning? What if,~ um,~ what if the chair wanted to be your chair from the beginning? I have a quote here from,~ um,~ Black Mountain that I keep by my desk.

Abraham: ~Uh, ~about Joseph Albers, and he said, Joseph Albers might sit in the chair, often making some new discovery himself about its shape. At least once, a discovery excited him so much that he danced a little jig. Those insights came because Albers believed in that chair and its particular properties. He the special qualities of an object or a person by saying, Oh,~ well,~ that's only a chair. To categorize anything was to take it for granted, to forget its unique properties. In other words, to ignore its reality, its life.[00:34:00]

Abraham: Imagine that as a design ethos. ~It's, I, that always, that, that's like, ~it's a little bit of a North Star for me. I think things, ~you know, ~that, that's a kind of, that, that individual focus is transforming, but there are other things,~ like, um, ~they're quite simple, and we've developed ~kind of ~a set of learnings from Odyssey Works about how to design experiences,~ like, you know, ~we come into everything we come into, um,~ um,~ with our defenses up, and that gets in the way of really receiving what we're seeing.

Abraham: And what are our defenses? Our defenses are critique, our defenses are ego, ego protection, our defenses are how smart we are, our defenses are how dumb we are, our defenses are how important we are, something like that. ~You know, ~people go to a museum, they spend 13 seconds in front of a painting or whatever the number is, right?

Abraham: And ~Um, ~and these things are all in the way of something being something powerfully affecting us. We can create conditions where people don't have to be so defended because they're accepted, because they've had a chance to give their critique, because they're not placed in a competitive [00:35:00] space,~ uh,~ because their, their time and experience is valued inherently from the beginning.

Abraham: Once those things are considered. Defenses go down and suddenly that painting's incredible and you want to sit, stand there for an hour looking at it because you don't have to worry about telling somebody else later how you thought it was stupid or smart or part of ~you know, ~this movement or that movement, right?

Abraham: You get to just be there and experience it. I think that's,~ um,~ part of it. So there's a, there's a kind of, there's something about,~ um,~ Having somebody design for a condition that makes it possible for me to be experiencing what's in front of me. that itself is transformative. And I could go on, there are a number of different things, ~but you know, ~just, just thinking about it, just thinking about it.

Abraham: When people do that for me, I don't know about you, but when they do it for me, I'm grateful. That changes me.

Silvia: I love this connection, this touch of humanity You know, I don't really have conversations like this every day where I get to like,~ like, ~talk about this. So in depth. but I think the connection with someone [00:36:00] else, the connection to your own humanity and like,~ like, ~a life that you want to be living.

Silvia: I, yeah, I can see it. ~Um, ~can you share more about your,~ uh,~ certificate program

**Experience Design Certificate Program
---

Abraham: Yeah, I'd be happy to.

Abraham: our certificate program is,~ uh,~ a year long intensive program that,~ um,~ trains people who are generally mid career professionals, who are generally dissatisfied with the way things are done in their fields, if I can generalize.

Abraham: ~Um, ~they are designers, they are artists, they are musicians. Performers, they are technologists, they are, we have a banker, we have community organizers, we have,~ um,~ graphic designers, all kinds of people from all different,~ uh,~ modes of making,~ uh,~ who have a question around how they can make in a way that was actually concerned with the person on the other side, and we want that.

Abraham: We want that because we believe in that both Because that cross pollination is great, but because also,~ uh,~ we believe [00:37:00] these, this kind of siloing in different disciplines is, is,~ uh,~ not conducive to thinking experientially, not conducive to making the work that we want. We want people, and now it's so much more possible.

Abraham: ~um, ~than it was, say, when I was in architecture school, to be working across disciplines with people in other practices with this common experiential aim. We do a semester, essentially, of a kind of an accelerator around principles of experience design, and these include , interactive and experiential narrative, world building, framing, things like this, eventness.

Abraham: ~Um, ~and we do these rapid fire,~ um,~ creative projects and then a collaborative project. People build their portfolio because there are actually now jobs out there for people who call themselves experience designers. We no longer have to all sneak into positions with a different title and say, actually, what I'm going to do is experience design.

Abraham: There are some of those. So people are [00:38:00] building their portfolios because this is a field that is more and more recognized and in demand, and there isn't really much other,~ um,~ education out there around this. And it's a hybrid program, so it's,~ uh,~ online one day a week,~ um,~ and for the year, and then we're bracketed by two in person intensives, one in Baltimore, one in New York City.

Abraham: ~Well, ~we may move that first one to New York. ~Um, ~Over the summer, our students do lived research, which is a process of actually asking a question about experience and going out and experiencing it and taking notes, reading books, perhaps apprenticing, perhaps prototyping, trying different things, and then coming back with a report.

Abraham: And then in the fall, they do essentially a thesis project, which,~ um,~ which is, which is, which emerges from that research. And then we present it in New York,~ uh,~ in, in a month. We'll be presenting in New York. So people are getting a little bit,~ uh,~ panicky right about now.

Silvia: Yeah, that [00:39:00] sounds amazing. ~Um, ~what have you seen,~ um,~ the students ~kind of ~take away from this,~ like,~ as they move on,~ like,~ back into their careers or their lives?

Abraham: It's been really interesting to see this is we're going to our third year and,~ um,~ so our third year of this, particular program was ~kind of ~prototyped and various different pieces for the last four years, but this is the third year of the full program and we've seen a number of,~ uh,~ our students Leaving, leaving their jobs , to do what they wanted to do,~ uh,~ getting out of whatever it was.

Abraham: ~Um, ~but also other ones,~ um,~ making room for a different way of working inside their,~ uh,~ organizations, which has been really interesting and they've been really celebrated,~ like, um, ~for instance, we had the technologist at,~ um,~ Meow Wolf,~ um,~ go through our program and, He was frustrated with the way technology was being used.

Abraham: He felt like it was a very tech forward, not experience forward, and he worked with us [00:40:00] carrying this question in a really explicit way through the program, always asking, how do we switch it or how do we make technology serve experience and not the other way around? And he developed work that, that explored that question.

Abraham: He went back to Niall Wolfe and he said, ~you know, ~this is. This is the way we do this. And they gave him a promotion, and now he's trying to bring the kind of, bring that way of working into That organization. ~Uh, ~and they, and I think they're appreciating it. This is ~kind of ~our aim on our end, right? To ~kind of ~seed this way of working in places that could really use it.

Abraham: ~Um, ~other people, ~you know, ~go different places. We've, we have,~ um,~ we have people starting kind of side projects and experience design that become front projects. ~Like, ~it's a project called,~ uh,~ This Yearning, which,~ uh,~ there's a scientist who went through our program,~ um, Uh, ~and she,~ um,~ she was interested in developing olfactory auditory experiences because she worked with smell in her research,~ um,~ and she developed this, [00:41:00] these series of experiences, especially during pandemic.

Abraham: ~Um, ~around that. And so this became ~kind of ~a sidebar to her scientific research, but she says it keeps sneaking in more and more into her scientific research. I don't even understand how that's possible, but she says it, it's happening. ~Um, ~and there's other people who are engaged in things like this and many of them are moving towards careers in,~ uh,~ in creative,~ uh,~ practices like immersive theater or.

Abraham: ~Um, ~but some of them are, are, are thinking about how they can, how they can invent totally new ways of working. ~Like, ~there's a banker in our program and she's really interested in sustainability and she's working at a, ~you know, ~one of the world's biggest banks and saying,~ well,~ we have enormous resources.

Abraham: How can we use experience design as a tool to affect real change? And, ~you know, ~Will it happen? I really hope so, right? ~Uh, ~I think it's possible. Now she has kind of the, the,~ um,~ she has the [00:42:00] vocabulary, she has the, the theory, and she has a way of presenting it to her organization such that perhaps they'll be able to take it seriously and let go out on a limb and make something entirely unseen before.

*Experience Design, a Participatory Manifesto
---

Silvia: Yeah, I can't wait to see it. And,~ uh,~ can you share more about your book? ~Uh, ~I will include the link in our show notes so everyone can see it, but,~ uh,~ please,~ uh,~ give us a little,~ uh,~ snippet of

Abraham: it. The book is called Experience Design, a Participatory Manifesto, and I wrote it to be... able to be read in a single day.

Abraham: So I know, I do know some people who have done that. It's not out yet, but,~ um,~ it'll be, maybe it's out when you're putting this out. I don't know. It comes out on,~ um,~ November 6th and it lays down a series of 10 principles that underlie experience design across disciplines. It's in a narrative format and I actually teach now in a graphic design program, an MFA program. Even though I'm definitely not a graphic designer,~ uh,~ they brought me in as the experience designer, just like, [00:43:00] just like some people in these organizations. ~Um, ~and I worked very closely with one of my best students to, my best former students, now a professor in her own right,~ uh,~ to design the book in such a way that one, one is able to,~ um,~ interact with it as one is reading it.

Abraham: There's, it's not exactly, it's not like a workbook. It's like a series of ~sort of ~interactive engagements with the text. Mostly it's a text, right? But there's this, there are, there are ways that you can actually live the ideas alongside the reading. ~Um, ~but it's meant to be a kind of practical primer on this way of working.

Abraham: ~Uh, ~and that's why I tried to make it fairly concise. That's so cool.

Silvia: I can't wait to check it out. ~Um, ~and then as just a way to bring everything back, how would you describe architecture in your own

Abraham: words?

Abraham: Architecture is the practice of creating places generally focused on the physical plant, [00:44:00] but that's only as a, as a kind of keystone for what is necessary to make a place possible.

Silvia: I like it. Thank you so much for your time, Abraham. I had a lovely conversation.

Abraham: I really had a wonderful time talking to you, Sylvia.

Erin: Hey everyone. It's Erin from out of Architecture. If you find these stories inspiring and are looking for guidance, clarity, or just need someone to talk to about where you are in your career, please know that we offer 30 minute consultations to talk about what may be next for you. If you're interested, head to out of architecture.com/scheduling to book some time with us.

Jake: Hey everyone. It's Jake from Out of Architecture. We love hearing your stories, but we know there's more out there that we've still yet to experience. If you or someone you know would be a good fit for the podcast and has a story about taking their architecture skills beyond the bounds of traditional practice, we'd love to hear it.

Jake: Send us an email at tangents@outofarchitecture.com.

[00:45:00] Thanks for listening to our podcast, new episodes every two weeks. See you then