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Welcome to American Heritage School's Patriot Podcast, hosted by the students of the podcast class at the AHS campus in downtown Salt Lake City. Each episode features students interviewing professionals, experts, and inspiring guests to explore real-world experiences through the lens of The Seven Principles of Personal and Civil Liberty. These conversations are designed to uplift, educate, and spark meaningful dialogue within the family.
Tune in with your family each week to learn together, reflect on the values that matter most, and be inspired to live with greater purpose and principle.
Learn more about The Seven Principles of Personal and Civil Liberty here: https://slc.americanheritageschool.org/the-seven-principles
Aloha.
London:Greetings from American Heritage School in Salt Lake City, Utah. This is the Patriot Podcast, where we, the students, interview people from all walks of life. Together. Together. Together.
London:We'll talk about future careers.
Jason:Timeless truths.
London:And unique experience. So settle in. So settle in. So settle in. And let's begin.
Jason:Hi, I'm Jason. Welcome to the American Heritage School Patriot Podcast.
London:Hi, I'm London. And today we are privileged to get to talk with Stephen James.
Jason:Stephen James is a husband and a father of three daughters. He serves as a stake president of the Salt Lake Immigration Stake, which is located on the eastern half of the avenues. Stephen is trained as an architect and serves as the chief visioning officer for the Larry H. Miller Real Estate Company. Most recent professional focus is rethinking developmental patterns and providing alternative models for community growth conceived to better integrate over diversifying population.
London:When Stephen is not working, he is learning to ballroom dance with Julie, his wife of thirty two years, or he can be seen road cycling up a local canyon, mountain biking on BST, or snowboarding down shoots on Fantasy Ridge in the Wasatch Range.
Jason:Stephen, will you tell us what your path was like becoming an architect?
Stephen:Sure. I was one of those kids who was a daydreamer in school, and I often would prefer to be outside than in the classroom, always sort of imagining what I could be doing, hiking or, you know, anything outdoorsy. I grew up in small town Logan many years ago when it was still a small town, and my father and my grandmother were artists. And so we would often sit around the table and draw together for fun. You know, many people's parents read stories to them.
Stephen:My grandmother pulled out the oils and helped me develop an appreciation for trying to represent on paper or on canvas what it is that I felt. And as I grew older, I started to wonder, well, what do I want to be? And, you know, I wasn't sure. And, you know, being an artist isn't something that I thought I could really make a career out of. But I found a way, just through exposure to life and growing up, how to apply something that I really loved and was interested in.
Stephen:My friends and I, we had actually, you know, back then, we didn't have video games. They didn't exist. And we would sit around a table with rulers and pencils and paper, and we'd say, Hey, what about this? What do you think of that? Wouldn't you like to live in a place like this?
Stephen:And so as I grew older, I got into architecture as I spent some time in Europe as a missionary and thought, wow, I really love these cities. There's something about it. It's so different. I decided, well, I'm going to study architecture. Know?
Stephen:When I was in high school, when I was your age, I was interested in school. You know, I had a hard time connecting with it because I didn't learn by reading, and I had a hard time learning by listening. And I learned by expressing myself, by building things, and by drawing, sort of that type of interactive learner. And so those are kind of the steps that got me into architecture. I learned right away.
Stephen:I went to BYU to play football. I learned right away that, well, these guys are serious. This isn't a game anymore. And so I decided I better settle down and focus on my studies. That's kind of how I got into it.
Stephen:But I had no idea what it really was until I got into it. I knew that architects design buildings and help build buildings, but I didn't have a clear understanding of how incredible the field is until I got exposed to it and realized it's such a diverse field that it can accommodate people with many interests, people like myself that like to draw and express their imagination, but also people who are interested in management, people who are interested in finance. So I discovered it was more diverse than I could have imagined.
London:You said you went to BYU for football. Is BYU the only college you went to?
Stephen:Well, went to BYU after my mission, and I decided that I wanted to study architecture. I learned they don't have an architecture program. So I ended up transferring to the U for undergraduate work, And I had a professor who had studied at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. And I really respected this man, the way he thought, the way he taught, and his work, his body of work, his portfolio. And so I thought, I want to go there for school.
Stephen:I want to go where this guy went. And so I ended up in Minneapolis for graduate school. And what was neat about that is that there's this sort of culture of warm, sensitive modernism, sort of new, exciting architecture through more of a Danish or Scandinavian lens, partly because the immigrants that landed in Minnesota, you know, one hundred years ago were from Scandinavia. And they built a beautiful city. And so working in a beautiful city and learning from people who had developed an attitude about how to build was really a prized experience in my life.
Stephen:It helped me to think differently, to be more analytical, and learn to see with new eyes, and frankly, become a better listener. There are a lot of key skills that you need as an architect. Sometimes in art, you just want to impose your will upon something. You don't have to work with anyone. You just sort of express yourself.
Stephen:But in architecture, working with hundreds of people, you have to convince someone to build it that they want to hire you. You have to work with someone to actually get it built. You have to convince cities that it's something that they want to allow. And so becoming empathetic to the needs of others and, really hearing what needs are. And then as an architect, you're really a public servant.
Stephen:You're not only serving those who work in a building like this one, for example, but also each building is a part of a much bigger city experience. The cities are built up of an assemblage of structures. That's interesting because architecture there's architecture and then there's urbanism. Architecture is building itself. Urbanism is how the buildings work together to create place.
Stephen:And so when I think about what are the key differences between architecture in The United States and architecture in Europe is that architecture in Europe frames streets and creates passages that are ultimately walkable the way that the ground floor units or the ground floor spaces work together. They're more like retail and shops. And so Europe is designed around walking, transit use, a lot less automobile use, and they're more compact so it's easier to walk. The places are closer. Here in The US things are a bit more spread out that the country is valued land and separation.
Stephen:A lot of the growth in The US happened late 1800s out of a farming culture. And 1900s, you think of World War II and the advent of the airplane, suddenly European cities were getting bombed from above. And so compact form destroyed cities. It was easy to destroy cities. In The US, it's very difficult because it's so spread out.
Stephen:So learning about the context and history of these experiences is really what makes architecture fascinating. So when I answer your question about what type of architecture would I be interested in here, I'm still interested in how it functions, how it creates choice. So, for example, in The United States, we're really an automobile focused society, but it forces that you have an automobile to get around. And so I'm really interested in what if there is not an either or scenario, walking or automobile, but both and. You know, is there a new community forum that allow people who don't have access to cars, who can't afford them or don't choose them?
Stephen:How you get around that? There's got to be a way to actually deliver experiences and environments that accommodate both. So high level, that's more of a question of what is urbanism as opposed to, you know, architecture. But then when you think about architecture, well, if you want to promote people walking, for example, what do you have to do to the buildings to make that walk interesting? You know, if there's always a parking lot between the sidewalk and, the building, then the walk feels really slow because you don't feel like you're getting anywhere, and it's not a compelling, environment.
Stephen:But when it's a compact form and buildings are close to the street next to the pedestrian experience, then you feel like you're moving quicker. But it requires that the architecture be different. It's, you know, more handmade looking. You know, the doors and the windows become important because they're right there. So those are things that, you know, how do you compose facades?
Stephen:How do you create welcoming experiences for pedestrians to approach buildings from the street? So those are some of the things that are kind of high level about what do you you know, what are considerations when designing buildings now in The U. S. To promote this and opportunity, you know, that you don't have to just drive everywhere into a parking lot and then walk through a parking lot. Walking through parking lots is not the greatest experience.
Stephen:We all know neighborhoods that are actually fun to walk in, you know. Where do you want to walk your dog? Is it through a parking lot or through a park or along a beautiful street with trees and and and porches and you know, beautiful houses. We we like to be where people where we can interact with people too instead of cars, right?
London:Yeah. Yeah. You were kind of like the mastermind behind Daybreak, right? How did you involve the thing that was just talked about into, like, Daybreak and how cozy it is?
Stephen:That's essentially a laboratory for these types of ideas. There's a lot of criticism on Daybreak because it's so far away, right? It's like, why is it so far from Salt Lake? Well, homes are being built all over, and they're being built in ways that create or induce traffic on the freeways, and then we all complain about free traffic, but they're designed in such a way that the car is the only way you can get anywhere. So Daybreak was an effort to figure how to do that in context of this market.
Stephen:So what Daybreak is doing is it's breaking communities into smaller blocks. It's trying to find ways to integrate housing types, meaning townhomes, large houses, small houses. You know what demographics are. It's sort of a study of age and income and blend that all together to create sort of a diverse, healthy environment and do it in such a way that people really have choice. So when I was a little kid, I lived in a place where my mom said, Don't come back until dinner, Right?
Stephen:You've worn me out. Pick up your toys and get out. Get out of the house. My kids on the avenues grew up in sort of a play date era. You couldn't actually hang out with friends unless it was prearranged.
Stephen:And when I was a kid, it's like you'd find your friends because they were always outside anyhow. So the question was, how do you create an environment that parents perceive as safe enough to let their kids go do that? And so we started to think about how do you create an environment for free range kids where they could go and socialize together in an environment that was fun and safe and that was elevated in such a way that it would be respected. One of our goals is how do we create an environment where kids can just go be kids and be safe.
Jason:Speaking of Daybreak, what gave you the idea for Daybreak? How did the idea of Daybreak and the construction of Daybreak start?
Stephen:So in this envision process, they hired a planner who helped think about what to do along the Wasatch Front generally. His name was Peter Calthorpe. He was one of the fathers of what's called the new urbanism. So there's sort of the old urbanism, which is like the old city that people tried to leave. Well, what if we built a new kind of city?
Stephen:And what would it be? And so there are principles of the new urbanism that we try to apply, because we thought in this marketplace there ought to be more choice. You know, often builders and developers just say, This is what the market's always done, this is what you're going to get. And as Rio Tinto, who was my employer that owns the Kennecott Mine at the time, wanted to do it, it's like, We don't want to compete head on with what everyone else is doing. We want to provide an alternative and see what the market thinks about it.
Stephen:So that those were part of the goals, and the idea is that we would create a new kind of place for everyone, that we wouldn't separate people by age and income. Most subdivisions that are built around, it's like this is for certain type of people of a certain type of age with a certain type of job, and all the homes are kind of the same, and we thought, well, what if we created the place that could attract all those types of people as long as they valued community. So there was this sort of civic social aspect to it. You know, there are people that wanted to retreat into their home, through their garage door, have their own park in their backyard and never come out, and then leave their house through their garage door every day. We thought, well, what if we took all the little parks in everyone's backyard and put them into one big park and laced it together into trails and lakes and playgrounds and paths and made it more community minded.
Stephen:Would the market accept that? Meaning would people buy into a concept like that? Because these things only work if people say, Yeah, I want that. And then they buy homes. And it's ended up being an incredible experiment.
Stephen:And the way our development works is we keep on rethinking every year or two what's changing, what could we improve, how do we make this better.
London:I love that. At American Heritage School, we try to live by the principles of personal and civil liberty. Which of these principles has most guided your career path, and will you share personal experience showing how this principle has helped you?
Stephen:You know, as I think about these principles and begin to reflect on it, I think there's an aspect of every single one that can be applied. I'm really struck by principle five, the family, religion, and civil government, because, you know, community is really founded on healthy families. When families struggle, everything else becomes a little more difficult to sort of maintain. And so I've always looked at my career through the lens of what can I do to help strengthen individuals and families? And creating places to live is foundational to that.
Stephen:I've been learning as well how to adapt my thinking to that approach as family the nature of family is changing, the amount of kids families have or the types of experiences that families enjoy now. These things are always sort of evolving and changing, and trying to find ways to keep up to date and maintain relevance in context of what are the needs of families, what are the struggles of families. Back in 2008, I don't know if you're familiar with the global financial crisis when there was a big market crash. In some of the suburban neighborhoods, I saw people walking along streets that were never designed for walking because they were losing cars and things because they couldn't afford to keep them. I just thought, I never want to make a place that people can't stay in or live in effectively if they find themselves in a position where a family of six only has one car now, you know.
Stephen:So finding ways to pull housing and jobs and schools and churches into more compact neighborhoods that don't rely we spend all of our time on freeways traveling to and from place. How do we actually create proximity? And we know in this life that time is our most critical resource. How do we use it? And how do we spend it in productive ways where we're building hope and faith and learning to love and respect one another.
Stephen:And so, you know, I think that one, number five, had a particular influence on the way I think about the work I do.
Jason:That's very insightful. And speaking of architecture and it sounds like such a fulfilling and interesting field of work, how would a student begin to explore a career in architecture?
Stephen:I think a great way to begin to explore a career is doing what you're doing right, asking questions. Because ultimately whenever I begin to work on a project, I've got to do just that. I've got to ask questions. You know, who am I serving? This is really a field in which we're giving of ourselves to others, but we have to have empathy.
Stephen:You know, learning to cope with disappointment is a key part of any field, too. You know, sometimes people don't like the work you do. Sometimes you spend your heart and soul working on something, and you realize, No, that's not what we were thinking. Go back and do it again. You know, so this idea of learning to enjoy the experience, it's not about producing things.
Stephen:It's not about building buildings, ultimately. The building becomes important and it helps build something, but the people that occupy the buildings are more important than the buildings themselves. I think curiosity is important. You don't necessarily have to be an artist to get into architecture. That was the path I took.
Stephen:But if you have an interest in helping to build a physical aspect of society, something that's tangible, then people who like making things, if you're a tinkerer, if you like Legos and robotics, those are very related fields. It's just building an architecture is a slightly different scale. You know, would encourage that you go and tour an architecture practice and see, you know, what does the day to day architectural experience look like. I was meeting with some consultants downtown today and there was a student who was just shadowing and got to sit in some meetings and understand what are the questions we're asking. We're often trying to balance finance, design, and function.
Stephen:You know, it's all these things that we're trying to balance into one design solution. There's never one solution. And part of what's interesting architecture is that you can tackle these questions from multiple directions and come with up with different outcomes. And often the process of getting there requires you try more than one thing. You know, the first thing you try isn't always a thing that's done, right?
Stephen:But yeah, I mean, are a few aspects of how you might approach developing an interest in the field.
Jason:Great. Thank you, Stephen. It's been great to have you with us today.
London:And thank you for taking your time to talk with us. We hope you enjoyed listening
Jason:to this episode.
London:Special thanks to our guests for joining
Stephen:us
London:and to the Lyceum Orchestra
Jason:for providing the music. That's it for American Heritage School
London:Patriot Podcast. If you learned something new, check out our other episodes and share with a friend. See you.
Stephen:Hi.