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Curated content, insights and opportunities to accelerate your career in Architecture, Design, Development and Real Estate to the next level.
Leaving Architecture to REMAP digital design, ft. Jack Stewart and Ben Porter
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[00:00:00]
Stephen Drew: Thank you. Hello, hello, hello. Let's get ready. We're going to remap architecture. And if you know what that means and you're in Manchester, you get brownie points. But for the rest of you, all this digital goodness is coming your way in 26 seconds. All right. Hello, everyone. And welcome to this live stream special. I appreciate you here. We're going to talk about something special. Now, I [00:01:00] know these guys. from back in the day. And they were the good students. I was there, I was all right. I got my 2. 1, but there was things I could have improved on. So we've fast forwarded to an interesting time because we've all passed.
We've gone from freshers. We've all come here. And today we're going to talk about remapping Digital Architecture. And what do I mean by that? These two gentlemen are going to explain that with me. So I've got the fantastic Jack Stewart, who is over the far side, and then I've got the lovely Ben Poore here as well.
Gentlemen, how are you today? Are you okay?
REMAP Works: Very good. Thank you. Very good. Yes. Thank you for having us.
Stephen Drew: My pleasure. My pleasure. Now, while we know each other from back in the day, as well as now, some of the people in the audience might not know you, so perhaps you can start off and tell us a little bit about who you are, first of all.
REMAP Works: We often [00:02:00] talk as if we are the same person, because Ben and I took a very similar journey through architecture school and beyond. So we are fully qualified architects. We studied at Manchester Uni, as you'd be aware. We were Stephen, yourself, was leading the charge in the Remap Atelier at Manchester University.
And I was in the year below below that, and then Ben was in the year below that, so we're three subsequent years of Remap here. And that Atelier at University We had a really interesting angle of exploring beyond buildings, in architecture, and looking at systems and mapping, and also how technology can be applied to the design process.
So Ben and I subsequently both joined Hawkins Brown a year apart. From from a remap from Manchester School of Architecture, and we continued that vein of exploring how technology, digital design can be applied to the architecture process in [00:03:00] practice. And more recently, after kind of 10 years at Hawkins Brown we've spun off, and we are now Leading Remap, which is a company that looks at applying digital technology to the built environment industry.
So we're working with other clients across the industry to, to do exactly that.
Stephen Drew: I love it. And we're going to unpack all of that together. The only thing I'm going to say is, I'm not too sure if I led the charge on Remap. I was there in the crowds. I don't know if I led the charge, but and for the audience, so we had a year and there was some of us were pretty good, but some of us, we were down in the pub and stuff, there's a few names I can't say, right?
But the year below us, they were really good, and Jack was in the year below, and apparently the year after was even better, and that's where Ben was! you've got me, it's as if the ape, and the graph is there's me, who's the ape? Jack's working it all out. And then we got [00:04:00] Ben on the front.
But
REMAP Works: brother.
Stephen Drew: Abso absolutely, and probably Nick. Nick and all of them are just like, oh gosh, Steve's leading this. What a nightmare. Nick, I promise I will stick to the questions. First of all, guys, you were talking about you and Hawkins Brown. That's really cool, amazing stuff. But how did you come to foundry, Matt?
Tell me, like, why did you, Think, do you know what? We're going to take the plunge. What urged you in the digital design sector to go, do you know what? We need to do this.
REMAP Works: I think so when we were at Hawkins Brown, we were super blessed that they really passionately encouraged splinter teams like our team to look at R& D, how can we carve out a bit of a different niche and how that can positively impact the building projects. So we had a lot of time, a lot of scope to be quite experimental in different technologies and different software and try and shape and mold Hawkins Brown for working.
Thank you. And it's been [00:05:00] amazing. And then we reached a point where we thought, this has got value for a much wider industry. And we're really keen to get out there and start sprinkling some of that sugar on other architectural practices, engineering firms, whatever it is, just across the industry.
We want to try and take that, because I think we're confident that we can help set new standards. There's definitely better ways of working than we're doing currently. The status quo isn't the answer. And we thought through RE MAP. It's a really good vehicle to be a bit more agile, be a bit more nimble, and just get out there, start speaking to people, and start making a sort of positive impact.
That's really, that's why that's really,
Stephen Drew: Very good. Very good. Makes complete sense. Now on that subject, you mentioned that part of what you do, you're passionate about digital design. You want to see that evolve in the industry. You've seen where you can add value to it. But maybe before we begin on that, Some people might not know what digital design is.
Some people might think it's CAD. Some people might think [00:06:00] it's Revit. Some people might not understand. So in your version, what is digital design first and foremost?
REMAP Works: That's a very good question. Digital design, I'm not even sure that across the industry everybody has the same term for it. You will hear all sorts of different kind of terminology. But what we've we've always felt digital design is a good all encompassing term for applying, Technology, typically digital technology, to the process of design, and I suppose you can have digital design and delivery as well when you start to look at the process of constructing and delivering buildings, but digital design, really broadly, if we were to divide it into categories, the first The way that we got into digital design was through computational design.
So that's applying computational processes, algorithmic thinking to the design process. Resolving complex geometry, pattern making yeah, trying [00:07:00] to push the design process through using computation. And then one of the other areas that we were really finding great value in exploring new technology was in kind of automation and computational BIM.
And because the environment in which we design and which we capture all of the design data that goes toward creating buildings, we have the ability to write scripts. and write routines and create tools within that environment. There's been massive potential to improve through kind of group BIM processes through computation.
And so that those two, those kind of two really key pillars of digital design. And then as Ben and I, over time, have become more proficient in broader software development. We've started to deploy a lot of the tools that we created across, when we were at Hawkins Brown, across the practice as platforms, as software, software products, essentially.
So those [00:08:00] are, I would say, two or three really key areas. And then the other area is that interface between design and construction. And on a bunch of projects we've worked on, we noticed that there's massive opportunity in the handover process. So when you're taking design information, captured in 3D and all of the data that is is part of that and handing that over to contractors there and handing that over to machines that can start to fabricate fabricate components for buildings that there's massive opportunity to streamline that using digital processes.
So I think those are probably four kind of really key areas that we think are key pillars of design. Digital design, but as a term, it's still relatively new in the industry. So we will hear other people probably referring to digital design in other ways. But those are four key themes that we think are really important.
Stephen Drew: Very cool. Very cool. And you're right. These are good questions because you helped me write them. So that's good. Helps [00:09:00] people think, Steve knows all these terms in digital design. I've had a bit of help. I've had a bit of help, but no, it's really good to hear. So that's a little bit about what I do.
Digital Design. So you expanded it a bit more. But what would be cool to know is, so a built environment, there's lots of different organizations. Are we just talking architecture? Could this be interior and construction? Where do you see all this unpacking? Is it just the architects or is there a little bit more as well?
REMAP Works: Probably, it's probably a little bit more. We think it's got a place across the whole industry. Jack mentioned a couple of things as the design process, delivery, fabrication, all these sort of different elements. Coming from a background of architecture. We are well positioned to have understood the whole process.
That's, the benefit of being an architect is you sit nicely in the middle. You get to see everything going on, from client relations all the way through to handover. It positions us quite well to be also at the center of [00:10:00] technology across the whole process. This idea, it doesn't, it's not a role that particularly exists at the minute, but if someone was there to monitor and ensure that you were using good design, digital design protocols throughout the project, it may not be more efficient or more efficiently done.
For example, I think, yeah we could work across the whole industry and across the whole sort of RIBA work stages from early conception all the way through.
Stephen Drew: But that makes complete sense. However, you're both in Hawkins Brown, right? Leading architects really cool. So it makes us, especially in the architecture process, that's the nitty gritty of what you've done as well. What I'd love to know, we've got this question here.
You're saying you've worked at Hawkins Brown for years as employees. How has the practice changed to make the most of digital design? I'd love to know that because I remember Back in my day when I was in practice, 2014, it was like BIM was the big thing and everyone was freaking out about that. Now, we're talking about AI, generative design, [00:11:00] there's a big journey that's happened between there, gents, I'm imagining.
I'd love to hear your experience on that front.
REMAP Works: yeah, that's it. Yeah. It's, it's a big question. There's a lot in there. I don't, um, in summary, what Remap intends to do is to help organizations in the built environment industry get the most out of technology and the experience that that Ben and I have together.
We've gained over the last 10, over 10 years each working at Hawkins Brown. As Ben has said, it puts us in the middle of seeing a lot of the opportunities. And yeah, in terms of Hawkins Brown, there's a whole bunch of things that have had to change in the practice to be able to make more out of digital design.
One of the biggest changes has been the adoption of BIM across the practice. And our role as kind of programmers. Or Architects Turned Software Developers was to try and get even more out of BIM, because BIM [00:12:00] applications are designed and developed to do, 90 percent of what we need to do in practice pretty well, pretty efficiently but there's this kind of final 10 percent that we talk about that we, we might do slightly differently, or, sorry, Hawkins Brown might do slightly differently to another organization And so we can develop bespoke tools and bespoke workflows.
To maximize and optimize those processes. Hawkins Brown has established a digital design team that focuses on looking at this stuff across the practice. Ben and I set that up. We established a digital design network. There's a focus team that does software development, builds tools, looks at processes, looks at design opportunities, and develops. Digital tools for them. And then there's a broader digital design network across the practice, which are individuals that can start to spot opportunities to do their own projects and deploy these things onto projects. And so there's kind of [00:13:00] structural organizational things that kind of have to change.
I think. Recruitment. Recruiting architects that are enthused by digital technology, new technology, new ways of doing things. I think it's really important in this kind of area to have people that are enthusiastic about doing things in new ways and in different ways. And and especially applying technology to that process.
So a big part of our role is mentoring those individuals within practice. Maybe a bit more of a grassroots level to get that to, yeah to create that. And then at the same time liaising with leadership, who are ultimately making the decisions and driving a lot of the change across practice.
And yeah, our role as Remap and what our role was previously in the digital design team was to act as this kind of glue between the entire practice doing that. And so I, yeah, structurally things have changed within the business, the kind of tools that are being used to design changing across the business.
It is a big question, man. I don't know if you've got [00:14:00] other It is. I was going to say, so practice is looking to do a similar thing. I would say, Jack's right. It's a cultural shift. The biggest shift in the last 10 years is
Ensuring that's been a fundamental cultural shift. We've always been quite grassroots, getting on with it.
People might never use Grasshopper when we first joined. We were just doing it, and we were doing it knowing that there was the support. Sure, it might go wrong sometimes. It might take longer. Yeah. If you're doing it repetitively, it's probably going to work out. It's not looking at KPIs every two minutes.
It's understanding that some of these things are a bit experimental. But, building that culture in where you've got, you're empowering younger, up and coming, straight out of uni architects who are passionately buzzing with all these amazing ideas, and giving them the sort of support structure to do just that, rather than just immediately getting set in and back to work, here we go already, here we go.
That's the biggest shift, I think. Yeah, we were [00:15:00] massively supported to do that ourselves. And we yeah, feel one we owe it to the next generation to provide that kind of framework. But at the same time, we think it's a really effective way of doing things. Yeah, that is a big change.
I think something I don't know if it's unique to Hawkins Brown that's kind of hierarchy, that structure, but it's certainly something that we would look at going into any organization. It's a cultural shift in adopting a digital mindset. Is, it's a little bit difficult to describe, but it includes all sorts of things from support, to training, to running CPDs across the practice.
We have one thing that we've established. At Hawkins Brown is a, an initiative called Hero for a day. And so in this initiative, we do a call out across the practice every year for individuals across the practice to give us suggestions for things basically to moan at us [00:16:00] to say this, we think this could do.
We could do this better. This is taking a loads of time. Where are the pain points on projects? We do a call out for that. Some of the suggestions, we had 50 suggestions come back last time round. One of the suggestions was to connect a computer in a meeting room to a server. Which we passed that over, more of an IT kind of related challenge.
But really interesting ideas. Come out of the company through this sort of this initiative and the idea is that we set a hero for the day. So the call out is for ideas. The digital team then goes through those ideas. We select a number of them and then the digital team and the wider digital design network sit down for a day.
It's a hackathon day. full day session and we take on three or four of those those challenges and try and resolve them in a day, which is incredibly ambitious to try and do that. But we ran this initiative like two weeks [00:17:00] ago and we had, by the end of it, we had some small prototypes for each of the challenges and and like a strategy going forward.
And then that
So it's initiatives like this that just help to develop culture and I think if you have a digital design team or some ambassadors for digital design that are there in the practice continually tuning this engine, then the culture will grow. We also get involved specifically on projects for a specific challenge, and so sometimes we may be seconded almost to work on a project delivering a digital agenda on it, and that's a more focus.
Or we may get asked, can you build us this software? We have a brief. It's very specific. We want a tool to do this. Please make it. So I've got involved at Hawkins Brown and other organizations in a variety of different ways. I think we've maybe deviated slightly away from [00:18:00] the actual question.
Stephen Drew: touched upon a bit your next question, but I know it was cool and you wanted to expand upon the projects. Maybe what we can do to give you a breather as well is because you've got some of these on your website. So what I thought could be cool is if we talk about one or two. Case studies then now I've gotta be careful 'cause I know I, before this, I got the link ready, but then I classically lost the link.
So this is like the equivalent of you waiting for your part one, not to put the presentation on the screen and you're frantically, you're saying I've clicked the right website. So that's a good start. So this is the remap website and we are just gonna say. You can, it's worth saying that anything, if you want to find out more, you can go to remap.
works. It's the new trendy, one of the trendy domains, remap. works, and you can check it out. And it is work in progress, but these guys are perfectionists. I think it looks great as it is. But I've been told it's a [00:19:00] work in progress, so I'm sure we've got more stuff coming up as well. So on the website, for our audio listeners, so we've got three sections here.
We've got Spotlighting Quality and Enabling Collaboration. We've got Revealing Insights and Amplifying Communication. And we've got Remapping Processes and Automating Workflow. Flows. So maybe Gen, I can quickly click on Spotlight in quality and this video pops up. So what we, what's what? What do you do on this little project then?
REMAP Works: Yeah. This is a project that we worked on through Hawkins Brown. Hawkins Brown has been involved in the HEREIS project since 2013. We've got kind of ambassadors for, with All conspiring the architects on the project and and I was working as a kind of digital design lead as an architect on the project and ambassadors really for pushing technology across the project that the tagline for here is was new ways of making.
And so we felt that it was absolutely essential to embody that in the design [00:20:00] process. And over a period of sort of 10 years in the development of that campus, we tried to adopt new ways of making things and new technologies in the process from start to finish. And so on screen you can see some of the results of that.
This particular project that is on screen, or it'll loop through maybe again, yeah, is the gantry project. Super, super interesting. An amazing project to work on. Like a student project but in real life. Incredible. And it's it's a pre existing structure that overlooks the Olympic Park in London and we developed a design system and a construction system for this project.
So we worked alongside Wikihouse, We were an amazing open source construction system organization and the project was to deliver a series of artist studios, 21 studios for creative businesses on the gantry. We were looking at how we could create a design engine to rapidly design each of these [00:21:00] units and then be able to send the information, the kind of cutting information, and the detail information directly to factory.
So streamlining that process. And the grand ambition, I think that it will pop up again as it loops around, you see a diagram of it. The idea was that we could have one design engine. We could generate a bunch of different design forms and different sort of shapes and sizes of unit.
We could change the location of a door, the footprint, the roof pitch type the over cladding types. And then at a push of a button, we can generate all of the construction information that's required. Ready to go to factory. You can see the kind of wiki system there as a series of jigsaw puzzle pieces, each of the units.
Structural chassis was cut out on CNC milling machines and then delivered to sites, almost as a flat pack, and assembled like giant bits of IKEA furniture. And each of the units would have an automated assembly guide that would have the instructions on how to assemble those units. And it's [00:22:00] an amazing example of Kind of data running right the way through from the beginning of the design process, right the way through to the end of delivery.
So it's a
Stephen Drew: cool.
REMAP Works: project that's very close to our heart. But yeah, an amazing example of how technology can apply to the process.
Stephen Drew: Excellent. It's great. Sorry that I kept looping around. Hope you didn't feel like you had to keep going. It's like he's put it on again.
REMAP Works: it's supposed to loop so now it's all good. Don't worry. It was perfect.
Stephen Drew: we were talking, someone in the world is saying, good morning, everyone. So sorry, Al. Hello. Good morning. It, that's an important thing. If you do have a question for Jack and Ben, then you can ask us here while we're here, no problem. Otherwise you can get into contact with them at remap.
works, the website as well. But moving on to the next one, I think Jack, we need to give you a breather, but you can jump in as well. Maybe we can pass the [00:23:00] baton. No, you were perfect, but I just feel sorry for you. I'm going to blow your voice out.
REMAP Works: I'll have a drink of water.
Stephen Drew: yeah, have a chill for a minute. Ben, were you involved in this project then that you can walk us through?
Or are we summoning Jack again? So this
REMAP Works: I know enough. I know
Stephen Drew: Yeah, you can jump in. So revealing insights and amplifying communication. What do we mean by that? And what was this project then, Ben?
REMAP Works: So this is a really good example of clients asking us not necessarily for buildings. It's one of the first examples where we had a client Conversations with clients who are trying to understand more about what they've got. These large estate owners, in this case it's Harwell University. They've got all of this stuff, all of this building asset and they're really keen to understand a bit more about it.
They're also keen to, to market it a little bit better and be able to visualize it. So we worked with [00:24:00] Harwell and we also did a collaboration with UCity. And this was about mapping their campus. Overlaying it across time, so you can see the development timeline, historic and future. And then also creating, using the ViewCity platform, some quite amazing, worm level, bird's eye view, whatever views you want to re market the campus.
It's a really powerful tool, and they can go in and model new bits of campus if they want, so you can start to play around with future developments. And even just being able to see and track what you've got is really powerful, and we think there's definitely a place for this client to try and become more educated with their own building assets.
University is a really good example, but any large estate owner getting to grips with what they've got, when we look at circular economy, becoming more prominent, we've got to understand what we've got before we start [00:25:00] necessarily proposing what we should put in its place. And this comes all the way back to the original Remapper Uni, Stephen, and I know you'll be very familiar with it.
It's about understanding the place, isn't it? We've got to map out and understand all the latent data and all of the physical data so that we can help our clients then go on and propose the best possible designs, and this is what that is.
Stephen Drew: Very good. Very cool. You're right. The amount of times I was walking up and down the town streets, getting surveys, doing all that stuff for for For our teachers Nick Dunn and Richard Brook, shout out. You were good to us though, I had a good time, so kudos, kudos. I've actually got them, they signed my book that I bought of them at the time, so I've got the signature in there.
I'll put it on my Instagram or something and tag them in and I'm sure that they will quickly untag it and ignore. I'm only joking. Anyways, mini interlude there the last thing that would [00:26:00] be really cool to talk about is maybe going a little bit about that, again, expanding upon it, remapping processes and automating workflows.
I have a feeling of where that's coming from, but Jack, I can see here we've got, it looks like BIM's open and a few other things. What's happening in this little whizzy script going on?
REMAP Works: Yeah, so the massive opportunities for organizations to make more from automation to improve their processes and workflows. And we've mentioned earlier how BIM is a really good kind of center point for this kind of stuff to take place. And I think also in the emergence of AI tools, there's a lot of hype about AI right now, just generally across the entire tech world, and some amazing new tools that are being developed out there.
I guess at the core, AI is around intelligent [00:27:00] automation. Automating processes more intelligently, and that's something that we've been looking at and developing for as long as we've been studying architecture. We have processes that we go, God, this takes a long time. This is inefficient. There has to be a better way to do this.
And rather than sit there and try and do that process slowly, We invest a bit of time in trying to do it more quickly, so the next time that we do it, it's faster. And so that's the kind of broad ambition here. In terms of the actual tools, I'll hand over to Ben, because Ben's been doing, over the years, spending a lot of time developing our kind of BIM Automation workflows and so can and I think yeah, that's this what gets me out of bed in the morning And
Stephen Drew: Whoa, what a statement. There you go. BIM scripting. Ben is your man.
REMAP Works: It's really sad isn't it but there we go Yeah, so [00:28:00] Hawkins Brown we pretty early on worked out that each project You're looking at is probably bespoke. It's definitely bespoke the approach to each project is bespoke Each plan has different points with So in terms of what one BIM package has to do, it's just too much, it's never going to work for every architectural project, and it's very easy to either manipulate your own processes, or manipulate your creativity, or your own organization's approach to a project.
into the funnel of a sort of BIM, a single BIM application. And, it wasn't what we wanted to do. We were really keen and quite passionate to reshape Revit in this case, and bend it to our will, a bit. And it's been fun. We've developed over, around 50 tools for Hawkins Brown. They have their own toolbar that then sits, and each of those, they're pretty tightly wed to their own [00:29:00] processes.
Having worked there, we were in there, we knew the way they worked, we knew all the standards, and then we can get involved with making virtually a custom version of Revit, which can do everything they need in a single toolbar, and that could be everything from validating models to custom models.
Doing the boring documentation to all the way through to whole life embodied carbon calculations. Simple automation tools. We often say, and every practice I think has them, it'll be the little wins, the things that don't seem like a big deal, but you're doing them a hundred or a thousand times on every single project, and it's a BIM project, they'll definitely exist.
Being able to automate those down to a matter of minutes once you extrapolate that across Every project in the office, across every member of staff, every designer, that's a lot of time that we're giving back. We try and monitor the amount of time each tool is saved and then how long or how many times it's been run. And at Hawkins Brown we were getting to the point where it's about 3, 000 hours, roughly, per [00:30:00] year. So it's hundreds of hours per designer. Hopefully that we're saving through automating the boring stuff. No one talks, they just go to sleep. But spreadsheet data in a chair family, a uniclass code, maybe some people did, but we don't think it's what's most beneficial for the project.
Good design takes time, we need to give as much of that time back to people as possible
Stephen Drew: yeah,
REMAP Works: Things are really powerful. But just to tack on to that around the efficiency thing is absolutely massive as Ben said. The only other thing I'd add to that is the kind of quality and the robustness because often with tasks that are repetitive and boring, there are, there's massive opportunity for error.
And again, developing tools that kind of automate the checking process or just improve the quality because, it's. process is going to be doing it correctly and there's less chance of [00:31:00] human error is really important. So we, these kind of things improve efficiency but also just help to organizations to be producing quality information.
There's some really good examples of that. One tool that we developed recently is for automating the conveyancing plans on residential schemes. So you might have a residential scheme of 500 units and each of those units will need a conveyancing plan drawn for it. And within Revit, each of those units is usually demarcated with an area object.
And so traditionally, you would have to draw 500 different plans and often there's some repetition, so there can be a bit of copy and paste, but there will always need to have unique reference number, unique apartment number. Or a unique key plan to show the location.
So it's pretty time consuming and quite soul destroying to have to draw what is, for all intents and [00:32:00] purposes, almost the same thing 500 times, just slightly different. And so we developed a a tool that enables us to, or that enables Hawkins Brown to automatically just crank through those 500 drawings, set it up with the parameters at the start, and then just leave it running.
And it will produce. 500 unique drawings, and the time saving there is just incredible. And every single residential project requires that as an output. So these kinds of things just guarantee a more quality output, but also get to that end result more efficiently. And as Ben says, it means that designers can spend their time making design fantastic.
Rather than doing some of these more laborious kind of more administrative tasks on project.
Stephen Drew: yeah. Makes complete sense. And I thank you for expanding upon that. I can see the value in it. Maybe a quick, funny question, because you talked about earlier about you [00:33:00] guys plugging in the server in the meeting room and also the spreadsheets. While I can see you've coded these and they have a design application, one sometimes, perhaps who's not technical, might get confused if that's IT or digital design.
So how do those two worlds differ? Is there maybe an important harmonious relationship between digital design and IT support there? Is the best kind of output when, the two teams work together per se? And how does it differ?
REMAP Works: Say yeah, we'd always be keen to work quite closely or any digital team I think needs to work quite closely with design and and because projects span such a sort of vast remit, there probably isn't one bit of software that's going to do everything anyway. We, IT is there, we need to take all these individual proprietary pieces of software, and often each individual [00:34:00] node in that chain does a job amazingly well.
But digital design has the opportunity to then lace them all together, or bespoke bits of software, and that's where we see it getting really valuable. That you can then daisy chain all of these different bits together. But yeah, it's, but that requires a very close relationship with IT, of course, because we need to understand the most relevant and most effective technologies to do individual parts.
We're
Stephen Drew: Yeah.
REMAP Works: about redesigning BIM software because they already exist and they're already quite good. But understanding how you can use it better for your specific processes is really powerful for digital design. I think how it differs would be, it's just much closer to the design process. I think understanding how we can leverage the technology.
To either visualize or document or do whatever we [00:35:00] need to the design that's in the designer's head, that's where we come in. I think that's the part. Yeah. Yeah. We are a glue between design teams and it, who don't necessarily always understand each other's domains. It, it varies. We have designers that are incredibly interested in the sort of IT element, and we'll have members in the IT team that are more interested in how designers are using that tech on projects. But the position of Remap is as a glue between these two teams, because we can sit on the fence and, Empathize with both kind of sides of that puzzle need, or both parts of that exchange need, so we can mediate and help to translate between, so we know what designers need their technology to do on their projects, because we've been there and we've done it and we've seen it and in the same vein, we know what the [00:36:00] opportunities are that technology can offer.
So it just helps us to sit in the middle of IT and design teams. The big difference I suppose is the applied use of IT projects rather than the kind of management of that IT like hardware and software. If that distinction is, makes sense.
Stephen Drew: No, it does. You guys can help people with how to turn it off and on. However, probably better using your time to script the exports of the drawings, which take a million billion years and is quite frustrating. So no, that really makes, but then I get what you're saying as well as the hardware and the software, it's all got to work.
So that collaboration is key. I think what would be cool. I am jumping the question slightly, but I think this is quite important, because at the moment, we've got all these new technologies. People are arguing whether or not Revit they should get on with, but BIM's becoming more and [00:37:00] more required.
However, now we see more and more emerging technologies. I'm seeing some good examples of scripting, ChatGPT and OpenAI is everywhere. Even I'm plugging it into my business and using the API to do all this cool stuff. But in your two opinion what do you think is the most profound impact that current technologies can have on the built environment industry in 2024 as you see it?
REMAP Works: I'll jump on the AI bandwagon for a minute. I
Stephen Drew: Yeah, come
REMAP Works: yeah, go on. You've laid that, yeah, I've fallen into the trap. But, I think we've long considered our BIM models as databases of information. At the minute they're a super hard nut to crack and the only way we can get information out of it is with scheduled data and actual physical, drawings.
We still, architects still produce drawings, it's fine, but all the information should be in there. There's some hardware issues [00:38:00] obviously with that, things are extremely complicated, but I can absolutely see a real powerful movement with AI Being able to understand that building as a database, that BIM model as a database.
And all of a sudden we can open up our designs and models. To wider audiences, people who don't necessarily know how to read drawings or get the most out of them. But also as design teams, people can look at models in a sort of hopefully room data sheets might disappear. Instead we can just ask a question of a room, what's the air change rate in this room 4.
22? And it can just give it to you. Being able to communicate with design and build databases in plain language, I think, could be quite exciting. It's not the most, it's not the sexiest amplification of AI. I've avoided the sort of y, stable diffusion, mid journey, whiz bang imagery deliberately, but, [00:39:00] yeah, I think there's definitely a place for that. The crunch and grind of just, Understanding what it is that we're trying to produce digitally as best we can before we go and put a spade in the ground. I think AI can
Stephen Drew: Makes sense. Jack, what do you think, though, is the emerging tech that we need to keep an eye on right now?
REMAP Works: is a real huge one. I think, I know.
Yeah, I was
Stephen Drew: Don't blame me. You wrote it. You wrote it.
REMAP Works: this question nervously. I think that the, across the whole industry, that there is a, there's a sort of piecemeal nature to the industry. And where there are lots of organizations along the kind of supply chain of a project from start to finish, lots of different organizations with different tasks, different [00:40:00] challenges, different prerogatives.
Thank you And ultimately work together in a sequence to get buildings built. But there isn't really a kind of platform that starts to stitch all of this together. And often individuals are working in, or organizations are working in silos. And so there isn't a kind of an exchange under and a sort of persistence to the data that's being produced by different organizations in that supply chain.
The infrastructure doesn't exist for it. Or and maybe it's starting to be developed and there are organizations that are looking at information exchange and data exchange between different environments and developing or different organizations developing platforms for that. So I think. It's not really like a specific kind of buzzword technology, but I think it's developing platforms that can start to store all of this information and data that is relevant and [00:41:00] valid and needed to get projects designed and delivered. And starting to bring that into one place that's a bit of a sandbox for organizations to start to develop the different tools that, that streamline and improve this process it's a note that hasn't quite been cracked.
But I think that has the potential to improve the way that the whole industry operates, from the very beginning of a project right the way through to the end. And when I say the end of a project, we talk about actually, what is the end of a project? Because there is the hole in use. And so if there are platforms that are able to track the data and also track the data of projects in use that can then be used as the kind of the brief for the next project, then I think that this is the kind of thing that is, will have a real profound impact on the future.
Stephen Drew: Yeah, no, makes complete sense. Now, the last question that I was going to ask is, how does an [00:42:00] organization establish a culture of embracing new technologies? Because we talked about here the cool things that are coming up. However, I remember even back in the old Revit days, people going, Oh, I'm not interested.
And then basically people getting forced or you have some project in the office and then you have an old school director who's going, I've been in my station for 20 years and not changing and all that stuff. So how do you establish a culture embracing these new technologies in your experience?
REMAP Works: I think you've got to go, yeah, you've got to welcome new ideas, fresh ideas, new technologies with open arms. And I think that's whether you're the one trying to apply these technologies or you're at the top level with members of staff who are actively trying to push these things. You've got to be a bit patient.
You've got to be open to new ways of working, which might seem a little bit strange. It's often a long game. Digital design and [00:43:00] supercharging varies. Parts of it can have an immediate impact, but really the long term gains. You come from that cultural shift where you then go to the point where the office of the practice is much more R& D focused, we're looking at new things, we're looking at constantly marbling and being a bit more agile.
It's not easy to be agile, especially in architectural framing, but you've got to be agile. Neurality is quite difficult. It is a, generating new culture in your head is quite difficult. But yeah, be agile. Be welcome to new ideas. If it doesn't quite work out the first time, don't give up, it's made in a different way, or I promise you when you next have to do it, if you've made the automation, you'll be real grateful.
Stephen Drew: Fair enough.
REMAP Works: it's a, there's, we've always been operating at two tiers almost, so we'd establish a digital design [00:44:00] strategy. For an organization, and that might be a document that gets updated each year, but it's the kind of the guiding beacon of these are some goals, these are some targets, and these are some goals.
Organizational things that we should be implementing.
There's the kind of like guerrilla tactics, which is, yeah, infusing those that are working on projects to start to shape and work towards that vision. So you have to tackle it at both of those levels, because it's difficult if you just have a top down strategy.
And try to encourage an organization to embrace these technologies. But likewise, if you don't have leadership, enthused about this stuff, you don't have leadership setting out at least a bit of a direction, then it's difficult for people to engage. for the kind for like grassroots innovation and grassroots embracing new technologies to happen.
[00:45:00] So I think that's at a very kind of strategic level. Any organization that we would go into, we would recommend that we should be looking at both of those things and then making sure that people are empowered and trained and to be able to deliver and start to deliver some of the stuff that's in that kind of guiding direction.
In our experience, just the final point on that is it can also be quite a wonderful snowball. I think When you first start looking at it, you don't know what you don't know, or you know what you don't know, whatever the phrase is. Once you can start to demonstrate what some of these technologies, or using some of these technologies in particular ways, can do, often people will then ask us could it do this?
Yeah, it can do that. What about this? Yeah. The tiers of unlocking the understanding of the true potential, It can be quite exponential, and that's how you can also grow culture quite organically. But it starts from just taking a few sort of first steps, and then being able to understand [00:46:00] the potential by seeing what the previous results were, and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Stephen Drew: Very good. Makes a an onwards journey, isn't it? And I think that the practices, in my opinion, embrace technology at the start, are more likely to scoop up the rewards. Last mini question from me. You two, Both have gone away from the traditional part one, part two, part three, but I would argue offer a lot of value in different ways in the industry.
You've seen something in the tech. You've seen something that you want to pursue. Do you have any little bits of advice for someone who maybe is feeling that way in architectural practice, but doesn't know how to quite get on the route that you both trodden to get where you are now? Do you have any?
Advice for someone like that?
REMAP Works: That is a really good question. The I guess that is where we were, or that's where I was. After doing Part 1 I had a great Part 1 experience, but I was [00:47:00] incredibly envious also of what my, my, my brothers did, both working in the technology world and the speed in which they could create things and deploy things and design and develop things.
And I've always been passionate about technology. so I think it's spotting the opportunities to. To to combine that with the day job, and at the time the day job was going back to part two and finding a studio unit that embraced the use of technologies and tech on projects was really important.
Amazing. And actually that really guided the direction that we'd end up taking things and then being in practice and being a bit guerrilla and a bit sometimes pulling the neck on the line slightly in our projects and saying, I think we could develop this tool to do this better. And on Here East, it was a good example of that, where we were [00:48:00] continuously looking at different ways that we could do things, but we hadn't necessarily done them before.
We always needed a plan B. It's very lucky to have leadership. Who supporting of that, but at the same time, you've got to you've got to put your neck on the line slightly, you think that, you say, okay, we think we can do this better, we're going to develop a tool to do this. You develop that tool, it inevitably takes you longer than you expect, and you have to be prepared to invest the time in figuring it out and getting the output, getting the results out.
So my advice to people that are interested in this is to try and create those opportunities and be a bit guerrilla, be a bit, be positive and be take the risks, have a backup plan but be confident that, your instincts are telling you there's a better way to do these things, test it out.
Give it a go, try it out and hopefully that leads, will lead to doing more of that in the organization that you're, that they're operating in. And that's led to us, to, to Ben and I now doing that full time [00:49:00] for the company that we've started, RIMA.
Stephen Drew: Yeah,
REMAP Works: it comes from, yeah, being a bit confident and taking a risk that we can maybe do things slightly better and now that's the day job.
Stephen Drew: but it's very interesting because I remember again, I sound like an old man keeping saying this, but there was no such thing really as BIM Managers and BIM Coordinators in 2012 2013 in the UK. It was trying to get someone that's done that in Australia at the time to come here and be like please can you do this normally.
Like the, now the BIM Managers and BIM Leads that I'd known at Grimshaw and stuff, part two was knocking around at the time that I've grown from it. And I remember a few years ago, someone saying computational design specialists, it's not a real job. It's not a real job title. And now we're starting to see that permeate in.
Whereas I think with you two, it's a great example of that. You've created your own roles. Now, before we end the live stream. I normally say to the guests, would they like to ask me a [00:50:00] question? And you can ask me whatever you want live. And it can be quite spicy. It can be whatever you want. We have the we go back.
But is there anything that you two would like to ask me before you go? Could be about recruitment, could be about the state of the industry, could be about tech. I don't know. Whatever you want. Hit me. Yeah,
REMAP Works: I would say, go on then, you go on. I haven't read it but I'm on my way through it. You're obviously very close to the industry across a sort of broad range, from architects coming up, Through university, finding employment, right the way through to talking to us old about the good old days Remap version 1. Are you seeing a shift? In terms of the impact that younger members of staff have when they go into practice for the first time, are you seeing them able to make a bigger impact because the [00:51:00] university education is shifting slightly, or people are having bigger, wilder ideas coming straight out of uni and this can make a difference?
Or do you still see that practices come first and then people fit into them? I'm quite interested to see that. because for Remap, we're looking, we're really looking for, like Jack said, that kind of guerrilla attitude where we can make a positive impact. Yeah, I wonder.
Stephen Drew: I think it's like what Jack said of all these people or, when you guys grow and you're looking for these people, unfortunately, there's no pool of computational designers or, it's trying to hard to find these skills. So I think it's a case, unfortunately, especially part one, you got to get into the practice a bit like what Jack says.
GorillaStyle. You've got your ambitions, but you do the part one role and you go in. So really, Ben, I don't see much evolvement in that. I think one of the big frustrations in the university circuit at the moment is just since when we were knocking around, the fees have just gone through the roof.
[00:52:00] So there's but whereas the salaries of the part one per se haven't and you'll laugh. A quick mini story is when I was going to go into, I was like sat down with my close friend. It was a BIM Coordinator at EPR Architects. I was like, I don't want to get my part free. I got to find a new job.
I got to do something else. And he was like, I was like, maybe I could become a BIM coordinator. And he was just like, Oh mate, you would just not enjoy that at all. You would be the worst BIM coordinator. And I was like, all right. And then I tried to try to find something else, but it's a shame that kind of happens.
But unfortunately I don't think we're there quite yet. Someone can rock out a union straight away unless they've got some really raw examples of computational design. I think it's going to be harder to get that. That being said, I do think if you were like, Making scripts on GitHub and you were going to events and you were getting involved in like the Rhino forums and they were reaching out to you and some people had stuff on social media.
Employers in the future, like yourself, might go, Oh we're interested in that lady or guy's work. [00:53:00] Maybe we'll contact them. So I do think there is an opportunity for people in that space to do really cool stuff. But I think it, it involves networking and that could be online or offline, but making those connections.
That's a quick, funny one on that. There was the Grasshopper Hub years ago. And like to get in there, they used to meet up two, three times a month and like everyone in there was like. So it was no brainer if someone was like, for instance, SOM, I do recruitment and then they're like, I need someone really good to write on Grasshopper.
And I would just try and get people in the group. I was like, Hey, are you part of the group? All right. Do you know someone in the group? Who's good in the group? And it was like that thing, but it was, again, people participating, creating opportunities. There's a bit of a roundabout answer there, but I don't think that the quote unquote jobs are changing.
I do think Architectural Apprentice is a really good thing, is a really good system, but it's a lot of work getting that involved. [00:54:00] But for the techies and for the cool people and for the computational designers and all Architects out there in the future, I think that actually creating, you create opportunities for yourself online to get seen by companies like yourself, like Remap, like a few others as well.
BIMorph is another company that I know, Thomas Mahone worked at Fosters and Partners and was the scripting part one, part two, then now has gone down that road as well. But I think he's tackling things from a different angle than you. There's enough to go around, but it's too few of you all. But on that note, let's talk about you.
So Hawkins Brown, you've been doing all the digital design there. They've been really cool. They support and you set up your business venture. They now you're in the wide world and that companies out there, if they want, they can get the brains. That helps set up all the Hawkins Brown, and they can apply it to their own [00:55:00] companies!
So that sounds like a good thing to me. Gentlemen, where can they find you if people want to get in contact and learn more?
REMAP Works: You've got it there on screen. Yeah, remap. works that's the website. And on there, there is all of the contact information. You can fill out a contact form and ping us an email or info at remap. works. Send any inquiries through to us and yeah, we'd be more than happy to chat about the opportunities that we can work on together.
Stephen Drew: All right, gentlemen, on that note, I'm going to end the live stream in a second, but do check out Remap because I think that, they're going to go on to bigger and wonderful things, and it'll be hard to book them on my podcast in years to come. So I'm going to cherish this, but I can't wait to see what you're doing.
Do check them out. I do know them from before, and nothing is sponsored on the Architecture Social. I only invite people that I think are really cool. like these guys. However, [00:56:00] Autodesk, if you do want to sponsor me in the future, I will gladly take your money. And we can put the banner up here and I will edit out this last 10 seconds and no one will know the difference.
But until then, check out Remap. Thank you so much, Ben and Jack, for making time out of your day when you're busy setting up and doing all this cool stuff. I really appreciate it. And to you in the audience, because I was some Barney Comments going on in the background, like who, what, where when. I didn't understand that, but there was some nice stuff that popped in.
I really appreciate your participation. Thank you everyone. Have a fantastic day and we will see you all soon. Take care, everyone. Bye bye now. Take care.