The Crit That Wasn't About AI
📰 Olson Kundig put 300 people in a room and asked what wastes their time. One rule: don't call it an AI meeting. The lists came back honest, and a big share of the complaints already had a fix sitting inside the firm.
Firm Culture
235: 'How Olson Kundig Scaled AI Adoption Across a 300-Person Firm', with Marlene Chen and Blair Payson
A conversation with Marlene Chen and Blair Payson about scaling AI adoption across a 300-person architecture firm by prioritizing culture, office-wide critiques, democratizing visualization, and managing change and software licensing.
Building for Four Million Architects
📰 Why does a software founder frame his entire company around helping architects build spaces where people fall in love? Mariusz Hermansdorfer's answer starts with 13 years inside a 20,000-person firm.
233: 'Spaces For People To Kiss', with Mariusz Hermansdorfer
A conversation with Mariusz Hermansdorfer about turning an internal sustainability tool into the jifto plugin, the challenges of spinning out from a large firm, and making early‑stage environmental analysis accessible to all architects.
The Three Things Firms Get Wrong About Transformation
📰 Organizational transformations often fail by chasing speed over capability. Instead, focus on cash, clarity, and capability, address cultural and knowledge‑transfer gaps, and treat AI as a design challenge, not just a productivity metric.
The Non-Sexy Work Is Where the Real Leverage Lives
📰 The unglamorous work (spec sync, project setup automation, data plumbing) is where actual leverage lives. Charles Portelli FAIA on his career path and building tools for the AEC industry from the inside.
227: 'Are We Horses or Are We Coal', with Rachel Riopel
A conversation with Rachel Riopel about why digital transformation initiatives in AEC firms often fail, the importance of organizational clarity and capability, and how to bridge the gap between technology pilots and meaningful change across the entire organization.