Kelly: (00:06 )
welcome to buildings and beyond

Robb: (00:09 )
the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment

Kelly: (00:13 )
by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Robb: (00:18 )
I’m Rob Aldrich

Kelly: (00:19 )
and I’m Kelly Westby.

Robb: (00:22 )
This episode I talked with Steve Klocke who is an architect and senior sustainability consultant here at Steven Winter Associates. He works with a lot of builders and developers, largely multifamily, especially low rise multifamily, and he’s been asked to do a presentation at several events-several conferences, called “We should know better, top 10 multifamily design mistakes” and it really resonates with folks and certainly resonates with me. He gets big audiences, so we figured we’d try and talk about it on a podcast. We’ll link to the slides he uses in his presentation, which can help visualize some of the things he talks about, but it was really good to chat. This was a long chat. So this week we have the first five of his top 10 multifamily design mistakes.

Robb: (01:13 )
All right. Number one over complicated geometry

Steve: (01:21 )
yeah. Okay. So I won’t get too deep into architectural theory and what we all learned in school and what we should’ve learned in school.

Robb: (01:31 )
We should say that you are a registered architect.

Steve: (01:34 )
That’s true. I’ve been for 13 years now. And I wouldn’t ever say that I was ever a “hot pencil”- would be the term, like designing things that look great. I can make them work but, and then make them look good, but making like the really great stuff that wins awards, not my jam. Hence senior sustainability consultant. But anyway, so at some point in architecture we got the impression that to make a building interesting, you had to make it sculptural, blame frank Gary or whatever. And so architects are for some reason driven to make their buildings do funny things sometimes. And to me funny things mean: bump outs, bump ins, setbacks, jogs in the building footprint. I mean, I’ve seen building sections that look like a human spine. They jog in and out, and I guess it’s to make things look interesting, but it makes the building work a lot harder than it has to. And really it’s all subjective. And you know, again, not being a hot pencil, I can just say that, just because I was never good at it means I can trash it, but really very few buildings are going to go out and win a design award. Right. Very few buildings you’re going to look at and be like, “Yep, everyone agrees that it’s a great building.” Mostly everyone is going to have a different opinion and some people are going to hate your building no matter what you do. So its very subjective. Things that are not subjective include: gravity, heat, wind, rain, all these things that the building has to resist over its entire life. Those things are not subjective. They are all objective. And so I think sometimes we put too much of a priority on these subjective design desires, and not enough on these objective things that really maybe matter just as much if not more.

Robb: (03:34 )
As an engineer, I’m exercising excellent restraints, I think right now. I couldn’t agree with you more.

Steve: (03:42 )
It helps that you’re tied up with leather belts. Sorry.

Robb: (03:47 )
I mean the more surface area, the better, sometimes seeing how many gables can we cram on this, or how many dormers can we cram on this roof? And it gets silly

Steve: (03:56 )
yeah, I drove by one on the way home from Albany yesterday and I almost stopped to take a picture to add to the next time I give this presentation, but I didn’t, too much traffic.

Robb: (04:05 )
And it turns into all framing and there’s no room for installation issues.

Steve: (04:08 )
Yeah. You’re making the building work harder. And the basis of, of where I’m coming from is making the buildings easier to actually build. And so I think that results in a building that is going to be more efficient. It’s going to be probably less expensive. It’s