Okay, what was your name again? You told
me? And josh josh josh Joshua, Joshua Tunick
You know I was missing getting
them first and last names. Got mixed up right
there. Think we're good to go and then so
basically I'm going to ask you some questions and yeah
, most likely just let you go when you start
talking about something underneath. Super focused. That's fine
. That's fine. Just so it's just a free
for an interview. Yeah. And I got myself
out of this. So if I ask you a
question, like when did you come here? You
wouldn't say a year. You'd say I came here
. Right, right, just look at me,
don't look at the camera. We're in good shape
. Okay, so why don't we start with that
when you're history with the school college? Well,
I started In architecture in September of 1966 as a
17 year old freshman. Uh very very naive kind
of guy actually. We're in the old high school
building which is now I think the architectural antiques a
very exciting an intoxicating place. Great professors, great
students, a lot of interest in an enormous amount
of energy. And who was Burchard there yet?
Burchard was dean. I'm not even sure where the
dean's office was. It's not some place that we
normally addressed. So the what we call the old
high school building was our base of operations. Are
home 24 7. Pretty much 24 7 new professors
. Olivia Ferrari, Herbert Cromwell, Ascherman and Peter
Green I believe were the four first year professors at
the time that I started, Herbert Cromwell was my
professor and I still talked with Herbert Cromwell occasionally.
I saw him a couple of years ago. I've
emailed him a couple of times but since then but
he hasn't been back to the U. S.
I don't believe since that time probably you really you
hit it just right. You came with the people
that would really shake things up. Yeah. This
uh I think I was the kind of sucking first
or second class. I think uh I think the
team had been here either. It's really uncertain.
They would never really reveal how long they had been
here at the time. I think there was a
mystery around. Oh how far really they might have
been even ahead of us. They might have been
learning just as we were learning about some of the
concepts, ideas and strategies which they were promoting.
But it was a a discovery oriented group of faculty
and a an energetic group of students who are intent
on learning and pursuing a lot of past. It
was quite a bit of freedom in the past.
You can pursue it. Did you feel like the
program is kind of finding itself finally, we're here
in reflection maybe when I when in reflection I would
think that the program was just developing its groundings and
it's it's founding basis. I believe it came and
started with some strategies that came out of the bauhaus
came exploring a variety of media, a not only
a cerebral approach but also a physical approach. Trying
to understand how pieces and parts of things inter relate
dina relationships and then the subsequent explorations into those discoveries
as you work your way through setting your own problems
and then solving your own problems. Uh So so
you Coco was built by 68. I'm not exactly
sure when Kobe was built maybe 68, 70 72
, somewhere along the time. So you didn't have
classes in COBOL? Uh not at the time,
not in my first two years. In my later
years, I had some time ago I had a
gap interruption between 69, 70 and 75. So
I took five years off to find myself. It
was the program was responsible for that. It was
a combination of combination of economics. Mhm. The
late 60s, the opportunities and the discoveries that I
wish to make outside of academia. And I did
not quite have the discipline for sustained continuation of the
academic program. Either financially or mentally and even physically
, I just wanted to do some other things.
I completely understand. Great. So so the film
is the focus going in and we'll see what it
ends up being. The focus going in is really
sort of the beginning of the film is this periods
are up to that. No pre burgeon Ferrari where
you know the school architecture came out of engineering and
all of that. Yeah. And then the middle
part is really this time that you were here.
Virgin Ferrari and and a problem and all these guys
. And then the last part is really gonna be
where things are right now, projecting into the future
. You're in a really unique position to really talk
about at that time into now future. Yeah.
My my progression through the university and Virginia text basically
. And the College of Architecture, I'll contribute to
that and the studies in Architecture and construction. It
may be where I'm at now. So, so
there's been some very good, very good people In
my life that have helped me along. But I
started in 66 and went to about 69 or 70
. Little blurry. And when all that ended,
it all melted together. I returned back in 75
and went from 75 to 78. I returned back
in 92 and got a master's degree from 90 to
93. I started on the faculty and building construction
in 93 and I've been here since 93 To 2011
and so there's a little bit of a blur sometimes
in things. So I have a couple of gaps
of a five year gap and then I have a
15 year gap. When did the building construction?
Come on. That's building construction started in engineering.
Much like much like architecture came out of engineering,
building construction as a program we're graduating Students out of
that was sometime in the late 40s. So it's
a very old program, one of the oldest programs
in the United States. The first graduate, I
think came out around 46 47. Um, it
at some point in time got, got used to
be architecture engineering. I understand that became building construction
became part of the College of Architecture. I think
when the College of Architecture was created, because I
know some students that were in it at that point
in time and almost certainly were in the College of
Architecture at that time. And so the bishop,
this wasn't here when I was here. No,
this building a bishop. Federal Hall was Opened in
January 2007 or 2008. I'm not exactly sure.
Again, four or five years, they get blurry
. They, so we've been in this building three
or four years, uh, before that, the
building construction program was, as many people characterized it
as the red headed step child of the college.
We were shifted around. So building construction at one
point was in the top of Patent Hall. Third
floor architecture used to be in third floor, fourth
floor Patent Hall. When I was a freshman,
I went up there to look and see where these
other guys were to see what was going to happen
to me after I left the old high school building
and a foundation. So I went up there to
just tour around a little bit and see that.
So I know that they were up there building construction
was in the old Patent Hall, top of Patent
Hall. They were moved over to the top floor
of the infirmary in Henderson Hall. They were shuffled
over into downtown. It was the old tech motel
which is where Draper Road and Church Street. Draper
Road in Church Street area, they were put above
a little docks drug store, which is the corner
of Draper Road in college at Union. They were
stuffed back into a couple of other places around campus
. They were also in the basement of Owens dining
hall for a period of time. And I've heard
I've heard stories about the ill. Yeah, yeah
, cooking soup up in the dining hall and occasionally
overflowed bubble over and drip down through some of the
cracks into the building, construction classrooms and labs down
below the back of birstall. We were in the
back of birstall for a period of time. We
then, at some point in time, our alumni
said, we're just uh, we just want you
guys to have a home, we want building construction
to have a home. And so the building construction
alumni got together and Mhm, partnered up, put
some money, quite a bit of money up to
create this building. This building is, yeah,
a real public, private partnership with the private stimulating
it. And a good bit of chunk of the
money coming from private donations to make the, Make
the building a reality. And we now have the
building in place. The area right outside my office
is a 24/7 access for the students. We think
that's an important component. We think that's very similar
to the way the architecture buildings operate. And I
come from that history of of having a space in
a place to go work anytime day or night.
And I have a very, very, very strong
sensitivity to locking people out of buildings because when we
were students in the Ohio school building, the police
used to come around and lock us out and then
we used to hide under desk and in closets and
wherever we could find. And when the police left
, we would come back out of the out of
the crevices and go back to work with little desk
lamps, headlamps, whatever we could find to work
with, pull all the shades down and then we'd
get rated and run off and somebody would always hide
out and unlock the door and sneak back in and
we'll continue to work. And eventually the university policy
was is that we just need to make this space
open completely so that the students have a place to
work because we're tired of trying to run them out
and they're gonna come back anyway so we make that
reality. But that's a good fun fun memory to
have being chased out of the building because you're trying
to do your academic work. Yeah. That's funny
. Marcus Cooper jr was like that and I never
made any sense to me coming from this. They
kicked you out at one am are you kidding?
I'm just getting started. Right. Right. A
lot of us were just getting started or had been
working for some of us for days maybe, but
it was an exciting, exciting, very energetic time
. So have you tried to take some of that
? Some the lessons, you know, things that
you learned ways to work and things like that.
Right. Part of my, part of my teaching
philosophy is that you, you have to self discover
and so in architecture, the the efforts are a
very brief problem set and then it's a discovery trip
to determine what the problems are, what the limitations
are, what the left and rights, tops and
bottoms are so that you can build the solution set
that you're after within that limited palette set, that
experience that you have knowledge that you have and meeting
the criteria that's set the most unique thing that I
can attribute. That not attribute that to but parallel
that with is the when an individual when I took
my architectural registration exam, unlike many other exams,
that design portion, you go in there and they
give you five blank sheets of paper and these are
17 by 22 or 20 to 24 inch pieces of
paper and they expect you to fill them up in
12 hours and they give you a very brief statement
, a little bit of programming and then you're kind
of on your own. And so one of the
things that I try to instill in our students is
that that problems come in. A lot of different
guys is the solution sets are up to you to
determine what the parameters are, that define the problem
. So establish the problem and then hopefully attack the
problem in some form of reasonable and appreciative solution.
One that's just not completely out of the out of
the realm of possibility, but one that's at at
the realm of possibility and does push some of the
limits and become creative innocence. So some of that
philosophy does carry over into the way I approach the
way students learn, which is to me a the
form of discovery now. How do you No,
this is relevant for the film, but I'm kind
of curious and maybe maybe it's one it works out
. Um, you know, you guys are here
, architecture is over there, part of the same
college, but there doesn't seem to be a whole
lot of interaction that seems at least to me that
somebody invested in this side as well. Miss stuff
answer. Right? Uh, yeah. On the
question of the interactivity between building construction students and architecture
students over the years, there's been a series of
endeavors to try to make that happen. The the
to me and I've tried to do it, I've
done some classes. We've we've done design build classes
with fifth year students. Design build classes with third
year students are third year architecture students and fourth year
Bc students, 50 Year Architecture Students& 4th Year
BC Students. And we've run into in those kind
of interactive type things. We've run into some some
maybe it's maybe it's a personality differential or maybe it's
a behavioral differential. I sometimes equate that to the
fact that there are people who are idea people,
creative idea generators and then there are people who are
implementing hers and begin to be doers. Uh huh
. Our students, the Bc students are predominantly experiential
types of learners. They like the hands on,
they like to manipulate, they like to build and
create things in that physical sense. The some say
that it's not, it comes back around to what's
practical and what's impractical and I think that's short selling
. The relationship between design and construction. Uh it's
it's been, it's been tried, it's been at
times we think successful at other times it's been extremely
unsuccessful. There are certain instances where I think that
there is a, at times a component of arrogance
relative to either side, from either a student aside
and uh either architecture or construction students are both.
And even at times, I think I've witnessed that
at the faculty side and I'll leave it at that
just a little bit. But for you on the
off camera, if you want to do an off
camera, I don't care how you handle it really
. Um I'm too old to care how people handle
these days, but there is uh from an architect's
perspective, I understand architectural arrogance and although I think
architectural arrogance has a purpose, architectural arrogance at times
becomes the becomes the becomes becomes a hindrance and a
distraction to getting a collaborative kind of endeavor going and
architects have to have maintained arrogance because everybody wants to
chop away at the creative aspects of the design,
owners want to chop away at constructors want to chop
away at it, consultants want to chop away at
it. Subcontractors want to chop away at the public
, wants to chop away at Yeah. And in
order for that purity of the mindset that architects bring
to the table, they have to fight continually.
And if they don't have a bit of an arrogance
about them, their solution sets will never be realized
to the level that they're asked. Uh and that's
a perspective that I have and that I see it
may be erroneous, but it's one that that I
perceive when I when I engage and deal with architects
. Architects sometimes use a a very mysterious language that
very few people are able to comprehend and understand their
articulation works pretty well within the architecture and design community
doesn't work very well outside the architecture and design community
. And therefore people kind of think that there out
of touch at times not to touch me. I
think it's all extremely well put and I think that's
yeah, that makes perfect sense. That's you know
, why it's important. But also the challenge.
Yeah, the challenge is a good word on approaching
that kind of relationship between the design and construct.
I've had I've heard both sides of the stories,
I've heard the story that, you know, builders
constructors if you wish, or just mechanics without a
sense of creativity. Um I've heard the a reverse
side. Architects know nothing about construction, I know
nothing about how pieces and parts go together. And
so I feel and I hope that I can make
that kind of contribution that I worked very diligently to
try to balance the fact that that there are contributors
. And it's a collaborative endeavor to get successful projects
built successful even at the routine region, local level
and even successful national, what we might call landmark
buildings are signature buildings. It takes an enormous collaborative
endeavor to make those happen. And if you don't
think that's the case, then you really are missing
the boat. Yeah, I mean it's a very
valuable perspective to be able to have from both.
Well, the designers do know how to put things
together. They may not know some of the very
intricate details and and they may not may not have
a sensitivity to some of the micro aspects of that
, but the broader aspects of the relationships that the
quality, quality too management of the delivery. Quality
management in a different sense than quality management from a
construction perspective, but how you do maintain the relationships
and quality of the workmanship of the material and the
quality of the inter relationships between the materials. They
architects understand that. I think very, very well
the ability to design the interface is I think in
general, they understand those reasonably well, they understand
tolerance levels reasonably well. So, so I don't
take a lot of stock in anybody that ever tells
me that architects don't know how to put buildings together
. I think one of the, one of the
things that I find very interesting is I don't know
if, you know 100. Yeah, he actually
bring some very attractive does he does. And this
summer we had summer studio grant program. You know
, there was a point where he's like, you
know, there has to be in door opener there
, where is the same newspaper going? There are
things like that I think are so valuable for architects
to understand, it doesn't have to come in and
come out, but at some point you have to
accept the reality that this can't be a pure thing
if you're actually going to make it, it's coming
off the page. And I anyway, so I
guess one of my questions for us going forward,
like projecting out as far as you want to project
out, do you see, especially with design ability
becoming a more viable delivery for public works and things
, do you see need or? Mhm. I'm
just wondering about the collaboration programs going forward in the
future. The well maybe not even so far into
the future because I think that right now the merging
of design and construction is happening, it's happening at
the, at the project delivery level that's happening with
the design build, to see in that risk components
that we're seeing being used significantly in construction right now
. Uh, the battle for leadership in integrated project
delivery has yet to really hit the, hit the
table very hard I think, but where you're seeing
it, not only in the professional levels, but
you see it at the sub levels where students now
are saying I need to know a little bit more
about construction or I need to know a little bit
more about design. So you're seeing that little tip
of the spear starting to happen and subsequently to that
, the construction professionals, the companies that do high
end work and do a significant amount of construction management
at risk and design build, recognize that the team
needs in house. On the constructor side, the
team in house needs an architectural, what I call
a construction designer or a construction integrator or a design
integrated the term that you whichever term you wish to
look at. I like the concept of construction designer
because that individual has now got a big gap to
fill between what might be the design designer and the
constructor of record if you wish and not even so
much the designer, the design designer and then than
a local designer. That's a, that's a real
difference. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking
about an individual that's able to bridge that world and
that domain between the design speak in a construction speak
and is able to say, okay, I need
to figure out simply, you know, just in
time, just in sequence documentation that's accurate to give
me what I need when I needed and add value
to the process. As opposed to documenting things that
might protect me and litigation or might protect me when
we run into uh, you know, why do
you have this and not have this and areas and
emissions kind of pieces and parts that we get into
? So I'm seeing that I'm seeing the companies,
particularly the constructors, construction companies are hiring architectural graduates
to come into their organizations to interface between the design
that they get and a construction that they need.
A lot of it is coupled around the use of
building information modeling right now and building information modeling is
, is, has quite a bit of capabilities to
it. It's being used quite frequently in the front
end procurement process. Give you three very quick schematic
designs, different schemes and I can actually probably price
them and reasonably range of pricing such that it's accurate
reflection and we can begin to decide whether it's a
physical project to pursue. So I can give you
a couple of schemes and they're really easy to kind
of click off, right, and then I can
then translate those things down downstream. Right? And
then I can take the the other aspects of construct
ability, the interfaces between the systems that I need
to cram in a little small space between finished ceiling
and roof and so our floor. So we're able
to then come back and take a look and say
, okay, how's all my piping on my duct
work? All my diffusers on my uh wow,
come to, it's all that other stuff that's up
in the ceiling. How do I interface with all
of that And make sure I can minimize my uh
interference is therefore minimize minimize my going back and saying
, well, you know, you didn't design this
to fit or it's too deep, too big.
I got a dollar so we catch all of those
in advance so we can virtually do the virtual design
construct. So the world of virtual design and construct
is a world that's going to now now naturally create
a collaborative environment for the design and construction and we'll
get a common speak out of the refuge. Do
you see more classes together and you know, things
like them? I'm not sure that that we'll see
classes together. I do think that maybe in an
educational environment there may be some, some specific focus
that has to go on and maybe I've just been
, what's, what's the term that you use disenchanted
when some of the things that you think will be
successful aren't successful. We do and I do.
And I teach a design built, of course,
it's a four credit our course, it's a design
build. I've taught it for a few years.
We've done that as I said with the fifth year
architecture students in our fourth year Bc students. And
, and that was almost a disaster. And the
disaster was is that when you team these guys up
, you get designers, they get design block and
then you get students that are kind of mm waiting
for the design, which I tell them you are
a contributor and a collaborator for the design. So
you can't wait for the design. You contribute to
the design. So don't give me that, buying
that. Um, but the design blocks at times
, you know, the paper where you can't get
anything on the paper or you can't make that decision
. And so you're seeing some of those, some
of those kind of rubs on that fifth year was
not one of the most successful years to work with
that third year could be, but I think third
year in architecture is probably devoted at a different level
of discovery that doesn't make the interface. So maybe
the fourth year is one of those areas that might
be able to work in that kind of kind of
peace in part. I think it would be great
if we could and I do that every year.
But when the realities come back in that it's that
it's a yeah, it's just a balance. I
think it's a bit of balance on how you get
that thing balanced out. Our design build I think
works reasonably well, particularly if we're able to get
master students that have been in architecture and then our
master students that we put with our our undergraduate students
in a design build endeavor. And so each is
able to bring and contribute quite a quite a bit
to the parts and you get that inter relationship working
and that seems to be I think reasonably successful and
I think that there's a good appreciation for that.
So my suggestion might be if there was a suggestion
that I could make is that that maybe a few
of the master students might like to participate in that
endeavor that we have here. The rub becomes the
rub is the rub is somewhat of a control up
. Like I got my students, I don't want
my students going somewhere else. They don't have the
time to go somewhere else. They're not going to
be near me and my glamour or my uh my
glamour is not the right term but my mentor ship
is not gonna rub off. I do think that
architecture at times in the past and I don't know
if it's the case and you may have a better
better handle on this being a master students or masters
or PhD master student being a student is that that
there is instances in the past where there's this kind
of, it's a kind of a mentorship where you
have the master and you have the student and so
the master has a student following and the student following
wants the master. And so it's a, it's
that relationship unlike the Jedi warrior in the trainee.
Oh, I think, I think what, I
think it's interesting to see, I think this is
because I see a change happening over there and I
think a lot of the older professors think it's a
bad think there's younger faculty coming in who have more
field mentality and we actually have to do this now
as opposed to, I think sort of the lineage
of for our years, right, being blessed out
, wow. So I think there's some people who
think the collaboration would be a great thing and other
people who think they know you're going to get that
, you don't need that yet, and but I
was interviewing great cats from art and he said he
was disappointed to see there used to be much more
open, heard more architects, students would take our
classes, and he thought great, and it just
reminds me it makes me think of a similar thing
here, where, you know, it would be
seemingly nice, all of these, you know,
building the structure, people could take architecture right?
We've tried before to again, cross collaboration is an
important component of pieces and parts we've thought internally even
of trying to do uh course sequences so that we
have our courses tiered and structured so that there are
modules much like books in the library shelf. Right
. And so the individual faculty are the books on
the library shelf, you need this module in your
class and you need it at level 123 or four
, you go get that faculties expertise and you say
, okay, so this week or this two week
time frame, is that module therefore josh, You
have that module for two weeks, alright. Which
gives me two weeks to go do another module on
something else, or gives me a two week respite
in my day to day activities and at least that
one particular course. And and if you can build
the courses or build a content around there, I
see no reason why that kind of expertise could not
cross over into one versus the other eye for myself
, in the design aspects I can teach or I
can share with the students a bit about the the
strategy is an approach to how you might design a
particular project in in our design build kind of component
. I'm not going to go through a bunch of
design philosophy and components like that, but it's a
down to business. You've got a brief, you
dissect the brief, you approach the brief from from
your givens, you granulated your givens to minimize the
permutations that you have. You then established criterias to
move that out and these are the basic kind of
things you kind of left with guys. And so
you now have the aspects of being controlled in one
sense and being creative in another sense. So you
recognize the controls and then you can recognize the creativity
and in a design build, memorable design bills are
only those that have a memorable design and so you
can't sell design build short by saying that that design
is not an important component of it because those are
the memorable projects and those are the only ones that
goes go in people's brochures or on their websites to
say here's our design build project and if it doesn't
look good, it doesn't make the cut, doesn't
make the cut. So let me ask you this
because I don't know the answer to this and just
trying to think back the film and what Yeah,
think get in there. Do you know the history
of the construction? I know a bit of the
history of the construction program. It was uh huh
. Again the names names at the beginning of the
construction program was I think trying to get help me
a little bit on remembering the guys as Coco who
was before, you know, it was before Kogel
in a historical sense or I should too, and
it's on the tip of my tongue and I can't
recall specifically who that is curry Lynn curry there.
And I think it was co golden curry or curry
and Cody. Right, right, right. One
of the two of those guys, either cobra career
, I think it might have been cobalt uh,
decided that that right after the Second World War,
a group of home builders came to the university and
says, you know, we need a, we
need an educational program in construction because we got a
lot of stuff we're gonna have to build here after
the war. So there's quite a bit of construction
is going to take place after the war. We
need people personnel that are educated and trained. A
lot of people equate education and training as the same
thing, but we need people educated and trained in
construction. How about seeing where we can do a
program in that? Uh We don't need an engineering
degree. We don't need an architecture degree of what
we need is a basic construction degree, a little
bit of architecture, a little bit of engineering,
a good bit of business. Uh and then construction
component and that got the program started. So I
think it was kogelo Korea. Either one of those
to have to get exactly um that started worked its
way I think out of patent worked its way around
town as I spoke about before finally settled into here
. The heads of the program were, who started
it, who, who the original head was.
I don't know back in a in the early forties
or the late forties, early fifties, I don't
really know who that is and I don't know exactly
when Bill Favreau started, but he actually might have
been the original head of the program in the department
. Bill Favreau was in this department until he died
. And I think the The early 70s, maybe
sometime in the 70s. And then Vince Silin Berg
was followed behind him and became hit. The faculty
was three or 4 factors, three or four factors
for the longest time, three or four faculty.
And they rotated faculty of people who practiced. Some
architects and built ever, was an art history professor
. So an art history professor started the construction program
. Vince Hillenburg was an architectural graduate and an architect
enrichment. And so he ran the program from the
70s to 90s, early 90s. And then we
had a tumultuous period with with but with just poor
leadership at that point in time. And then Ivan
Belliveau came in in the 95 or so like that
mid 90s. And then he took the program on
until 2007 or so. Like that 6 2006 2007
when the school of construction was created and he took
the director head of the school construction and the building
construction department. He became wallet. So so that
little uh tom framing, that's basically that's the basic
timeframe Back in the bill. Favreau days. They
used to spend a lot of time out at the
airport is actually building out at the airport that BC
students built back in the 50s. And so they
had, they had classes that met out there by
the airport. They did they did some work like
that there. Origination was strongly for the home building
and the home building industry and that has matured over
a period of time to where we're at right now
, which is a to prom programs that we have
. We have a design and construction program, that's
what we call it. Design and construction. And
we have a hey a development, real estate and
construction options. So we have two options in our
program. One design and construction and the other is
development, real estate and construction. And we have
quite a few people who are in both. So
it's split. Probably pretty reasonable. Oh, for
a while, when residential construction was real hot,
Late 90s or early 2000s, residential construction was a
hot commodity and a lot of students were going into
that real high and hot on that. And now
that that's dropped off the deep that that endeavours dropped
a bit as well. We still have those two
options and we're still about equally split. But the
energy level that residential doesn't quite have the enthusiasm that
it did before please. You guys are still getting
jobs. I don't know about the architects, the
the some of the things that building construction has contributed
to in the past. The our student chapter of
the, of the International Honor Society for Construction.
We are the second chapter, we are the beta
chapter. So we're what we are actually the oldest
active chapter right now. The first chapter is,
is I believe it currently an inactive chapter. We're
the oldest active chapter. We've had a couple of
presidents of the International Honor Society for Construction, Nash
International President out of our department. We uh,
we are one of the founding members of the associated
schools of construction. Associated schools construction is now,
I believe it's 108 members or something. We want
one of the original six or 7 founding members of
the associated schools construction. So we have a long
history there. The end, a good bit of
the construction industry in Virginia uh is owned managed and
performed by graduates of our program over the last 60
, I guess it's 60 years. One of the
think this is my first year back was saying something
. If you're here to make money, you should
go over there, go over the building construction.
This is not. But at least they're being honest
. Yeah, well, everybody should make money this
way. I look at it and successful projects.
Everybody makes money on successful projects and it takes a
collaborative endeavor. The problem that you frequently run into
and I find in this whole design, construction kind
of component is a design build, helps in construction
management of risk, helps alleviate this. Is that
up until the day the contract is inked, the
designer has a tremendous amount of flexibility to be able
to make modifications, inclusions, additions, subtractions to
the documentation. Once the contract is inked, all
that kind of stops and what you didn't take care
of before the contract was inked. Now you've got
to deal with in a contractual obligation basis and you've
got to follow the letter of the law mostly unless
you want to walk around on the edges of the
contract. Um, so that creates that time,
some difficulty in a working relationship. And then there's
always the advocacy, the advocacy for the design and
that's a continuing battle that designers thanks my design,
my design, my design and the concept of design
intent I think is very important. And constructors I
believe understand that very well. The minute you begin
to, from an architectural perspective, the intent was
to do this. Now how do we go about
actually doing that? If we can have those conversations
after the contract is inked, we can have a
very successful project downstream. The intent is this?
Well, my intent was this Okay, well let's
see if we can't work these two intense out and
hopefully from a collaborative perspective to work out for success
, it happens. It's a, it's a small
world out there, the communities that were in the
design construction communities, no matter whether you're in Blacksburg
Virginia or you're in Washington, D. C.
Or new york city, those design construction communities are
pretty close titan, Everybody knows everybody, everybody knows
about everybody in it. So it's not like you
don't know somebody and you don't interact with somebody.
And as I tell my students, there are guys
in class right now that you will be across the
table on competing against known projects, there will be
guys in the classroom that you will be on the
same teams, competing against other guys in the classroom
and recognize that. And there will be guys in
Cobo Hall and Berta call that you will be collaborating
with on design construct projects. You will be doing
Construct projects on a traditional design bid, build that
people that are just now two or 34 400 ft
away from you are working on. So we really
need to recognize that it's a small community and it's
a relationship based kind of approach for success. Yeah
. But if the last think I'll ask is yeah
, Ferrari has come up a lot. And do
you have any stories or any anecdotes about any of
those guys are already perjured or any of the Oh
, I probably have a have a treasure trove of
stories and we could maybe talk about some more stories
at another time. The I will say about all
of the faculty that I've had the opportunity to study
under at Virginia Tech and all the faculty that have
had an opportunity to collaborate with Virginia Tech. Their
predominant interest is a success of a student. They
are here to change people's lives. The faculty are
here to change students lives and we hope we're successful
in changing their lives. And I will tell you
that Ferrari had a tremendous impact on my life and
changed portions of my life. Professor Crandall had a
tremendous impact on my life and changed parts of my
life in Berkshire had had an impact on my life
, not maybe as significant as those other two faculty
, but changed my life in Virginia Tech changed my
life. And I think that we, we should
always be cognizant of the recognition of those people who
help change your life and help make your life better
. And the Virginia Tech College of Architecture and Urban
Studies or as I like to call it because building
construction, architecture and urban studies has changed my life
. But I do have a few stories I could
probably tell you after. All right, That's great
. Great. Is there anything else you want to
say? No? Well, yeah, I can
tell you the in the old days when we got
started and you know, customs and customs, custom
take customs. Let me see if that's the right
word is at customs or what's that routines, Customs
. And I was the best. You can help
me figure out the word. But we started this
coffee drinking. We used to drink a lot of
coffee. The professors drank coffee. The professors would
go down to the Greeks where the seller is now
and they would drink coffee and then they would take
a student to let's go get a cup of coffee
. So you'll be working in there and pull you
right out of the, out of the lab.
Let's go get a cup of coffee. So you
go down and get a cup of coffee. Then
talk. Next thing. You know, they would
pull out a napkin out of the dispenser and start
eating on a napping. I think Virginia Tech invented
the design on a napkin process In the early mid
60s. All right. So we would do that
and bring that back. You talk about it and
you do those kinds of things. So whenever we
would have a an issue a designer's block or something
, we go get a coffee. So we'd go
down to the Greeks and we get a coffee.
So coffee became up a ritual and a custom that
we developed and incorporated into our thing. The design
on napkins was a piece and part that happened.
The classical Schaefer fountain pen that you had the ink
cartridge in that everybody used to draw with became a
kind of classical drawing to. And so so in
the early days there there was a strong camaraderie of
oh, role models of the faculty. The faculties
were role models for the architecture, young architecture students
to determine how they might want to carry on in
a design sense and how they may want to interact
with other people. The some of the aggression that
was shown sometimes and I'll call it aggression and some
people might call it assertiveness where where people just tell
you, the professor say that's a piece of crap
, they throw it on the floor and they stamp
on it and said, if you don't understand what
I'm talking about, you need to get another another
curriculum. And so at times those kind of might
be intimidating. I'm not sure we can do those
things these days, Maybe we can, those guys
were able to do it and get away with it
. And it's an appreciative aspect of life that we
could have. I don't know how your professors interact
with you on those things in building construction. We
have a real strong relationship with the students that it's
a building construction, particularly it's almost fraternity kind of
based thing in a sense that everybody is a member
. They know the members, their collegial with each
other, They collaborate a lot. They live and
work together. So it's a, it's a real
community, real strong community and that helps everybody go
a long way. The the two, this building
is quite nice for students. It's a wonderful building
, a wonderful opportunity for the students. So basically
those are kind of it josh. I could tell
you some stories of things the students used to do
where we climbed up on the roof of the,
what was the original Squires hall, where there was
a little spire up on the top and a couple
up there and we painted an A on it.
I'm surprised. I don't know how we didn't fall
off the roof. I think we had a rope
tied up there. I don't know if, I
don't know who the first guy was. They went
up there. I wasn't the first guy, but
we had a rope that we kind of pulled ourselves
up there, kind of tied off and we painted
this a and we kept a look at this.
If anybody was spotting us and big event the next
day we can go look at it when the sun
came up. Right. So we did that.
We built a, you know, a two ft
by two ft concrete cube on the drill field one
night in the dark of night with lookouts at each
end of the drill field to let us know with
a flashlight, if there were some somebody coming down
either either into the drill field or or from either
direction so we could all hit the ground so we
wouldn't be discovered. So those are some of the
events that we kind of did. There's a couple
of other kind of events but very exciting, very
intoxicating time of life, early Middle 60s, early
70s. And I think the old high school building
contributed to that a lot that it was just,
I went to. It really was a think tank
, do tank working the hallways. People had models
in the hallways building in the hallways just like it's
just a real real nice environment to work in.
Okay. Yeah. Mm That's right. Thank you
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