Welcome to Building LA, a podcast about the buildings and projects shaping the future of Los Angeles hosted by me, Sam Pepper. I'm a licensed architect, developer and project manager, specializing in large complex projects, and as you can probably tell, I'm not a lifelong Angelino. I moved here in 2019 and I'm just fascinated about the projects shaping the city and I'd like to learn more. Each episode of Building LA features conversations with the industry leaders driving those projects forward. We talk about what inspires them, the stories behind these impactful projects, and discuss what continues to excite us all about working in design, architecture and real estate in Los Angeles. Please subscribe to Building LA on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform. And if you have a minute, please register a view. We really appreciate it and we'd like to hear from you. Now onto the episode. There are a few things which almost all Angelinos have experienced, and one of them is driving or being driven around World Way. The Loop Road that serves LAX's nine terminals. If you didn't know it was called World Way, that doesn't actually surprise me, as I'm confident everyone has their own nickname for the loop. My guests and I certainly do. The good news is that Los Angeles World Airport's more commonly known as Lawa recognizes the issues and has done so for some time now. That's why the airport is in the midst of a $15 billion capital improvement program and is why the place appears to be in a constant state of construction. The improvements are being made to all terminals and $5.5 billion is dedicated to the Landside Access Modernization Program, which thankfully has a shorter acronym of LAMP, including a new LAX Economy Parking Facility, a Consolidated Rental Car Facility and most importantly, a new automated PeopleMover. More funding is allocated for the midfield satellite concourse, which adds eight gates to the Tom Bradley terminal, as well as the airfield and terminal modernization project, which includes an airfield, new terminal line and other improvements. In summary, there is a lot going on. Today, we are focusing on the LAX Airport Metro Connector, which as the name implies, connects the Metro including Rail and Bus to the new automated PeopleMover. It's a game-changing project, which will significantly change the way many people arrive and depart LAX, which is one of the busiest airports in the world. So who better to discuss this incredible project than Andrew Byrne, managing partner at Grimshaw, an internationally acclaimed architecture firm founded in 1980 by Cynacolis Grimshaw, with 600 employees across eight offices around the world. Grimshaw is the firm behind the design of the LAX Airport Metro Connector, and Andrew has been leading the charge for this incredible project reshaping such an important component of Los Angeles. As a firm, Grimshaw has won over 200 design awards, and they design everything from sports arenas to cultural centers, and are arguably the world's foremost authority in the design of airports, rail and mass transit projects. Andrew moved to Los Angeles after leading the complete redesign of London Bridge Station, which is a marvel of design engineering. That project had to systematically overhaul a station which accommodated 90 million passengers per year while maintaining operations and not disrupting service. In this episode, we talk about the complexities of designing a mass transit system, what it's like to work with the LA Metro, and how Andrew sees public transit evolving in Los Angeles. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Hi Andrew, welcome to Building LA. Sam, hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me. We're going to dive right in and talk about the LAX Airport Metro Connector. One thing that's great about this project is that almost all of our listeners, I would imagine, are very familiar with LAX, both the positives and negatives of it. If you are aware of it, you know there is major work happening to better connect the airport with the Metro and all the public transport connections to the east. What people may not know are specifics of the planned timing and of course, Grimshaw, your firm is rolling it. My first question is, Andrew, could you give our listeners an overview of the breadth of the travelers who will go through the Metro Connector once the project is complete in I believe 2024? It will be a transformational project for the way in which people experience LAX. LAX is in the process of building an elevated automated people mover, which is a train that will be free to ride on that will take passengers from the terminals to various locations. The Metro Connector is the hub at which all of the various spokes of transit come to a central point where you can actually jump on to that automated people mover and head into your terminal. It's a truly intermodal transit hub and it's going to really shift a lot of people's experiences from the current day. It brings together all of the Metro riders so there will be a new service from Metro which will be a rebranded green line and the Crential line which is currently under construction and not yet operational will come into the station and you'll be able to ride, say from downtown on Metro all the way into the Metro Connector and then transfer onto this automated people mover and into the airport terminal of your choice. There will also be a Kiss and Ride drop off what we commonly call a Kiss and Ride drop off. It's an ideal for lift and Uber users and family and friends who are dropping off and picking up people using the airport and who wish to avoid the travelling all the way into what I refer to as the horseshoe of despair in LAX where now you'll have a more seamless drop off experience and then be able to jump onto the automated people mover. It also has a lot of bus facilities, there are 16 bus bays there that regional and local buses that will create new and better connections into the airport plus a lot of local area workforce that actually are travelling into the airport every day as employees of the various airlines and offerings in the airport as well can use this with new dedicated protected bike lanes and a bike hub facility as well. So it really brings together a lot of different modes of transportation into one central hub and this is where the mixing valve occurs and you can connect in and hopefully get in and out of the airport in a far more efficient and seamless way as compared to some of the torturous journeys that exist today. I like the horseshoe of despair, I always call it the loop of death is my term. I was recently being picked up by my wife at LAX, it was late at night on a Tuesday and been flying in from a business trip. I think it took about 20 minutes to get to the airport from our apartment and then she picked me up a terminal two and we then spent the next 25 minutes just going around the loop before then driving 20 minutes back home. So I think everyone will be very excited about the possibility of avoiding that experience which is just structurally inefficient is the plan that all the rideshare drop-offs are happening at the LAX airport metro connector instead of the current location. There is going to be a big change to the current Uber and Lyft area designated area at LAX because that's the footprint in which Southwest Airlines are planning to expand a new terminal one east into and it will be relocated when the automated people mover is up and running. It won't be exclusively at the metro connector. There are a number of locations where you'll be able to jump onto that service and ride into LAX for our facility. There's a really great connection into the central hub and there is some amenity and services and retail offerings in there as well that might make this a little more desirable depending on what your wants and needs are on the way to the airport. And I said that it's opening in 2024. Is that I know that these public projects that schedule can take on a life of its own but is that still accurate? Yes, the official line is we're targeting a December 2024 opening date. It is intrinsically linked with other major infrastructure projects. We need the credential line to be operational and working for our metro hub to also be able to operate. And of course the automated people mover that LAX are delivering needs to be operational for the intermodal activity or functionality of our station to come into full effect. So we are codependent on a couple of other projects but December 24 should be a great
moment, Rupin cutting and opening and a new experience of seamlessly sliding in and out of LAX, there will be unrecognizable to those of us who have had similar experiences to you in the whole shoe of despair. That's great. Well, I'm excited for my holiday travel then in 2024 already. When Grimshaw was first awarded the project, how do you approach a design for a space where people are often rushing, potentially a little bit stressed out and they're traveling, navigating tight schedules, how do you incorporate that and mitigate that as part of the design process? Yeah, I mean, that's the salient and insightful question. I'd probably attempt to answer that through analogy. I don't know if you're anything like me, but there's got to be a drawer or a box somewhere in your house where you've kept all of your electronics and a year after not touching it, you'll pull it out and there'll be a spaghetti junction of wires that are intertwined and entangled and it takes quite a bit of time to unpick. In essence, a lot of our transportation projects are really about sorting out those parts of movement and entangling them and ensuring that there's a very seamless, intuitive and simple method of navigating through the projects that you're able to make the various movements as comfortably as possible. And that really is the starting point. A lot of the organizational ideas around the building are centered on the locations of the attractors. In this case, it might be the position of the platforms for LA Metro or the position of the automated people move for station. It might be where we can get the buses into the site and where the bus bay terminals are going to be. Understanding the desire lines between those functions and organizing them and reorganizing them in a way that they become very efficient, very clear, very legible. And that's a kind of key commencement point for organizing the building and the program. And from there, we move into kind of from the organizational or diagrammatic conceit. We move into the experiential and how you can reinforce the simplicity and legibility of navigating through the building with complementary architecture that actually elevates the experience. And if possible, can de-stress the transition from one mode to the other because as a building function, that's really its primary job is to ensure that it doesn't make what it can be a stressful or confusing experience. Any worse. So Grimshaw is world-renowned for a lot of types of architecture, but in particular large transport infrastructure, airports, train stations, bus terminals, all over the world. In looking at the renderings, which we'll post online in a very beautiful, there seem to be some design themes that translate between the projects. And I know you worked on London Bridge for a long time. Can you speak to some of those fundamental design qualities that you see as a movie a theme through a lot of Grimshaw's work? I think the intuitive wayfinding aspect of our projects is quite critical so that we're not reliant on a person who is maybe experiencing an environment for the first time or is running really late for a flight and they're very stressed out that they're not going to make their vacation. We're not reliant on them stopping reading a lot of information on a sign to be able to navigate their way through the building. So intrinsic in the architecture and the arrangement of our transportation projects, we need to ensure that there's a legibility in the way that the elements are organized and we need to use architectural devices to help people move through the spaces. So to take that from the abstract into the practical, just visual and spatial connections, there's nothing more powerful than getting off a train and being able to see where you need to go to next because if you've clocked that location, it becomes far more intuitive movement to follow the line of travel. That is somewhat linked to the way in which the volumes are designed. We need to ensure that there's a sufficient scale and spatial generosity that's provided so that you can make those visual and spatial connections and have that orientation within a larger environment. And then what follows on from that quite naturally is an obligation within your design to be intelligent about ensuring the space doesn't become cluttered, doesn't introduce a whole host of additional potential visual barriers or hanging advertising or elements that serve as distractions from the space. I think that those are the real key cornerstones that we work with. And then using natural daylight is really been a sort of signature move for the practice over the course of the last 20 to 30 odd years within this space. And that is again, almost a kind of primordial or subliminal desire for people to move towards the light. And if you place your escalators and elevators underneath some diffuse top lighting in a transit environment, it becomes immediately more apparent where the movement needs to occur and where the direction for the onward journey is. So we've always used that as a moment of both celebration and excitement and identity, but also to draw people into the locations where they need to be to understand where then their onward journey might be next. One thing that I've always found really successful about Grimshaw projects and I used to work right next to the Fulton station in New York City. There's moments where you actually do want to pause, particularly if you've got your first few times the project and look up at the spectacular, Oculus structure. But cleverly, it feels like those moments where you want to stop and pause have already been thought into the design. So you're not stopping in a major thoroughfare where there's a host of people rushing towards their destination. And I think that some of the transportation centers that I've been to aren't as successful, which obviously Grimshaw did not design, there's often a sign that's placed right in the middle of your main thoroughfare. And of course, you then have large families and people standing in this area where you're trying to kind of squeeze paths with your roller suitcase and it becomes this point of congestion that is supposed to be just a sign showing you where you go, but you have to figure out the signage and understand. I love that point that you made that if you can see where you're going and you intuitively see no, okay, I can see the escalator. Oh, is that I think there's a corner of a truck and see the train over there. Then you just intuitively understand, oh, yep, I go, I walked the right, I walked the left, whatever it is. This project, a transit hub of this nature, the typology is actually quite freeing because we're not overly concerned about creating a really efficient, performative building envelope. There's not a huge amount of internal air-conditioned space. We're providing a lot of shelter and shade and a amenity for people to use within the building, but we've got great flexibility in the way that we have elements that may begin life, particularly the airport metric connector, beginning life as a simple canopy providing shade shelter for people about to board a bus. They can then transform and rise and then merge together to create an over-sailing roof environment and the flexibility to create a more dynamic envelope through there not only creates dynamism and excitement, but it shows, again, this intuitive notion of something is happening in this direction. This is a grander space. There's an acceleration, there's a crescendo in terms of the experience of the building through here, which naturally draws you in the direction that you need to travel for your onward journey as well. It's a really enjoyable, yet challenging environment to or building typology to work within. The project was approved by, I believe, the Metro Board of Directors, I think in 2014. It's quite a long time ago. It was awarded to Grimshaw and Gruen Associates, and if I've got my FactsTrade, I was in 2017. Were you involved in the project at the time? Even if you weren't, can you tell us how you were able to win the project? The success in winning this commission was primarily down to establishing a culture for our team. In the submission, the executive the architect of record was a group.
and Associates and Grimshaw is the design lead with Arab and their multi-disciplinary team leading on a lot of the technical requirements for the station. And we had been successful five years prior to the award of this project, in securing a visioning exercise for the reimagination of LA Union Station for LA Metro. And I think through that process, they not only became perhaps more intimately aware of our station design capability through our portfolio and some of the initial visioning work that we did on LA Union Station. But really, they understood who we were from a cultural perspective. And what it was like to work with us and what our team dynamic was across multiple disciplines. And I think that that gave them a great level of confidence and assurance that we were an excellent match for what was really at the time a really aspirational project for LA Metro. There are a number of line expansions that are the direct beneficiaries from the Measure M vote outcome that expands the network. But this project is satisfied from those particular endeavors because it's a unique multimodal transit hub and is not subject to conforming to the same type of standard station design guidelines that exist for the expansion of the typical Metro lines. So this was an individual one-off project for LA Metro and it is aspirational in its intentions. You mentioned Groen and the rest of the consultant team and obviously the project with Union Station, which maybe we can dive into a little bit on that later. What do you think is the key to success? It seems like Grimshaw and Groen have developed over those two projects, really successful partnership, AOR, design, architect, relationships, historically, sometimes there's some friction there. How have you managed that and what do you attribute to the success? Well, that's something that I think I'm incredibly proud of from a Grimshaw standpoint is that we've always had really great and successful collaborative relationships with all of our partners. I think it helps that we are a practice that exhibits a culture in the shape of our founder. So Nicholas is not at all a primadonna. He's a relatively somewhat humble borderline introverted individual, incredibly talented, thoughtful, considerate and really a visionary, but doesn't really play the ego card. I think as a practice, we've been able to expand and evolve and yet still hold some of that sensibility. I think that we have a huge level of respect for all of our teaming partners and what they bring to the table. One thing I would say, Sam, is that ultimately the success of any relationship be it client, architect, contractor, executive architect, design architect, it does come down to the individual and personal relationships between the key project leaders and the tone that they set as a culture. I have to admit, Deborah Gerrard who leads both Grun's union station and the airport metro connector project on behalf of Grun is not only a very close personal friend, but a brilliant professional and a brilliant collaborator. And I think the fact that we live in the same neighborhood and we for a while played on the same softball team means that that personal connection has really helped keep the magic valve partnership alive throughout the process with this project. You mentioned Steniculus. I'm curious. I know that he is the founder. I think he retired as chairman a couple of years ago, I believe. How involved is he in the firm these days? Current day, not so much. He's observing more of a watching brief and is not active in leading any of our projects, but remains very enthusiastic around when he's sought out commenting on project opportunities and hearing how things are going. And as I said, he's been an incredibly strong mentor for the generation of leadership that he's ushered into the practice. And I think that's one of the really incredible achievements of Grimshaw as a global architectural practice is the success in which we've been able to navigate a true secession into a practice that will endure hopefully for decades to come. And it's not always easy to move past a incredibly influential founding architect. So it's something that I know Nick is very proud of. And something that I think the practice is able to help perhaps indicate to similar practices that are facing some of these challenges, a viable path forward to evolution and longevity. Can you give me a sense about how many folks are in the Grimshaw office in LA and some of the other projects that you're currently working on and obviously can talk about? Yeah, sure. We've got just under 30 in the Los Angeles studio at the moment. It's about 100 odd in New York now as well. And as a practice, we've never really targeted growth for growth sake. We haven't set KPIs for expansion. Really, it's been a project led and it's been the studio evolving through the opportunities that we have. And at times we've grown and adjusted the size of our practice in response to project success or project opportunities. So we're a little under 30 at the moment. And by the end of this calendar year, we'll need to expand by four or five people. And with our outlook in 2024, I think that that growth trajectory will continue and I think we'll be closer to the mid 40s by the end of 25. And part of that is because here in California, as our audience will attest, things don't necessarily happen very quickly. Sequel is a wonderful piece of legislation, but it certainly elongates the delivery or gestation period of projects. So we've got a number of projects that have been in our pipeline for quite some time that start to come to bear in 2024 in a kind of more substantial way, which supports some of this anticipated expansion. So I won't give you an exhaustive list because I'm sure you'll not off and get a little bored. But I'll highlight a couple of key projects that we're really excited about. One is a new studios project, just adjacent to our studio in the arts district, on the sixth and elimita site, which some folks may remember was a subject of a really large entitlement submission from Herzogon de Moran to build some really tall towers. Subduquent to that project dying on the vine, our client purchased the site East End Studios and they're delivering 16 film studios plus two creative workplace buildings. And that's been moving through entitlements over the course of this calendar year and is due to break ground in the summer of 2024. And we're really excited about that. I mean, it's a huge project over 750,000 square feet of floor area and bringing over a thousand jobs to the arts district to help balance the distribution of residential development and work creation within the neighborhoods so that there isn't the risk of the arts district becoming an empty bedroom community for downtown workers. So we're excited about that as a flagship project. Another that has been keeping us very busy over the last few years that we've been quite quiet about is the design leadership and architectural remit to build the four stations for Brightline West, which will be a new high speed rail and line connecting Los Angeles to Las Vegas. So we've had a four year engagement with Brightline now across a number of different studies and commissions and are moving forward on the basis of receiving a federal grant, which is due to be announced in the coming months. We'll have secured a sufficient portion of the funding to commence construction and before the end of 2023 they're planning on breaking ground to build that new piece of infrastructure. And it's a project Sam that we're super proud to be involved in. It's the sort of project that we want to be associated with because, quite frankly, it's transformational. I think it's incredible that a private sector company is delivering public infrastructure. This will be the first genuine high speed train line in Northland.
America where trains will be running at 186 miles per hour or 300 kilometers per hour, which is the international designation is true high speed. And it will take now a little over two hours and 15 minutes to get from the LA basin to Las Vegas rather than the five and a half hours that I endured when I ill-advisably tried to drive down the 15 from Vegas back to LA on a Sunday afternoon. So I think that's going to become a really impactful development and of course there's the provision to connect that service to California and high speed rail through the high desert corridor that would link Palmdale through to Victorville. So they're great buildings and great stations, they're different to the airport metro connected in the sense that they're more of a hybrid between hospitality project and a transportation project where there'll be departure lounges for guests to enjoy before hitting the train. And that will be a really unique product and service that I think will resonate for years to come in terms of infrastructure development in North America. And then if I can just one final one which is again it's been a little under the radar because of some some concerns around confidentiality but in 2020 we were successful in the pursuit of a developer led project to reimagine Piers 30 and 32 on the Bay of San Francisco. So that's um it's a big surface car park today. It sits underneath the shadow of the Bay Bridge and there was an opportunity for us to deal with the degradated infrastructure and the collapsing sea wall to introduce a greater level of sea rise resilience and flood resilience for downtown San Francisco and the South Bay. So we're actually looking at removing the existing pier. It's falling apart and crumbling into the bay and it's not fit for purpose. We're looking at removing the existing pier infrastructure and replacing that with a much smaller footprint that gives back what's called bay fill. It gives back open area to the water which is great for the local ecology and will deliver 365,000 well actually slightly under 400,000 square feet of creative workplace and a market hall on the Embuckett Arrow but the really exciting thing is the community offering which is a aquatic center and swimming pool. So we have an Olympic sized heated swimming pool plus a learner swim in a therapy pool all floating on a steel barge in the Bay of San Francisco plus a high dive area to dive into the Bay, a kayak and hand-powered water vehicle launch area and kayak higher center as well. So it's a really exciting prospect and I think it'll be a really memorable place and supporting that project across the road is 750 affordable and market rate housing units as well. So it's a really substantial project and we're moving through with the city on that in 2024 as well. So yeah excited about some of the future impacts and the reach that these projects might have. I can't wait to see that project and go visit it that sounds incredible and also just really fun project to work on. I wanted to talk to you about LA Metro as a client and I'm curious about I would imagine that there are an overwhelming number of stakeholders and voices out of projects like this but I just want to be I want to make sure I have this great. Your client was technically LA Metro but into into face a lot with Lawa and I would imagine some other kind of jurisdictions and firms as well. Can you just talk a little bit about that relationship? I've had experience with different transit agencies. They each have their own cultures and each have their own pros and cons. LA Metro is doing an incredible job navigating what I would consider to be the hardest landscape in which a transit agency has to operate within. There's there's a host of challenges that exist within LA County that they need to navigate and within the cities in which they need to liaise with as well as the communities that they're impacting. So overall I would say as a client and as an agency I have nothing but incredible admiration for what they are able to achieve because it is very challenging to achieve absolutely anything in the context in which they work. So again I think our individual project has benefited from just some amazing individuals in leadership positions and that's what's facilitated the success of the project and you know as a as a quick shout out and name drop here you know I think that Tim Winthom's oversight and governance of the project has been exemplary and has really set up this project for success from its initial days and Corey's Elmer as well when he was on the project and then more recently Paul Wang who overtook the project I believe around the design development phase and is still leading from the architectural and design side through construction administration has been incredible but I would say this is a politician's answer Sam this is not what you wanted to hear you you're actually asking what's it like working for LA Metro and let's pull off the varnish and be honest there there are a lot of departments within Metro and they have very specific agendas and specific requirements and specific metrics to meet for their own objectives and at times they're conflicting so it's painful it's a painful process because what you need from a lighting or energy consumption standpoint may be a direct contradiction to what the security team at Metro require to monitor and safely operate a station in the late hours of the evening so navigating and achieving or working through the approvals process for the technical criteria on stations is is a really really tough journey it's an undervalued aspect of being an architectural professional is that ability to bring people together that are part of a large organization such as LA Metro there are other clients I've worked with other clients that are private clients that have an abundance of stakeholders where they all have their own set of requirements and rules that make a ton of sense but in order you need to bring them all together to map out a path forward as you said and that's outside of any architectural education but is a key to working with a client and developing a design that the functions and that meets requirements and is ultimately successful so I have a last question about the project public transport this is a big question public transport as you know is a is a relatively controversial topic in LA cars dominate here you are more qualified than most to suggest potentially ways in which the city can promote the use of public transportation and release us from the burden of being such a car centric city I'm curious if you have any tricks up your sleeve ideas about how we can go about that hey I'm glad you asked no problem Sam I've been ready to solve transit in Los Angeles for years now I've just been waiting for somebody to ask the question this is easy no problem easy easy question what I would say is that I think that at times there's a very lazy appraisal of the culture of Southern California to say that people in Los Angeles just love being in their cars and they don't want to give that up and they don't like the idea of having to catch a train or catch a bus and public transit is beneath them I think that that is completely incorrect and a very lazy assessment I think the reality here and I alluded to this a little earlier when I was talking about the task in front of Metro I think that now that I've had some time I was born and raised in Melbourne Australia which is you know one particular type of city and then spent nearly 13 years living in London in central London and then have moved to Los Angeles and it's now as you said almost six years of learning about this city and the thing that strikes me is that it's a very very challenging landscape to be able to promote and provide a successful transit network because this is a unique urban morphology you know this the the polycentric nature of Los Angeles and the patchwork quilt of various city agencies that exist means that there is no simple silver bowl.
it to solving transit. I think that there's been conversations around punitive solutions such as introducing congestion charges and the like on particular roadways to discourage the use of private vehicles as a means of mobility. But I don't see any of those methods being successful until you've got a viable effective alternative. What we need to do is to manage the threshold of discomfort, the threshold of inconvenience, and at the moment the maturity of the transit network and the coverage of square footage of the transit network map is somewhat short of being able to provide the level of service that you need for it not to be inconvenient to use public transportation. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that for some very specific journeys it might make a lot of sense but so often the movements that you need to make it's not just solving the last mile, it's solving the last three, four or five miles and until we get a greater level of coverage throughout the system then I don't think you can demand that people give up their vehicles and I think that there'll be a tipping point with the maturity of the transportation network with the expansion of Metro's lines where that threshold of inconvenience starts to rebalance and you know you'll have the thought that actually crawling on the 10 is sold destroying time in my life. It doesn't even even having excellent podcasts like building LA to listen to will not overcome the sold destroying experience of only creeping forward at one footing cramits on the 10 and you'll choose the experience of being able to move through on the Expo line with less obstruction as a preferred solution. So I think that's where we need to work to and I think we also need to acknowledge that there is no world in which these it's not a zero-sum game. There's no world in which we move entirely to a transit dependent system and we don't still celebrate the use of single occupancy vehicles. There's a great freedom and liberty that exists there and I think we should acknowledge that it's not something that should be derided and people should be chastised for enjoying. I think these things can be complimentary and you know you need the offer and the opportunity to make a make a choice and the choice needs to be a good one. I totally agree with that. I think the car is at the centre of the design of LA. When you look at LA's personality as a city the car is fundamental to that and I think there's always going to be an appeal to getting in your car in LA and I think culturally as well. There's always going to be an appeal to that but it's in tend to agree with you. I don't think that punitive actions are going to work like they actually have work relatively successfully. In my opinion in London, London has an amazing public transport network and so it's very easy to jump on a train and in fact most of the time that's a better option to get in the car. So I want to I want to change tack here and talk a little bit about about you and your career. We've touched on a little bit about Grimshaw's I think ambition and the projects that Grimshaw has on the west coast. I am curious about why you moved out here in the beginning there and sort of what the initial ambition of opening up. I believe you did open up the office here but what the initial ambition was at that time. Sure. From a business standpoint we had found project opportunities where we had one competitions or we'd been invited to really significant commissions that had prompted the business or actually had a pre-requirement to have a presence locally for multiple years and that sort of enabled the practice to grow its global network but it wasn't necessarily through strategic consideration. It wasn't that we sat down and said right in the next five years we really need to have a permanent studio in Melbourne because of X, Y and Z reason it was really opportunity and project led and the business had evolved to a point in the early 2010s where we had become made the transition to a global network of studios and we turned our attention towards more strategic investment in an expansion of that network and looking at the map it was fairly obvious that the glaring omission in terms of time zones and representation was on the west coast of the US and we started discussing the prospect of our first venture into a deliberate strategic positioning of a new studio and had a lot of internal conversations about where that location would be best based and I think there was a lot of conversation around both San Francisco and Los Angeles and ultimately there was a lot of enthusiasm and interest in L.A because of the unique urban condition because of some of the challenges because of the prospect of although it may be long term and incremental really significant transformation over the course of the next few decades in terms of densification and transportation and the way in which the city can be experienced and it was really exciting so that was the kind of fledgling conversation around laying down more permanent routes here and I think the practice was also quite good at acknowledging that we tend to benefit from importing and exporting knowledge into new regions and I think that there was an acknowledgement amongst the partnership that there's plenty that we can learn from Southern California and from California in general and there's a great opportunity to help evolve and inform our practice globally by having these experiences locally so as I said I was in London at the time and I was a principal with the practice and in our designation that means that means not an owner of the practice just the the pile highest level of seniority in terms of studio leadership and the partners approach me and asked whether I'd be interested in leaving my station in London and relocating to Los Angeles to start a new studio and Sam I was a terrible terrible negotiator I was so excited by the opportunity I said yes without even considering what the terms might be and maybe even a guilty admission to make here on the podcast just because it's the two of us and no one else will hear this. No one will listen and hear this I'd actually agreed to move myself and my family and start this new studio in Los Angeles before I'd ever actually been to the city so after making that agreement a couple of weeks later I found myself landing in LA wondering exactly how I was going to make sense of it all. Wow you're a managing partner now at Grimshaw I believe there are seven managing partners at Grimshaw is that correct? Sounds right I haven't done the math but that sounds right. I'm curious and I don't know if you have a typical week but let's just say you did have a typical week how much of that is spent on a project level versus company level doing the tasks that are associated with being a managing partner and the responsibility that you have in winning work managing the business. How do you split that up? Yeah it's a constant challenge you know I think probably from meeting me in our interactions you've probably gleaned that you know my happy place is actually on projects I love working on projects and even to be even more explicit the opportunity to pick up the pen be it on the iPad or on tracing paper which I still you know shameedly still tend to use quite a lot rather than be reliant on sort of the digital sketching which I do enjoy as well but you know I that's where I go to get the adrenaline kick and the rush and that's what I love so I do my best to fight as hard as I can to protect those engagements in that time on projects and do my best to carve out designated periods of time where I can focus on that there are weeks where I fail miserably and you know it tends to be a little bit cyclical because we do have obligations in terms of studio management around our end of financial year reporting and our formulation of the subsequent financial year budget a lot of business administration type of activities that are time consuming and also a lot of you know people based activities that are really important to me and to the practice as well we have a period over the summer where we undertake appraisals and and reviews and mentorship programs that are invaluable but require the investment of a lot of time and then as you pointed out the cohort of managing partners at Grimshaw plus a couple of key other senior leadership individuals group.
managing partner, our chairman, our deputy chairman, need to get together and re-empowered by the rest of the global partnership to make operational decisions about our global practice. And that can be anything from business case assessment for promotions or ascension to ownership, as well as our distribution of budgets and investment in projects or even strategic directions around our vision, our principles or our future growth or business plans. So that is time consuming. I tend to do a pretty good job of buttoning a lot of that stuff up in about half a day. And then the general studio management stuff, I think, is somewhere around a day to a day and a half, which gives me maybe three and a half days. And then all of the time that I should be at home with family or doing things on the weekend where I can be dedicated towards projects, which I love to do. That's great. I want to go back a little bit to your, let's say you just graduated university, you're a young architect. What were you inspired by back then? And what did you want to try and achieve in architecture? My origins in architecture in Melbourne were incredible and I love them, but they were in a slightly different sphere of design. I studied at the University of Melbourne and had to fairly in occupies first part of my degree. And I think what the a really significant moment for me was at the completion of that undergraduate course of planning and design, there's a requirement to gain some workplace experience before coming back and completing the architectural degree. And I was fortunate enough to be recommended to an architect called John Wardle. And I'm not sure if you're familiar with his work. And he's a greatly celebrated Australian architect with with officers in Melbourne and Sydney. And I think has got a growing international portfolio as well. And I went there as an incredibly naive student. And I believe at the time he had seven people, and we were off church street down there in Richmond. And the practice had been going, I think, for maybe 11 years or so, but it been fairly modest in terms of the scale of its commissions and the size of the studio. And seeing John work and understanding his level of craft commitment and passion to the resolution of design thinking and his poise and elegance in the detailing of buildings was really quite inspiring. And I had an incredible experience. And it helped that because his practice was on the precipice of exploding and being recognized and winning all of the awards and winning all of the competitions and doing all of the projects, it attracted some incredibly talented young architects. And as the kids still in school, I benefited from working with this crew, and Andy Wong and Andrea Vichescavalli and Megan Dwyer. And all of these people were just like, it was an incredible moment to be a part of. So I really enjoyed that. I thought of a reason had always had a bit of an analytical and practical bent that complemented the more creative side. So I decided to go back to university and actually do a double degree that was both in architecture, but also in property and construction. So that I wanted to understand the mechanisms of financing and delivering architecture is still something that I'm kind of quite connected to. So I let into that space and the project work that I did in Australia was some larger multi-residential projects, some residential towers, but a lot of them were single family homes, beautifully crafted homes, some of the earliest stuff at John's practice. And one more note if I could add is I was offered this incredible experience by John after working there for about 10 months or so. I was thinking that I needed a little bit of a break and a refresh before launching back into university. And I was about to take two months off and go and be an Aussie beach bum and sit around and go surfing every day. And John is incredibly persuasive and mounts very coach and arguments. And John suggested that instead of doing that, what I should do is go and be a laborer on his house that he had just started building in cute. And I would slave away and work on site and clean up the the building mess that was left behind the contractors. And what hope did I have? I of course acquiesced and said yes. And it was a great experience and one that has really kept my flame for architecture and design alive even to this day because I learnt so much. It was brilliant visceral working with my hands understanding how to lay flooring. And then at the end of the day, all of the builders would go home at 5pm and the heat would start coming out of the day. And I'd hang back a little bit and John would come over from the studio. And I'd talk to him about what happened that day. And he'd look at different areas of the building that were maybe not quite fully resolved. And we'd sit there and we'd talk and we'd sketch on the walls about how to detail certain junctions. We'd make changes to the timber cladding on the outside of the house and how it might interface with the steel work that's carrying the glazing. And it was in hindsight an incredible experience. And I loved it. It's interesting in having going through these conversations with people, there's often one person out around that stage that had a quite a large impact and asked the kind of young architect to do something a little bit out of the normal path. That was the thing that then inspired them and kind of led them on the path to architecture. So it's interesting. It also reminds me of a lot of friends of mine have gone through the Rural Studio Program at Orban where it's a very hands-on process. That I think tends to produce great architects that then work. Particularly a lot of the top firms in Seattle and the Northwest that are sort of really detailed focused. I'm going to ask you two final questions. So the first one is, and you kind of answered this a little bit, but I'm going to ask it directly, what inspires you to continue working in LA? There is so much great work that needs to be done Sam. I love LA. I've really embraced it. I've not for a single beat, regretted the move here. I'm completely all in and willing to make a commitment to be here indefinitely for the rest of my life. It's been a great experience. It's unexpected. I didn't have strong preconceptions. I think that the drive for me is it's a hot mess. LA is broken and it's a hot mess. It's this kind of, like I mentioned before, this somewhat disconnected tapestry of neighborhoods and disparate villages. There's a chronic underinvestment in the public realm of amenity. There's areas of LA that have been underserved in terms of shade-scape and green space and public parks and transportation is an issue, but there's so much potential and there's so much energy and there's so much life. Part of me also loves the fact that it's not easy. It's difficult. There's a sequel. There's two-year entitlements. There's adverse economic conditions to try and realize buildings in. There's challenges around sophistication of supply chain and pre-fabrication and DFMA and lack of integrated delivery. There's all of these challenges and I like that it's not easy. I like that there's a challenge and I like that it's not finished and I think I'm going to work as hard as I can to make as much as a positive impact as I possibly can and know that it's barely going to scratch the surface but that's okay. I love that answer. It's why I think I really like LA as well. When you come here, there's still so much work to be done. It's still a such a young city that grew very quickly over a few decades to the middle of the century and now it's almost like a grew too fast and now we're having to come back and figure out how do we actually make this like a functional city now. Final question. What are your three favorite buildings or places in LA? This is the perfect anxiety inducing question for any architect because the fear of being judged by your peers by getting this answer wrong is real. The fear is real. Let me
Let me address it this way. I'm actually going to lean into sentimentality and make my answers very personal. I think my engagement with LA all the way up until the point that I visited here for the first time after committing to relocate my life here had always been through a filter and a filter of film. And I'm going to say that my first favorite would be the Bradbury building because of how iconic that interior is. Blade Runner is, you know, again, leaning into the cliche like most other architects. Blade Runner is one of my favorite films and if an interior set could win an Oscar, I think the Bradbury building should be our first and only nomination. So that's number one. Number two, I'm going to say Dodger Stadium. Big part of moving here was the assimilation into American culture and I'd never really been surrounded by it. I mean, I married one in the UK, but an American in London is not an American in LA. And it was something that, you know, I was really conscious of was embracing the culture here and learning what I could and I had never watched baseball, knew nothing about it. One of the earliest things that I did was join a local recreation softball team and met a bunch of friends, a bunch of buddies and went to a bunch of Dodger games and learnt this incredible American pastime and became obsessive about it and fixated on it. And it gave me a sense of community and belonging that I don't think would have been present otherwise. And it really helped create a generous and soft landing. And, you know, I'll hold those friendships dearly for the rest of my life. And there have been big part of why I've had such a love affair with the relocation over here. Dodger Stadium, what a place. My third really leaning into personal obscurity here is going to be one of the under celebrated Richard Neutra buildings, which is the Eagle Rock Recreation Centre. So we live in Eagle Rock and we relocated from London directly to Eagle Rock. And we've been here the entire time. It was recommended to us by a colleague of my wife. And we were told it would be a great little community to raise children in. And we landed here not knowing a thing really more than that. And the recreation centre there has been like a consistent part of our lives. And we spent a bit of time there. In fact, the summer concert series on Sunday evenings has been a highlight over the last few weeks. We saw a Beatles impersonation there the other week and an Abber one two weeks ago, which was phenomenal, I would say, is my official appraisal of the quality of that concert. And it's a really, I think, underappreciated building because it's clever. You know, a lot of the, you obviously more celebrated for his residential architecture and a lot of the ideas and thinking around the configuration and the adaptability of building envelope are present within this rec centre. So big sliding and movable panels that can be reconfigured. And it's kind of ideal for that multi use functionally required for a community rec centre like that. And boy does it need some TLC. I don't think they've touched it since it was built in the early 50s, but it's, you know, it's a sentimental fave. Perfect. I will, I'll make sure to check that out next time I'm in Eagle Rock. Andrew, thank you so much for joining the show. You've been great to talk with and I hope to talk to you again soon. Thanks Sam. Loved it. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you did, please consider subscribing to Building LA on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or whatever your favourite podcast platform is. As a bonus, if you have a couple of minutes, please consider reading the podcast and writing us a brief review. We'd really appreciate it. And of course, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me at
[email protected]. Hope you tune in again soon. [BLANK_AUDIO]
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