The Renderings We Made Along the Way (feat. Dan Grothe)

(upbeat music) Tell us a little bit about what you saw and being able to relay that message to Korra when you watch Kimberl pitch and kind of help out so he wasn't tipping his pitches. - So tipping pitches, we hear about it all the time. - People at home understand what tipping pitches all about. - It's amazing. - Yeah, that's remarkable. (upbeat music) - Alex, a few years ago, well I think two off seasons ago. You and I sat down and we did a brainstorm. We sat down and we said, what are some episodes that we've always wanted to do? Where are some creative ways that we could talk about this game that we love? What came out of that, the fictional betting pod, which then became true like two weeks after it happened? - Yeah. - What else came out of that? - Do you remember? - I'm actually curious now. I don't remember what was in the brainstorm. - Some of our, I think greatest ideas. I believe Aeroads rules to life. - So true. - I came out of that brainstorm as well. It's quite possible that the banger of next week's episode or this week's episode of You're a Patron might have been born out of that brainstorm idea as well. So we're seeing, frankly, the fruits of our labor coming to bear, I guess two years later. - And those fruits this week are the renderings pod. You know 'em, you love 'em, stadium renderings. What are they? Where do they come from? Why do they just appear on the internet? Why do they appear on the X, the everything accounts of the teams who are building stadiums years from now? What purpose do they serve? - That was, you're getting a little Tucker Carlson on me. - Just asking questions like renderings. What are they? (laughing) As you know, I'm more-- - Should you be afraid of them? - I'm more of a Jordan Peterson guy myself, so it's more like renderings. Why are they keep coming into my life? I didn't ask for these renderings. What do they signify about our modern culture and masculinity? - I don't think I can cry on command, but if I could, I would've done it for that. The renderings pod, we were lucky enough to be joined by a friend and longtime listener of the show, Dan Groathy, who we estimate the end of the pot if he has anything to plug. No, not really, 'cause he's not really a media member. I think this might have been his first podcast appearance, but he crushed it. - Knocked it out of the park. - Crushed it. I had a lot of questions that we needed to get to the bottom of and there's silly questions. Silly questions that you shouldn't ask anyone who's profession it is for any of this stuff, but Dan was nice enough to join us for about an hour and talk about these things. So if you've ever been curious about what where these renderings come from, like we are, this is the podcast episode for you. Before that podcast episode starts, like to talk about next week's episode, which I teased last week on the podcast. Really, it's getting really hard to keep these timelines straight because I'm-- (laughs) One week into my Japan trip by the time people are listening to this, but we're gonna try, okay. Next week's episode is a big one. We convened our friends, Michael Bauman and Matthew Robertson. We convened them in the blank check studios in Brooklyn, New York, not sure if you heard of it. And why did we do that, Alex? We did it to draft the stadium sponsors based on which companies we would most like to work for, AKA least hate to work for. We recorded for two and a half hours, I think. We yelled at each other a lot. There were some wrinkles. One of my favorite pods we've done in years. It reminds me a little bit of the deranged energy that we brought to the Jersey patch rankings. Talking about baseball, talking about the corporate synergies of these teams and their sponsors, but not really actually talking about baseball all that much. Yeah, oh, they both brought the heat. I think they executed exactly as we asked them to. So I'm very excited for everyone to hear just how weird it got. And that's why I thought of these two gentlemen for this podcast because I knew they would bring their own particular flavors of preparation that would be very different from each other. Like for example, Bauman showing up with the printout of my outline and Matthew Robertson having all they looked over my outline like once or twice. Yeah. It's a very special episode. Why am I previewing it so hard on this week's episode? Well, because if you're a patron member, not only are you going to get access to the full five rounds of the draft, whereas on the public feed next week you're gonna get three rounds of that draft. But you can hear it right now. It's available right now, one week or right now. I'm not sure. So two tipping pitches episodes at the same damn time. That's maybe too many tipping pitches episodes. But some of you will probably listen to them in the same day. What do we take away from this, Alex? What are the bullet points? What of what? Our schedule? Yeah, exactly. No one's serious. What even is what? Synthesize what I just said to people. What have we got cooking today? We got a rendering spot. Yep. Long awaited rendering spot. I'm so, so stoked for this. If you are a patron right now, you get access to all five rounds of the stadium sponsorship draft featuring Michael Bowman and Matthew Robertson. You don't have to wait until next day. You don't have to wait. And you don't have to get the short version. Exactly. Everyone else is getting three rounds. Next Monday, you can get all five today. You're such a great salesman. You really Mr. Calling is like the guy who, like the Shamwile guy or whatever. Right, oh God. That could have been you. Or the, what's the one they call where they like slap the tape on like a leak? What's that one called? Leaky tape. You know the Shamwile guy is running for office right now? I heard that. Yeah, I did. I did see that. Oh, you were, you were doorknocking for him. Well, probably with really cool policy positions, right? Yes. Yeah, I don't know. He's cool. You guys should look into him. He's doing good, good stuff. It's sweet. I'm going to throw one more thing on at our listeners. Oh my God. Not only can you listen to the stadium sponsor and employment draft really worthy title for that episode. But it's okay. Not only can you listen to that one week in advance. If you're not currently a patron and you do want to listen to that right now as well as all of our back catalogs such as several Wikipedia episodes, several three up three downs, dumbest things extended, the political alignment chart episode with video. You can use promo code sponsors. Type that in promo code sponsors to get 50% off your first month of the Tipping Pitches podcast Patreon. I think that's it. This is like a real, we're really in salesman mode. But a long way of just saying, we've been working really hard on putting episodes out while I'm away in Japan on vacation, watching World Baseball Classic games, creating lifelong memories. So that y'all would have some fun, cool episodes, solicit to that we made with our friends about topics that only the Tipping Pitch community really cares about. You can tell when we actually start putting work into the episodes because we start pitching them really hard. We're like, no, you guys really trust, I know you're kind of on the edge a little bit. But wait, three weeks from now, we've really locked in. OK, we're going to go to our conversation with Dan about stadium renderings. But before we do, I am Bobby Wack. I am Alex Basley. And you are listening to Tipping Pitches. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] All right, it's time to get to the bottom of renderings. I'm not really sure what that means, but we're going to find out what that means today on the Tipping Pitches podcast. We are joined by friend of the show, Tipping Pitches Kansas City Meetup alumni, Dan Gerthy. Dan, welcome to the pod. Thank you for being here. Oh, absolutely. I love what I do and I love talking about what I do. Well, maybe that's a good place to start. What do you do? Why are you the person that we're talking to for renderings? So I am an architect. I am a licensed architect and a member of the American Institute of Architects and have been now for a little over a quarter of a century. I have worked in every job you could possibly do in the profession. I have made a number of renderings in my life. I even managed to dig out a couple of renderings I did. Like 25 years ago, I can share with you. Oh, my gosh. There we go. And of course, the live stream viewers on Demio will be very excited to see that. [LAUGHS] I was doing this in front of a live studio audience for Demio Plus. Yeah, I was kind of surprised when we-- you know. I'd been up in a place in Midtown and we're in a warehouse. The old sign held studio. I thought they would have repurposed it by now, but I guess they've been sitting vacant all this time. - Alex really wanted to do it at the SNL studios, but we couldn't get Lauren to sign off on it. So here we are. - I'm losing my sway with him these days. - So yeah, as I said, I've been an architect for many years. I have worked in every job. I have done renderings. My job now, I'm a project manager. So more on the client management, at project execution side, but still working very closely with designers. I have worked on every scale imaginable of projects. I've worked on a lot of different types of projects. And actually one of the really interesting things around this topic is just how wide the range of what architectural rendering, architectural visualization can be. - Yes, within the sports realm, there's definitely a style that they've all fallen into in the last 10 years. And we can get into why that is. But yeah, this is a, you know, although I'm not day to day doing renderings and visualizations anymore, it's something I've done a lot in my career and something I'm still involved in, at least indirectly the creation of every day in my job. - So I think it may be helpful to sort of take things back to square one. - Please. - And ask, maybe what is maybe an obvious question of like what is a rendering? And maybe what like function. - dictionary.com. Define things. - I'm very angry. (laughing) - No, but I'm curious to like learn a little bit about the function of them because I gather that the renderings that the public sees around, say, baseball stadiums is probably a very specific type of product. I think maybe there's an element of that is marketing for both the public, for both local governments. But when you think about renderings, like what are there different styles that are people gravitate towards to? - Absolutely. So, well, maybe kind of back it up all the way to beginning, like what is a rendering and why do we use it? So, you'll hear a lot of different terms. Use rendering, visualization, less common more of an archaic term, but delineation, architectural delineation. And if I do lapse into just like every industry has its jargon, if I do lapse into archa battle by all means, stop me and ask me to define any words that I use. There's a lot of different terms for it, but really what it is about. So, there's two components to it. One is the set of, you know, what you think of as blueprints, what we would call construction documents, is the set of instructions that we give to the contractor in order to build the building. And those are very technical and very specific. They have a lot of information around everything from, you know, how big is it? What is it made out of? Where does it sit in relationship to other elements? And that is not something that the average layperson can look at and get a clear understanding of what it is. Because there's a lot of graphic conventions that are a part of that that are really more for communicating with the construction industry. So, the rendering is a way of taking those, that information, creating a visual piece of information that the average person can look at and say, oh, I understand this. I get where windows are, I get what this building is gonna look like, I get what it's made up. Because so if we back up the blueprint itself, based on what I'm picturing when I picture a blueprint, which is almost certainly just like stuff I've seen in movies. But it's basically like x-ray. You're seeing through the whole building. So you don't know where there is a wall that you can't see through, where there's a window, where this is a structural beam versus something that you will actually see exposed when you walk through the building. Correct, yes. And an architect or an engineer or a contractor can look at that drawing. And again, because of the sort of shared graphic language that we use, you can get a strong picture of what that is. And one of the things that they tell us in architecture school that you don't really believe until you start meeting with clients, average people can't read plans. They can't read, they can't look at a plan and understand what's happening. So that's another purpose of the rendering is during the design process. This is how we are ultimately communicating with the client. Because if we show them a floor plan, an eighth inch floor plan, sorry, is that eighth inch, that means one eighth inch equals one foot. That's kind of the standard. Because we still work in freedom units in American architecture. The, that's kind of the standard communication device for a plan is eighth inch equals one foot plan. Exactly all the things that Bobby just said, like where is structure, where are mechanical shafts, things like that, that's not gonna be obvious to somebody looking at it. But if you show them a rendering, like, oh, this is what you're gonna see sitting in your kitchen. This is what your kitchen's gonna look like. This is what you're, you're gonna see when you sit in your living room and look at your fireplace. This is what you're gonna see when you're in the dining room of this corporate campus dining hall. That's something that they can start to wrap their head around and understand. Like, oh, okay, I see you've got people in there and you've got 40 people sitting in this dining room and I see where the ceiling is and I see the kind of lights that are in there. So it's really a communication tool. It sounds like then that the blueprint or the construction plans as you might call them comes well before the rendering. So the renderings are almost to sort of get the public up to speed or does it depend? It's very much they come up together. Okay. So when, and when we have like construct, we have like building, we have like a building plan and then we have like a building plan for dummies. You can't, you can't actually read that. So I'll break down. This is sort of the standard accepted process. I can want to do like the whole process of designing a building in under two minutes. Let's do it. Let's do it. So we're starting now. So there are four phases that lead up to construction. There's pre-design where you're basically figuring out what do you need? How many rooms do you need? How many of those rooms? What's happening? You should those rooms. Sometimes it's also called programming. Then that tells you how big the building is going to be. So then you go into what's called schematic design. And that is very rough. That's, you're starting with a blank sheet of bumwad and a big fat marker and you are starting to draw things on the page and you are figuring out, what's the form? How is this going to flow? And during that schematic design process, you'll start to create from very loose sketches. In fact, there are still a lot of architectural hand draw. All their renderings, or the even really called renderings at that point, they're just sketches that they're using to communicate to the client. Sometimes in perspective, sometimes in elevations like a flat-on view. And that's really getting down the core. Where is everything? How big is it? How tall is it? What shape is the building? What's the building made of? And then you take it into design development. And that's where you're refining everything. That's where you're saying, OK, the sink needs to be this far from the stove or in a hospital, the patient room. These are all the med gases that need to be on the head wall of that patient room. And here's where they need to go. And here's how the nurse is going to use them. And you'll actually walk through user experience and literally, where does every outlet and late switch in the building go during design development. And then you move into construction documents. And that is where you are creating that set of instructions for the contractor. So you will do details that show this is where the window goes. And this is how you flash the window. And this is how you terminate the top of the roof, things like that. And then that's-- then the construction documents are what gets signed and stamped by the architect and sent to the contractor for bid and to the city for permitting. So then at each stage, each of those stages, the renderings are going to be serving a different purpose and are going to be of a different quality. So during schematic design, they're going to be much looser because you just don't know as much. You might have a general sense of how big the build-- you're going to have a general sense coming out of pre-design, how big the building is going to be. And you're going to have a general sense of where windows are and what materials are. But those things are also going to change during schematic design. Because everything from reality to budget is going to get in the way. I was like, oh, I really want this big expansive windows right here. Oh, but we've got cross-bracing along that whole wall. So actually, we can only have small windows here. So then that drawing that you had with a beautiful expansive glass is now maybe like five-punched windows. Or you may get to the end of schematic design and the contractor prices that beautiful expansive glass. And the client says, yeah, I'm not paying for that. So then it changes to five-punched windows during design development to get the project back on budget. So I have a lot of questions about that specific thing-- the gap between the rendering and reality for lack of a better phrase. But before we jump ahead to that, I want it for a project of the size of a baseball stadium, which is like a huge municipal hundreds of millions of dollars are going into this. Multiple billions of dollars are going into this. Even hundreds of millions going into renovations for a lot of these stadiums. The multiple sources of who's paying for it, some of it is private, the famed PPP public, public private partnership that we always talk about here. How would you go, like, how would a team or a city government sit, for example, even if it's not a baseball stadium, go about like finding the architectural firm, firm who is going to do this? Are they going to like field pitches from multiple places? Is this the kind of thing Dan, like a lot of industries now where there's basically like three companies left that did even take on a project of this size? What does the industry look like that facilitates these sorts of projects for these billion dollar businesses? That's a great question. They are, so I'll maybe start with the kind of the landscape of sports architecture firms. Weirdly, there are more sports architecture firms now than there would have been 25 years ago. And a big reason for that. There was 25 years ago, there was basically one. And as a firm in Kansas City called Pockeless. And what has happened over the last 25 years is the number of firms H-N-T-B, another one of the Alphabet Suit. Every firm is an alphabet suit. They have spun off other firms from Pockeless as people have decided that I'm going to go off and start my own thing. Or I'm going to go to another firm and I'm going to start a sports group there. So strangely, that's one of the areas where although we could do a whole sidebar on private equity and architecture right now and what an absolute shit show that is, I can swear on this, right? Is that not true? I guess that would be really great. I was unsure if you were trying to keep your PG-13 rating on Apple podcast or not. Do we have a PG-13 rating on Apple? I don't know. I think we're explicit. I don't have to be explicit. You have the exact same. Okay. Yeah. I market explicit in our hosting platform, but there's, I don't really know what happened after that on each of the individual podcasting platforms. I don't want you to get demonetized and have to go and get real jobs. Well, unless our beloved listener's stop paying on Patreon, we're not going to get demonetized, but one of the other platforms. Absolutely. Absolutely. So anyway, the, there are, and so what would happen in the case of any large stadium project is now that said, there are very small number of firms that are qualified or have the res--the experience to do this scale of work. Again, those are all basically the spin-offs from populace or the people who left populace to start their own thing. And populace itself is a spin-off from a firm in Kansas City called H.O.K. and then they broke off to create populace as their own venture and then now since then they've spun off. By the way, I had a former coworker who left Minneapolis where I live and work now. He went, he got his dream job working in populace. And this guy, I like the guy, but he is exactly what you think of as the ultra-browy, frat guy, hockey player from the Minneapolis suburbs. I was on an old man hockey team with him and this guy would be trying to start fights with people and it's like, dude, we're all like, you know, a countenance that have to work tomorrow. What are you trying to accomplish with this? I can't go under the broken tooth. But he went to, he got a job at populace and we have family in Kansas City. So I was down there and grabbed lunch with him and he's like, yeah, this place might be a little too broy even for me. Like, Jesus. So what do you attribute the spin-off into populace like a sports architecture firm and then the multiple spin-offs since then? Is it just that there's more supply now? Is this like a booming industry because teams are building more and there's more demand for it? I think that's probably a piece of it because not only nationally, but internationally with FIFA stadiums and you know, everything else, NASCAR rinks and everything else that's getting built around the world. F1, F1, tracks. Olympic venues. Olympic venues. Although now they're letting them reuse because it turned out only three or three tiny countries would spend the money to have both the Olympics otherwise. But I think a lot of it too is within architecture, you will get to a place in your career where you're like, okay, I'm not getting the where many people find they aren't getting the leadership opportunities that they want. They aren't getting the growth opportunities they want. Or there's just a whole tranche of people above them that aren't retiring. So they think, okay, if I want to continue to grow, then I need to go somewhere else to do that. But I love doing sports architecture. So I either start my own thing or I bring my skills to another firm who wants to start a sports architecture division and I help grow their sports architecture division. So I think it's just the natural flow of architecture. And of course, Gen X, we've been forever trapped in the cycle of the boomers won't retire and the millennials want our jobs. So a lot of people are then moving around to find those opportunities they aren't getting within their current location. So then back to the question, how does this happen? So what's going to happen is they're going to put out what's called an RFP or request for proposal. And those will be for something like this, it will be targeted. It's not there are RFPs that will just go up on like the state of Minnesota will post call for architectural proposals for different things. And you know, be a cattle call that everybody can respond to. But this is going to be a targeted in place. So you're going to pick the three or four people and then like in the case of the A Stadium, HNTV who is a well known well respected sports architecture firm led by former populace leadership, they are partnered with Björk Engels who is in Denmark. He's one of the hot starkatex in the industry of the last 10, 15 years. And so they partnered with a big D design firm, kind of a big famous architecture firm to do the design concept. And what will happen is a big office, a big Björk Engels group, so they go by big. They will do kind of that schematic design phase and do that concept work. And then that will get handed off to HNTV who will do the actual drawing of it. And then there's probably in the Vegas area, a local architect who's also involved in help of permitting construction, construction administration, on site, things like that. So they'll get multiple proposals and then they'll do, they're going to do a pitch. And I guarantee having not been involved in pitches for stadiums, but having been involved in pitches for, you know, similarly high profile projects like museums and college campus projects. I'm guessing at a sports stadium, I would be shocked if a firm spent less than $200,000 to put together that proposal. Just in time, labor materials, they're going to build a physical model. Physical model is another style of architectural rendering, kind of a different thing, but it kind of lives in the same world. They're going to do dozens of renderings. They're going to bring their like three or four best interviewers, best pitch people to come in and interview and present to the, present to the teams and whoever else is involved whether it's local jurisdictions, MLB, whatever else, they're all going to be part of that conversation. And then so they'll get anywhere from three to five pitches and then from there the teams will either go to a second round, maybe window it down to two or three or one of, you know, maybe two or two to three of those three to five and then make their final selection from that. We alluded earlier to sort of the disparity, I think, between some of the initial renderings that we see. And then the final product, I imagine there's a few reasons for that. Oftentimes we're seeing the initial, you know, run through probably the best looking version that they're using to sway city planners. But necessarily I think the process, the engineering process sort of whittles down what's capable. I, and then oftentimes you're seeing planners sort of assuming the economic development that they are promising, right, already sort of being baked into to the surrounding environment. But I'm sort of curious when these renderings are being conceived, what is the line between something that is like aspirational, but honest versus I guess intentionally misleading about the final product. So like how do maybe not intentionally misleading, but, but, you know, I imagine there's a line there. So I came up with an analogy for a medium that Bobby is very familiar with. And I know Alex, you have a passing familiarity with the concept of film. He's just, he's, he's walking right up to the line of watching his first film. He's not there yet, but he's gonna watch us so read. - I'm so happy. - We're really happy for him. - Gonna be a big day. If you think about the work that the person doing an architectural rendering is doing, it's very similar to what a cinematographer is doing on a movie. I have Bender those same places that were, that I'm blanking on his name right now. I know his first name is Linus, but the cinematographer from La La Land. - I'm gonna say good. - Yeah, yes. I have Bender those places. La does not look like that. - Right. - So what an architectural renderer is doing is they're gonna want to feature it in the best light possible and that they're gonna just like a cinematographer is gonna use lighting, focal depth, cam, different camera lenses. They're all digital now, but a renderer has access to all of those same tools. And they're gonna take that same approach. And in previous generations, when I first started in the industry, so I finished college in 2000. I'm started my first internship in '96. And when I first started, we had two people in our office who full time were hand-to-week hand renderers. That's all they did. It was just renderings, but all by hand, just colored pencils, watercolor, whatever else. Beautiful artists, incredible artists. And obviously those aren't looking exactly like what the final buildings look like and nobody's expecting it to, because it's an artistic medium, two-dimensional artistic medium going into a physical space. So now, when we call it intentionally misleading, yes, but intentionally misleading to make a point. It's not about selling a lie exactly. It's more about selling an idealized version of something. And I prepared some visual aids as well. - Oh, here we go. - Let's go. - Let's see. So this is gonna be great radio, but. So like this is the, this is the rangers, this is a rendering of the rangers wallpark that opened in 2020, 2019. - Yeah. - Globe life field. - Yes. - And we love it on the internet for being known as Globe Death Fields to those of us who don't really like how it looks. - It's not the most exciting stadium can I do? Let's see. So like this was, and I'll be the first to admit, this is not a very good rendering. It's very flat. They're not taking advantage of the many tricks offered the cinematographer to create light and shadow and life and depth through their rendering. But if you go to the interior shot, they're remarkably similar as built versus rendering. But again, it's not a very inspiring rendering. I'll pick one that's kind of near and dear to my heart, target field. By the way, I work across the streak from target field in the same building that the twins offices are in. And the day that Falvi got fired at co-worker and I were like, "Should we go waitin' a lobby and see if we can catch him on the floor?" - That was a good one. - Right, look for the guy carrying the cardboard box in your long hair. - Seriously. You could have got us breaking news, like a little quote from him on the way out. - Right. - Exclusive on the Tiffing Pitches podcast. - One of my friend, I rode down the elevator once with a Rob Manfred. And I was like, "Okay, I need to get questions from Bobby and Alex just a case that ever happens again." So, you know, so target field is interesting, right? Because this is, I almost guarantee you that this is a digital watercolor. In fact, I probably know the person who did this. He's a very talented artist named Les Chalinsky. And he does a style that is, it looks like watercolor, but it's all done in Photoshop. So it's all like, it's hand painting, but digitally, it's really amazing work. So, you know, these are, I think if you look at these, you know, it's very similar, because it's very similar vibe between the rendering, which again, it's a lot easier to cheat with a hand rendering, right? Then with the digital rendering and then like target field. So there's, you know, again, very similar. Obviously, there's gonna be more, you know, all the ads and the skyline is never quite as perfect as it is. And oh, yeah, they took out the little cops of pine trees because the batter said they were distracted by the blowing pine needles. Let's see, and then I'll just do one more. Because this is a contemporary rendering. So this is a sofa and LA. And this is, you know, what you would call the glowy silver rendering, you know, 100%. And again, you know, LA, the LA river has never looked like this. It's never been that full of water. No, not in the last, you know, five centuries anyway. And of course, they aren't highlighting, you know, this is a good example now. You know, they aren't highlighting the absolute sea of parking that exists around the site in real life. Yeah, I mean, this is basically a parking lot with a building in the middle of it. And, you know, here they're absolutely downplaying that both with the choice of view and the choice of lighting with everything being highlighted around the stadium. Now that said, you know, yes, this is absolutely like this effect. It's never gonna look like that from the air. That's just not how materials and reflectivity work. But you're gonna get that that see through roof impact on the inside. And I was actually surprised when I looked at, so I've not been to this. Have you been to the stadium? No, I have not. I haven't had either. But when you look at like the exteriors, and what's the rendering? They actually got pretty close between the rendering on the right. And again, your perspective right is up high. So it's always gonna be a little more dramatic. I actually had one client who told us to stop bringing perspectives from up there with the renderings because she said that's not how she's not wrong. That's not how anybody's going to see this building except for birds. Yeah, or drones. Yeah, increasingly more and more drones around the stadiums. So you know, you got this landscape out front. This big open open stadium, the view or the kind of open wall, the view into the glazed roof up above. Yeah, this is, you know, obviously this is different. And I doubt flocks of balloons are being released on the regular here. It's kind of wild. You go back and look at renderings from the 60s and 70s. For some reason, people would always draw hot air balloons in them. It's so weird. I don't know if we thought ballooning was gonna become a core mode of transit in the 60s or maybe they just thought it looked really cool. It's just a nice little aesthetic. Yeah, exactly. And that's what a lot of it is. Right? Like, oh, I have a visual dead spot here. You know, so I'm looking at this really now. I'm looking at this with like an art director eye. Like, okay, I need something to terminate the left side of this image because otherwise it's just this arc dying into the end. Oh, well, but we don't want to draw a focus away. So let's just put some balloons in. Yeah. This was incredible. Thank you for the visual presentation piece. If you're listening to this on audio army, we'll post just that little, the video presentation piece for your reference on Patreon too, as long as that's cool with you. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I wanted to, so some of the renderings that you just brought up there are not great examples of the thing that we were alluding to earlier, which was this kind of silvery, you know, faux futurists looking machine that a lot of these new renderings have had particularly among the baseball stadiums. And I guess I have a little bit of a two-part question, which is sort of our, our move here on tipping pitches. The first is like, as you said, the renderings are coming up alongside construction plans. And I imagine that there are different iterations of the renderings as the project is changing, but also just like, you want to be improving the renderings as they go along so that they more accurately reflect and do a better job of, as Alex said, marketing your project. Correct. How long into, like, from the time that the project is conceived of in the pre-planning phase, like, how many different versions of the renderings have existed before, like, the rays tweeted out, for example. And then the second part of that question is like, why, and now, of course, that we're asking you to kind of opine here, like, from your perspective, as someone who's worked on these projects, why have we all sort of flattened out to this version that I think listeners know what I mean, but it's like, it almost looks like it's from the perspective of, like, of, like, AI artificial intelligence, like, why everything has this weird sort of, like, backlit, still very glow to all of the things, like, why in your opinion has that become the, the form of renderings that, once they've gotten to that point, they're like, we must release this to the public. All right. So, So the first question, how many versions of renderings are there before the ones at the public sees? I don't think it's an exaggeration to say hundreds. Wow. Okay. A ballpark is probably a two to three year design process and then a three to four year construction process. There were certainly before anything goes before anything goes to the public. There would have been a year plus of design because you're not going to show anything to the public that doesn't look moderately close to what the final version is going to be. And you know, this, this then go the, this question dovetails nicely into your second one. The tools that people use to now, you know, the tools that people are using to kick out those renderings kind of default into the image style that you're talking. And AI definitely is a piece of it. AI is relatively new in renderings. I don't know anybody that is using AI to design buildings. Nor should they be. It's a terrible idea. There are people who are, the main, the main way that I've seen AI used in architecture and in design right now is in a rendering where you will take a rendering, a very basic rendering and you will feed it into AI with the props somewhere along the lines of, you know, add, add people. One third sunset, clear day, maybe a duck or two in the foreground. This is how we got the AI person in the A's rendering that looks exactly like Alex, which I'm obsessed with. There's a guy in there who zoom in because I'm like, I think they took Alex's picture with John Fisher and they were like, that guy's probably going to be at the biggest stadium. They had no idea. I did have a project I worked on recently and AI, the designer used AI to clean up the final renderings and put a three-legged person in and I was like, I was like, dude, you got to take that out. That looked ridiculous. So I mean, a lot of it does come down to the tools and some of it is stylistic. People tend to gravitate toward, you know, we're all reading. We used to be, we're all reading the same magazines, but now we're all reading the same like five architecture blogs. And we're all seeing-- With the architecture people haven't pivoted to Substack yet? Or are you just calling the Substack newsletter splot? I'd probably, I'm calling. You know, I actually don't follow any architecture Substacks. That's what we like to hear. That's how I'm putting my Patreon employee hat on. No, so no architecture Substacks around here. Is this like a classmates.com kind of Facebook thing between Patreon and Substack? Wow, geez, I hope we're not classmates.com. There was a-- I remember onion headline from when Facebook was first coming up where employees afraid to tell C-E-C-E-O-A-Classmates.com about Facebook. So, I mean, a lot of us are using the same-- You know, we're all seeing the same blogs. We're all seeing the same magazines, publications. We're all seeing the same things published in the media. And I was like, OK, this is now the accepted house start. And this is what we're all going to push for. And you know, certainly when you were first starting out and you're trying to-- just like in any artistic medium, you're trying to find your voice. And to be honest, most of these renderings are going to be done by people-- I would say certainly younger than 35 and probably younger than 30. Because this is a work that is typically done by recent credits. Partially because they're just closer to it. They've been doing it in school. So those tools, and they know newer tools, then we might know having worked in the profession for a while. Also just to be frank, they're cheaper. So they're at a lower bill rate. So if you want to have somebody spend 40 hours, you couldn't have me as much as I would love to just go back to the model shop and build models all day long. The company couldn't afford my bill rate to do that. So we have-- That's right. You have-- That's right. You have to-- So you have to-- if you have to have somebody do 80 hours of doing nothing but a rendering, you want to have somebody that can do it at a price point. Because architectural margins are surprisingly thin. There was a survey once, professions where the gap between what the public assumes the profession makes and what the profession actually makes. And architecture is the largest-- Everybody assumes that architects are-- They don't get me wrong. For somebody, I don't have to get up early and I don't have to lift heavy objects. And I paid very well to not do those two things. But certainly I'm not making surgeon money. That got off in a really strange sidebar there. But-- I wonder if the second largest gap is podcast host. I think-- What do you think? People think you're making a million dollars a year off this podcast. They don't know. We're out here, grinding. You're only cash in 700K. You're all-- Exactly. That's cleanly six figures. This is an asset, not a liability. The numbers after the decimal point are still figures. That's exactly right. So it kind of been circling around this question of why do they all look like that. Some of it is just people get into a style because they're all seeing it. Some of it is-- and some of it is AI. And some of it are just the tools that we're using for digital rendering. A lot of them, they are cranked out very-- the good news, bad news. A rendering that I would have done first starting in the profession that took me two weeks to do. Somebody can do now in an afternoon. And that's not even using AI. That's just using the native tools that exist within the model-- the digital modeling software that we use to document our drawings. But that means that rendering is going to look like the way the tool thinks it should look. So the time to actually then take that rendering out of the native tool and give it that artistic flair, give it that artistic point of view. That is many, many, many more-- probably more hours than it took to generate the initial image. And a lot of times, we just don't have the time. We are under constant deadline stress. You're juggling five different tasks. And it's like, OK, I need this. And frankly, for most clients, the difference between a six-hour rendering and a 60-hour rendering, they aren't going to see it. Yeah. Well, I was going to ask, is it something that in your mind is even impactful on how the building ends up looking if the rendering is a six-hour rendering or a 60-hour rendering? Or is it a nice to have, not a need to have, that the rendering has some sort of, not artistic integrity, but artistic specificity. There's something that feels so generalized. I know we're kind of-- we have been talking about AI, but there is something that feels so regression to the mean about when I look at the raised rendering versus the A's rendering. I know that if I looked at them long enough, I could be like, well, these buildings are going to look differently. But if I close my eyes and picture those two things, they look exactly the same. There's nothing really distinctive about the way that they've delivered these renderings to the public. But as someone who's worked on projects like this, does that matter at all? Or is this just a hyperfixation of Alex and I? I think too-- as much as it pains me to say this, I don't know that it actually matters that much of the grand scheme of things. The key thing that you are doing with a rendering is you are-- I mean, ultimately, the reason you're doing it is you're trying to get the client to sign off on the concept. And as long as you are communicating factually, you're intent, then whether you spend six hours on it or 60 hours on it is kind of irrelevant. Now, there are clients who do value it. Before my current-- the firm I came from before where I met now, I spent 10 years working with a very large tech company in Madison, Wisconsin. And the CEO there, she loved renderings. She loved looking at renderings and she loved beautiful renderings. She was the one who told us to stop showing aerial views because only birds can see that. And all the renderings that we did for her were by hand. We would model everything digitally and then we would kick out a line work drawing of it and then we had We have we have three very talented architects who would then go into either pro create on their iPad or Photoshop with a whack-a-m And just drawn top of it and they would spend you know A week week and a half on each rendering and Alex you mr. Calling in such a big way, dude You should have been doing this. I know you should have been in Photoshop doing this not too late. It's not too late exactly People are gonna love my be spoke renderings when when AI has taken over So yeah, when you get a client who values it. It's awesome because you know There you know there again one of those like divides between what architecture is and what the public thinks it is You know, we didn't get into that we didn't get into the profession to kick out click renderings and then you know You have to go to three other meetings and turn around three other projects in two weeks You know we all went into this with this idea that we're gonna be these struggling, you know these these tortured artists who are painstakingly slaving over every design decision and Like in any creative field rate their reality is never quite that that clear and the certainly there are architects who do versions of that but You know a lot of it is just I'm so proud of some all the work that I've done and I've worked on some absolutely amazing Amazing projects, but I've also done my fair share of you know simple remodels or you know like a industrial I've actually done an industrial work, but like a ophthalmology clinic remodel that's you know pays the bills But it's not the kind of thing I'm gonna it's not gonna put it in my portfolio. I'm not I'm proud of work, but also You know again, you know every not everything that we do is gonna be gold, right? Yeah, to go back to the movie analogy you have to do one for them and then before you could do your one for me exactly Exactly You've been incredibly generous with your time before we let you go I'm just sort of wondering like so so the next time that we get a batch of renderings dropped What is it that that I should be looking like is there anything we're like new renderings drop and you're like I need to go and see This thing I need to see how they how they rendered the people I need to see if they It's in the case for God to put bullpen's in the rendering like How should I be looking at this if they predicted the future that Brent Rucker was actually gonna be one of the top 10 hitters in baseball That's right and okay, wait the final to add on to Alex's question because this is something I actually sort of forgot to talk about when we were talking about like how out all these look Should I be how should I assess how many winter windows there are and whether or not those windows will actually make it into the final building because there's always So much glass and all these renderings then Assume the amount of glass and the rendering will be reduced by somewhere between 12 and 22% before the Okay, cool. I can do that. I'm especially if you're building your stadium in Florida where it gets a lot of hurricanes I should assume maybe that they will make it in there You just aren't showing all the plywood that's gonna get nailed on the stadium every time every time I'm a hurricane's coming Yeah, exactly God there was are you aware of burgate with US bank stadium in Minneapolis? No, no, but I have a bad feeling about this So as it relates to glass So this was the render this was the original rendering of US bank stadium and There we go. So this is the original rendering and this is all glass along this wall The Mississippi River is about five blocks east of this stadium And the Autobahn society said You're putting up a big wall of glass right in the middle of a migratory path That seems like a bad idea if you thought about at least using it's called bird safe glass It's glass that has These vertical lines in it that break it that break up the reflection so the birds don't think it's sky Yeah, and of course, it's more expensive so they said no, we're not gonna do that and So it got built with the big Got built with the big wall of glass. There it is just like the rendering showed like the rendering shows And there is somebody whose job it is to sweep up bird carcasses Still they still haven't changed it. I don't know this oh Dude there have been so many lawsuits around this building. It was the contractor that they had they've had to Re-put this black metal panel on like three times because it was leaking This this building has been an absolute like from a construction standpoint like they're gonna teach classes on this build like a construction law classes are gonna be taught on this building That's awesome Boy oh boy that said unfortunately then the the bird people took their victory from that and Then proceeded to weaponize environmental laws and try to block Minneapolis's housing ordinances By saying that the increased density will be a threat to birds Hmm cease One for them one for us. So again If you want if you want to talk zoning we can we can I could do another hour just on zoning if you want Yeah, so far we have our second and third hour plans second is private equity hour Oh God, this is the great Wait, so back to Alex's What's your playbook for when you get when you get New rendering drops like what do you what do you ring in my architects mindset to this new rendering? Yeah, yeah, okay So that's a great question So whenever obviously whenever these render when are running like this come out We do tend to look at them and we'll you know kind of all gather up in the office and One of the things that we're looking at we are gonna we're gonna be looking at you know first and foremost like what materials are you using is This seem does the Materials and the overall design just it feel right for the environment Because you know as architects one of the things that you know really starting from In a lot of ways in a reaction to modernism Most of basically anybody educated after the 70s. It is much more about Is this building appropriate to the place? You know are the materials is the four are the windows, you know you're in You're in Vegas. Should you really have a whole bunch of West-facing windows? I have an opinion about Many people listening to you the answer is no you should not The so you know does this does it feel appropriate and then what does it feel like at the human scale and I will say One of the things a good rendering should do is bring you down to the human scale and One of the things I do like about a lot of ballpark renderings is they'll show that home plate Rendering And that really is trying to put you in you know Obviously again, they all do the aerial shots, but some of the best renderings for my money Really are the ones that are like on the field that Long are like in the concourse and showing what's it gonna feel like to be here as a fan What am I gonna see on the field? How easily am I gonna be able to navigate the concourse? You know so really those are the things that you should be looking for like you know does it feel appropriate? What am I gonna feel like as a visitor to this place and then Yeah, certainly and you definitely want to count the number of windows and then do your mental math Dan Groathy this was so amazing this was quite literally exactly what Alex and I have been trying to do for a long time We can't thank you enough. Oh good on your way out here Yeah, do you want to just like do you want to tell the tipping pitches listener? What is the exact Unassailably correct answer to what is the most beautiful ballpark? This is a lot of power. I'm giving you a lot of power You know what I am going to I this is gonna sound like hometown bias but I have to go with target field and I'm gonna there are there are three reasons why I'm gonna do this Two as an architect and one as a fan Architecturally it does a great job of using it uses a lot of yellow limestone Which really was one of what along with flower is one of the materials that built Minnesota's economy So it's a very it's a native material to Minnesota. It's on you know so many of our buildings from really starting from the 30s onward It's a beautiful material. It has this like wonderful sense of color and depth to it So just the art the materials that we use are wonderful the way that it sits right downtown Is absolutely amazing and target fields isn't the only thing but target field would be one of the few instances of We're gonna revitalize this neighborhood with a stadium that actually worked the neighborhood that The stadium is in was it called the warehouse district And for many years, it was just empty warehouses after the, you know, kind of the 70s collapse. In fact, when our company first said, we used to be on this beautiful office building near a park on the other end of Minneapolis. And when they said we're moving to this neighborhood, my friend and I are both like, there's nothing but pimps and chuds in that neighborhood. Why would we want to move our office to that location. But it turned out that, you know, 10 years later, it is the hopping neighborhood in Minneapolis. And not only did it a great job, but the way that they had to sit it in the urban fabric, I went to a presentation by the architect from populace, I could of course, populace did it. I was just noting that when I looked at some photos, some of the renderings, I was finding the rendering for it. And I'm making up these numbers because I don't remember the exact numbers, but these generally speaking, this is correct. It's directionally correct, as somebody once said to me, it worked recently. The typical ballpark, that they, a new ballpark, they'll want to put it on 30 acres. They've done ball parks as small as 18 acres. And target field was 14 acres. Wow. So it really shows how much you can maximize your building, if you just get really creative. So the architectural problem that they solved of putting this stadium in a place that was way too small and should not work, it really came together. And then lastly, as a fan, you know, the downside is target field is fantastic from May 17th until September 11th. But man, there is no better feeling than sitting in target field on a sunny June day. It's situated just right that you get these like great breezes coming out. You have this wonderful view of the skyline on the occasional time when the on-field product is good. You're watching a great game. Otherwise, you're watching a great visiting team coming to town. You know, you get, you know, you end up with with Interleague Play, you know, you get to see Bryce Harper come in. It's kind of fun to watch. It is one of my favorite ball parks that I've been to. And I've only been to, you know, eight to ten ball parks in my life. So I haven't quite got to half yet. But of the ones I visited, and I, you know, I think Kaufman is in a fun relic of his era. I love the Cardinal Stadium. Is it still bush? Yeah. It's like bush too. I think their last stadium was called bush too. But I think they call it bush too. Yeah. I've seen it. Yeah. I've only been to bush too. I think that's a great stadium. Obviously, Riggly comes with its history. I've been to most of the West Coast ball parks. They're all fine. I have not been to Pac-Beller. Whatever that's called these days. That's the only one I have not been to, which here is a goal. What are the giants play? Yeah, I hear that's amazing. But yeah, target feel. It's just, it's amazing. Beautiful. Dan, thank you so much for absolutely. Doing this with us. We really appreciate it. This is Bobby said exactly what we were looking for. So thanks so much. Good. It's a very astrotaric topic for you guys to take on, but I'm glad. I hope this is at all useful or answered any of your questions. It was. Is there anything you want to plug? Or you just like, we're good. We're good. I got nothing to plug. I don't know. Anybody, if anybody needs architecture, call me and I'll see what I can do. Thanks, Dan. You really appreciate it. Absolutely. Okay, thanks to Dan. Thanks to you, Alex. We finally did it. Our lifelong dream of talking about maybe AI-generated renderings of stadiums that may or may not get built. The way that they may or may not have been designed by maybe real people facilitated by public private partnerships. It's, I mean, what else did we get into this world for? Dan was great. What a great. Oh, that was great. Guest for this. That was everything I wanted and more. We easily could have gone another two. When he teased us a little bit with the private equity and zoning pods and I was ready to do them. You've done many zoning pods that just haven't been recorded. I said, for big honest, correct. Exactly. Okay. Last reminder, last plug, because this is the last thing that we're recording before I leave the country for three weeks. Stadium sponsor employment draft, it's coming out next week, but only three rounds of it will be on this year's feed, which is, that's a meal. That's a meal right there. But if you want the full three-course meal, that's actually a five-course meal. Now I'm mixing my metaphors. The full five rounds next week, the extended version, the uncut shit. That's going to be on Patreon. In fact, it is on Patreon right now. If you're not a member right now, right? God damn now. If you're not a member, you can sign up with promo code WhatAlex? Sponsors. 50% off. Sponsors, yeah, plural. I almost, I had to second guys it myself. Sponsors. Just like in the Pub song when they're like, I just want to thank all the sponsors. That's what we're always doing. That's what we're doing here. We're thinking each and every representative from next week's draft. Go check it out. If you're confused send us an email or something, I almost send you the links to all this stuff. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week, or maybe momentarily when you click over the Patreon sign up. To those of those stadium sponsors who play the draft. Bye. Hello everybody. I'm Alex Rodriguez. Tipping pitches. Tipping pitches. This is the one that I love the most. Tipping pitches. So we'll see you next week. See ya!