Interview– Andre Gomez

“I've gone back and forth over what I think is working and not working in the industry. I remember starting off my career and being immediately frustrated with how things were in the industry, but not really knowing why. Now, as I understand the forces better, I think what it comes down to is that it's a very compartmentalized industry: design, construction, permitting, vendors, materials, subcontractors. It's making the process expensive, and it's making the process slow. I don't think buildings are constructed quickly enough in the United States. Costs are all over the place. If one builds a house in Long Island, then it will cost seven times the amount it does in a different part of the country. That doesn't make any sense. One could get different bids from contractors — same exact design, same project — and there will be two bids that are totally different in price. That's showing the underlying issues in our industry.”

Can you talk more about the logistics of starting your firm? I had a project in North Carolina that was my first house and my first commission, and that kickstarted my firm. Around the same time I met some key mentors in New York City and they gave me the boost that I needed. They said, ‘Hey, you should just do this. You have the house. We'll give you space. And we'll help coach you.’ Those relationships were super key. It’s something to reiterate to younger architects: mentorship is so important. If you don't have a mentor, you're almost wasting your time. That's basically how I ended up where I am right now — through mentors.

How does the work of your own practice compare to the work at an architecture firm? Working for an architecture firm and working for your own practice are actually very similar. However, with your own practice, the part that's unique is that you need to sustain yourself financially. Where's the money coming from and how are you going to get it? That's the most challenging part.

I would assume there are differences between being an architect and an architect/business owner. You have to know how business and the market works. What was your strategy to get that other information? The skills that were needed to start my own business were marketing and communication, which are huge! Basically, I had to learn how to convince other people that I was to be trusted — that I could do the job that needed to be done. I just learned little by little, almost out of necessity. I had gotten some of that experience by working with clients first hand at my previous office, so I didn't feel like I was starting from scratch.

The business day-to-day stuff, at least in my situation, isn't so intense because I'm a small practice. I'm basically a one-man army. I run a profit and loss sheet, and that's basic, elementary math. The part that I had to overcome was the marketing. Constantly, every week I’m putting myself out there, meeting new people, networking, getting more and more comfortable with selling my services, selling my business, bragging about myself. Those are hard things to do, actually. It just takes practice.

What passion project would you fund? I would like to do a prototype for a new type of city. I have a lot of interest in urban design. When I have the time to devote to it, I’ve been doing some sketches of a concept for a city: different ways we can organize it, different ways we can build it, and different ways we can collect resources from it.

I started with a plan that was basically a study in density to see what’s appropriate for a city. I looked for the best way to shape towers and masses to get the right amount of density while still having open space and light.

This is a platform design — there's a high platform, and there's the low platform. The idea is that we can move people separately from cars and vehicles. Bikes and small forms of electric transit could all move independently on this higher level, while cars are just moving on the lower level. The towers are shaped for light and for growing plants, growing gardens, collecting water on the roof. I want to go higher with the towers, but have a little bit more open and green space in between so people can live comfortably.

I started thinking about ideas for different ways to move people through drones or pneumatic tubes, and this concept of something I call ‘sky zoning.’ The two most important parts of a building are the ground floor, of course, but also the sky. I think we’ll start to move people by rooftops, especially when drones become a reality for moving people.

I use colors to suggest different transit lines. So, one could have a public space up here on this roof, with retail or a soccer park, and one could be moved to another roof on a different building by automated transit. One’s roof should also always be used to collect water and solar energy.

I did these sketches a couple times until I got it right. There's a whole other idea about how these buildings are built. I want to build them with ETFE, where one could actually have a continuous facade that's rolled up from the ground floor. There's also the sketch, and the 3D sketch. Now one can see that this is where it all comes together. We have the pneumatic tubes, we have the multi-level city that's connected as much as possible, we have the water collection up on the rooftops. We have the low level, We have the high level. All of our buildings right now are working in isolation, but we can put them together to work as a system.

Finally, these bubbles are really important too because there's just better ways to build. ETFE is a good example, which is starting to be used more for civic buildings and commercial buildings. I think that's really exciting to do. That’s the bottom line: if I had money to prototype a dream project, that's what I would do.

What is the thing that you want to learn more about over the next 10 years? I’d love to learn more about ETFE over the next 10 year [Laughs]. I saw it first installed at the Anaheim Transit Center, which they did out of ETFE. It was pretty incredible. I can also be seen down at the Hudson Yards, and the Bloomberg building — the Shed.

The idea is that we could just roll these giant films of ETFE up the side of the building. We could construct an "all-glass" building in a quarter of the time. It costs a quarter of the weight, too, because glass is so heavy. ETFE could be one continuous sheet, so there are no panes and no seams. It's just one roll of film that goes right up the building.

So, these are more cost efficient, because it doesn't have to be split into different parts? With ETFE, it's fewer parts and less labor. It's less weight too, because glass is really heavy and it all has to be modulated. It takes a long time to install and it's expensive. However, if we could do it with sheets of film, it would be lighter, quicker, cheaper. One would still have to figure out how to insulate it. One might need to do a double layer and it might need to be pressurized with a certain type of gas. That's where the idea for these bubble buildings come from. It's ETFE!

I'd also like to learn more about new construction technologies. Robotics is really exciting. Synthetic or natural polymers are really exciting — fusing that with robotics to create new types of buildings. That's where my biggest passion is right now, though I can't apply it yet. I'm still studying it, reading it, drawing it. I want to actually apply that stuff. It takes connections and money to bring that together, and especially time. That's what I would like to cultivate for the next decade, for sure.

What would you recommend somebody who has just graduated aim for in terms of starting off in a big corporate or mid-sized or small firm? If you just graduated, I would recommend mixing it up. You should try to get different experiences: a couple of years here, a couple of years there. If it's not working out, you cal always only work for a couple of months. I was at a company once for six months. It didn't work out and it wasn't a good fit for me. My first job was in a small office, but it was for a big company. I had the resources of a big company, but there were only 8 to 10 of us in this small satellite office. That was the best of both worlds. After that I went to a small to mid-sized firm and that was about 30-40 people. That was amazing! I was there for about four years and that was a really good company to work for. I've worked at basically three offices in nine or ten years. And that was a perfect number for me, personally.

What would you like to change about the industry? I've gone back and forth over what I think is working and not working in the industry. I remember starting off my career and being immediately frustrated with how things were in the industry, but not really knowing why. Now, as I understand the forces better, I think what it comes down to is that it's a very compartmentalized industry: design, construction, permitting, vendors, materials, subcontractors. It's making the process expensive, and it's making the process slow. I don't think buildings are constructed quickly enough in the United States.

Costs are all over the place. If one builds a house in Long Island, then it will cost seven times the amount it does in a different part of the country. That doesn't make any sense. One could get different bids from contractors — same exact design, same project — and there will be two bids that are totally different in price. That's showing the underlying issues in our industry.

I think a lot of it has to do with architects losing control over both the pocketbook and the construction process. Nowadays, contractors are holding a lot of cards and leverage in the situation, which is new. For the rest of history, with the exception of the last century, it has been architects who were actually the ‘master builders.’ We're professionally trained for it. We're educated for it. We should be better at controlling that process, and we should cast a bigger net. We should have better resources. Instead, we've lost a lot of control to different groups. I think that's partly why it takes so long for projects to get built, and why they're so expensive.

Interview– Justin Fabrikant

Interview– Victor Gorman

In-Process Interview Project