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Archispeak: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Evan Troxel & Cormac Phalen
What’s it really like to work in architecture? The hosts of Archispeak know, and they’re here to share real-life experiences. Since 2012 architects Evan Troxel and Cormac Phalen have been podcasting their brand of real talk on everything from design, tools, and work/life balance to generational differences, mentoring, job hunting, and more. Probing questions, revelatory interviews, and unique insights have grown their audience and become a weekly ritual for students and seasoned professionals alike.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 1 weeks ago1h 12m
#390 - From Idea to Execution: Heliomorphism
Sven Shockey, FAIA joins Evan and Cormac to talk about Virginia Tech Academic Building One — a 300,000-square-foot computer science and computer engineering building on a new campus in Alexandria, Virginia whose faceted, photovoltaic-integrated form was derived through 1,400 computational iterations. They explore what it means to design a building's exterior before the interior program is finalized, how three distinct types of building-integrated photovoltaics get assigned to 17 different facades based on orientation and performance data, and what a sewage wastewater energy exchange system has to do with a tunnel under a parking lot.This episode is especially relevant for design architects and architecture students who want to understand how computational tools actually interact with design judgment — and for anyone who's ever wondered what it looks and feels like to sit inside a building where the facade is doing real work. The shadows move. The light is soft. The algorithm found a non-intuitive answer, and then the real design work began.Episode LinksGuestSven Shockey on LinkedInSven Shockey at SmithGroupSmithGroupSmithGroup websiteSmithGroup on LinkedInSmithGroup on InstagramVirginia Tech Academic Building OneProject page — SmithGroupVirginia Tech Innovation CampusFirst building nears completion — Virginia Tech NewsAlumnus plays large role in designing the campus — Virginia Tech NewsVirginia Tech's Striking New Building Pays Homage to the Sun — Interior DesignVirginia Tech Innovation Campus Academic 1 Building — Architect MagazineA Window to the Future — Inform MagazineDesign centers on sustainability & connectivity — SmithGroup (2020)First building nears completion — SmithGroup (2024)AwardsInterior Design Best of Year 2025 — Dual HonorsAIA Virginia 2025 Design AwardsContext: Virginia Tech & Amazon HQ2Virginia Tech Innovation Campus key to attracting Amazon HQ2 — Virginia Tech NewsRelated Work: DC Water HeadquartersDC Water Headquarters — SmithGroupPutting Wastewater to Work — SmithGroup Perspectives<a href="https://www.dcwater.com/about-dc-water/media/news/dc-waters-iconic-green-glass-headquarters-awarded-leed-platinum" rel="noopener noreferrer" target=
- May 1, 202635 min
#389 - I Want To See Tears
A van conversion project that was supposed to take three days is now four months in and an eighth of the way done. Evan and Cormac dig into what actually happened and why an architect's brain might be the single biggest obstacle to finishing a personal fabrication project on time. They cover the scope creep hiding in "wouldn't you do it differently?", why one wrong cut forces every subsequent piece to compensate, and the design-build logic that makes real-time problem-solving both efficient and indefinitely slow.This episode is especially relevant for architects and designers who've ever started a hands-on project with a realistic-sounding timeline and found themselves months later still fitting cedar lining around corners that aren't quite 90 degrees, holding a saw, and refusing to call it good enough.-----Thank you for listening to Archispeak. For more episodes please visit https://archispeakpodcast.com.Support Archispeak by making a donation.
- Apr 24, 202638 min
#388 - Frank Lloyd Wright Lemonade
Cormac spent last week driving from Detroit to Baltimore for a punch review, then north to a factory two hours outside Toronto to inspect replacement vestibule glass — only to reject it for the second time because the print scale was still wrong. Along the way, he squeezed in an unplanned tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House in Buffalo, ended up teaching the docents, and toured AGNORA's glass factory, where he found something almost no other manufacturer will attempt: a fully miterless, corner-glazed insulated glazing unit. He also saw a project where a developer printed the image of a demolished historic building onto the glass facade of its replacement. Evan and Cormac dig into what "punch ready" is supposed to mean, whether we can still build at the level of FLW's Prairie homes, and what it costs (in time, travel, and patience) to hold a project to the standard it was designed to. This episode is especially relevant for project architects and CA practitioners who know the exhaustion of traveling to a site review only to walk away with another rejection, and who still find genuine awe in what the industry is technically capable of building, even when the job itself won't let you use it. Episode Links:AGNORA - glass manufacturer websiteFLW’s Darwin Martin house-----Thank you for listening to Archispeak. For more episodes please visit https://archispeakpodcast.com.Support Archispeak by making a donation.
- Apr 18, 202656 min
#387 - The Walmart Greeter of Architecture
Five years into one project. Ten into another. Three principals retired before the second one wrapped. Evan and Cormac dig into what long-duration architecture projects reveal about career identity, why the profession has always romanticized the architect who works until death, and what retirement actually looks like when architecture is all you've ever done. They also get into the slow erosion of architectural vocabulary, why Cormac put a massive "WHY" at the center of his studio board, and the design decisions that unravel when nobody stops to ask the most basic question.This episode is especially relevant for mid-career and senior architects who are quietly wondering where the work fits in the rest of their life — and for educators and mentors in the profession who want to give students the reasoning skills, not just the technical ones. Episode Links:Archispeak’s “What Makes This Building Great” - Kahn’s British Museum-----Thank you for listening to Archispeak. For more episodes please visit https://archispeakpodcast.com.Support Archispeak by making a donation.
- Apr 3, 202633 min
#386 - If not me, then who?
Ten years into a $600M research laboratory project, Cormac reflects on what it actually means to see a complex build through to the end — the COVID-era redesign, the permit battles across three code cycles, and the people who've been on site since day one. He and Evan unpack the case for continuity: why the architects who know every decision that was ever made are essentially irreplaceable, and why the grinding sameness of long construction administration is also the kind of rare, compacted education that most architects never get in an entire career.This episode is especially relevant for project architects and CA teams who've ever wondered whether staying on a long, demanding project is actually worth it — and for anyone who's adopted someone else's mid-stream project and immediately felt the weight of not knowing why.-----Thank you for listening to Archispeak. For more episodes please visit https://archispeakpodcast.com.Support Archispeak by making a donation.
- Mar 27, 202637 min
#385 - Why Architects Can't Say No
Cormac spent twelve hours trying to send one email. Evan has seventeen apps open at all times. This week they trace the architecture of modern distraction — from "you're on mute" killing the flow of real-time thinking, to AI making it easier to do more of the wrong things faster, to the structural reason architects keep saying yes when they should say no. The profession runs on availability, responsiveness, and service, and those instincts are now at war with the deep, focused work that good architecture actually requires. This episode is especially relevant for architects who recognize the gap between how busy they feel and how much actual work they can point to at the end of the day — and who are starting to wonder whether the answer is less technology, better boundaries, or just learning to say no.-----Have a question for the hosts? Ask it at AskArchispeak.comThank you for listening to Archispeak. For more episodes please visit https://archispeakpodcast.com.Support Archispeak by making a donation.
- Mar 20, 20261h 19m
#384 - The AI and Expertise Paradox, with Chris Parsons
Architecture firms are adopting AI faster than they're building the expertise to judge it.In this episode, we explore the AI and expertise paradox with Christopher Parsons, Founder and CEO of Knowledge Architecture, the firm behind Synthesis — a knowledge and learning platform built for AEC firms — digging into what happens when the tools your firm is counting on require more institutional knowledge to evaluate than the people on staff actually have.AI tools for technical work in architecture — code checking, quality assurance, documentation review — don't run themselves. They require experienced practitioners who can distinguish a real error from a flagged decision, catch what the model missed, and exercise judgment the model can't replicate. The problem is that the people who can do this are retiring. And the emerging professionals now entering firms are, in many cases, actively avoiding the deep technical tracks that build that kind of expertise. The knowledge gap is structural, and most firms aren't naming it yet.Meanwhile, the apprenticeship model that used to transfer institutional knowledge quietly — through proximity, repetition, and mentorship — has eroded. Young professionals aren't getting the reps on site visits, project management calls, and technical coordination that used to form the foundation of good judgment. Architecture's feedback loop compounds this: a decision made today may not be visible in a finished building for four or five years, and by then the people who made it may not be at the firm. Organizational learning is nearly impossible without systems designed to accelerate it.This conversation is essential listening for architects, firm leaders, and AEC educators who want to understand what it actually takes to build expertise in a profession that keeps adding tools faster than it builds the judgment to use them.What you'll learn in this episode:• Why AI tools for architecture QA and code-checking require senior technical oversight — and what happens when that oversight retires• How the knowledge management crisis in AEC firms is structural, not just a staffing problem• Why emerging professionals in architecture are increasingly skipping deep technical tracks — and what that means for AI adoption• How architecture's long project feedback loop makes organizational learning harder than in almost any other industry• What intentional mentorship looks like in practice — including "desirable difficulty" and how one firm rebuilt its approach to professional development• Why expertise functions more like a verb than a noun, and what that means for how firms should think about training and retention#AIinArchitecture #KnowledgeManagement #ArchitecturePractice #AEC #ArchitectureEducation #DesignTechnology Episode Links:’The AI and Expertise Paradox’ by Chris Parsons-----Have a question for the hosts? Ask it at AskArchispeak.comThank you for listening to Archispeak. For more episodes please visit https://archispeakpodcast.com.Support Archispeak by making a donation.
- Mar 13, 202654 min
#383 - Why We Still Love This Profession
In this episode of Archispeak, we catch up after Evan’s trip to New York City and the AECtech conference, where he moderated a panel with design technology leaders who’ve climbed all the way into firm leadership. We also talk about the continuing education grind it takes just to keep our licenses alive, why there’s really no such thing as “architecture without technology” anymore, and how technologists are quietly becoming some of the most strategic voices in practice. From the culture and community around AECtech’s workshops and hackathon, to studio juries that ask students whether they actually had fun, to wandering Heatherwick’s Little Island and wrestling with the idea that architecture is allowed to be whimsical and purely experiential, we connect the dots between career paths, culture-building, and remembering why we fell in love with this profession in the first place.-----Have a question for the hosts? Ask it at AskArchispeak.comThank you for listening to Archispeak. For more episodes please visit https://archispeakpodcast.com.Support Archispeak by making a donation.
About Archispeak
What’s it really like to work in architecture? The hosts of Archispeak know, and they’re here to share real-life experiences. Since 2012 architects Evan Troxel and Cormac Phalen have been podcasting their brand of real talk on everything from design, tools, and work/life balance to generational differences, mentoring, job hunting, and more. Probing questions, revelatory interviews, and unique insights have grown their audience and become a weekly ritual for students and seasoned professionals alike.
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