 And here in a single family house on the upper side of Manhattan, we were invested in developing sort of a through line between digital design methods and techniques and artisan material processes that include the forming and sculpting of ceramics, as in the case of the terracotta facade system that you see here. Metal fabrication in the case of the stair with a braided bronze railing and faceted with treads and sort of decidedly parametric geometry. And robotic milling is in the case of this carved and lacquered wood ceiling. So for us like in this project in particular and maybe kind of in general, craft and sort of craft processes are really thought of as a way of bridging between the historic context that we often find ourselves working in and sort of contemporary life of our clientele. So, Charles and Ray Eames were fond of saying that that the details are not the details that they really make the design. And the practices, the practice of the Eames is is one that I've always held personally as a kind of aspirational model, or the wide ranging and diverse sort of interests that it encompassed. And also there's a play, but also their ability to reach across disciplines and bodies of knowledge in each project. So here in a series of studies in plywood first there, their molded leg splint for the US Navy that actually required the declassification of a number of, of adhesives, in order to make possible, which sort of led to patented techniques that they developed for forming plywood around sheets to their famous rubber shock mount welded to the back of their plywood and fiberglass chairs that was at once flexible but also allowed for the fastening of the metal frame to the smooth seat and back without having to drive a screw through the face of the formed surface. And the rubber welding technique is one that was being used at the time to assemble automotive dashboards and is part of an even larger project of the Eames is to connect the manufacturing techniques and engineering expertise war effort, and it's associated technological advances sort of into the and bring those to bear in the in the post war design of housing and consumer products. And there's a detail in the sense of that it's an enlargement or a kind of articulation of note that makes that sort of makes the design aesthetically and experientially, but it's also a gateway between between worlds and bodies of knowledge. And so we've really tried to build a practice where our ability to bring together many different voices and facilitate and power the work of others is truly central to the to the work. And interestingly enough, interiors have afforded the opportunity to pursue that objective and sort of some incredibly surprising and satisfying ways. Because there are so many individual design elements and potentials for collaboration, and because the standards for performance and for quality and for detailing are so high. So, here in the dining room of a park Avenue apartment, we have a space that is meant to function as a library as a family and dining as a family dining space and also as a formal entertaining space. It's a long standing collaboration with the Hudson Valley sculptor Christopher Kurtz, with whom we created this table that is made of oxidized cherry and aluminum that's been cold forged into into sort of like a rippling lasagna noodle surface. And the table is the table is meant to sit against the wall most of the time, you know, against this, this, this banquet, but then it's brought out into the center of the room and expanded with leaves to seat 14 when the family entertains. We also collaborated with with the designers ladies and gentlemen studio rubbish and red hook to create this chandelier with a stainless steel reflector and an uplight and a pendant drop pendant and slumped glass. The chandelier rotates 180 degrees in the room so that it so that the drop is always centered on the table irrespective of what position it's in whether it's kind of tucked in or if it's at the center of the room. And so like, as in the case of many of our interiors, the design here emerges less through singular vision of an individual author, let's say, and more from from the curation and cultivating of relationships with other designers and creators, where our role as the architects or kind of principal designers is really more to create opportunities and technical support for others, and then and then to sort of get out of the way and let them run with their with the opportunity. So here in the penthouse structure of a townhouse on the Upper East Side. We were working with the artist Sarah Oppenheimer to create a site specific artwork that we commissioned when the building was still in schematic design. Sarah's work really plays with and expands the sort of gray zone between artwork and environment. And this is one of the very first of her works to be permanently incorporated into the high performance envelope of the building. And sort of as such it became a central element in organizing the structural and other technical aspects of the building, as well as the volume and form of the addition from a from a zoning perspective. So the piece is a is a kind of a hinge that introduces a skewed angle around which these other systems are then sort of organized. And eventually what what Sarah's piece, really, what it really does is it is it projects a sliver of sky into the space below through a skylight incorporated into the roof terrace and optics that are that produce an effect that is at once entirely visually beguiling, but that also begins to really kind of confound the line between inside and outside where the glass rooftop structure meets a 19th century based building. This is so beautiful. Before you move on to the next. There is a small window that says that's like build order. If you could minimize that we can see the slide. It hasn't been particularly disruptive but really this little Okay, that's gone. Try. Try playing again. Yes. It's like the, the one the many wonders of zoom. Yes, exactly. Now it's gone magically. Thank you so much. So, in that same operation project we also had this really special collaborative opportunity that emerged out of the client's request for a vertical garden. So vertical gardens are notoriously difficult and maintenance intensive, particularly in environments like the northeastern United States where there are large swings in the climate between summer and winter. So we approached the design of this garden through kind of a hyper local lens, which started as shown on the left with a really detailed environmental analysis, where we were measuring and simulating a series of variables like humidity temperature or solar exposure, and the like, in order to construct a very highly detailed ecological profile that was sort of unique to the to the facade and its geometry and its location on the globe. So with that profile in hand, we then went in search of a target ecosystem and begin to concentrate our search on the limestone cliff faces of the Hudson Valley that are immediately north of the city. And really started to look at this plant species that were native to that environment, kind of with the theory that they would perform well and in our environment. The facade and the roof top and the gardens of the house really track the dimensions of that ecosystem from the forest floor to the cliff face to the cliff top. And interestingly enough, in that ecosystem there are also a number of native species that are on the federal endangered species list because they're losing their habitat due to climate change. The garden facade really began to be an exploration into the into the efficacy and also a kind of degree of agency that an individual building or individual building component might have on a planetary phenomenon like climate change, and the loss of biodiversity. So we concentrated a lot of our energy around a particular species, it's called known as the North American hearts tongue for nor splenium burn, which is one of these federal federally endangered species. And in collaboration with the landscape architects local office and a team of conservation botanists at SUNY in Syracuse, and the graduate forestry department. And the strategy to propagate and plant the wall with with species that included these endangered ferns actually had to seek out a warrant from us fishing wildlife in order in order to do so. So running parallel to this effort was a design effort to put the form of the planter itself at stake, looking at the three dimensional texture of the facade, as well as the form of the planter unit and the shadows that it would that it would cast below. The development of the facades actual geometry really took these factors into account to coax out these ecological intensities is sort of nano biomes. That that kind of tease out the environments of a limestone cliff face, and then begin to compress those intensities, those kind of ecological intensities into a single 35 foot tall wall. So using with Boston Valley terracotta, who are a manufacturer of terracotta facade systems, we developed a zero waste casting process to create the planter units themselves which are then coated with a with a pH neutral glaze and then kind of planted with a variety of native species. So another view, another view of the vertical garden sort of shortly after its initial planting for these really beautiful ferns who are also kind of a poster child for the threats of climate change. So, one of the really interesting byproducts of this design research project is that the ferns had to be propagated outside of a laboratory environment for the first time, with the help of commercial greenhouses, and, and that the quantity of ferns that we had to order, was available commercially for propagation and other contexts. So, part of the data that is being returned to the to our conservation partners in this garden concerns how different subspecies of the Aspenium firm perform in this kind of garden setting to see if they can become commercially in the marketplace and kind of creating another pathway out of off of the endangered species list. We've also recently started a project for a ground of house in in northern Westchester in within the Croton, the Croton watershed, where we're also looking at creating similar kinds of supply chain linkages, but in this project using timber from New York State and other northeastern sources by kind of sourcing them from logs and trees that are taken down as part of the New York State Department of Conservation efforts to help to manage the the of New York State and kind of like certain certain certain trees have to be brought down for the health of the forest. But, and we're collaborating with a with a fellow GSEP alum and Professor Lindsay Woodstrom, as well as Sillman on the engineering side to create a hyper local timber supply chain where one doesn't presently exist. So we're kind of taking measure of how the fruits of that supply chain might also inform the form of the building instead of the other way around. So the building itself is a series of pavilion like volumes that are unified under under a very thin wind wing like roof. So the structure is the roof is structured and then clad in timber and it's supported by these by these kind of ceramic cloud volumes that lift the roof above an elevated courtyard. You can see in this this concept model on the on the left. And then you get a sense of sort of like these pavilion like volumes and this kind of manifold timber cloud roof with with the floors also in glazed terracotta. So I think like one of the interesting kind of opportunities and projects like these because you know we do so many projects for individuals or kind of individual clients. So we do these projects there. We've been looking for opportunities that the projects afford to kind of link them durably to to larger systems are kind of planetary phenomena. And then kind of find find the find the imprint of those systems in the in the individual buildings as a way of kind of sort of sussing out where where these, you know, these residential projects are kind of interior projects have, have an opportunity to have agency within those larger contexts. And at the same time we've been doing research sort of like on some of those larger phenomena to try to link them back to two individuals. So this is one example of that. So this is an image of the Empire State Building. This is kind of specifically the the spire of the Empire State Building, which was sort of famously designed as a mooring for airships, but really has been home to broadcast infrastructure since the very beginning. This building was was home to RCA and it's and it's experiment early experiments and television from the 1930s, 30s onward and really like, except for a brief period after kind of in the in sort of like the the the 80s. Since 911, the Empire State Building has also been the primary broadcast point for the entire metropolitan region again. So we, we've been sort of really fascinated in kind of the, the relationship that urban form has to the technologies of broadcast. Particularly as they move from kind of traditional broadcast to mobile, kind of thinking about how the ultra visible sort of iconic form of New York City which literally that of an antenna. And it should kind of be dematerialized as as we move as we shift to kind of a similar but but essential infrastructure that is that is entirely secret and entirely privately owned, which is the mobile phone infrastructure, which is really only visible in the ways that it rubs up against other other indices or other units of measure like FAA databases or kind of protests, you know when tenants kind of like protest their landlords installing antennas on their on their rooftops. So we created a series of events, kind of looking or kind of walking around the city with with academic groups like, you know, that we recall these antenna spotting events like trying to trying to kind of understand the distribution of mobile phone antennas on roof on rooftops. We also went in search of a kind of electronic registration. So this is data that's pulled from a single Android phone using an antenna tracking app to kind of log which antennas that phone communicated with over the course of the day. And ultimately we were kind of the research sort of culminated in the in in the kind of scraping of building permit data, specifically kind of electrical electrical permit category that pertains exclusively to mobile phone infrastructure. So this is a map that we created that was that was exhibited that be an online 2012 on the American civilian of all 14,472 mobile mobile phone antennas in New York City, at the time, kind of cross reference against the age and height of the building that they're on, which really begins to be a kind of a portrait of this of this infrastructure and kind of like it's and how tightly mapped it is to the to the form of the form of the city. One of the really interesting collaborations that sort of then emerged out of that research which we thought was just like a kind of interesting way of trying to find other registrations of this kind of communication technology is that since 2016 well beginning in 2016 we were contacted by city bike about a partnership because the bike stations communicate on mobile phone networks and so since 2016 we've been we've been engaged in the kind of data sharing arrangement with the city bike to provide to provide data kind of mapping layers and also insight about the about the mobile phone infrastructure to help them to position their stations more intelligently and to help them to grow the system. And then sort of switching gears kind of back to the interiors we've also been a couple of years ago we were contacted by a donor who was interested in making a library, a children's library inside of a shelter called concourse house, which is a shelter that serves women and young children who are transitioning out of out of homelessness it's located on the grand concourse in sort of the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. So the library is located on a mezzanine above a former chapel in the shelter and it's sort of unique in this facility as a space that is specifically dedicated to reading and storytelling and imagination. And it's it serves by by and large a population of children who don't actually own their own books. So the project itself is largely a shelving element and study tables for reading and homework. And this extremely graphic carpet that we collaborated with the artist Alex proba on that sort of very loosely indicates different functional zones like a spot on the floor that is appropriate for sitting in a circle and of course, for hearing a story. There's also this wall of upholstered elements that can be brought out for collect for collective events and proceeding but that when stashed. It creates a really soft upholstered surface that that makes sitting on the floor meaning a book comfortable. So the geometry of these elements themselves is sort of cuddly with integrated lighting to brighten up the space which was which was obviously quite dark before. And it's also a scale that that works as a kind of a guardrail or balustrade between the space in the double white space but what beyond, but also to make it much more approachable, or for young children. So, this is a project that we did on a pro databases, and it's been one of the most instructive and sort of eye opening aspects of that project. And it's a real effort that we engaged in to solicit donations and raise money to support the fabrication and the resourcing and the decoration of the project. And so, in this sense, there was a kind of expanded field of practice that that that emerged beyond the design, beyond the territories of design proper where we had agency and could make a contribution. And so we raised a number of fundraising efforts, a couple of events in our studio, as well as an, and then we also kind of. We created an online auction on artsy and petalate featuring sort of ultra high end design objects from many of our friends and collaborators in New York in the in the design industry. There were options off to create an endowment to support the ongoing maintenance and supplying of the library once the sort of initial donor involvement began to begin to fall off. And, and I think one of the most kind of potent takeaways from this project has really been our capacity to kind of act in that in that manner, and also the fact that it wasn't that hard. It's an enormously satisfying kind of impact on on the lives of this very needy community, which has really informed our subsequent pro bono work and and also the formation of design advocates. So, in late last March, right as the COVID crisis crisis would be good was beginning to unfold in a really serious way. I was really afraid for myself but also and for my team but also for the for the workers and the other design businesses that we, that we frequently collaborate with. So the origins of design advocates was was actually a few Instagram stories that I posted at the time looking for friends in the community in the design community that we could talk to you about doing something. It was beginning to be very clear to us that COVID-19 posed a series of problems that were sort of highly extremely special and architectural nature, because it concerns our ability to be in space like with each other. And we began to think that architects might somehow be uniquely qualified to be helpful. Also in in in the United States and also in particularly in New York is the crisis was unfolding amid kind of the utter absence of any form of organized federal response or plan. And I made conflicting and limited guidance from the state and city. And that was also as these maps show sort of disproportionately and somewhat horrifyingly impacting low income communities and communities of color. Because of course, as as the crisis was rang out of control as we all know it also coincided with this nationwide reckoning of our racial injustice and police violence against communities of color and as a sort of queer Bible person myself like that was something that resonated with me deeply and so that's the sort of context for design advocates and the and the twin issues that we felt compelled to engage in a sort of productive way. So the impetus for the small group of us who got together at that time may initially have been to help each other. But it but the mission of the of the organization really came into focus as we began to observe a real need to help other businesses and organizations to connect the dots between the fairly broad and uncoordinated guidance around COVID-19 was out there in in in sort of the atmosphere and in what that guidance meant for individual spaces and communities and businesses, as well as other nonprofits and and public institutions. So our objective has been to help to convert some of the general governmental technical and public health guidance that's out there into implementable action for individuals and to help them pro bono to adapt their spaces and operations to the pandemic and beyond. So, from the beginning of the pandemic until the present there was this kind of enormous reluctance on the part of many actors whether they're professional or or whether public or professional to really step into the fray at that particular scale. There was a there's always been a kind of a preference towards high level guidance over over direct and individualized aid and that gap. We feel has contributed to that there's a so there's an important gap between between expertise and implementation, which continues to be present and and frankly dangerous everywhere. Especially in, in communities that are disadvantaged or communities of color, who have not always had the most positive experiences working with or, or I've not necessarily had access to design professionals, and who have also been the hardest hit by the pandemic and the long term collateral and long term impacts. So, as an organization that's primarily made up of small firms this is this is sort of individualized health that we thought that we were particularly qualified and sort of set up to do. And it also became began to be a way to continue to collaborate and share what we were learning with each other and with other organizations and then to end and then to in turn use that learning to develop partnerships and return insight from the field back to public agencies. So we're interested in creating this sort of cook this this sort of productive and collaborative feedback with where where individual interventions are informed by expert guidance that then in turn promote equity and constituency building and communities of need that then return insight back to kind of the powers that be to inform future expert guidance and regulations. So, the design, the advocates part of design advocates also means that we're engaged in work with public agencies, like the New York City Department of Education. So, one of the things that we've done since the beginning are we've developed these four reopening plans for New York City public schools. And so this is one study that was done for PS 34 in Brooklyn. Which is the oldest operating public school building in all of Brooklyn, you can see from the plan that it's that it's an unflod style building like it's a railroad plan, meaning that there are no corridors, and every classroom is access from another classroom, which meant that the possibility of a physical distancing or kind of the regulation of the of the student and staff population was almost impossible and in a building like this. So, so the reopening plan is really actually just kind of a color coding and circulation strategy that makes use of every single stairwell in the building and creates a series of pathways. Kind of built around the, the, the schools AB kind of constituent are kind of cohort structuring which is like half of the school is present on one day and half of the school is present on another day and simply creates routes and rooms that that different students in each cohort utilize including the bathrooms to ensure that one group of students can access their classroom without having to without having to pass through the room of another cohort. And it was kind of like a uniquely architectural problem solving. That was then reinforced with color coding and signage, you know kind of implement that could be implemented really simply and as a result of this plan, we immediately received all this feedback from from teachers and also parents, telling us things like I was really afraid going back to school but now that we have this plan. I know what we need to do and we've got it like we can do this, and that was really I think proved positive for us at the very beginning of this of this effort that this that we were sort of on to that we were sort of on to something. So, this idea that design could be about communication and trust building, maybe even in advance of being about things and spaces was something that started to inform many of our early efforts and design advocates. So, part one of the, one of the things that we were doing very early on is working with neighborhood restaurants. And as a result of that work, we were asked to join the neighborhoods now effort, which was a, which was a kind of initiative that was created by the vanilla and the urban design forum to create teams of architects who would be working with community community development organizations in organizations in the four neighborhoods of New York City that were the hardest hit by the pandemic. So this is a, this is a brochure that we made that was distributed to restaurants in in the Bronx. Around this time the city had created a program called open restaurants, which many of you probably know about that enables restaurants to open outdoors in the, in the public way. So, this was a way of kind of communicating to the community in advance about the existence of the program because it really was not known. And kind of to tell them about elements that we could help them help them with on a pro bono on a pro bono pro bono basis before we ever kind of set foot in that in the neighborhood and attempted to kind of like design anything. And this is one of the projects that kind of came out of that effort. It's Dominican restaurant on subject Avenue called tropical and our kind of work on this project involved a collaboration with two local artists, Felix and Dexter Dexter Cyprian, who grew up in the neighborhood and have then since returned to the Bronx to live to live and work. Dexter and Felix kind of work in collage and around themes of identity and and memory. And so they transformed what we had created for them which is a sort of base infrastructure which is very kind of like regulation friendly open restaurants. And then they kind of converted it into this phantasmagorical expression of Dominican thingies like kind of using sort of construction off cuts and and paint and corrugated roofing to kind of create this, this really vibrant space for this for this restaurant, which really need an outdoor dining pavilion because it's really more of a take out kind of restaurant. And so the pavilion instead became nominally sort of like outdoor dining room but it also became a little bit of a community hub. So there's a. So this is a digital projector projection screen and there's a projector that is used to display artwork and kind of community information and it's and it sort of was available for for meetings and other kinds of community communities and so this is sort of this is some images from the opening. And so like the idea that these kind of individualized street installations might be kind of powerful on a community basis is also organizing some of our research. This is some images of a study that we're doing with Community Board for in Queens. And a team of designers that includes the traffic safety and engineering group at Thornton City. We're basically we're looking at how we could equip the Community Board with proposals for very selective street closures that they can bring to the Department of Transportation. And how we could target certain blocks that meet the criteria of the DRT in terms of selective pedestrianization part of the kind of effort to create more accessible and equitable access to outdoor space, but also where the street closures can be instrumental, not only to local local restaurants, but also because of their proximity to other institutions like libraries or public schools might be able to be those street closures might be able, maybe, maybe might be able to be leveraged to become more a more kind of essential community resource. One of our other kind of partnerships has been with the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the AIA to create a program that's called the Design Corps, which is sort of design advocates and miniature. It's a program to partner individual restaurants with individual architects who can help them with some of the elements to enable them to open outdoors. And it's a way of kind of taking some of the lessons that we've learned and kind of try to fold them into a citywide program. And then kind of running in parallel with that we've created a winterization retrofit toolkit that kind of considers how the improved traffic safety, kind of snow and wind kind of structural stability and heating and enclosure strategies could be could be implemented to safely help to transition these provisional structures that were erected over the summer. Into kind of like the into the winter and the next the following seasons, now that the program has been made permanent. So this is a, this is a sort of initiative that we've been that we've been engaged in kind of looking at at bringing engineering expertise to some of these really lightweight kind of temporary structures. And also thinking specifically about how to incorporate other kinds of safety measures, you know, from sort of the incorporation of water filled traffic safety barriers to kind of safe strategies for reinforcement. So we have really inexpensive and easily and easily implemented to kind of retrofit some of these structures to do more kind of robust engineering expertise around around airflow so we kind of engineered a kind of enclosure strategy that that that triples that that that sort of increases or augments the the ASHRAE standard for safe indoor air and kind of beats it by between 300 and 2000%. So all of the kind of as part of an effort to to improve sort of this the safety and longevity of these of these outdoor elements because we believe that that that effort will serve the kind of durability of the program, which is currently, and kind of incredibly caused a sort of reconsideration of the public space of the street and what that space is for and who it's for. And then kind of a last project, an arts project this is a, this is a, we've been working with a gallery in Williamsburg called summertime on kind of a retrofit of their space and I will. And kind of as part of our efforts, creating these videos to to spotlight the clients and the work that the work that they they've been doing so I'll let them explain the project in their in their own words. Summertime is an art studio and gallery space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and we champion a more inclusive art world for artists with intellectual disabilities alongside artists without disabilities. What we're working on with design advocates is to make our gallery and studio space more accessible for artists as well as transition from a studio to a gallery space seamlessly. One of the things we loved about working with design advocates was that working collaboratively is so central to their ethos and that's something that aligns perfectly with summertime submission. We did a participatory pinup with the artists that we work with, as well as people in the neighborhoods, friends and colleagues where we invited them into our space to look at our designs, give us feedback and let us know what they would like in our space. We want summertime's physical space to be a collaborative creative hub for all. Working with design advocates has had a huge impact on summertime as an organization and it's really the first time that we've been afforded the time and space to think about our design, both on an accessibility level as well as making it a mutual space. And that really perfectly aligns with how we want to support and exhibit the artists that we work with. The artists always come first. And some images from the participatory pinup. So I mean one of the interesting things about these kinds of projects is that all the design advocates projects are collaborations between multiple offices and clients and so it's also kind of afforded us this really interesting opportunity to try out other forms of collaborative and kind of participatory design processes and kind of workflows that we've maybe not had the opportunity or kind of like the projects in our respective offices don't necessarily afford, which has been I think one of the most kind of incredible learning experiences from the organization. And as a result of that, like the collaborative teams are starting and the organization as a whole. I mean, we're just about to hit the one year mark. And we are suddenly finding that our initial kind of premise which was that, which was that small firms shouldn't be limited to kind of thinking about small projects is actually is showing it's kind of proving to be true so kind of in a return to this antenna image. We've, for example, been recently. We've started a collaboration with a group of telecom workers who have kind of broken away from spectrum to create a community sourced and worker owned alternative internet provider in New York City called people's choice. We may have a contract to install internet connectivity infrastructure on 50, starting with the 52 New York City housing authority buildings. So we're starting to be kind of asked to partner with organizations as well as city agencies to kind of think about more equitable distribution of essential infrastructure like internet connectivity for for communities like the public housing community and for public transportation. So this has been a really interesting kind of outgrowth of this collaborative energy that that has really been kind of built into into the organization. So, these are the six firms who kind of started the the group and some of the logos and kind of persona that that have been involved in it over the course of the last year. Thank you, Michael. That was fantastic. I'm inspired now so I can go do my studio work. This is great. No but seriously to see such a diverse body of work. I would love to know how you manage all of that and I mean I don't know of any other firm or designer with both like rich interiors compact living design socially conscious urban design interventions and academic research so I mean that's it's extremely unique. And also to see what you're doing with design advocates is really exciting, especially living in New York City I see how much need there is for that so thank you. We have about 10 minutes so we'll to have the Q&A so that's, I'll go ahead and try to start the process. First question, and please feel free to write anything in the chat as we go. So first question is from Gary, and he says, Sir Michael good day. Sir may I ask, what would be your best tips to become a successful graduate in a mark at Columbia GSAP. And do we need to become more experimental or do we need to become more conventional and traditional. So, I guess my, that's a big question. I think that my, my, my reply is probably something along the lines of I think that you should do you. But I can just say that from my own path. I, I think that you know I've tried to, I was really deeply inspired by both the kind of critical training that I received at Columbia, as well as a sort of experimental kind of the spirit of kind of experimentation, particularly around, around digital technology. I was kind of happening in the early odds when I was, when I was in a mark. And, and, and I, and I guess like my career trajectory, certainly in the context of the office has been defined as many applications of that training as, as I, as I, as I could create in within the realm of, of a conventionally structured, you know, sort of not especially novel practice model, you know, which is that like, we're structured like a conventional architecture firm. And we do primarily built commissioned work, you know, like much of it in New York City right and so trying to find ways for that context, like Park Avenue apartments right which are, which are in a way some of the most traditional most coded most kind of rigid project contexts for them to be hosts to some of the more kind of radical thoughts or kind of techniques or working methods. And I think that that has sort of been, let's say foundational to my own training as an architect like, I find not to be an incredibly enriching environment to work in right like and, and sort of like an interesting challenge to, to, to engage in is it what it means is that that what it means is that is that the people who are practitioners of those more experimental processes digital fabrication, you know, kind of coders programmers, as well as more experimental makers, it means that they are the people who keep the profit from these projects. And so that is a way of, I think, kind of an important form of community building and kind of capacity building that as an architect we, I have have sort of the privileged position of being able to to kind of conduct right and so, so I think for me it's about kind of connecting the dots it was never really about it was never really about choosing either or. That's fantastic yeah I mean to see the ceiling in the Fifth Avenue apartment it's like it's both like extremely contemporary but it has like this traditional aspect to it says really interesting. So, Chris has a really good question. He says thank you Michael I wanted to ask what your vision. Oh, sorry, now it's moving on. What's your vision for your firm in the next five to 10 years and what do you hope to achieve and I would also just add in there. How do you see design advocates playing into your role of like of your firm and over the next like five years. Yeah, I mean, well I think, you know, so I'm like in my mid 40s right and so like, like, I feel like I feel like for the firm, after a, you know, a decade or two of sort of striving that we're finally kind of hitting our, our professional stride, and that's been really powerful and kind of exciting for me personally and also for the whole team. And I think that that interestingly enough like many of the opportunities that we've been afforded recently have kind of coincided with some of with the advent of some of this more sort of civically minded. You know, kind of pro bono work right so kind of work with institutions that has led to other has led to other things and so in the, in part of the kind of ulterior motive behind design advocates was always to use the organization as a way to be a cheerleader for and a kind of a support mechanism and a resource for other small firms. And so something that we are very much invested in right now as an organization is talking about how we can kind of transition from being more of a kind of like led or kind of executive led organization to being a more member led organization that serves the, that kind of returns, shall we say profit or kind of benefit to the members the volunteers who actually contribute their and the energy to to the projects. So, as the profile of design advocates has been kind of on the rise over the course of the last year, and we're being asked to be sort of essential partners, kind of working on essential work for organizations and also for the city, like, we're trying to, to use that as an opportunity to advocate for the importance of small firms are kind of independent firms and the sort of energy and and and expertise that that resides within. So, I think that the hope is really that that that the two organizations are, are kind of mutually reinforcing in that, in that way, you know, like that, and that, and that that benefit doesn't kind of like flowed to me or or my fellow board members but it begins to really be spread across the people who are who are active in the organization. And I think that it's being, it is, you know, we have we have sort of indications of proof of concept of that simply by virtue of the fact that we're like recently being kind of approached with with non pro bono kind of like paid work, you know, kind of work on infrastructure for larger institutions and kind of larger actors. And so we think that there's and we think that those are really interesting opportunity here within within design advocates, I mean, and, and that sort of plays very well into my own ambitions for the practice which is that we want to be making more buildings we want to be making larger buildings we want to do more work, kind of in the public, in the public realm, where some of the research capacities and and kind of technological possibilities that we have in the office gain a foothold and sort of like the material world. I think when you showed the first slide you said there was about like five firms together in in yourself for design advocates, and how quickly did it grow to about 120. We're closer to 150 by now and I mean it was just like it's been just like a slow additive, you know, process so I mean we probably have to like close to 300 people kind of like cycle through the organization at one point or another in the last year and I probably say that there's probably like a, probably like a group of 30 or 40 forums who are really kind of core to the, to the, to the organization. Now we're doing a lot of work. And how has the city responded so when you do those like guides of the like ventilation and like street side eating like how has the city responded have they been very helpful. They have I mean like, so the the winterization guide is actually being released in conjunction with the Department of Transportation so it's, it's, it required quite a lot of back and forth with city agencies, you know, do to do be small business and so I think that's been a very interesting kind of outgrowth of the whole experience, as well as you know we we assumed that we would have the door slammed in our faces and actually what we found is that the city is so desperate for people to step in that not only is there an opportunity to get involved but there's actually an opportunity to help them to kind of move the needle, a little bit on what these, what these various programs will mean down the line, especially as they become permanent. And so this is sort of like, to me this is the, this is the Holy Grail right is to is is for some of the people who have been who have been active, and in this process on a kind of pro bono and self organized level to be both recognized and kind of agency in the context where the city is starting to consider like what are in what manner will outdoor dining become a permanent feature of the of the of the landscape of the street in New York City and that that's, that's a conversation that's happening right now. And so we're trying to exert as much pressure on that process as we can. Okay. And would you it's already one o'clock so would you be willing to answer one more question. So, Andrea says, great presentation. Thank you and how do you find local artists like Dexter and Felix Cyprian. So, so, one of the amazing things about working with a team of 300 other designers is that we have an incredible network. It's a great answer. It's like, you know, Felix and Dexter are friends, like, they're friends of friends. And, and it's the same with kind of like the artists and designers that that we work with in the, in the office, you know, sometimes it's about people, sometimes it's about recognizing that there are just gems in your own network or kind of your extended network. And it's been about tells kind of telegraphing that that, at least for us in the office, it's been about telegraphing our desire for kind of interest and commitment in collaboration. And then we use platforms like Instagram, you know, like we find we learn about people who are interesting to us. And then throughout, we kind of cultivate relationships, and then we try to find ways to get them paid, like done online right and we kind of look for paying opportunities or kind of commission opportunities, and try to find ways to kind of share the wealth like that's, I think. So I think you find partners by being a good partner. I mean, I mean, I could, I could see that, you know, post COVID-19, maybe the design community, you know, becomes a little bit tighter in New York City through this whole process, I mean, I really hope so. I mean, like this has been one of the most miraculous things about design advocates right is it like all of us like many of us are friends right like a lot of us have associations with schools or like we went to school together we teach together. And so we have kind of, we have a certain kind of community that's that is that is built in but but professionally we are kind of nominally in competition with one another all the time right. And that doesn't mean that we're not still friends of course because we're architects and our friends are all architects. But we've never been able to, we've never had the opportunity to collaborate with each other in quite the same way. And so it has been kind of magical, like it's been a really wonderful experience kind of like my favorite thing that I've worked on in the last year is, is sort of like this, you know, this kind of like rag tag team of, of fellow designers in New York where we get together on zoom and on mirror and kind of like work on these amazing projects for these amazing communities. That's fantastic. Thank you so much that was such a great note to end on I wish we had more time. But I want to thank Michael and Nash for bring more awareness to what the GSAP community does in the city and beyond, and hopefully we can have Michael back for an update on all his projects and design advocates in the future. But I've dropped some links in the chat to stay in touch with Michael and for updates with his firm as well as participating in upcoming GSAP lectures so thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you so much.