187: Jay Siebenmorgen, Design Partner @ NBBJ

Can strict technical requirements and elegant design coexist? Jay Siebenmorgen says yes. As Design Partner at NBBJ, Jay has spent over 30 years working on hospitals, research labs, and higher education buildings — some of the most technically demanding spaces in architecture — and made beauty a non-negotiable.

Jay walks through the exploratory design process behind 325 Binney Street — Moderna's Kendall Square headquarters — including the massing studies, zoning constraints, and the five-story atrium his team fought to carve into a famously deep floor plate. He also talks through Mass General's new Ragon Building, a 1.4-million-square-foot academic medical center more than a decade in the making, and the McLean Hospital project that proves great design doesn't require a big budget — just discipline.

Along the way, Jay gets into what makes institutional design different: buildings that have to function under enormous technical and regulatory pressure while still feeling humane, beautiful, and calming to the people inside them. He also opens up about teaching graduate design studios for over a decade, what mentorship has taught him about running a 650-person firm, and the leap — three years ago — from top designer to partner, and everything that leap forced him to learn that architecture school never did.

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Transcript

Rens Hayes IV 0:08

Hi everyone, welcome to design development, your hub to learn direct from top performers in real estate design and construction. I'm your host, Ren Hayes, co-founder of H+O Structural Engineering, lifelong learner, and I'm personally obsessed with high-powered organizations and the leaders that got them. Let's go. Today we're putting the design and design development. I'm speaking to Jay Siebenmorgen, Design Partner at Global Architecture Powerhouse NBBJ. Jay spent decades helping clients use design as a tool for organizational transformation while also shaping the next generation of architects as a professor at prestigious universities like Columbia and Northeastern. And he has a lot to teach us as well. Let's dive in. Jay, walk us through the exploratory design process with Moderna at 325 Minnie Street.

Jay Siebenmorgen 0:54

Yes. So the site was by our studio was being investigated and started, I think, in 2017. And of course, Alexandria had bought the property. Interesting location of the MetPipe site that was there. Last quadrant or area within Kindle Square, you might say that was a kind of transitional zone between the more dense part of Kindle Square that was being developed to the lower scale neighborhoods to the northeast. The site, which was the old MetPipe site, Alexandria real estate had bought the property and we started working on it with them, I think, in 2017, around there, 2018. And it was a pretty complex kind of situation where the larger part of Kindle Square, the denser part that was being built out, this was a kind of transitional zone between that density and what was residential neighborhoods to the northeast. We dig in and you start investigating how much area you can build out. And in the meantime, you're dealing with the complexity of the residential neighborhoods and trying to respect them and so forth. So we we really dug into many different studies of different scales of massing. And so you're crunching the numbers, you're looking at tall massings to stepping down to low massines, you're thinking about the spatial relationships of such height relationships, but also how it relates to the neighborhood, right? It's a really, really invigorating process where you're meeting weekly with the client, bringing new studies and so forth to where we're editing down and getting focused into maybe three or four different massing approaches, also working through the legal side. What the lawyers think the Cambridge Planning Board is gonna actually approve and even potentially upzone for the area to actually build the building as we start actually trying to be as smart as we can about what massing is gonna make it through that route process. So you're doing that, you're also doing test fits of such kind of floor plates. This building was unique because it was very deep and long, which meant not a lot of natural light was going to be getting into a deep floor plate like that. And I'll come back to some of those thoughts there. Ultimately, settled on two shifted massing heights. One is a six-story building and one is a four-story building. They are all one building, but the taller portion is pushed towards Benny Street, which is the denser part of Kendall Square, and the lower step portion is towards the residential street to the northeast. So we as the architects and the team thinking about interior space as well, we actually started to think about the connection between the low and the tall massing, what that kind of split moment could become for the deep buildings. And then there's also the taller portion of the project. So one of the things we love is collaboration with our clients and the kind of the give and take of ideas. And I always say this joke to my team don't ever present anything you don't want to build. There should not be a bad idea on the table when you bring it to the client.

Rens Hayes IV 3:39

And I could see you want you have one design you're in love with. So you show one that you don't like and hope that the client agrees and you don't want to get stuck with the one that you don't like, right?

Jay Siebenmorgen 3:48

What I think is interesting though is you think in your head that's the idea, but through the editing process and that kind of collaboration, you're listening to what resonates with them based on what you're showing them and with the metrics, but also the kind of the big ideas. They started pushing us hard on how are we going to get light into this deep floor plate. And so that really just opened things up, and uh which resulted in kind of two kind of incisions in the building. There's a very major one on the south facade on Benny Street. So if you go there and you see the building, you'll see these. What we call the jewel boxes that kind of dance up the side of the building. Behind those jewel boxes is actually a five-story atrium space that goes deep into the building so that the program between the labs and the office space actually flank that area so it brings light down into the building.

Rens Hayes IV 4:35

And did you have to give up density or scale of the building to create this?

Jay Siebenmorgen 4:40

Yeah, that's so that's part of the number crunching. If we're gonna do that, you have to sacrifice this kind of area to make it happen. But ultimately, I think we hit this kind of sweet spot with the occupiable area of the building where they could also offer this really amazing amenity space, which is really important these days with buildings, is to offer really good amenities to potential tenants so they can think about how they're gonna use the building because it also wants to be a tractor to their employees to come into the office, right? And this kind of give into the work from home world. We were designing this during COVID, interestingly enough. So there was a ton of discussion about what the future of buildings wanted to be. This impacted this the size of elevators, the scale of a stair that we actually designed in the space, actually as wide and then influxed to a tight point, but it spirals up the atrium space. So that the goal was that if somebody wanted to take a stair from the top to bottom, they could do that in a beautiful experience without taking an elevator, right? You're also encouraging health and wellness in the building. You not only get that from natural light, but now you're activating the building by encouraging take the stairs because it's an incredible space. And then the cubes or the jewel boxes, those are actually collaboration zones on the outer edge of the building. So they're like two-story atriums anchored to this five-story atrium.

Rens Hayes IV 6:01

That sounds amazing. As as I continue to grow in in business and organization building, I have a deeper and deeper appreciation for spatial design and the environment you create to bring that together. And like I I prioritize having an area where you can attract people to come into the office. So I can see at the scale at which say a tenant like Moderna, they really need to create that environment. So it's cool to hear that BBJ and Alexandria made a focus on that.

Jay Siebenmorgen 6:29

Those ideas were in place when Moderna saw the design, and we know that was a big factor in them being attracted to the building.

Rens Hayes IV 6:37

And that's gonna be rewarding because I I think sometimes one of the challenges an architect faces is they have this vision for the architectural impact, but it's really hard to measure or get an ROI. So when you have that feedback, that like something that you envisioned, like this space, this stair, this atrium, the these cubes off the side of the building for a collaboration space, that ultimately is what helped attract a major tenant to this building, is super rewarding.

Jay Siebenmorgen 7:02

What was cool is that when Moderna saw the design, they actually had their own, they came in and they pushed for more green, more vegetation, which did not really exist in the design at that time. So now, which was amazing because now we were given license to go in. We designed all of these custom planters, which which goes up the side of the base of the first stair, and then it actually goes up the main structural spine wall that's in the middle that's actually allowing this atrium space to occur, and then the jewel boxes are anchored to the side. So we affectionately called it the veggie stair and the veggie wall, and really one of the most beautiful spaces I think our design team has done. Really proud of it.

Rens Hayes IV 7:41

What architects inspired you, Jeff?

Jay Siebenmorgen 7:44

There's a lot of layers to that, I would say. So I was a kid of the 80s. So when I finished my undergraduate at Kansas State University in the 90s, that was there was an era called deconstructivism was going on at the time. There was a big exhibit at MOMA in New York on that that is actually going into kind of postmodernism. So I was like any kid at that time. I was attracted to kind of the, I would call the craziness of what postmodernism was doing at first, but then I got really turned off on it later on. So architects like Rem Koolhaus or Stephen Hall, who were, you know, Stephen was really focused on kind of phenomenology of ideas about space and light and so forth.

Rens Hayes IV 8:23

That and you got to work directly with Steven?

Jay Siebenmorgen 8:25

Yeah, I did, which was checking off a bucket list thing in my life. But he, you know, he was doing things different that that actually were not paying attention to this kind of postmodern thing that was going on, but had more to do with sculpted space and inform and how it related to actually big concepts or big ideas, how it related to tactile qualities of touch, even down to the design of a door handle. That I just found a lot of depth of meaning and thinking that way as an architect. And then I think about then there's the opposites of coolas, who was really interested in program and the manifestation of what program can do to be very expressive for the architecture of a building, like in a literal way. So I find myself as a thinker in architecture somewhere caught in between those two worlds, I would say. Because now when you I think there is you'd mentioned organizational transformation, the way you organize a program transforms the way a client or an enterprise can function. So, but it also like I love this kind of thread between the expression of a program and material application to it. So like it's all intertwined, right? The way you organize it. The beauty of the architecture comes from the beauty of the relationships between the program, the scale and the shape of the program, the placement of the program within the building. So if you look at 325 Binny, you will literally see the expression of two-story atriums anchored to all atrium space, right? And then a very rational facade that's based off of this the spacing of a lab grid. You have to geek out on those proportions and so forth. Whereas opposed to like the Ray Gun building that we're doing for Mass General Hospital, super complex. It has a base podium, that procedural plate that's loaded with operating rooms, and it's also a cancer hospital. So it has infusion level, but then it also has a patient tower, right? If you go, the first tower is built on that. We got another tower to go yet. But if you go see it in person, you will see the way the lobby spaces cascade down the side of the tower and actually go into the base of the podium. There is a meditation space that has its own kind of unique form to actually spatially open it up to get more light into it. And then there's a lot of thinking about how you select and apply facade materials, interior materials based on that program specificity. So it's it's I was gonna say it's difficult to explain, but it's like there's a lot of layering in the thinking. And then at the same time, I think something I mentioned before, how does all of that relate to the how does it relate to the scale of the neighborhood and the experience of being on the street level with it 20 feet, 100 feet away versus three, four, five blocks away when you actually see it within the context of the city? You have to be thinking about all of these things at the same time.

Rens Hayes IV 11:12

Now now working with someone like Stephen Hall, was he a phenomenal teacher, or was this somebody that you just had to be in close proximity to and observe how he worked?

Jay Siebenmorgen 11:20

There's somebody once told me you need to go, you need to go work with those people you idolize to demystify the process, right? And I think that's exactly what it was for me. Like you have your own thoughts about architecture and how you want to run a team and guide a team and ultimately produce a great building, right? But there is something about going to work with those people, the starchitects, that actually gives you more self-confidence that, hey, I'm capable of thinking within this context, within this group of thinkers. Now I want to go take it, be a part of a different kind of a design firm and try to guide things in my own way, right? Or test myself in new ways, right? That's not another.

Rens Hayes IV 12:00

That's such a great lesson, Jay. I I think that can be applied in a lot of areas of life. You can look at what somebody else has achieved and think that they're like this incredible person that is almost like at an unattainable level. But I think a better question is like, why not me? Why not us? What can we do to put ourselves in a position to achieve our goals as well? And I think demystifying the process is a really cool statement.

Jay Siebenmorgen 12:24

They're still doing incredible work. I still have good friends there and uh they're just incredibly passionate about what they do. And that's anybody who's going to be good in a profession doesn't not just architecture, right? You got to be really rigorous and very passionate about it, I think, to succeed at high levels and really test yourself.

Rens Hayes IV 12:41

I loved hearing how you think through a design process and start to blend all of these considerations, like the curb appeal when you're walking by a building versus blocks away versus miles away versus each facade angle, the sunlight. How do you balance this everlasting pursuit of design excellence while also managing a team and hitting a project budget?

Jay Siebenmorgen 13:03

I'm a firm believer that you should be able to do great design with any budget that's given to you. And I've definitely been challenged with the lowest budgets to actually having no budget at all. I would argue that it's much more difficult to design a very minimalist box in a beautiful way than to have an unlimited budget, right? Where you've where you you have to exhibit self-control to actually do control that world, right? There's no excuse. If I have no budget, I have no excuse for not doing a great building. Whereas I would rather actually have the kind of constraints, some constraints placed on us to really push ourselves to think differently to achieve something great.

Rens Hayes IV 13:41

That makes total sense to me, Jay. And being adjacent to architecture and the building and construction world, like my entire career. I went to design a house. And it's like I could look at my old house or past houses and think of how I would renovate them to make them better. It was almost like having certain constraints of the existing building made my vision of what it could be that much clearer. But when I was given a blank slate, I was like, where do I start? It's like I look at that as almost like an impossible thing to set off in the right direction. So when you approach a new design, are you almost trying to find a set of constraints to start to shape your design?

Jay Siebenmorgen 14:20

I there's a book called The Architecture of Trees that I was obsessed with, I think it's 10 years ago or so. But uh it's just this big thick book that documents every type of tree species in the world, and they're all hand drawings of these trees, and it's amazing, beautiful drawings. There's this kind of I've always had this thought about the essence of an idea. A tree has very specific function no matter what species it is, and it has a certain kind of leaf or the branch structure, the bark, and so forth. Every single thing serves a purpose within the beauty of that design, per se, and the way it functions. And there's an interesting kind of challenge with architecture, I think, is that is to be able to distill an idea down to where ideally you can't remove anything else because it's in such a balanced kind of state of design that if you remove anything, the idea falls apart, right? Which would be the same thing with the function of a tree. If I remove the leaves, it's not going to capture the sunlight or capture water and so forth. So I it's something I've I challenge myself internally with when trying to edit down ideas for sure. When is something superfluous or essential to the architecture, to what the client needs, to what the people inhabiting that building needs and so forth? Like how do you strike that kind of beautiful balance? And I think that's when you I think that's what some of the most beautiful kind of architectural works are in the world when they hit that kind of the essence of that kind of balance and things. It's quite it's a big challenge, right? To think to try to achieve that. But I think that as a North Star has always been.

Rens Hayes IV 15:52

I can appreciate that type of excellence or pursuit. It's almost like a pursuit of perfection that is so hard to attain, right?

Jay Siebenmorgen 15:59

Like we uh we're doing a building for McLean Hospital, a behavioral health project, which is really critical these days for it's for anybody from young children all the way up to their in their early 20s. But it's two buildings, it's a it's two teaching buildings that are linked together and then a residential building that wraps around it, but it's a low budget project and it's on the McLean hospital campus. But the fact that the budget was tight, we actually had to really hone what is the essence of the of the shape of this building and how it fits on the campus, because it's a very it's a very interesting mix of buildings there over a historical period of time, different kinds of ornamental facades, cornices, and so forth. That there was no way we were gonna have money to put that kind of detail into this building. So it really came down to this purest kind of massing almost in a kind of Danish way. Just very austere but beautifully proportioned buildings. I love when we can achieve something like that. It's being built right now, and when it's complete, I think it's gonna be a really special kind of project, but at a very low budget, and it's gonna be great for them.

Rens Hayes IV 17:04

Yeah, I can appreciate that. It's like the shape and the massing of the building rather than a level of detail is how you achieved that design. And not to mention the purpose behind the use of the building is pretty inspiring. You also did work at MGH. You work on the Reagan buildings for some time. Tell us about your work there.

Jay Siebenmorgen 17:20

So that is a that building actually started design at the same time that 325 Benny did.

Rens Hayes IV 17:26

So you're talking 2017 time, so almost 10 years ago. Yeah, yeah.

Jay Siebenmorgen 17:31

And we're still that project will span 15 years from the 2018 is when we want it. It'll finish in 2033, 2032, 2033, right? So it's uh I think 1.4 million square feet and around 450 patient beds, six levels underground, where that has 1,100 parking spaces and then two patient towers. So that also has it's an academic medical center, which is something we really focus on as a firm. They usually do teaching hospitals essentially, right? So they have it connected with Harvard, but so this new complex has a conferencing center and auditorium within it. So it's very, and then as I was mentioning earlier, the kind of density of ORs in the base, and then also has two rooftop terraces. So by the zoning setbacks on Cambridge are such that you can build up to certain height. So I think we have five stories, and then you have to step back some 60 feet before the tower can go up. This is an example of where you use constraints to actually create something great for the building. So with that setback, we have these two amazing roof terraces that are going to have beautiful vegetation. The patients that are in infusion, which they sit in these chairs for a very long time, they'll be staring out onto the garden. And the ones who are healthy enough, they can actually go out into the garden space. At that level, you have these amazing views out to the Charles, to the Salt and Pepper Bridge, as we call it. But yeah, so it's and it's a big team, right? We're a firm that when it comes to we cross-collaborate a lot between studios. So there's a really strong effort predominantly between the Boston office, the New York office, and the Columbus office. Um, we bring our best minds to the table for the project of that scale and this and the kind of the really kind of dense moments of like design development and construction documents. That team gets up to 40 people or so. So it's a big team.

Rens Hayes IV 19:25

That's a lot to manage. That's amazing. And that's across multiple offices that might come to collaborate on.

Jay Siebenmorgen 19:30

Oh, yeah, definitely. So it takes a lot of strong leadership and a lot of strong collaboration, which we very much believe in across the firm. But now we have a full-time team that's on site overseeing construction. So it's a big time commitment, but it's these are buildings that transform people's lives, it'll transform the way the hospital functions and its major impact on the landscape of the city and being part of the city.

Rens Hayes IV 19:55

If I was a real estate developer, I would want to know I wasn't overpaying for structure. But how do you do that if you don't design structure, you don't estimate construction, and every development's a little different than the last? Well, that's why we created the HO cost index. So you can know you're not paying for structure you don't need. If you want to navigate your structural investments with financial confidence, click the link below. Let's get back to the show. How do you envision or manage resources on a project that's gonna span 15 years? Is that something you knew when you get involved in 2017 going to span that long? Or is like the scale and scope and duration of the project kind of get realized over those first few years?

Jay Siebenmorgen 20:32

Yeah, our firm's done enough of these types of projects, the scale to understand how the ebbs and flows are gonna work over time, that you're gonna that you're gonna have a specific size of team at the beginning. It's gonna slowly expand through design development and CDs, and then it's gonna contract again during construction administration. It's just something that as a leadership group, you've got to stay ahead of and be thinking, thinking out three and six months. So we have a process we call process design that we actually, it's a kind of two, three-day intense team meeting where we get together in a room at the kickoff of every phase and actually plan out to the best of our abilities what the next, what the every month of that phase is gonna bring, right? So that includes the client in it, includes consultants, and then it's just also the internal design team by themselves for a period of time, trying to map out every possible scenario or predict as best as we can what's gonna happen when it's gonna happen.

Rens Hayes IV 21:28

I like the intentionality of that, Jay. Do you also try to identify the key decisions, internal milestones? Because we go back to that conversation around pursuit of design excellence. I think one of the hardest things for an architect is to when are we done with design and we're into production? Because I know once you're building my own house, designing my house, we're still building it, and I'm still like, oh, I would love to do this differently. Try to make the change later, but you can only go so far.

Jay Siebenmorgen 21:53

To that point, you're never done designing. So even in even and there's there are some firms that have that mentality of. Okay, we're moving into CDs. It's a different team. We're very intent on giving people the opportunity to go through as many phases as they can for continuity. Because when you are in construction administration, you are still analyzing and designing and problem solving every day of the week, right?

Rens Hayes IV 22:17

How do you manage that relative to scope and budget? Because so we're in construction, say, which means a contractor has already given the owner a price. But if we're still technically designing, is that something you're like having open conversations with a customer? How do you manage that?

Jay Siebenmorgen 22:32

It's definitely with the construction management team. You have to have a great relationship together. And ultimately that things are going to come up or not anticipated. And budgets usually anticipate contingencies to have that buffer for such situations that unforeseen situations that are going to come up, right? That's totally normal. So our job is to try to minimize that as much as possible. But you still it can be things such as the color and finish of a material. They're not able to match what we actually wanted to do. So we have to consider other options to go down, right? So that's like an example. Or the way we drew uh mullion cap detail doesn't actually work at some kind of intersection. So we have to sit back down and rethink or redesign that kind of condition with the fabricator, facade fabricator, but also in tune with the construction manager and our CA team, right? I'm just barely touching the surface of scratching the surface of the myriad of things that happen. And within a hospital, which is probably the most complex building you can design, you have all the intensity of the support systems for the patient rooms that deals with the gases and the kind of technology and so forth and everything that goes into each room. That you can imagine over 500 per bed hospital, how many scenarios might arise over a long construction period of time. But you have seasoned people that are the best in the business at doing it. One of them has what he calls the no freak out zone. You're not allowed to freak out in any kind of scenario. It's our job to solve it. It's a problem. Let's solve it. It's nobody's fault necessarily, but we got to sit down and get this right and get it done.

Rens Hayes IV 24:12

That's a strong perspective. I think assuming positive intent, or you don't have to find somebody that's at fault to solve a problem. If we as a team just focus on solving problems, because like you said, you're gonna run into challenges in a project of this scale. And to expect no challenges would be unrealistic, right? The no panic room, the no freak out room, the no freakout zone. How about how do you create urgency on a project of that duration? What I see in in young professionals in our industry and other industries is sometimes when you're working on smaller projects, you can kind of kick the can down the road and then you're like, all right, it's due this week. I'm gonna do the whole project. I'll stay laid and I'll get it done. But on projects of scale, you can't do that. So you have to set like these interior internal deadlines to almost create urgency to hit these milestones to put yourself in a position to lead, right?

Jay Siebenmorgen 25:02

Yeah, I think Lee's. I've I used to be that kid that actually would blow stuff off until the last moment. And I was always very good at it. But you grow and you you learn how to pace things and push what you need to push forward and what can wait. But that's actually part of that process design is we actually will map out all right, we got six months, we're gonna have we're gonna what we're gonna have 10 design presentations with the client, and these are gonna be the anticipated topics of each presentation, knowing that we got to start at a certain point with program and so forth, and get into more specifics of detail with each kind of department within the building, right? So it's uh it's you start big and you start honing into certain areas of the project as you go along. So you do have a kind of mapped out outline, of course, with you got to be ready to pivot and flex based on response within design presentations. But that's totally normal. And it takes it just takes years to figure that out as well and not panic. But uh, it's all good. We've we've when you get to a project of 1.4 million square feet, it's an amazing process, but it's like what I say, the give and take between the client and the ideas that we bring is what really makes the project special, right? Because we don't we want to push them, and what's even better is when they start pushing us back, right? And that's forces us. And then you really you're a team together. It's no, it's really that's the way I like to think about it. It's yes, you're the architect and there's the client that ideally you're working together as a team and moving forward for the best possible outcome.

Rens Hayes IV 26:34

Setting like delivering the projects, the unified goal, so we're all on the same team. I think that's really important. It's it comes back to that same example of don't find somebody that's at fault. There's a problem, we all have to solve that together. Let's just solve the problem. What's the biggest challenge you've faced in your career?

Jay Siebenmorgen 26:50

It's probably just my own growth edge as a person, as a professional, right? I think every I became a partner three years ago, and that's probably my biggest leap of like becoming a new kind of the new design problem, right? The design problem of a firm now. You're like you're part of a group of people that's guiding the firm forward. And like what's great about NBBJ, I think so we're like 83 years old now. The firm started in the 40s, and that's what is a firm that's all about succession planning and always an evolution of fresh leadership. The partnership is structured in a way that we're, you know, partners need to retire at a certain age so that new kind of younger partners can come in. So there's always this really I think it's beautiful the way that flow works. So I think when you're how do I say this? When I became a partner, I've I was I became a partner because I was respected as a very as one of the top designers in the firm. And we should get this individual into the group to be a part of this leadership group.

Rens Hayes IV 27:48

Yeah, and that's an important talent to have at the top.

Jay Siebenmorgen 27:50

Yeah, but you but now you have to really expand your thinking on how a business runs, right? It's not that you're not thinking about it beforehand, but now you're really behind the curtain. So now there's a whole different kind of set of new things you need to learn as a professional, how to be smart. I've I do believe that it is a design problem to design how the firm operates and how you move it forward. There's a lot of big important decisions that happen in a 650-person firm. It's really interesting. It's also humbling at the same time. So that's the challenges. Other challenges are just this kind of different that is a big challenge, Jay.

Rens Hayes IV 28:29

And I honestly love how you started to answer that. It's like growth as a person and a professional, because I think those are one and the same thing. And it's like we do have to grow as individuals in order to continue to advance like our professional professional capacity. So it's like the things that we pride ourselves on as an architect or as an engineer aren't necessarily the same skills that are gonna help you contribute to growing and managing the health of a 50, 100, a 650 person firm. That's not the stuff they teach you in college. Definitely, and I don't know that you could ever come away with that full education in college. And I know we definitely got to talk about the university picture in education here in a minute, but it's like these things that you really do run into problems that you have to continue growing as a person. Part of our ethos here at design development and certainly the stuff that we're advancing and pushing for at HO is personal growth. And I think when you have the environment, be able to look at a problem objectively. It's the same thing as with your client on the 1.4 million square foot development. It's like there's a problem, it's no one's fault, but we have to understand why we're running into the problem and then figure out how to solve it together. Same thing comes into play of running a business. Yeah, absolutely. What was one of the biggest shifts in your responsibility? Did your day-to-day change?

Jay Siebenmorgen 29:43

The biggest shift, I think, is immediately being invited into the room and with with all these people that you highly admire and just respect their level of intellect, right? And now it's a new test for you to uh develop to that level, ideally. It's another, it's also like another kind of area of demystifying what it means to be at that level, right? You're still a human being. Doesn't mean you know everything in the world, but you obviously have certain leadership traits that are valuable and effective to bring forward within the firm, right? Now I'm learning from all of them, which is amazing, but it's also different. I'm connected across the firm much more intensively than I used to be, which is great, right? Because I'm able to actually have advocacy and help help mentor others within other offices and the kind of their development as professionals. But then I'm also part of a group called the design practice leadership team. There's three of us partners that actually run that, that actually deal with everything operational within the firm, especially design excellence. We get into the kind of technology being done in the firm, things like AI, anything and everything that impacts the quality of design is something that we are managing as partners, right? That in itself is a very interesting kind of place to be in now.

Rens Hayes IV 30:58

That's an exciting place to be. It's and it comes with great responsibility because your decisions have impact at a scale across the entire company.

Jay Siebenmorgen 31:05

Yeah, absolutely. So it's for myself, I've always been most effective as a teacher or mentor, I think, in helping teams think through different design problems, right? So we'll have peer reviews with within the firm with designs that are going on different projects. And I think that's one of one of the things I really bring to the table as a critic to be able to sit with a team and talk to them about, okay, this is what's happening. You might think about these different ways to strengthen the project, or they have a specific design problem that they're struggling with. I enjoy that process of kind of critiquing and collaborating with them to create new ideas to push it forward, right?

Rens Hayes IV 31:44

I think that's a great organizational trait, having an internal peer review. I I think it's short-sighted to think that everybody in a company is going to do something perfect and think of every possible thing and then send it out to a client or to an external peer review. It's like we have this type of depth and experience across the team. Create an internal process to let the best idea.

Jay Siebenmorgen 32:04

You often need an unbiased mind to come into the middle of your team dynamics to help them move forward at times, right? Because when you're on a team, you're so focused together that sometimes you're so into it you don't actually see maybe some different potentials that they could be investigating. So that's where the peer review process is highly effective.

Rens Hayes IV 32:22

So that same thing exists at the organizational level too. A mentor of mine who really I got educated in mergers and acquisitions and how to turn around businesses and create scalable organizations. A lesson that they shared is even at their level, who they did turnarounds for if bank if somebody was in trouble with and had debt with Bank of America, they would call him to go in and evaluate this company. And he said, if you've been in an organization for more than 18 months, you have a bias that you can't see. And that same thing happens in design, that same thing exists at the other lesson I've learned about partnership, Jay. You mentioned like you're in this room and you appreciate all the intellect of people around you. And I think that demystifying bias, I think anytime you meet a subject matter expert that's an expert in something that you want to know more about, that you're not yet the expert, like that level of intellect can be so impressive. But I think internally it's so important as individuals that we're not judging those around us based on our strengths and our expertise, right? Because they might be they might be excellent at something understand at all. And so let's judge them on their strengths, not our strengths. You mentioned collaborating across offices on a scale where you're bringing as many as 40 people together at crunch time on a major deliverable on a major project. How do you organize the architectural team across a 650-person firm? Do you have market sector leaders?

Jay Siebenmorgen 33:39

Do you have studios? We so the firm has we have 10 offices internationally, and then you have studios, right? So Boston is an office, but also a singular studio. We're about 65 people here. Whereas like Seattle, I think they have six to seven studios that vary in size from like lighting design and graphic design, which are small studios of like five to ten people, all the way to commercial and healthcare studios, which get back up to the 30 to 50 to 60 range, right? So when it comes to cross-collaboration, if I use the Reagan building as an example, we have to do a project like that, we have to have different types of expertise. One, namely being excellent medical planners, also have to have great interior designers, and then of course the architects and the designers that are on the team. But so part of that strategy is that we don't in Boston, we don't actually staff up to actually take on that load so that and then in three or four years, oh, we have to let 20 people go, right? But it's also because so we can balance our staffing that way within the firm, but it's also so that we can draw the best expertise from each studio, right? So at the time we had we we brought in really excellent interior design team from New York. We had planners and interior designers from the Columbus office as well. And you got in we get into this cadence where they all come to the Boston office at that schematic design, it was like at least twice a month for several days. So we're like shredding together. But the rise of things like this, like Teams and video games, was had already started pre-COVID, right? So we were already doing that.

Rens Hayes IV 35:15

That's a competitive advantage, yeah.

Jay Siebenmorgen 35:17

And then, but being in person together, you just make so much progress that's still that's the best way to do it, right? But we're we were pretty pretty in tune with that kind of flexible collaborative model before COVID. COVID just lit it on fire, right? That anywhere, right? So we were in our comfort zone when COVID hit, as far as that goes, right? It was easier for us, I would say. But it's been a normal thing, right? When I was in the New York, I was 15 years in New York City for the New York office of NDBJ. And back in 2004, we were designing the Londer building at Mass General Hospital. It's quite normal that I would come up to Boston at least once a month, meeting with a client and so forth. So it's pretty easy in the Northeast, right? Easy flights, and so that kind of collaboration is very easy to do. But it just to the point it brings the best of our expertise to bear for a project and we do things like that.

Rens Hayes IV 36:10

You've been a professor throughout your professional career. One, like you've obviously led a professional career that's allowed you to a design partner at a 650 confirm. How did you continue to grow your professional career and carve out time to be a professor and give back to rising architect?

Jay Siebenmorgen 36:29

Yeah. So I've always I've never been full-time teaching. That's important. I've always been interested in studios, like teaching graduate level design studios. And it's kind of honestly, I did I just knew that I wanted to teach. I didn't start off with any master plan, and I had an opportunity to co-teach at Columbia for a period of time, and then I actually traveled for a year to teach at my undergraduate school, Kansas State University. And then the crazy thing was my wife and I, when we wanted to move out of New York City, actually did a quasi-two-year sabbatical and we went to teach full-time at Kansas State University until we decided to move to Boston. But so then when we came to Boston, I taught at the GSD and now I've been at Northeastern for a few years. But carving the timeout is I like to do one studio a year has been because it is demanding. Luckily, they've reformatted the use of studios used to be three days a week, now they're two days a week, which I think is about right for students.

Rens Hayes IV 37:27

Two days a week and they're like a semester long.

Jay Siebenmorgen 37:29

Yeah, so it'd be like studio on Tuesday, Friday from 1.30 to 5 30. And then I get it pretty early. So I like I will make up my hours that I miss in the studio. And I you just gotta be you just gotta know that if you're gonna do that, you still have to be completely accessible as a partner. And sometimes you might have to miss a studio to take care of something.

Rens Hayes IV 37:51

You're still accountable to the result and to the Oh, yeah.

Jay Siebenmorgen 37:54

Absolutely. That's where flexibility in a work environment comes in, where you can still there's also an understanding within the university as well that of what your role is within the firm and you may have to miss a studio here and there. But honestly, it's all it's pretty normal for a professor to have to miss a studio here and there. And what happens when you're in a good group is you just cover for them when they're gone and you pop in and do desk grits with their students and they do the same for you.

Rens Hayes IV 38:19

Has your experience teaching at in university impacted the training and development program at NBBJ or vice versa?

Jay Siebenmorgen 38:27

It's yeah, it definitely impacts the way I think about things for sure. Because when you're student when you're teaching 10 students, you essentially are helping design 10 projects, right? And you what's cool about it is and demanding is that you have to stay ahead of those students, right? So if they're interested in certain ideas, you find yourself, oh, I've got to go actually look into this and be prepared for desperate. So it keeps your brain active and interested in different areas of thought. And it also challenges your own beliefs about architecture, right? When you when you start preaching to them about something and they throw bombs back at you.

Rens Hayes IV 39:04

It keeps you on your toes.

Jay Siebenmorgen 39:10

But that kind of uh it's very rewarding, and that kind of process of working with them, the student, is I very much enjoy doing that as well in the studio here. Not that I'm teaching them, but if it's giving now it's my time to give those design teams, they're the ones coming up with the ideas, right? They're the creative engine, and I'm more the critic helping push things forward with them in different ways.

Rens Hayes IV 39:34

Has the way we educate architects changed, or does it need to change?

Jay Siebenmorgen 39:39

It has not really changed. There's kind of there are certain fundamentals you have to teach students to think like an architect, right? And those you just have you have to do, right? So the years that I'm usually in, I'm very keen on helping them develop their rigor behind the ideas, behind their concepts, right? And then I'm also teaching a comprehensive studio at Northeastern where you're actually they have to think about structure and mechanical systems and so forth, which is just a brain fry for them. Wait, I got to do all these things and uh and which but you start educating them. That's why when you see a beautiful building, that's because all of those systems are so well thought out and fine-tuned that they almost disappear, right? Or they become an important part of the logic of the design of the building. So, what is how are you gonna think about your building, right? So that computers obviously have evolved over time and the programs and so forth. And now there's the challenge of AI, but you have they have it's important you push them towards rigorous thinking, especially now, right? I know the experiments of AI that's going on and so forth, that that's our goal right now, at least my still my goal within the studios is the discipline of thinking as an architect before you go use all of these other tools.

Rens Hayes IV 40:53

It's equally important in engineering. I know we have a we have a saying, Justin Murray, he was a professor before he joined our team almost 10 years ago now. And he's if you we can't teach you engineering if you don't know statics, right? You have to understand the root fundamentals of engineering for us to be able to guide you as in a growing up. And that's it's so true because it's like we have all this technology at our fingertips, but you have to understand the fundamentals to be able to know if something's wrong. You have to be able to identify when you're getting an output from software that doesn't look right. You can't gain that perspective without first mastering the fundamentals.

Jay Siebenmorgen 41:30

So it's if you don't know statics, we can't that kind of thinking with students when they're interested in an idea. I'm usually very quick to take them back as best I can, like through a history of that thinking of that particular idea. This architect studied this, and there's you can draw there's famous diagrams, branchings of certain architects had these three people split off. They did these incredible things, and then all these people split off. So there's this like almost tree family tree diagram. And there's so like I enjoy threading the needle of those kind of ideas and lineage of thinking behind architects, and especially helping students see that there's an importance to how it's evolved over time and like why is what you're studying now important and how are you going to take it and do something fresh and new with it compared to what was done before, rather than just repeating it.

Rens Hayes IV 42:18

You told me you can trace any good architects' ideas forward through their portfolio, like an idea that doesn't get built on one project they carry forward. Yeah. What's a thread you can see in your own portfolio?

Jay Siebenmorgen 42:32

I don't think I've ever been asked this before. There's kind of there's scales of threads, you might say. There's definitely the the challenge of how a program is organized and manifests itself in a formal way on a building. So that's constantly that's something that it that is always creates something new and fresh. And so the belief in testing those boundaries is always there. The others is the other is like material application. And I've I dare use the word ornament in a kind of loose way because like on the Dini building for Moderna, it was very much about rational kind of systems, timelessness to it, and timeless is a word I use quite often. Like any building that we do should be equally relevant in 50 years as it was today when it was completed. Like you should be able to look at it in 50 years and think that is beautiful.

Rens Hayes IV 43:24

Is there a trend in the industry right now that you don't think will age well?

Jay Siebenmorgen 43:28

I could dig into a lot of architects, but I'm not gonna it's my favorite thing to do.

Rens Hayes IV 43:34

I know one that I picked out or that stands out to me, and I actually like it right now is black windows in residential homes. I went with white windows because I don't think black's gonna age well.

Jay Siebenmorgen 43:46

What you mean white window frames?

Rens Hayes IV 43:48

White window frames, yeah. Like in the grills in a window in a residential house, like black, like a white house with black windows, is I feel like I see that everywhere because I also went through that thought process. I like that look, but in my mind, I'm like, I don't think that's gonna age well. I think the white window frames are timeless.

Jay Siebenmorgen 44:05

I could look at someone like Mies who did buildings with all black molens, and you go there today and you're like, wow, that's beautiful. Yeah. But it's got facade materials. I've grown more interested in organic shapes and facade panels and just a kind of I haven't done it, I haven't been able to do it yet, but we've designed a building for Metemco, MIT's development arm on Volpe site. It's a project that we did post-COVID for them, of course, with the lab building overbuilding and the bubble and so forth, it went into the drawers, but they're they fully are hopeful that it's going to be built someday. But this project is the first project where our team actually did these kind of GFRC panels that actually have a subtle sculpted detail to them so that when you spread that detail over 15 stories, it has this kind of beautiful Vell kind of quality effect and even almost looks like a water drop shape down the side of the buttons. Yeah, so that but doing something like that means the form of the building needs to be absolutely pure and austere, right? You can't be battling something, it has to take precedent in the overall composition so that so it's all working beautifully together, and uh so that that will be really exciting if we get to see that through the end here, next few years.

Rens Hayes IV 45:22

So exciting. Thank you for walking us through that. Jay, I've had a blast getting to hear your journey and and try to see the your vision of great design through this conversation today. One last question before I let you go. Do you have a book or podcast that you'd share with the audience?

Jay Siebenmorgen 45:38

I've reading two books that are completely opposite of each other. One is Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mullock, I think that's how his name. But it's a couple years old. It's about the it's working with AI and how to think about AI through your day-to-day life and how you actually use it in smart ways, i.e., co-intelligence, rather than thinking it's going to take over your life. So I'm only about a third way into the book, but it was recommended to me. And I always need something that's not serious. So David Sidaris is uh me talk pretty one day.

Rens Hayes IV 46:11

Jay, thank you so much. I did to take a look at these build buildings and see the work your work in the future. I wish you, the team at MVBJ, helping up the best. So just click that send button. Send this episode to a friend to let them get those same insights that you got today. We appreciate you. See you next time.