Design Vault Ep. 2 Vanderbilt University with Steve Knight

TRANSCRIPT

00;00;05;27 - 00;00;29;07

SN

It's a very faithful rendition of what's known as Collegiate Gothic. It is very much in step with this long-established tradition of higher education that goes back to the church in Europe and then institutions like Oxford and Cambridge. And then it comes over to the states with institutions like Harvard and Yale, who are doing very much the same thing. They were trying to identify with this established tradition.

 

00;00;29;14 - 00;02;24;07

DP

This is my guest, Steve Knight. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault we’ll highlight Steve's project, the Nicholas S. Zeppos College Building at Vanderbilt University.

The Nicholas S. Zeppos College Building is several thousand square feet, five stories with a large tower at one end. The building is red brick and limestone, designed in the collegiate Gothic style. The building has a slate roof, slate dormers, large brick chimney masses, limestone window frames and quoins, multi-story window bays, gable forms across the facade, and limestone gothic arches, a tall square picturesque tower with chamfered corners, polychromatic brickwork and limestone cap rounds out the building at one end.

Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault. Today we're talking to Steve Knight, who led the team designing the Nicholas S. Zeppos College at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Steve is a member of the American Institute of Architects and he's a principal with David M. Schwarz Architects. He studied at North Carolina State University, where he received his Master of Architecture. That same year, he joined David M. Schwarz Architects. Steve primarily focuses on his firm's performing arts venue projects. He served as project architect for the design of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, the Palladium at the Center for Performing Arts, the Gilliard center, and most recently, an 8000-seat amphitheater in Huntsville, Alabama.

Among other projects, he's currently leading the offices team on the design of the multiphase residential college project at Vanderbilt University. The Nicholas S. Zeppos College Building is one of four residential buildings for DMS at Vanderbilt University. So let's get into the details. Welcome, Steve.

 

00;02;24;14 - 00;02;25;28

SN

Greetings, Doug. Good to be here.

 

00;02;26;08 - 00;02;30;09

DP

So, tell us a little bit about your firm, David M. Schwarz Architects.

 

00;02;30;20 - 00;03;04;27

SN

Sure. We're a mid-sized design architect and planning firm. We're based in Washington, D.C. We have about 35 design architects on staff. We were started in the mid-seventies by our founder, David M. Schwarz.

It was a really interesting time to start an architecture firm in Washington and in the U.S., really. And there are two pivotal things that happened in the late seventies. The first was the district passed one of the most stringent historic preservation ordinances in the country. And on the heels of that, the federal government enacted tax credits for historic preservation.

 

00;03;04;27 - 00;03;06;22

DP

Really? How fortuitous.

 

00;03;07;00 - 00;03;43;12

SN

So, we found ourselves, the firm at the time - this is before my time there, obviously - but we found ourselves working in newly established historic districts on landmark designated buildings, and it really informed how we think about architecture that architecture is - it's very important that it responds very carefully to the context around it. Each building is part of a larger ecosystem that creates meaningful places, beautiful places to walk, live, places that are memorable. That really is a kind of a train of thought that I think we've carried through all of our work to this day.

 

00;03;43;20 - 00;03;54;16

DP

So, the greater majority of the work that you guys do is traditional. Has that been challenging in any era over the course of the last 50 years when people were doing more modern architecture and...

 

00;03;54;26 - 00;04;42;08

SN

Well, it certainly is today. We never sought out to be traditional architects in that sense. One project begets another, and like many architects, we sort of get known for our buildings and what we do. And I think in terms of that stylistic leaning, if you will, it's a bit controversial these days, I think, particularly within the architecture design community, where I think there is a tendency amongst the majority to want to look forward in sort of the past is the past, let's look to the present and let's look to the future.

I think for us, architecture is primarily about communication. And what we mean by that is that buildings in their edifices say something to people and it's really important that they engage with the communities that they serve.

 

00;04;42;20 - 00;04;58;02

DP

Yeah, it's interesting talking about classicism, traditional architecture, having a kind of language and speaking to the community in a certain way. Right. It's kind of understandable language for many people. You see, especially in Washington.

 

00;04;58;10 - 00;05;02;25

SN

It is, it's a very legible language of building and design. Absolutely.

 

00;05;03;03 - 00;05;05;14

DP

So, tell us about your role in the office.

 

00;05;05;27 - 00;05;33;12

SN

I'm a principal in the firm. I've been with the firm since I finished graduate school back in the late nineties. I started out as an intern and then, as you could imagine, sort of worked my way up through architect staff and project architect and then project manager. I spend most of my time communicating and working with teams of people in the office. Design, for us, is a very collaborative sport. The office is a very collaborative environment.

 

00;05;33;12 - 00;05;33;28

DP

That's great.

 

00;05;34;05 - 00;05;59;17

SN

I think one of the most interesting things to me is the founder, David Schwarz. I have rarely ever seen David pick up a pencil and draw something, but he commands a great deal of influence and quality oversight of the firm's body of work, largely through talking to people, getting to know each of us. And I in turn try to do the same.

 

00;05;59;25 - 00;06;02;08

DP

Well, you've been there a long time. It sounds like you've got a great boss.

 

00;06;02;14 - 00;06;07;06

SN

He is a great boss. We got a great group of people around me. I consider myself very lucky.

 

00;06;07;12 - 00;06;20;27

DP

Oh, that's really cool, because, I mean, architecture is challenging enough, right? It's a challenging profession. Very difficult business. We're all architects, right? So, we're all a little self-absorbed. To find somebody you enjoy working with and for is wonderful.

 

00;06;21;02 - 00;06;22;01

SN

Yeah, it's very important.

 

00;06;22;04 - 00;06;34;02

DP

Yeah, that's great. So, let's dig in here. Let's talk about the residential college project at Vanderbilt and specifically the Nicholas S. Zeppos College building. How did your office get this project?

 

00;06;34;15 - 00;07;25;15

SN

Well, it goes back to a master plan study that we did. Oh, at least 15 years ago, we conducted a study. The university was interested in reorganizing student life on campus, and they struck on the idea of the residential college model, which grows out of a very well-established tradition that starts on the other side of the pond by places like Oxford and Cambridge.

And then it comes to the States in the early 20th century with the Ivy League institutions like Yale and Harvard and Princeton. And what they really liked about it was this notion of breaking down the larger student community into smaller communities of a few hundred people. So, we developed this master plan that sort of provided strategic opportunity areas on where these colleges could be located.

 

00;07;25;21 - 00;07;28;28

DP

So, they came to you with this idea. There would be four colleges.

 

00;07;29;06 - 00;07;38;02

SN

They came to us with a very broad idea of, “we want to rethink student life on campus,” and through conversation, the residential college model came out of that.

 

00;07;38;02 - 00;07;38;21

DP

Wonderful.

 

00;07;38;23 - 00;08;00;27

SN

And then opportunity areas across campus. We identified sites. They then constructed what they called the freshman campus, the freshman college, if you will. That's where all first-year students go to live and there was a bit of a lull. And then we sort of came back with this more defined project of the four colleges, of which Nicholas S. Zeppos is number two.

 

00;08;01;08 - 00;08;07;11

DP

So, had you been hired at that point or were you working against other architects to try to get the project?

 

00;08;07;16 - 00;08;17;01

SN

No, we had been hired at that point. We had done other work in Nashville, most notably the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, the Nashville Symphony's concert hall.

 

00;08;17;01 - 00;08;18;02

DP

So, they knew of you.

 

00;08;18;03 - 00;08;22;19

SN

So, they knew of us. And we just developed good, strong relationships in the community.

 

00;08;22;20 - 00;08;31;27

DP

That's great. It's a great way to get jobs. So, can you tell me a little bit about the history of the place, the town, the neighborhood, the buildings around the site?

 

00;08;32;04 - 00;08;52;00

SN

Sure. In Nashville, it's a fascinating city with great heritage and history. One of its monikers is the Athens of the South. They have a full-scale replica of the Parthenon on Centennial Park campus, which is actually just across the West End Boulevard from Vanderbilt.

 

00;08;52;02 - 00;08;55;07

DP

I'm sure I've seen photos of this and have forgotten. That's incredible.

 

00;08;55;17 - 00;08;59;15

SN

It. It really is. Every detail is fully, faithfully executed.

 

00;08;59;16 - 00;09;02;07

DP

I'd love to talk about that some time but go ahead.

 

00;09;02;17 - 00;10;17;15

SN

But that's not why it's called the Athens of the South. It's called the Athens of the south because of the number of institutions of higher learning that one finds there. So, you have Fisk, you have Vanderbilt, many institutions. And it just at a sort of a per capita level. It developed this sort of bookish, erudite culture. Another thing that helped reinforced it was there's a great deal of publishing that happens there, mostly religious, and musical publications.

So anyway, so it's the Athens of the South, so that's really neat. The Vanderbilt history is really interesting because it's basically it's founded as an outgrowth of the Civil War. The institution, it was basically viewed by its namesake who endowed the starting of the university as a kind of a healing moment between the North and the South.

Cornelius Vanderbilt. And he has a statue, obviously, in the heart of campus. The campus itself is - it's a really beautiful green garden-like setting. It does have the classification of being an arboretum because of the number of unique specimens of trees one finds there. The architecture is quite eclectic. Like most campuses, there's a kind of a historic heart of Victorian era buildings and some collegiate gothic buildings as well. And then it sort of evolves over time.

 

00;10;17;24 - 00;10;31;07

DP

So, you touched a little bit on what these college buildings are composed of. Could you give me a little bit more information about the programmatic requirements of each of the four buildings - or let's just stick to the Zeppos College building?

 

00;10;31;12 - 00;12;03;17

SN

Yes. So Zeppos houses 340 students. We typically say beds. It has 340 beds. So that's the lingo in that business, if you will. And it's viewed as a really holistic living environment for students. Not only are there places to sleep, but there are also places to study, places to gather. There are places to eat. There are even accommodations for some resident faculty. Each of the colleges, or at Zeppos, has a family - faculty member and their family has an apartment within the facility. And they help provide leadership and mentorship to the student community.

So, and all of those things are fully realized programmatically with dining facilities. There's a really great dining hall in Zeppos. There's a great room, as we call it, a large living room with wood paneling, courtyards. So there's nice quality, secure, defensible outdoor space for the students to use.

On each of the floors, it was a really interesting challenge because we're dealing with a lot, even within that reduced footprint of only 300 odd beds, it's still a lot of program, a lot of footprint to have to manage. So, to create a sense of place that's navigable and somewhat homelike and approachable and familiar, we did some interesting things within the student floors. There's a lot of articulation in the building massing, and we offset the double loaded corridors to create nodes and they tend to coincide with elevators and stairs so that we create places for students to naturally bump into each other.

 

00;12;04;00 - 00;12;16;08

DP

Well, I'm going to actually ask you about that in just a minute. So first, let's back up and talk a little bit about the site and the topographic features, if there are any. Or are they just completely flat?

 

00;12;16;19 - 00;13;04;06

SN

No, there is a bit of grade change from - I have to get my compass directions right - from east to west. I think what's most interesting about the site is it has kind of a two-sided nature to it. So, on one side is West End Avenue, which is a major east west thoroughfare that connects with downtown Nashville. It's sort of the public face of Vanderbilt. So, the colleges were a real opportunity to sort of enhance the university's image to the outward community.

And then on the other side, the opposite side is a very opposite kind of condition. It's a series of very low scale residential structures that house the Greek community. So, several houses, each one is a fraternity or a sorority. So, we had to respond to two very different contexts on each side of the building.

 

00;13;04;17 - 00;13;08;22

DP

So, tell us a little bit more about the building plan. You started getting into that.

 

00;13;08;29 - 00;13;29;25

SN

Sure. So Zeppos is a figure eight with two courtyards. What makes the figure eight is what we call a double loaded bar, if you will, on the upper student room floors. You have rooms on both sides of a corridor. And again, there's interesting offsets in those corridors and bars to help break down the massing.

 

00;13;30;04 - 00;13;32;25

DP

Does that create these large gables?

 

00;13;33;00 - 00;13;48;03

SN

Yes. And then and then some of the bars, we actually punch through to create Gables to help break down and articulate the massing of the building. It's basically a city block. So, all of those moves are really important to help make the building very approachable and friendly.

 

00;13;48;11 - 00;13;51;14

DP

Are all four college buildings a city block.

 

00;13;51;26 - 00;14;14;09

SN

About. They each layout a little differently from one another. The one immediately to the east of this one, Rothschild College. That one has three courtyards. Due to the particulars of that particular site and obviously what makes the Zeppos college most special amongst the four of them is this 300-foot tower at one end of it.

 

00;14;14;17 - 00;14;20;03

DP

So that's a great segway. Tell us about the style of this building because it's stunning.

 

00;14;20;12 - 00;15;02;06

SN

It's a very faithful rendition of what's known as Collegiate Gothic. It was really very much a communication and really a marketing decision by the university in terms of we looked at lots of different vernaculars. What should these things look like? And the entire team ultimately arrived at Collegiate Gothic is the appropriate response. It is very much in step with this long-established tradition of higher education that goes back to the church in Europe and then institutions like Oxford and Cambridge, and then it comes over to the States with institutions like Harvard and Yale who are doing very much the same thing. They were trying to identify with this established tradition.

 

00;15;02;13 - 00;15;04;13

DP

Really? I mean, it makes perfect sense.

 

00;15;04;14 - 00;15;05;02

SN

Absolutely.

 

00;15;05;13 - 00;15;14;25

DP

So, were there any specific buildings that you can recall that you guys were looking at? The tower looks like it could have been pulled from the facade from a church in Europe. Right? I mean.

 

00;15;15;02 - 00;16;04;01

SN

Sure, we're very eclectic in our approach. We spend a lot of time looking at examples in books. We try to visit places in person, and that was a really important tool at the outset of this project is we actually took members of the client team on a little whirlwind tour of residential college examples around the country. Some examples that we looked to for the tower would be the Harkness Tower at Yale.

A slightly more atypical one that we did look at. It would be the Nebraska state Capitol and I think one feature that we quoted from that one is towards the top of the tower. As it starts to step in, you'll see what we call a little lantern, a little limestone lantern on each of the four corners. That's a common type feature in this style of architecture. When you're creating a tapered tall form like this, we thought it worked very well.

 

00;16;04;09 - 00;16;11;29

DP

And you chose brick for the majority of the material for these exterior facades? Tell me a little bit about that.

 

00;16;12;07 - 00;16;45;17

SN

Well, we always want our buildings to have a really rich palette of materials. And that's true of the interior and, of course, the exterior. So here the palette is a combination of brick, carved Indiana limestone, and then an accent stone, which is called Crab Orchard. It's actually a stone that's native to Tennessee. And we thought that was very appropriate to sort of weave in a local material that one finds in and around Nashville. The brick in particular is really interesting because we knew we didn't want a stark read of just one color.

 

00;16;45;19 - 00;16;48;08

DP

Right. Like if the building was all limestone.

 

00;16;48;08 - 00;17;09;26

SN

Like it was all limestone. And even within the brick itself, it's not just one brick, it's actually a blend of three bricks. And we did lots of mockup panels with the help of a very patient Mason, and a very patient local brick distributor who gave us about an acre of their brickyard to do all these different experiments.

 

00;17;09;27 - 00;17;10;16

DP

That's so cool.

 

00;17;10;16 - 00;17;46;22

SN

We tried different blends and we ultimately settled on a blend of three bricks for the college, and then we further augmented that with what we call decorative bond detailing. So, if you look closely at some of the details, you'll see brick that's fashioned into basket weave patterns, sawtooth patterns, what's known in England as diapering, which is creating a sort of a diamond checkerboard pattern. And we use different bricks for that as well. They tended to be iron spot bricks that are really beautiful because they catch and reflect light in different ways depending on how the sun is hitting them.

 

00;17;47;06 - 00;18;26;25

DP

Yeah, so it's interesting. We've got this polychrome going on, so you guys have the red brick and then I see these diamonds which are made from a different color brick, and then you're taking that one step further. You're backing off the changes in color perhaps, and you're changing the direction of these bricks and the patterns on the interiors.

I mean, it just takes so much time and thought to do everything you guys are doing on these facades. How much time did it take? Just doing like the design work? And who was doing that design work in the office? How were you doing these drawings and how are they being reviewed? I mean, there's a lot going on here.

 

00;18;27;02 - 00;19;17;26

SN

There's a lot there. I mean, the process is really key and it's a very layered process. You don't start out drawing detail. You start out with a parti and then you look at the plan and then you study the massing and then you get to a point and that's schematic design and that was probably about five months. And then we launch into design development.

We are refining the details and that was probably another six months of design development. And within both of those design phases, it's hand sketching, physical study models - we still love doing old fashioned models, just cutting out of cardboard and matte board - as well as two-dimensional drafting. And then, of course, actually three-dimensional modeling and digital modeling in the computer. That was a really key tool.

 

00;19;18;06 - 00;19;22;26

DP

With all these bricks and all those patterns. Must have been an unbelievable process.

 

00;19;22;26 - 00;19;45;28

SN

Yeah. And then it all has to be documented. It's a beautiful project. The standards were very high at the same time we did have a budget and doing cost take-offs at each of the milestone levels of completion - at schematic design and design development - were very important and they caused us to have to do some recalibrating and some adjusting to keep the thing on budget and on track.

 

00;19;46;09 - 00;19;52;23

DP

Yeah, I mean, you sit down with the clients and show them some of this stuff and I'm sure the first words out of their mouths is how much is this going to cost, right?

 

00;19;52;25 - 00;20;12;01

SN

Sure. It's interesting. In the earliest design packages, schematic design, you just can't draw all the detail. So, we actually put photos of collegiate gothic buildings in the drawings to help the contractors really get their head around, okay, this is really complex here. This is not your typical...

 

00;20;12;14 - 00;20;19;14

DP

And there had to have been a lot of handholding in the field too. I mean, a lot of the detail, like the variegated quoins, the quoining on the corners.

 

00;20;19;14 - 00;20;23;19

SN

Yeah. Every one of those stones is actually laid out in the design.

 

00;20;23;27 - 00;20;30;16

DP

All the dimensions, the materiality, the color. Like everything. Wow. So, there's a lot of details.

 

00;20;30;27 - 00;20;39;27

SN

Yes. I mean, it's a phone book level – for anybody who remembers what a phone book is – a phone book thickness level of drawing and documentation.

 

00;20;40;04 - 00;20;51;19

DP

Tell me a little bit about the limestone work, because, again, the level, the detail and the wonderful intricate detailing, I mean, you've got to draw and then you got to find somebody to make that.

 

00;20;51;28 - 00;21;24;16

SN

It's southern Indiana is limestone country. Indiana limestone. It's where the stone is quarried and it's where it is still fabricated. To this day, it is grand tradition. It goes back to the mid-1800s. It had its heyday in the early 20th century with, one just imagines, the proliferation of limestone buildings one finds in any great city in the U.S. and then it gradually tapered off from there after the war in particular. But there are still a few very dedicated fabricator firms that do the what they call the cutting.

 

00;21;24;23 - 00;21;30;24

DP

It had to have been hard to find somebody with so few people doing this kind of - this level of detail work.

 

00;21;31;07 - 00;21;44;12

SN

Well, there's one firm we've worked with on almost all of our projects. And they’re still - this is what they do. They are perfectly set up to do it, Bybee Limestone. We know them very well. We love them and they know us. And they love us too.

 

00;21;44;12 - 00;22;05;24

DP

Yeah, it's stunning. So back to Brick for a second. Did Brick solve any particular design challenges for the architecture for the client? I mean, you touched a little bit on the color, on the exterior and the feel of the architecture, right? We talked about the fact that you make this building all limestone. You got a problem. I mean, it's just a monolith.

 

00;22;06;06 - 00;22;38;17

SN

Yeah, well, it's a very warming material. It's very appropriate, in particular, the way it's used here for what is essentially a residential place. It's a very approachable, it's a very durable material, obviously. And sustainability is very important. We think one of the most important aspects of sustainability is building very consciously, using resources very consciously and very wisely. And in building something that will hopefully be around for a very long time. This building will be around for a very long time.

 

00;22;39;05 - 00;22;45;02

DP

That's for sure. Were there any unique construction details that you guys developed as you were working on this?

 

00;22;45;12 - 00;23;50;11

SN

Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, architecture is a very collaborative sport, and we didn't do this all ourselves. We had a very dedicated architect of record Hastings Architects out of Nashville. They were very faithful in working with us to realize all of the technical detailing, achieve what we're trying to achieve aesthetically, and then a really good contractor late in construction. They were very on top of things the whole way.

I'd say a couple of specifics: one of the things, the details that makes the colleges really fun and interesting are these ornamental chimneys that you find on the roof. And the contractor hit on a really interesting idea because in particular after the previous college where they did not do this, they elected to construct the chimneys on the ground, and then hoist them into place with the tower crane. That allowed them to advance construction on the roof without tying up a huge amount of roof area with scaffolding and preventing them from drying in the building. It was just a much easier erection process down on the ground.

 

00;23;50;21 - 00;23;53;09

DP

You just have boiler flues going through these things. I mean.

 

00;23;53;16 - 00;23;58;06

SN

They're vents, They're flues. Yeah. So, they do they do serve a functional purpose as well.

 

00;23;58;07 - 00;24;05;00

DP

I think that's a wonderful touch. You wouldn't expect to see these chimney masses on a building like that. They really kind of set it apart.

 

00;24;05;07 - 00;24;46;07

SN

One other quick detail is it sort of goes back to the documentation. After we get even through CDs and in construction, there's then what's known as the submittal process where shop drawings are submitted and the contractor hired one firm, an engineering firm that was sort of the central documentation point for all of the masonry. Typically, you would have separate drawings for brick and limestone, and in this case, the Crab Orchard. So, we had one firm that was weaving all of that together. It really helped the coordination and adjustments that had to be made to some of the technical details because it was all in one place. You know, it's also this is modern cavity wall construction.

 

00;24;47;13 - 00;24;49;03

DP

That’s a good point. Okay. So how does that work?

 

00;24;49;11 - 00;25;23;18

SN

So, there's a concrete superstructure between the slabs. We span metal studs. And then much like any building, we pack insulation between the studs. There's exterior rated gyp. board and then a barrier coating that goes over that and then some additional installation in some cases to get the proper R-values. And then the brick is hung off the building. It's built the way modern brick buildings are built today. Cause it really had to be, because that's just how we build - that's how people know how to build. Yet, we're trying to achieve something quite different in the aesthetics.

 

00;25;23;25 - 00;25;26;07

DP

Did you guys use any brick on the interior?

 

00;25;26;18 - 00;26;01;09

SN

So far, no. But there's one last college that's under construction and we were using brick in the dining hall of that one. It'll be a thin brick that's applied to the inside wall surface, but it's been a fun opportunity and a challenge at the same time across four colleges, because we want them all to fit within this collegiate gothic vernacular.

But yet, we want each one to be slightly different, so it's identifiable and to the community that lives there in a larger community as well. So, finding subtle, fun, different things we could do from one to the next was always one of the most interesting and challenging parts of this.

 

00;26;01;21 - 00;26;10;17

DP

I was thinking about while we were talking about the general contractor that you worked with. Was it a bid job or did you guys go immediately to the GC?

 

00;26;10;27 - 00;26;31;26

SN

They were a construction manager. So, they were brought on board early in the process during design. We like working that way because we like getting the technical expertise and input during design. We can constantly be moving forward as opposed to taking three steps back if a contractor comes on much later and says, “I wouldn't have done it that way.”

 

00;26;32;01 - 00;26;37;09

DP

What I was getting at was whether or not you had any challenges finding a really good mason.

 

00;26;37;19 - 00;26;48;06

SN

You know, it's interesting. It's lots of masons. There was a mason subcontractor, but they in turn subcontracted. It would be interesting to ask them. I know it was a challenge.

 

00;26;48;08 - 00;26;50;21

DP

Finding the right people to do the work.

 

00;26;50;21 - 00;26;51;17

SN

The right skill set.

 

00;26;51;23 - 00;26;57;11

DP

It's always a challenge for every architect. So, Steve, what was your favorite part of the project?

 

00;26;57;22 - 00;27;36;01

SN

I really enjoy the design development phase. We're really getting in and figuring out details. It's a level of problem solving that I find really interesting because in the earlier design phase, we sort of setting up the game board and making the major moves, but then to go in and make each one actually work and really figure stuff out and all the tools that we used to do that and it's a really interesting variety of tools, whether it's a half inch scale model of a corbel that's sitting on my desk or a sketch or the digital model, I just find problem solving at that level to be really, really fully engaging and satisfying.

 

00;27;36;10 - 00;28;02;24

DP

It's great. It takes a long time for most people to find what they really love about the profession, right? I mean, some people end up doing everything they've small offices, some people end up doing one thing one or two things inside of an office. It's a challenging business. It's a challenging profession. I think it's really nice that you're as happy as you are doing what you're doing and as good as you are at it. That's wonderful.

 

00;28;03;02 - 00;28;24;05

SN

I think one of the other interesting things, I use the word ownership a lot with the teams in the office and in design development. It's a really great opportunity to give individual young designers pieces of the building to figure out and design. When it's all done, they can come with me to the site and they can look at that point and yeah, I did that. That's really cool.

 

00;28;24;05 - 00;28;30;16

DP

Oh, that's great. So, Steve Knight, it was great to have you here. Where do people go to find you and your firm?

 

00;28;30;20 - 00;28;41;29

SN

Go to our web site www.dmsas.com. And if you're in Washington DC, come by and pay us a visit. 1707 L Street

 

00;28;43;00 - 00;28;47;09

DP

You get to meet some of our listeners. That's wonderful. Well, thank you very much, Steve Knight.

 

00;28;48;00 - 00;28;49;12

SN

Thank you, Doug. It's been a pleasure.