Shaping Spaces: Stanford Professor Ethen Wood on Architecture, Teaching, and Creativity

0:02 Hello and welcome to no Wrong Choices, the podcast that explores the career journeys of interesting and accomplished people in pursuit of great stories and actionable insights. I'm Larry Samuels, and in just a moment I'll be joined by my co-hosts, tushar Saxena and Larry Shea. But before we kick off, we have a small favor to ask If you enjoy what we do. Please take a moment to support us by following no Wrong Choices on your favorite podcast platform, such as Spotify, apple Podcasts or YouTube. We also ask that you connect with us on LinkedIn, facebook, instagram Threads and X, or by visiting our website at norongchoicescom. On our site, you can sign up for our subscriber list or explore our blog, which digs into each one of the episodes that we're putting forward.

0:49 Your support helps us keep bringing these great stories to light. Now let's get started. This episode features the Associate Director of the Stanford Sustainable Architecture and Engineering Program, ethan Wood. Ethan also has his own practice and has worked in the architecture industry for more than 25 years. He's also a bit of a white whale for us, as we've wanted to talk to somebody from this field literally since before launching this show. Larry Shea, why don't you set this one up for us? This is a white whale, that's a great way to put it. You know, we made a list of those career choices before we started really digging into this and architect was like prominent.

1:31 You know, this is a profession I don't know. It always has like a certain level of prestige associated with it, right, like you're responsible for great buildings and great structures, and it seems like very difficult to do, to be honest, like let's be real about it. If you make a mistake, everybody knows. So this is going to be exciting. I'm really I'm happy we finally got one of our white whales and this is going to be a true journey, I think, because it's something that's not going to come easy for people If you want to be an architect in this world a lot of schooling, a lot of dedication, and I'm sure that's what he's about to share with us, tushar.

2:12 What do you think? Well, I'll tell you this is that, after a recent trip that I had to Chicago, I have a greater appreciation for the profession of architecture, architects in general, engineers, structural engineers because after seeing how that city treats its buildings as part of the river, part of the environment, I got to see buildings and architecture in a totally different light and I'm extremely excited, extremely excited to talk to someone who thinks in that manner, that where it's not so much of just putting buildings up in a straight line, but they are actual pieces of living art, where we are all interacting with them at the same time. For sure, and for me as a I guess currently former college professor I may be again before too terribly long I'm very curious to get his insights on what it's like to be a professor at Stanford.

3:02 So with that, here is Ethan Wood. Ethan, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me guys. So, ethan, we like to start every show by taking the microphone away from me as quickly as possible and giving our guests the opportunity to set themselves up independently. So why don't you tell us, and tell our audience, exactly who Ethan Wood is and what he does? Yeah, well, as you mentioned, I'm the associate director of Stanford's Sustainable Architecture and Engineering program. In that capacity, kind of running the curriculum, teaching classes, generally getting people excited about architecture.

3:42 In addition, I have my own design practice, as you mentioned, but I really think of myself as a architectural acolyte. Right, I love architecture. I wake up thinking about architecture, I go to bed thinking about architecture. I do it when people pay me. I do it when nobody pays me right. Maybe you shouldn't say that. Hopefully the first more often than the second. I don't do it for other people when they don't pay me but it's like like it's. It's the thing that that I love, and you know, part of that is education, and it's education in a formal context of of academia, and it's education in a informal context of working with clients, many of whom have never built something before and are new to the process and trying to understand, like, this isn't a lot of money, how does it work, when do I get it?

4:31 And kind of taking them through the process to kind of be their guide. And then, you know, my last kind of role as an acolyte is just to kind of tell people it's important, right, like nobody thinks that the ballet is not important, even if they never go to the important. Right, like everybody, nobody thinks that the ballet is not important, even if they never go to the ballet. Right, they know that that's something right, even if they don't read literature, they know novelist is important. And I think people think of the built environment, they take it for granted or they think of it as a commodity and as a real estate and they don't always think of it as something that can bring pleasure or can change the way that we interact with the environment or can move us to have emotional experiences.

5:12 And so I always like to kind of guide people in that process to understand the world a little bit differently. I like the way you put that. You have the distinction of actually having the career that I thought I might have as a young child, which is really interesting, but let's talk about the very beginning. I guess, and I guess I'll ask it this way Were you an avid fan of Legos as a child. Was this the dream? I'll start by saying I hear that story a lot. I wanted to pursue architecture, but and then you know, fill in the thing I was no good at math. My parents told me to do something else. For me, lego is the gateway drug.

5:52 I think Lego is the gateway drug for most people into architecture. I would qualify that now, with my students, it's more Minecraft than Lego. Interesting the new Lego? Yes, absolutely, minecraft is essentially digital Lego. But also for me, I think I had a unique childhood in that my parents separated and divorced when I was very young around two years old, and I'm an only child and they had joint custody and so every week I would move from house to house and then by the time this is San Francisco in the 70s and 80s, by the time I was 13, I had lived in 14 different homes Wow, all within seven miles of each other.

6:43 But also it's kind of a lack of a place made it imperative to me to really work on making places for people that would make their life better and make them feel settled and have a place to be. Well, san Francisco is a very unique looking city in terms of its own architecture, the building design, the layout of the city itself. As a child who moved around a lot, you know from house to house, as you said, 14 homes. How did that inspire you? Or did that inspire you then to say, ok, this is, this is the environment I live in, this is the world that I see. How did that inspire you? then, moving forward, I think of San Francisco as my home.

7:24 You know, like each of those houses that I lived in or apartments, I have some memories, but my memories are often of walking through the city. You know, san Francisco is a small city, seven miles by seven miles, and I feel like I know the city through the kind of the pads of my feet walking around. And even though I didn't always have an interest in history, I become more interested in the city because I realized now I can see how the city was made and see these strata and it's almost like if you guys remember in the matrix when they're looking at the screen and all of the green lines are coming down. You see the ones and zeros right. Worlds ones and zeros, and they didn't want the simulator. Like when I look at the city, I see all of the building codes, I see the planning codes, I see the redlining, I see the historic racism, I see infrastructural projects of transportation and I'm like, oh, this is how this place came to be and I find that fascinating.

8:21 When you were young, moving around and seeing the city and taking everything in, and obviously that had a major influence upon your vision and how you saw the world. Were you also into design? Did you draw? Were there things that you were doing as a young kid that, whether you knew it or not, were sort of bringing you towards this field? Yeah, absolutely so. I drew all the time Because my parents were separated. When I would be with them there was no iPad right and I would go to work with them. Sometimes my mom taught English as a second language at night, and so I would go with her to her classes and she'd go into the copy room and bring out a whole bunch of paper and stick me in the back of the classroom and I'd have a pencil right or later.

9:10 I was a kind of a latchkey kid and there was four channels of television on, and so I just had paper and I would just draw. For a brief period of time I thought I might be a comic book illustrator, and then I realized that I could only draw people in one pose, and that doesn't get you very far, sort of like hangman with like the hair and the arms and the legs. Yeah, exactly. It was just a very rigid, stiff pose. But I like drawing all the things in the background and so I kind of shifted away from people and started drawing architecture and that I think that served me well. I'm so glad you just said that, because the reason why I wanted to do it is because I would draw cartoons and things and eventually that became like this is going to sound really crazy.

9:55 Golf course architecture. I would like design like par, nine holes and like you know just ridiculous childhood stuff. But I've read in a million places in researching this interview that architects don't necessarily need to be good at math or drawing to be successful and I'm wondering how true you think that is. I think that's very true. I mean, architecture, by many people is considered the mother art, and when I say that, I mean that it takes into consideration art, engineering, sociology, economics, politics, interpersonal relationships, the process of construction, and it's about synthesizing it and it's a team activity, right?

10:43 You know, there's this kind of myth that was, I think, perpetuated by Ayn Rand and the Fountainhead, of this lone architect genius toiling away and getting his vision out there. And you know, I've never worked on a project that doesn't have dozens of hands on it, and sometimes you know hundreds, because there's so many things to do. And so you know you don't have to be good at everything. You have to find out what you're good at. And it's like a batting order, right, like if you had all you know cleanup hitters. You know it might be entertaining sometimes, and you know other times it'd be maddening to watch because you couldn't do anything.

11:24 And so it's like, how do you get the project manager who's good at coordinating everything, how do you get a person with vision who's good at setting the framework for what the design is? How do you get a person who has the interpersonal skills to interact with the client and to put them at ease as they're working through these things. How do you have the skills, get a person who has the skills to work with a team and get a team of people to get behind an idea, and so you know it's. You find your place in that world where you feel comfortable, and then you build a team around you, or you know, if you come into an office, you're plugging the hole around them to make the team successful.

12:07 I have a couple of questions for you, ethan. Yeah One what is the first thing you ever built? And I don't mean as professional as a house, I'm just like what's the first thing you ever built? My first job I got when I was 18, it was an internship at an architecture office in San Francisco. It happened because my mom was on a plane and she had the gift of gab and started talking to some guy and she said my son's interested in architecture. He said come work for us. So I worked for them doing grunt work, coffee, arranging the library, things like that. And on my last day or two in the office they had a client which was a Golden Gate University in San Francisco and they needed to put three flagpoles on a wall above a little subterranean place.

12:55 And they said Ethan, we want you to design this flagpole bracket. And I thought this was the most I said. I couldn't do this. This is like too much pressure for me. I was 18. I was like you know, like said I couldn't do this. This is like too much pressure for me. I was 18, I was like you know like I can't deal with this, like shouldn't you guys be doing that? And, of course, now I know that no one wanted to spend the billable time to design a flagpole bracket give it to the intern. So I I took to making a full-scale model of this thing. I even built the bolts and and did the best that I could, and I forgot about it. Fast forward about 15 years. My then girlfriend, now wife, was working in downtown San Francisco and I'd go pick her up every day and it was right in front of this university and I would see this flagpole bracket and I can guarantee you a thousand people walk by it every day and a thousand people never looked at it.

13:45 But it haunted me, it tormented me, because it looked like something that an 18-year-old did right, and that reminded me that you know, unlike other professions, our mistakes don't go away. They stay in the public realm for a long time. The lesson for that was that everything that I do has to be the best thing that I've ever done, because I don't know how long it will be there right, it might be there for a hundred years and I don't want to be like, oh, that was the day I phoned it in. This flagpole bracket is the day I phoned it in right. Is it still? You still see it, I still see it and I guarantee no one has looked at it. Other than you, every single time you walk by.

14:26 Now I have to go to San Francisco. I have to do this, ethan. So what was it? What was that first time that you kind of felt that impassioned to yourself to say this is what I want to do, this is what my life will be like, even as a young child right, I mean, we haven't talked about your schooling yet but as a young child, what was that moment where you said this is what I have to do? Did you see a building? Was it a house? Was it a street? What was it? Well, I think it was a combination of things. I think it was so. For a part of my childhood I lived in a Buddhist monastery in the mountains of Carmel, california, and I saw workers building parts of the monastery and I thought that was fascinating. A little bit later, and I wanted to be, so I said I wanted to do this and my parents being the hippies the good hippies that they were they said wouldn't you rather do something like be an anthropologist or a poet or a writer?

15:19 No, I'd like to eat no in an odd way you are. You're doing that, and then it kind of came into more clarity because I still didn't know what architects did. But there was an exhibit when I was in high school at the Marin County Civic Center, and the Marin County Civic Center was built by Frank Lloyd Wright, or was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was built 10 years after his death. If your listeners haven't seen Marin County Civic Center, they can go and watch the film Gattaca, which I highly recommend, one of my favorites of all time. It's the backdrop for everything. They use it in that film as a space station. But one of the things I love about the Marin County Civic Center is that it's the thought extension from the Guggenheim.

16:03 It's the thought extension from the Guggenheim. So Frank Lloyd Wright did the Guggenheim in 1959, and he had this idea of an atrium and that you circle around this atrium and you move up, and then 10 years later he built the Marin County Civic Center, which was like what, if you take this building and you stretch it and you put it between two hills, then it has this kind of oval or lozenge-shaped atria and you can look down and see it, and so you can see how these thought processes develop over time. And so, kind of, going to the Marin County Civic Center and seeing this gave me this feeling that I love this space. And how can I make people feel that and it's still a question that I have how can I make people feel something that's beyond like oh it's nice.

16:55 Which I'm sure comes up in every single one of your classes as you try to inspire your students. So in that moment, as you're taking in the Civic Center and as you're reflecting upon sort of where you are and as you think about OK, this is the path I want to follow, what steps do you take? Are you in high school learning how to design and preparing yourself for that career, to get into the right programs, et cetera, et cetera? How old were you? You know, I was maybe 15 or 16. I was fortunate that my mother knew that I had an interest in architecture and she found a high school in San Francisco that had an architectural design program, and so I went to this school that was part academic, part technical, and I did architecture classes and lost wax casting and photography as well as other other things.

17:47 I applied for a program in undergrad at which was the degree track is called a b-arc. It's a five-year degree and it's a professional degree, technically the equivalent of a master's. I wasn't the best student I got. I got a's in all my creative classes and C's in all my academic classes, and so I ended up at the University of Oregon, which was a fantastic place for me. When I started I thought I knew something, and now in retrospect I can say I was probably eight out of 15 in my first class. I was below the 50th percentile, but I loved it more than anybody else and I thought I may not be the smartest, I may not be the most talented, but no one is going to love it more than me.

18:35 And each term I put more and more myself into it until eventually I got the kind of top prize for my thesis when I finished in my fifth year. But maybe an analogy you guys might appreciate is I love gamers in baseball, you know, like the guys who hustle, the guys who take the extra base, whose jerseys are covered in dirt and tobacco. I love the analogy of a gamer. One of the questions we always ask on this show is were you good in school? So it sounds like you had a lot of support from your family. I mean, they're fine. She's finding this, this place for you to get educated. What were you good at and what were you not good at?

19:17 Why do you think you middled in that way? Maybe? I didn't know how to work. You know, I went to high school and you know the assignments didn't always mean anything to me, and so I was like, why am I going to bust my ass for something that is just busy work. And then, when I discovered what architecture started to be, I was like I want to spend time doing this, I want to stay up all night making something Right. And you know it was this virtuous cycle, like I'd spend up all night making something Right and and you know it was this virtuous cycle Like I'd spend up all night making it I'd get some positive feedback and be like that feels nice, like I want to. I want to do this more, um, and I love the fact that it wasn't predetermined right, it's like I could want it more.

19:59 If I, if I wanted to stay up an extra three hours and make something, I could make something better than somebody else because I put the effort in and I love that kind of feedback. And so it becomes almost an act of will as much as an act of creation. During that time I know you mentioned that you won an award at the end for your thesis that you won an award at the end for your thesis as you're discovering your talents and as you're developing your style and as you're developing your art, do you discover what your strengths are and what you're good at and do you zero in on those things and sort of run with that going forward or not, really that this isn't that type of profession or skill?

20:43 A little bit, I got a glimpse. I mean, I think my strength, which I found professionally and it came from school, is really conceptualizing a building. What are the ideas, what are the rules, what is the rigor that goes into it? Because, as I said, so many hands touch a project. I've worked on projects where I started it and then I was no longer in the firm and it took 10 years for that project to materialize. And when it did, because the initial concept was so clear. It looked almost exactly like what I had conceptualized 10 years prior, prior.

21:26 And if you imagine playing a game of telephone with a million contractors and subcontractors in the city for 10 years to have something that remotely looks like what you first did is almost miraculous. I know there's a lot of different types of architecture commercial, residential, interior design, green space, I mean. There's a million different directions you can go as you're on your career journey and your path. How are you figuring out where you're going to fit into the architectural world? Because it just feels like there's a million different choices and, as you said, it takes an army. So I would think it would be based on strength and weakness and other factors. Talk about those factors.

22:08 Yeah, I mean for me. So the first job I got out of school. So when we present in school there's always presenting to a panel or a jury of architects and they come and kind of judge your work and give you feedback. And one of the people on my final thesis panel liked me and he offered me a job and it was a midsize corporate firm that did university work in Portland Oregon and I liked him very much. It was about 77 people and there's a kind of hierarchy and a kind of way of paying your dues. And I was brought in as a model builder but quickly they saw that I was a talented designer and they said well, can you work on the design of this, but don't put it in your time sheet, put it in a different time sheet.

22:59 And they had me working in a janitor's closet on the 22nd floor of the office building and I was working 90 hour weeks doing that and I realized I don't like that and so then later when I moved back to San Francisco I started working for small kind of boutique design firms and they did residential work and I realized that's my love Right, like I like working with a couple or a family, I like tailoring something to their needs. I, like you know, the idea of a dwelling to me is so fascinating because it has universal constants, right?

23:41 Everyone needs a place to sleep, everyone needs a place to bathe, everyone needs a place to eat, everyone needs a place to relax. And how many different variations we can get out of that with those same constraints is fascinating to me. I'm glad you just brought up working 90 hours a week, because one of the things I wanted to touch on and since you touched on it already, I mean everything I read is that architects can expect to work long hours, weekends, nights. I mean I don't want to paint an ugly picture out there for people who are aspiring architects, but I really feel like it's a lot of hard work and a lot of long hours, and is that fallacy or is that reality?

24:27 I think that's unfortunate reality, with the caveat of there are many places that work nine to five, but the quality of work that they produce may be buildings and not architecture, and part of that is architecture is an inherently custom activity and people have unrealistic timeframes for getting these things done. They're writing big checks and they're saying why is this taking so long? Like you know, an average building time from concept to execution is three years, and so people are kind of waiting a long time for this stuff and then, especially in the residential realm, they watch these BS shows.

25:10 Like you know, flip. My house, or my wife knows that she cannot turn on Hgtv because I just get enraged and want to oh geez. So you're that guy who's throwing beer cans at the tv at that show? Oh, totally that's great. They're like we took twenty thousand dollars and in 24 hours we did this and you're like, no, that's bullshit. You know and and you know. The other thing that's so interesting I tell my students all the time is like, like, if you think about how long, how many reps of something you have to do to be good at it, right, how many times Five, six, a dozen times you have to be good at something, or to even be competent, maybe not good, and then you say each one of those is three years.

25:57 You don't even get to feel competent until you're in your 40s, right? There are no Wunderkin, 25-year-old genius architects who are changing the world, like you just can't know everything that you need to know in that time. It's a slow, methodical profession, it's a marathon. And early on, when I was still dating my wife, we were somewhere and I saw this book on this Brazilian architect. His name is Oscar Niemeyer and he brought modernism to Brazil. And I said, you know, just so you know, oscar Niemeyer lived to be 105. And he did that by going to the office every day. Right, and even though it's a lot of work, it's regenerative.

26:41 It can be regenerative, right, if you're doing the work that you want to do. If you're just slogging away making Costco's or something like that, you're not going to work to 105. Right. But if you're making art, you know, and the best architects that I've ever met have this like childlike sense of wonder. They look at the world, they're just like what can it be? What will happen today? Right, and it becomes this rejuvenating activity. You know, that just barely balances out all the draining that it does. For sure, for sure. Now, when we talk about drive, we're eventually going to talk about your time at Stanford. So, with those two things in mind I don't want to skip over the fact that you went to the Harvard Graduate School of Design Can you talk to us a little bit about what it was like to go through the process of getting into the school and about the impact that that experience had upon you, your style and your journey going forward?

27:39 Yeah. So I should qualify that by saying I never wanted to go to Harvard for graduate school. I wanted to go to a more art-focused college in Southern California called SCI-Arc, the Southern California Institute of Architects. They were very much about making things in this kind of expressive forms. And when I finished undergrad I knew I wanted to teach. I knew I needed to get a master's to teach, and my mentor suggested I work for a couple of years. So I worked for two years before I went back to grad school and I wanted to go to school in LA. And so I asked my mentor for a recommendation and he said I'll only write this recommendation for you if you apply to Harvard.

28:24 And I was conflicted about it and I missed the deadline to get in. The deadline was December 5th. I didn't get it in. I was like screw it, my thesis professor. She wanted me to go to Columbia. I wanted to go to the school in LA. I'm like it doesn't matter, I'm not going to go to Harvard, I'm going to go to school in LA. A month later my application was due for Columbia and I asked my mentor again for recommendation. He said I'll only write it for you if you apply to Harvard and he said, well, I missed the deadline. And he said, well, just call them up. Sometimes they make exceptions for post-professional students.

29:05 And I called up the admissions and nobody answered and I said, screw it, I'm just going to go to this school down in LA. Screw it, I'm just going to go to this school down in LA. And then, finally, the application was in February for the school in LA and I called my mentor up again and he said I'm not going to write this recommendation, I'm not kidding, I just called them. So I was like months behind, if you just call them. So I was like this is ridiculous, but I remember the story from my childhood. My mother had a cousin who was her best friend. They were very close and so I would kind of hear their stories and whether this story is actually true or not is irrelevant to the television, like around the city or on the white house knowing my retellation, I'm not surprised by this at all, and they were so tickled by this you know, this is before homeland security, this is you know everything else that they gave them a private tour of the White House of Congress, of the Senate, of the Smithsonian, and it was this kind of reminder to me that anything is possible if you, if you ask.

30:45 So that's always kind of sitting in the back of my head. So fast forward. It's now three months past deadline. I call up the Graduate School of design and I say um, I know I'm late. I, I was told by my mentor that sometimes you make exceptions for post-professional students, which I was. Um, is there any way I can? I can apply. And they said well, if you get us your application by friday, we'll put it in the pile and we can't guarantee anyone will look at it, um, but at least it'll be in. So I said all right, here's my chance. And in the, in those days, you had to make a physical portfolio. So I was like printing this, this book, and and there's a story about that in a moment I'll share but I, I printed this book, put it in the mail, sent it to harvard, said I don't care, I'm gonna go to this school in la, doesn't't matter, anyway, a couple of weeks later I got a letter that says congratulations, you've been accepted.

31:39 And that was how I ended up there. The other caveat to that is I had to make this book and I had like a couple of days to do it. So I was at that point. I had quit my job to work on my graduate school application. I was printing out this book, everything was everywhere, and I had to go to Kinko's to get them to bind the book right. I was going to ask if you went to your local Kinko's, because I knew Kinko's was coming up and so I go to Kinko's, which is just down the street. I'm out of my house for 30 minutes, which is just down the street. I'm out of my house for 30 minutes. I come back and the gate to my house has been jimmied open and somebody's busted my front door and so they've broken into my house in the 30 minutes that I was gone.

32:26 So I immediately called the cops and the cops show up and they come in, guns blazing and they kind of search the whole house and they say you know, it's clear, you can come in here. And they're looking around and the cops open the door to my room and they go holy jeez, they really did a number on your place, like they tossed everything. And I looked at him and said actually this is just how I left it. I have to get this application to Harvard in eight hours. That's how chaotic it was and they're like all right, whatever. So I got into Harvard kind of not knowing what that would be like. It was fantastic because I didn't go for the name, but I had to present my work to some of the best architects in the world and it gave me a kind of armor that I feel that nobody can rattle me anymore, because I had to present to all of these people and kind of to be around people that are so smart that they're almost like I don't know if you guys ever watched the original Star Trek.

33:31 You know those people with the kind of throbbing brains, the dry ass, yeah, absolutely. You know, I was like sometimes I would meet people and I'd be like I don't even think there's a skull in there, I just think it's all brains. Did you get into the LA school? I did, I did. It would have been funny if you said I didn't get into the LA school after all that stuff? No, no, this was your fallback option. I got into it, but at that point I was like well, I guess I got to go, and I think it only worked because I didn't want it. I think if I had wanted it, I would have choked. You know something, I would have put too much pressure on myself, I wouldn't have made it happen. And it only fell into place because I was like eh, whatever.

34:12 So what's the experience at Harvard like then for you? Like well, what was that eye-opening experience like to you? Well, so for me, because I was a post-professional student, all classes were electives. I could take whatever class I wanted, and I think it was just being around amazing people. They would fly in architects from all over the world. They would come from Switzerland, from Spain, from Japan, from England and teach, and these people that I'd read in books are right there. And just to kind of be around them, I think was the thing that was most amazing. It was also incredibly competitive in a way that I wasn't ready for. Again being raised by hippies on the West Coast.

34:53 I was just like you know what again being raised by hippies on the West Coast. I was just like you know what? Everybody loves everybody else. You do you. It'll be great, and I was quickly disavowed of that. Did it help in some way, though? If you're raised to not be competitive and you're put into a competitive environment, do you roll with the punches better than other people and take certain aspects of that less seriously in a way that can be helpful? Yeah, I think so, and also because I didn't need that degree, and so I was like I'm here for me, everything is going to be to make me better. I'm going to work like hell because I like it and I have fun doing it, and so it was totally freeing.

35:33 And now I look back and it was like the best time of my life. At the time I thought I was miserable, but so that's. That's fascinating that you say I was there for me. Um, in my mind I'm thinking I'm going to one of the best schools in the country and this is going to line you up for whatever comes next professionally. Um, did you have that in your mind or you're like I'm just learning my craft right now, I don't even care about? that I mean. So I did think that I thought that the world was going to throw itself at my feet and I was going to get a golden ticket anywhere it's Harvard. And then I realized in Boston everybody went to Harvard. You know, throw a stone and not hit somebody who went to Harvard, so it wasn't special there.

36:17 And then my ultimate goal was to teach. And I came back to San Francisco, where my family is, and I thought that all the universities here were going to open the door and the angels were going to sing and, and, and I applied to every university and, and for 10 years I couldn't even crack the door right that they just were hiring people that they knew or had worked for them or were in their circles. Wow, and it took quite a long time to get into the realm of teaching. So it helped a lot, but it wasn't an all-access pass. It just meant that people gave me a little bit more credibility than I would have had otherwise. I'm fascinated. You said it a couple of times I wanted to teach, I wanted to teach.

36:57 I mean, you've decided early on in your career that this was the path you wanted to go down. What about teaching was the goal for you and why you wanted to go there? And why not try to pursue something else that maybe caught your eye in the architectural world? Because, as we've already said, there's a whole world out there of different things you could be doing with those degrees and with your knowledge and with your passion, which you truly have at this point. But your point blank I was going to teach. Part of it is a naive optimism. I mean, I think architecture, at its essence, is an act of optimism. It's like you're looking at the world and you're like you know what it can be better.

37:39 You know who's going to make it better this guy right. Not a whole amount of hubris just in the act of doing it, but also in the academic realm or in teaching, like you're stoking that fire in somebody else, like it's still my favorite thing to do, like if I can make somebody excited about something, it's like a feeling I can't even describe, where something goes off in their head and you're like they've found something. They've found something that has made their life better in every way, some direction, some meaning. I think it's about meaning, right, because architecture or the building industry is a service industry and a lot of times that can be like I'm going to pay you X dollars and you're going to renovate this or build this thing and we want it to look good and that's enough.

38:32 But in academia, there's this idea that it can be something more than that, right, and I had these experiences at school where it's like I want to be this, I never want to leave this place. In my spare time I'm reading books about architecture, right, and it's this thing that just kind of gives me hope, right, that it's so hard to do, but the fact that some people can do it is almost miraculous. And so this idea that I wanted to kind of contribute and inspire people was always a part of the goal for me. So the 10 years that you're waiting to get into the classroom, from harvard to your first classroom, what's going on in those 10 years?

39:18 I? was working for a number of boutique design offices in san francisco doing beautiful, award-winning, uh, really expensive houses in the first dot-com boom in san francisco are you the reason why no one can afford to live in San Francisco anymore? Not exclusively, but I'm a part of it, that's great and I love that and that was fun. But teaching also allows me access to merge worlds and to break boundaries that are not there. Like I can talk about Gattaca, right, I can talk about comic books.

39:59 I can talk about history and current events. I can talk about street art. You know all of these things. You know I could talk about abstract expressionism. I can bring all of these things into a discussion of architecture, where in the profession, you can do that for a certain period of time, and then someone's like, yeah, but where's my thing? I just want my thing. And so it allows me to share and to be nourished. And the funny thing about this is, after teaching for many years, my wife said, you know it was coming to be summer break, and wife was like, oh, and I was like wait, aren't you excited? Summertime we can, we can be together.

40:40 And she's like you're so grumpy during the summer oh geez like I just can't wait for the summer to be over, so school starts and you can be yourself again. And and this just lured me and I was like what do you mean? And she's like you're not yourself unless you're teaching. And I said how long have you known this? And she said forever. I thought you knew this and I was like, no, that's so interesting. So how did you break in? How did you get that first gig and open up this world for yourself? So I mean, I think, like many things, it is being prepared and being at the right place at the right time.

41:22 And so I had tried for all of these universities and I sent my resume every year. I'd send them to four or five universities in the Bay Area and I wouldn't get a call. And then at one point we were living in a neighborhood in San Francisco near Golden Gate Park, and there's a university three blocks from my house called the University of San Francisco. Oh wow, Great school. Great basketball players have come out of there, many other things Bill Russell the greatest of all and so I wrote them on a whim. I said, said hey, I just live around the corner. I'd love to, I'd love to kind of come by and learn what you guys are doing and if you ever need somebody, give me a call.

42:04 And the head of the program wrote me back and said we just had somebody take sabbatical. I've been looking for somebody to take his class. Uh, would you be willing to do that? And I said absolutely, uh. And and that was what kind of opened the doors. So what did you take from your college experience, or even those 10 years, and bring to the classroom on those first few days? I mean, I imagine you had to get your feet wet with the teaching, right. I mean, some people are naturals, but that's a big shift from going and doing you know the actual work to inspiring people, showing people, teaching people, that kind of thing. How did you make that transition?

42:45 It was humbling, I thought, because I so. I had worked in those 10 years. I worked for these boutique offices. Our projects had won dozens of national, local and regional design awards, been published in dozens of magazines. I thought I was kind of at the apex of my career, and when I went to teaching, my wife was like you know, this is a different profession. I said no, it's not, it's the same. And I quickly realized that dealing with 18 olds is different, it's very different. But you know, I the thing that kept me going was that I remember almost nothing from my first architecture class. There's like three things my professor said to me, but it got me just curious enough that I wanted to learn it on my own, and so I decided what I was going to do is I was going to share my enthusiasm.

43:36 I was going to kind of light the spark, and if that spark catches and burns within somebody else, that's great, and if it doesn't, that's fine too. And so it's this process of sharing what you love, and that's become kind of a mantra for me. And and and the kind of the parallel to that was, I started the first architectural lecture series at USF and I was so nervous and I, I gathered all these architects to speak and I gave my first introduction and I'd written this big, long introduction, the way that I had seen at Harvard and that we were supposed to do. And, uh, after I asked my wife, I said how was that? And she was like it was a little boring and I was like you're supposed to be on my side, like what the hell?

44:20 She is on your side. She's trying to help, honesty. She said well, you like these people, right? And I said yeah. And she said why don't you just talk about what you like? And that blew my mind. It's like, oh, I'm just going to. And that changed how I taught too. It's like I'm just going to share everything that I like, and if you like it, that's great, and if you don't like it, that's cool. But you know, at least you see that somebody has dedicated their life to something. And it's not like the teacher from Ferris Bueller's Day Off right. What was his? name again Ben when, when, Ben Stein. Ben Stein's money, ben Stein yeah. Ben Stein, anyone, anyone, so, ethan, um, do you try to teach your class like an art class or as a I guess a practical, I guess a practical world class?

45:09 It's a little of both but I tend more towards art and creative thinking. I think you know the industry will teach you how to do those things. It's not a trade school. I'm not. I'm not teaching people how to repair HVAC equipment, right I'm. I'm teaching them how to think and to synthesize complicated information and to have a point of view right. That it's like if, if it was just a formula, everybody could do it and every building would be great. And yet somehow they're not. And so how do we have a point of view? So I can teach them to think, teach them to deal with constraints, teach them to be creative, to take something that should be a detriment and turn it into an asset.

45:50 And then you know, the other issue that happens at Stanford is is that nobody comes to Stanford for architecture. They come from Stanford because of Stanford and by being here in Silicon Valley, someone can leave Stanford with a degree in English lit and go to work for Google and make twice as much money as an architect, and that's fine. But what I want to do is to kind of get people to say like, do you love this thing? Does it fill that spot in your soul? And if it does, then here's a way to think. Here's a way to look at the world, here's a way to make and interact, and those elements of the professional world get integrated into that, but within a framework of kind of creativity.

46:36 I'm going to cheat a little bit and pull something forward from the pre-call that you and I did before this interview. You talked about a student who was in one of your Stanford classes who said that she could not design, she was not built for this, et cetera, et cetera, and you said you're wrong. Can you tell that story, because I think that really nicely sums up that, the impact that you're making yeah, so. So a student uh, just a delightful student. But my first day of class she raised her hand and she said uh, I am not creative and I'm not sure I should be here. I said I don't know what came over me. But I said you are a.

47:16 And it was like the record, scratch, right. And everybody stopped yeah, and I said you have taught yourself not to be creative. You have taught yourself not to think in intuitive ways. Right, I have a son. My son is now 10. I have never had to teach him how to play with blocks or to draw something right. We all know that at a certain point, we are told to grow up, we are told to be serious, we are told that you know, we should be thinking about how to solve the problem. And I said you know, you just have to get in touch with that. And from that moment on she was amazing.

47:59 It's like the world opened up. She said to me she said I found my place, I found my people, and that is like the best thing that I could ever hear. Yeah, that's like that's gold for a teacher. I mean pure gold. I hope this isn't a tough question, it's a little existential. Um, what would the general public be surprised to know about a life and a career in architecture? Oh, that's a great question. Well, I think they would be surprised that the pay doesn't equal the effort and I think they'd be surprised at how much we care.

48:41 Right, each act of architecture is essentially a custom act. In that process, it's like they want to and it's become commodified, right, like you're selling I mean for homes, especially like you're selling the home. What's the resale value of this stuff? But you're like I want this house to fit my lifestyle. I want it to be able to sell to somebody else who has a different lifestyle and sell it for more money. It's like in what other context could you do that? Could you go get a suit and be like I want this custom Armani suit and I want to sell it to somebody that's six inches shorter and 50 pounds heavier and sell it for a profit Like that makes no sense, but it's kind of what we do. So it's this idea that we love it.

49:23 We toil for this on other people's behalves and we don't always get the benefit of that. You're the assistant director of the architecture. Yeah, the associate director of the program at Stanford. That's obviously a huge, huge tell. You're essentially the second or one A in command of the program at Stanford. How'd that come about? Again, it was kind of interesting about being in the right place at the right time. So I've been teaching at Stanford for 11 years. Before that happened, and I was a lecturer, I'd come in and teach my introductory to architecture class. About two years ago, the architecture program, which used to be called architectural design, shifted within the School of Engineering and a new program that they've established at Stanford called the Doer School for Sustainability, and so they wanted to remake the curriculum and kind of inject more engineering into it.

50:18 And we had this kind of all hands instructor meeting and they said you know, we're going to put more engineering into our architecture. What do you guys think? And they said we want to talk about energy modeling and wind flow and all of these things that are very important. And I felt like I was on the edge of kind of losing what I cared about, and so I thought you know, if this is the last thing I'm going to do, I'm going to say what, what matters to me. So I raised my hand and got called on by the, by the chair of the engineering department, and I said uh, no one has ever said you know why I love this Frank Lloyd Wright building?

51:00 Because it's so energy efficient. And it was like again, it's like this record scratch and like there's complete silence. And I said you know, if we don't teach our students how to love architecture, nothing else matters. Right, and in part, just to get in the weeds a little bit, 40%, about 40% of the solid waste in our landfills is from the construction industry, and the average lifespan of a commercial space is very short, of a residential building is about 60 years. But we're just constantly building and demolishing things, and the only way, the most sustainable thing we can do, is make a building that people love.

51:41 And so how do we engender this love of of a building? So I said this crickets. And I'm like, well, that was fun, but at least I said what I, what I believe. And and the next day I got an email from the, the chair of engineering. I said I want to meet with you in my office and I said, well, all right, it was fun being your playbook but at least I went out my way Right and and she said, I really appreciate what you had to say. It's not what we thought. How would you like to start to uh rewrite the curriculum? And I said, you know, that's my dream. And so it just kind of happened to work that way.

52:26 What an amazing, amazing story. Yeah, I've worked as a college professor for the past couple of years and AI leapt upon the scene relatively suddenly and it became something that, as a teacher, I had to contend with, and I quickly embraced it, because, for me, I was teaching a technology class. But for you, I wonder what the sentiment is around AI. Is it something that you teach? Is it something that's considered a threat? Is it a tool? Is it useful? How is AI impacting your students and your field?

53:08 I think it's all of those things, or we perceive it as all of those things. It's so easy to make images now, right, you can put in a prompt in chat, gpt or some of these other software and it will make a million versions of a building. The thing is, is that they're facsimiles, right? They have no spatial components or capacity. It's an image. And so then the question is like do you like it or do you not? And so you kind of move to this idea of a kind of a Julius Caesar. Right, like we like this or not, and so it's. You know it's going to come. And so what we're talking with the students about is how do we make those choices?

53:49 How, when you have 10,000 options, how do you iterate and start to say I'm narrowing this down because right, and so AI will play a part in that. I think it's troublesome insofar as that it makes it seem easier to clients, so much like the HGTV thing, like, oh, do this, if I could say, go into the computer and say, make me an airport that is all out of wood and could service travel for the next hundred years, and it would spit out an image. If I wanted to actually do that it would take 10 years and a billion dollars to do that thing. And so just because AI spits it out doesn't mean that it's something that's achievable.

54:31 It's like a digital pipe dream, right, or a kind of visual hallucination that then implies reality. So I'm going to ask you this so what is your favorite architecturally beautiful? What city do you consider architecturally beautiful? Every city has something that's good and bad. Right, cities are living organisms and so I think there's not a place necessarily, although I I spent a lot of time in in kyoto, in japan, and I love kyoto, but I think it's more how do you just look at an environment that's built in it and what has more things that make you feel something positive than just the oppressive concrete that just, uh, makes?

55:17 you want to go home and lock your door and and uh and sedate yourself with uh, some something just to say, like obviously, the three of us, we are in the new york area and I think at times you're right that you kind of take the environment you live in for granted, because I mean, I see, new york I've flown in, you know we've flown in as well um, and I think you take that gray space for for granted the concrete jungle. I recently went to Chicago. I've gone to Chicago a number of different times and I had an opportunity to take and if anyone ever has the opportunity to take, they should take the river tour, the architectural river tour, where they actually kind of make you look at the buildings on the river and how the city was planned.

55:58 And the best part about it was that the Chicago fire burned the city to the ground so they had to rebuild it and they were able to kind of incorporate how the architecture works into the living space, whether it be the river or the neighborhoods, et cetera. I have never looked at a city in such a light ever and because of that I personally think Chicago is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen, just because the buildings that are built even on the river itself, have that feel of a moving object. It's beautiful. It's beautiful, and one of my very first introductions to San Francisco was not Gattaca, it was Dirty Harry, right, because there he is in the city and you see this beautiful grittiness to it.

56:47 So, yeah, I totally get what you're saying Well, and I think but you know, I think beauty is alone is a little bit of a red herring, because you need that friction. A lot of times I'll talk to my students and I'll say, like where's the rub? Right, like you don't get a pearl without some irritant right? And I'll use a New York example right, like the High Line. I presume you guys have all been to the High Line. Yeah, yeah. Sure, it's this beautiful swath of abandoned infrastructure that was feral for years and every developer in New York was licking their chops to tear it down and to get that land and to put a building in its place. And through the efforts of a few people, dedicated people, they ended up turning it into a park.

57:30 They worked with some fantastic designers Gilles Scafidio and Renfro Field Ops, amongst others and they made this amazing elevated boulevard right, that, where you know, aside from Central Park, you can go in here and you're in nature. You see people, and now everybody's clamoring to be next to it. They want to have their building right up next to the highway. That's right, that's true. And that rub wouldn't have happened if it was a green space, because the idea of taking a park that's a mile long, or however long it is now, and putting it 25 feet above the city, that's almost stupid. But you know, this is why I say it's kind of alchemy, because when it happened you're just like this is the most amazing place, I've been Right, and it makes so many people happy.

58:18 I mean, I don't. You guys can tell me, but I've never heard anybody that goes to the Highline and it's like. I hate that place, nope. Never. It's ironic that two of my favorite places in the world, the Highline and the Chicago architectural boat tour great bar on that boat great bar, al Capone putting his car right into the to the building and they raise it up and the whole thing. Very cool. We've entered the did you know? Portion of your interview. I don't know if you knew this was going to happen today, but you learn the most fascinating things when you're interviewing people and trying to dig into their life. I learned today, today, years old, that architecture was an olympic sport.

59:01 I have you heard this? So I guess my question is do you want architecture to come back to the olympics? they would give they would give medals exactly are we going to keep? Ping pong. Are we training ping pong? just a little a little background 1912 to 1948, the ioc is actually giving out medals for architecture, painting, sculpture, literature, public speaking. There's all sorts of things that have been a part of the Olympics. Who knew? And architecture. So there you go. I heard that recently too and it blew my mind. I mean again architecture. You know, when you have the fastest person in the world, be, you know, get their record in nine seconds and you say architecture will take three years.

59:43 It doesn't seem like it lends itself for an Olympic event, no, but you know, I love the fact that there's some ideas about anything that gets it public recognition. I doubt I will ever be at the Olympics competing. I have a number of students that do go to the Olympics and I'm always excited to see them there, but I think there are other forums to promote architecture than perhaps the Olympics. I'll have you know. The reason the IOC got rid of it is because too many professionals like yourself were entering and it wasn't the spirit of the amateur Olympic competition.

1:00:27 I thought it was all the dope. But LeBron James can play. Yes, lebron James can play. He plays later. That's called irony. So, ethan, as we get towards the end of our conversations, we like to wrap with one specific question, and then I'm going to hit you with another one that I'm very curious about. So, advice for people who want to get into the field of architecture, architectural design what advice do you have for those folks? I would say, travel, experience things, feel what architecture does to the body right Architecture is calibrated to the human body and see as many things as you can see.

1:01:11 The other thing that I would say is that architecture is an amazing profession, but you have to love it more than it will love you. You have to be committed to doing something and not getting any praise and putting your life into it but still getting some something out of it. And if you can find a way to dedicate yourself to that, you know it's absolutely wonderful. And if not, there's a lot of ways to influence the built environment. Right, you can. You can start a company. It's absolutely wonderful. And if not, there's a lot of ways to influence the built environment. You can start a company, you can. What's it? Mark Zuckerberg hired Frank Gehry to do Facebook headquarters. You can talk to your local politicians and representatives about how the built environment happens.

1:01:56 You can just be somebody to appreciate it. Go and look at buildings like they. They don't kind of continue to exist without other people's gaze and other people's love. You know, just just see experience, talk about it. Those are the things that that keep it alive. Your passion for architecture oozes through this, through through the screen that we're looking at you on Zoom and I have to admit I'm jealous of your students. I wanted to have, I would love to have had a professor like you. When I was at Fordham I had plenty of great professors, but one like you never. You mentioned before the idea that you never wanted to have a teacher like Ben Stein. You are not Ben Stein, you are Robin Williams and the Dead.

1:02:40 Poets Society. Oh, captain, my captain, I'll tell you what I would love to have that class. You are a teacher sir. Well, thank you very much. That means a lot for me to hear that from you. Too sure. You gave it the perfect doubt, but I'm not going to take it. I'm going to take it after this final question. So, ethan, as a teacher, as an artist, as a designer, you're still young, so you may not have given this any thought as of yet, but what do you want your legacy to be as you step away from all of this? When people think Ethan, what do you want them to think? Every once in a while I entertain this thought and it changes. Uh, every once in a while I entertain this thought and it and it changes.

1:03:23 I think when I, when I was very young and starting out, I wanted to have a monograph, a book of my work published and I wanted to see my name on that book and people to see it and think of me like Frank Lloyd Wright or something like that, and and I I realized that it's much more complicated. Um, and I realized that it's much more complicated and that it's also not about me. And so now I think my legacy is I want the world to be better than it is right now. I want to not, I tell my students, although a lot of it is altruistic, part of it is selfish. I am tired of looking at crap. I want to see better things made. I want students to go out and see the world and say we can make it better, we can make it more beautiful, we can make it greener, we can make it more socially responsible, and I want to live in that future.

1:04:14 And so I think my legacy is kind of planting seeds, and I never know what seeds are going to take and I don't know what form it will be. And I just had an experience where I found out that a building that was built in San Francisco was done by one of my students. He was the project architect and I was like that's amazing, wow, what a great feeling. That's your legacy. Right there, right yeah, that and the flag brackets. That's your legacy. Right there, right yeah, and so that and the flag brackets. That's exactly right. Well, ethan, you have us feeling that way. So, if it matters at all, you know we are inspired and we hope to leave the world a better place as well. And you know, this has really been a great conversation.

1:04:57 We've learned so much. We've smiled the whole way. Thank you so much for spending the time with us today. Oh, thanks so much for having me. This is an absolute delight. So that was Ethan Wood, with a remarkably inspiring story, not just about an industry and a profession, but also what feels a little bit like an art, in a way. Larry Shea, what are your takeaways? Yeah, I love that. He said that right, that there's art, that is architecture, and then there's people just putting up buildings and there's a difference, right. Yeah, I was struck by so many things and, by the way, this is not coming to the Olympics anytime soon. Let's get that out of the way, that's a great question.

1:05:41 But yeah, that Legos and Minecraft are the gateway drugs of this profession, I mean, that was just priceless. You don't have to necessarily be good at math or drawing to be successful, right, yeah, very surprising, but you could find your role because it does take an army. It's a team of people that are doing this and as long as you play your role whether, like he said, it's, you know, fronting with the clients, organization timelines, whatever it might be I mean everybody's good at something. So, yeah, if you want to be an architect and you're not good at drawing or math, it's not a death blow. I thought that was amazing and I love this advice. You know, travel, see as many things as you can see.

1:06:23 You know, live a full life, kind of thing. We've had that advice before and I think it's across the board for any profession, really important Just travel, go see things, go do things, experience things, and you'll figure out what you want to do or don't want to do and you have to do or don't want to do, and you have to love it more than it will love you. I mean, that's what we really realized when we were researching architecture. Right Is the hours, the dedication, just how hard it is to really make waves in this profession, but rewarding as well. So do it go for it if that's what you want to do. T, what do you think so, so cool. I mean, I got to be honest. Honest, if I had a teacher like him, I would be inspired to do, I'd be inspired to go through a wall for this guy because he really made, he really made.

1:07:09 He really made the idea of, of, of architecture as a true art form. It's not just, like you know, we've spoken to artists on this. On the program before right we've had we've had guys who put paint to canvas, but this is a different type of canvas you're dealing with, because you're dealing with essentially your environment as that canvas around you. I think it's amazing. The other thing that I'm very surprised about is that we're getting very close now to the Seinfeld trifecta. Now we have our architect. We need to get a marine biologist. I have a line on a marine biologist. By the way, I'm working on that one. We also need to get an importer-exporter on this show, love it. Once we do that, we are set. We have the Seinfeld trifecta all squared away, and if one of them is named Art Vandelay, even better.

1:07:54 Don't forget the latex salesman. We need one of those, the latex. Oh, I'm sorry. We're getting to bro. Oh my God, that's right. I'm confident we're going to get the marine biologist. I'm close, I'm close. So you know, for me I really enjoyed hearing his passion for teaching and his time spent I think it was the University of San Francisco first, and then getting into Stanford afterwards and I can't wait to see those cleats over at the, those flag cleats. Oh, I forgot about that. Over at the University of San Francisco. I will see those one day. Yeah, but forgot about that. So you know, for me, having taught college for a couple of years, it's hard and connecting with the students and finding your rhythm and finding your groove can certainly be a challenge, I think for me I eventually found it, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

1:08:46 Similar to him, so it was just inspiring hearing his passion, his stories, his growth, his development within that field and also his story of taking a leap and throwing out the fact that you might not be teaching architecture in the best way Perhaps you should consider something different which took a lot of courage and in the end it paid off and put him in a great position with one of the best universities in the country. So just a remarkable story, an inspiring story, and I'm so happy that we were able to get Ethan on the program today. So with that, ethan, thank you so much for joining this episode of no Wrong Choices.

1:09:30 On behalf of Tushar Saxena, larry Shea and me, larry Samuels, thank you again for joining this episode of no Wrong Choices. If, after listening, you've thought of someone who could be a great guest, please let us know by sending us a note via the contact page of our website at norongchoicescom. While there, please be sure to check out our blog and explore other great episodes while signing up to become a member of our community. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, facebook, instagram, youtube Threads and X. Tiktok is up and content has begun rolling out. We'll be back with another episode next week. Before then, always remember there are no wrong choices on the road to success, only opportunities, because we learn from every experience.