From One Cabin to a Global Idea: Craft, Intuition, and Building with Purpose | 698

0:00Another person on the other side of the world sees it and is touched by it. And that immediately means there's also a connection between you and that person. Hello, Architect Nation, and welcome back. This is the right place for you if you run an architectural practice. On today's episode, you will discover why building something small, even just for one person, can unlock opportunities that you never planned for. The unexpected trade-off between control, craft and scale, and why growing a business can quietly pull you away from the work that you actually love. And how one deeply personal project, built with no commercial intent, ended up resonating with people all over the world.

0:43In a remarkably short period of time, Caspar Scholes went from building a single cabin for his mother to developing a body of work that's now being experienced across continents. What's interesting is that none of it started as a business plan. It started with him working with his hands, following an instinct and staying close to something that felt real. And along the way, he's been figuring out how to turn that instinct into something repeatable without losing the essence of what made it meaningful in the first place. Today's episode is sponsored by Gelt. Is your architecture firm just filing taxes or actually using them to grow the business?

1:19Gelt is your partner in optimizing your taxes so you can focus on scale. They work with you year-round, not just at tax time. Taking a proactive approach that combines expert CPAs and powerful technology, from smart entity structures to overlooked deductions and smarter compensation planning, Gelt helps architecture firms unlock strategies most accountants miss. And exclusively for Business of Architecture listeners, Gelt is offering 10 % off your first year. Don't wait for next tax season. Schedule your complimentary consultation at joingelt.com. That's J-O-I-N-G-E-L-T dot com to learn more and mention BOA when you sign up.

1:58Kasper. Yes. What a delight. What a pleasure. Welcome to the Business of Architecture. How are you, sir? Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm excited about tonight. It's very late for me. Good. I always go to bed at 10. Really? I'm excited to stay up for this. What time is it there? it is uh quarter past ten now oh good so we're in new territory then for you absolutely i love it well i'm very delighted to have you on the podcast you're not the typical architect that we would normally have here you're an artist a builder uh someone who doesn't just draw ideas but physically brings them into life with your own hands we can see all of the exciting models and interesting bits you have behind you that are kind of testament to that and some may know you through your project company cabin anna which is a project that quietly went viral around the world and is in kind of simple terms a moving transformable structure that blurs the line between architecture nature and experience and you know when i first came across the website where peter had sent it to me I was just blown away by the kind of beauty and the simplicity of it and the fact that you were kind of getting these things made and built and sent around the world was was quite extraordinary so welcome to the business of architecture um thank you and perhaps we could start off with you describe yourself as a designer artist but also someone who builds where did that approach and title come from um well i still struggle with it to be honest um what to call myself but um um i i've i i feel like through a whole series of events uh taking many years i kind of came back to my my childhood dream like so I'm in the first place just a kid playing playing around and building huts and yeah I'm in my best place when I lose myself in my fantasy and this can either be sketching or it can be I have behind well looks like it's behind you but there's my little desk to do some soldering and And then I like welding and sawing wood in the workshop.

4:37So like kind of like from, yeah, I just love doing the hands-on stuff. And then I have a team, incredibly good and skilled team that can sort of bring my mess together and actually execute it. And we somehow managed to bring a cabin from Amsterdam to somewhere in the United States and build it up in a few weeks. and make someone really happy with Anna. But that's mostly the team because when it comes to being structured, I'm usually not the best example. So what was it that drew you towards making kind of more small experimental structures rather than going down the conventional architectural route?

5:32Well, I mean, it's not like it was ever a very conscious choice. I feel like it just happened. But if I sort of reason backwards, then what I love about the scale is that it's a scale that you can just go nuts in all the details. So when a project becomes a bit bigger, it's really hard to give every detail attention either because the budget doesn't extend that way or because there's not enough time or simply because of the scale. If you make a chair, you want to literally look at every little detail corner. And that's the beauty, I think, about that skill. like you have the time you have the even just like you have the focus for it if you if i when i see a big project like that it's all it's overwhelming you know and and another thing that i love so of course the skill we work at is a little bit bigger than a chair um but uh and then what i also love about it is uh i find it really hard to deal with regulations I find it hard to deal with.

6:54And I think this is an incredible skill. I really admire a good architect that can deal with the clients, with municipality, with budget, with the builder, with the engineer. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love people. But if all those people, they all have their opinions. and I think the main skill of a really good architect is bringing it all together without losing, yeah, the heart of the project. And I think, yeah, I'm not sure if I'm typically the best at that and I love when it comes out of the moment and I just came about. It was never a plan to turn it into something to bring it to the other side of the world.

7:49It was really like one cabin for my mother. And I loved building it. I was building for 12 months. And the funny thing is, even after it's finished, the way I think about it, the way I talk about it, it keeps developing. Every so many years, I look back and then I say, okay, my story three years ago was different from six years ago and nine years ago. And that's because you kind of, I love it when I'm in that flow and I create something and I feel like it makes sense. At least to me, you know. And then the story comes later. And yeah, I don't know how that works. If it's some kind of, if you just make it up or if it's reality or, but that doesn't even really matter, I think.

8:43What was the origin story behind Cabin Anna? And I don't know, maybe it makes a bit of sense as well to give a bit of context in your own architectural training and the sort of different pathways that you took during that. I was trained as a physicist. I graduated in Amsterdam in condensed matter physics. but during my studies I always felt like I forgot about something and as a child I was someone I grew up in the forest always building huts while my brothers were playing soccer or computer games or so I was a very clear interest and I feel like when I grew up and became a teenager I kind of lost it a bit maybe thinking it wasn't wasn't cool anymore didn't fit anymore instead discovered other aspects of being a teenager and and i feel like it took me a while to realize that i that i left a part of me behind and i loved physics i absolutely loved it it's it's an incredible study it's it's i'm good with numbers and on top of that it's it's very philosophical i think it was incredible to spend six to 12 months just uh understanding a black hole yeah if you if you take six to 12 months to understand a black hole the black black hole is like a tree you know it becomes part of your life you you're still amazed by it but it's it's normal that it's there and and well and then and then when i was finished i still felt like i wanted to go to art school.

10:24So I did one year of Arts Academy, Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. And then in the same time, built a cabin for my mother, moved back home, stayed with her for, I thought it was going to take me three months, but it was 12 months. But super amazing time with my mom to spend that time was very special. And at the same time, you just wake wake up, so different from studying physics, you wake up, you have your sketches and you go to the workshop, start sewing and you go out and you dig your holes and you pour your concrete and you're out all day. I was in an incredibly, I was in an incredible shape.

11:05I was very, I felt so good. I felt so strong, literally, but also mentally. I felt full of energy and I was able to make a lot of decisions in the work because I was making it myself and of course you never i never did it alone i was always talking to friends family to to someone from the hardware shop like i was talking to everyone to get the details right because i've never done something like that before uh but like the fact like that it kind of comes into being um is super exciting like i i i also don't i find it really hard i'm quite disciplined but still i find it hard if i know the end result it's very hard to stick with it if you if you explore and something comes out then like it comes natural you don't have to rely on your discipline i'm very interesting this kind of a wonderful relationship between kind of making something and throwing yourself into a process with an unknown outcome and then your relationship with like condensed matter you know particle physics and black holes are the two connected i mean were there were there insights or or ways of thinking where you've been looking at black holes on these kinds of mysterious objects that exist in the universe that kind of carried through into something tactile and and building or is it just completely it you know one that was one part of my life and now i'm doing something else no i i mean i think i carry it carries with me uh daily and i on two levels like i've always been good at mathematics and physics i'm terrible at language all that stuff uh mathematics and physics was always my strong side and and i managed to develop that further so i i'm i'm i'm a very like it's very easy for me to talk to engineers it's very easy to figure things out that technique very technical i really enjoy that part also i have a good sense of yeah how things might work and sometimes i figure it out with an engineer if it's a bit more advanced some sometimes do it myself but at least i i feel like i can be a good a good partner to an engineer and i i really love that dynamics so that's one way how i carry with me the other thing ways is very in a philosophical way so it was like my my studies when i studied physics was also a bit of a hard time but that was also when my father died when i was 21 and i i always feel like those two things my dad dying and and in the same time spending months and months on uh on quantum physics and and and uh black holes and um it it was it was very um you you get into a world that is uh that didn't exist before so and and it may be sounds strange to compare the death of my father to a black hole but there's two things that are death and black holes are part of the reality part of the universe essential part of the universe but yeah it's easy especially when you're younger to not realize it to not believe it you know about death you know about black holes but you don't really feel it in your body you don't really understand what these words mean they're very abstract and I think it was for me a whole process that that there was something much bigger going on than what I saw.

15:04And I also did a minor in philosophy, which kind of helped forming that, completing that picture. And one, I actually don't test me on philosophical knowledge. It's usually quite patched together and scattered, but I know some concepts. But one person I found really interesting is Heidegger. and when he speaks about the eigentliege and uneigentliege. And that's very much about, you probably know about it, but maybe for people who don't know about it. Eigentliege is your life here. You go to your work, you join friends and you go to the pub and it's like very worldly things. Sorry, uneigentliege.

15:54And eigentliege is the whole picture, the wider picture. actually your position in the wider universe, in the bigger reality, the part that we usually forget. And he says, it's not good to spend all your time in eigendliche and also not good to spend all your time in uneigendliche because in uneigendliche you forget about a very essential part of life, like what it is to be alive how to be really at home in the universe and on the other side if you spend too much time in it you actually have a you could go nuts basically it's so overwhelming and if you really feel it you can go crazy quite literally and if you spend too much time in it you miss an essential part a very exciting essential part of what it means to be alive in this universe and i think and many of the things i like i said if you'd asked me 10 years ago i would have not said this so it develops you look back and you read your work in different ways but now i very much read my work including kebenhanna in in those terms that's very that's very that's very beautiful and what i'm hearing there from you is that the There's this kind of idea of beingness or something of like, you know, being a part of the cosmos, which is quite a profound way of thinking of our existence that we are of, we are part of something, which is this kind of intricate, mysterious set of mechanisms.

17:42and then actually like the day-to-day of fabrication and building something and putting something together is as equally you know important and there's this kind of interesting relationship between the two and like what you're describing there between something kind of theoretical and uh you know like what happens inside of a black hole and these kinds of mysterious objects and then something very real and tangible like the passing of your father and kind of just watching in like on one hand you're thinking about impermanence or the erasure of something in a black hole kind of theoretically mathematically and then then kind of viscerally experiencing it that's you know it's uh quite profound to just to be open to that and then to see that that's actually a philosophy that gets attributed to the cabin anna i find that quite interesting and it's very very architectural yeah yeah i i think like how you described that and and and that so that's the other side of me is very practical so um yeah then then how to translate these ideas emotions into a very practical thing is is is a is a really big joy i think so with the first cabin you made that for your mother and so there wasn't i'm assuming there wasn't really any intention to make it a commercial endeavor or to turn it into a career it sounds like it was a a kind of labor of love and an exploration how was it you know how did it practically come into into being was it something that your mother asked you to do or were you funding it yourself yeah so so my my my mom was obviously also in in a deep grief around that time um and my whole family we all went through that and all in our own ways but also together um and and she was, she somehow also felt like an urge to be, like it's almost an urge to really live under a tree, you know, like to really be super connected.

20:07Like I sometimes describe this, you lose, especially my mom, your biggest root, your biggest connection to whatever it is that we're experiencing. So you're heavily uprooted and that gap needs to be filled somehow. And I think we experienced something similar. I went through a time where also my doctor said, well, I feel like you're getting a little bit too destable. So I suggest you take some medicine for this. But it was also the same time that I had very clear dreams, conversations with my father, dreams in the night. I would have very real conversations with him, sitting at the table or walking in the forest.

20:57And we were, he was a builder, by the way. And he would bring often drawings from his projects back home and would put them on the table. And I was always super interested. So we would go through drawings and he would explain and he was super passionate about it. So those conversations were very, we had often very passionate conversation about often, yeah, could be architects, could be something else, could be anything. And then often when I somehow looked away and looked back, he disappeared. So it was sort of this, it was so hard to understand that it was really gone, that in my dreams I had to digest it somehow.

21:47So the doctor said maybe you should take medicine, but at the same time I thought my body is trying to tell me something. I need to, I shouldn't push this away. And instead my father was very much a big nature person. person and and so i thought i need to find myself or him or whatever or find peace in nature so i went to sweden for a few months to hike and also to sleep under trees to to bathe in the in the ice cold rivers in the lake so and there i started to calm down and i said like obviously you don't get any answers but the questions disappeared to a certain extent they calmed down things started to make sense again and then when i came home my mother said yeah i have been thinking i have this plot of forest i would like to have a little yeah unit there where where where yeah i can be but also all of you can be and stay there and be alone or be with other people and and so and and and then I said like yeah I just asked her well I can help you find one but this is made I would love to actually design it for you and build it for you and then we had many conversations about that and I started sketching and it was really like in conversation with her and at some point we were like okay this is cool this is it and yeah and then it was really quick So she, it was also really good because it was before there was a lot of options in cabins to buy off the shelf.

23:31And the ones that were there were quite expensive also. I mean, now I wouldn't think it's expensive, but I could build the first one myself. I mean, I worked a whole year on it without getting paid. So, I mean, that makes obviously a big difference. but uh i i could i could spend the whole budget that she had for it on materials just materials just so it meant i could build something quite exciting it's it's amazing because it's also like a very deep and cathartic and healing it sounds like it's a it was a very deep and cathartic healing process to go through to be building something like that for your mother to kind of reassure her in her healing process for you it's a way of uh rekindling the kind of you know the the boyhood relationship that you had with your father and did he did he visit you again in dreams as you were building it did he come has there has there been any other any other conversations or it it um i i did the the most intense dreams were before that that's for sure but he he would and still does sometimes uh yeah pass by my dreams and sometimes i very clearly remember and sometimes i just felt oh yeah he was there i i've caught his smell or i just felt he was there but one thing is that well this is I mean it's all whatever you want to see in it and that's always the case with everything but I had a what is the English word for this bird the little red bird?

25:19Robin yeah exactly I think it's Robin yeah so my dad when he was a builder he would always wear a bright red orangey kind of helmet to his projects and and this this robin robin came to visit me uh every day and they're not yeah they they're known not to be scared so he would be literally sitting around me and it was really nice for me to imagine that that was somehow uh was somehow him seeing like uh yeah he always thought about me as an as an architect or or or something like that like a builder architect maker so um and and the funny thing is that yeah he never saw me like that because i was still studying physics so yeah it was also another way to uh to connect with him wow really beautiful thank you for sharing that that's very moving very very um beautiful genesis of uh such a wonderful project how did it like when you first completed it then because this this genesis of it is really you know there's a there's a heartfelt intention behind what you were doing how did it grow from that into something that you know is what it is now and kind of repeating it i'd imagine that you you might have done this one project and it was quite amazing and yeah i'm your mother i'm sure kind of loves it and it was cathartic and transformative in a way what happened after that for you to then to feel that you could even repeat it or it could be a commercial endeavor yeah so so um i uh so it i i did that same year art school and i met a guy called jorrit and he became a really dear friend he was a bit older than me and and a really good photographer and and one day he said yeah you're always talking about this cabin uh but yeah why why is it so special and uh like he was a bit teasing me a bit i want to come see what's so special about this this thing and he came and he brought his camera with him he wasn't even planning to do a photo shoot or anything and and but he was quite surprised but i never told him that it opened up and so that was quite a surprise for him and and he found a lot of uh joy in so that same day in taking pictures and i think what he likes about is that it's the same object but by sliding the the shells you can play with the light and like so it's quite fun to take pictures of it and then he said to me it was really kind of his suggestion like okay now we have those photos what are we going to do with them and I was like yeah I don't know like frame it or but he said like no but you know we could send them somewhere where would you like to publish them and just dream big and I was like yeah okay well dream big Arts Daily The Zine but yeah I mean I'm not even an architect so why would they publish it and I think nowadays it's more common that these smaller projects even like the handmade projects the cabins they're more of a category in themselves now but yeah it's now like 9 years ago it wasn't so common but I think it was very lucky we were very lucky with the timing because it was the beginning of the interest of people in cabins and what they mean.

29:04So we sent it to the zine and we didn't hear anything for a month. And then suddenly it was on the zine and it was, I believe it's still today one of the best visited, what is it, viewed videos and articles on the zine. So it was insane what happened. Like we got hundreds, literally at the beginning, hundreds of emails a day. Yeah, it's nuts. and we have this show in the Netherlands Yinek is a talk show it's really popular it's also a million views a day or something and my mom loves watching it and she was at some point I got a phone call from her and she was like turn on the TV turn on the TV you could barely speak and then the cabin and our garden and whatever and was on TV and she was speaking about the cabin.

30:02Like, no, we weren't even informed about it. So lots of really fun things. And it was a really fun time to enjoy with my mom, this weird attention. And I kind of, yeah, again, we sat down, what are we going to do with all this? And we kind of agreed, I'm going to say yes to everything. So whoever sends an email and wants something, wants to talk or has an idea or i'm going to explore everything so i i i flew a couple of times to new york i like there's all these people that that had big ideas and and most of them well most of them is just really kind people that want to express that you did something cool and and support you or whatever so that's really great it's just already good for your energy then a percentage of those people want did they wanted to have an anna another part was entrepreneurs or companies that wanted to turn this into a product and and yeah i just spoke to everyone and then i met one guy and and like 15 years older than me and we immediately had a click and uh and and still today we have and he became the biggest supporter and an investor uh behind keb and anna and and we still together on the journey and and uh yeah that's now five what is it five six years ago so i tell it a bit that that there were no i yeah the other thing that happened that i got a scholarship to study in london at the architecture association so i went to do this this is this is after basically the publication and the yeah wow yeah and while in london i kept talking to everyone and and like visiting people switzerland new york and i thought i need to meet all these people to see i had a feeling i wanted to take the next step but i didn't know how and then i met dennis and uh uh and he was like uh yeah i think so cool let's let's just make it happen you know and he what what he did is um he basically said like okay what if you if you would build this cabin again what would you improve yeah and i said okay this this this this and then um okay i said okay and then he said like okay how much would it cost how much would you like and i don't even remember which number i said but uh i said uh let's say i said a hundred thousand and um and uh okay okay yeah okay we start a company together and i'm gonna put that in there and you're gonna start and but shoot with lots of energy and i started building and but I remember after two months I had to call him and he did everything based on trust we didn't have any official anything official in place yet and he all I didn't have a car he gave me the car and he it was it was really I could sleep at his his house because it was closer to the workshop whatever so it went really fast it was all based on trust and and it made sense also looking back and then after two months I'd spent all the money and so I had to call him back and said yeah I don't know how to tell you but I'm half way and I spent all the money and then he was like oh okay well how much more do you need and so that's kind of how it started and then we built another product and then we finished that one and we decided to put it and he had a piece of land in a very big, well, it's not very big, but to Dutch standards, in a Dutch wildlife reserve, one of the biggest in the Netherlands, he had a piece of land.

33:59And he was already allowed to build some things there. So he said like, okay, let's build it there. And then we also going to rent it out because that's the best test. Let's invite people. And then, you know, in one week, you get a family with kids. You get, what is it? A woman with two dogs. You get three guys on a weekend trip. You know, like, I swear to God, everything that can break will break for sure. And we also asked a lot of feedback. So that immediately after six, 12 months, we realized, okay, this, all these, we made a list, this all needs to change. So it's kind of part of it is we need to repair what's there and maintain it.

34:48some of the earlier ones that we built they still need much more maintenance and the same time how would we change these things so in the next one they don't need that maintenance so build another one build another one and until we built uh we built nine i believe after that and the ninth we said okay now this one feels not these little kind of prototypes you're kind of kind of yeah i think you could call them prototypes yeah and we all build them in the same well not all of them in the same area um some we actually sold also to other people there's six in that area and the others are in other corners of the netherlands right um but uh yeah so so and then the number nine or ten uh we said okay this is the one this one we actually there to send to the other side of the world and knowing that we don't have to come back in 12 months to repair things or and that's quite a long time past because the first one that we sent to the United States I think is now two years ago so this is another thing I completely underestimated it took me so much time to go from a concept, because my mom's cabin is almost like the way I look at it now, maybe you call it a prototype, but maybe it's an art installation.

36:20It was very conceptual. It was a platform with some sliding shells. It's a house that divided in two with two layers, very conceptual. You couldn't do anything there apart from putting a chair there and sit there and enjoy your environment and then later you understand that yeah that the how you can turn it into something that you start to add like the domestic rituals which for me sort of this is two parts one is like okay you have sort of an object that opens to the environment you use your own body to do it very important so you're very connected to the object very connected to the to to the surroundings and you kind of recreate your environment in that in that way and the second one is then so you kind of create that gateway uh to to be somehow teleported to another reality or the same reality could see it with new eyes but by adding sort of those daily rituals um like you also sort of like making the bed cooking they're all kind of mini instances of that because when you cook you make the meal and then the meal is finished and then you wash your plates and you like it's all these cycles and that's kind of like it's it's little rituals that actually uh make sure that that gate is also open and you know it's almost like if you it's like it's like what you're talking about in the beginning it's like the it's like the daily physical simple routines and then the the kind of structure itself is kind of just reconnecting you to the wider cosmos and yeah in in environment there's that that kind of relationship of the everyday practical rituals that exactly yeah yeah it's it's it's such a wonderful story to hear something like this happen um what what do you think was the reason why it went viral like what like what what do you think was so compelling or captivating about those images the videos the original design that had it kind of take off like this because these are the sorts of projects where you know i've spoken to a lot of people who have designed cabins and and have tried to set up a frame kind of businesses and and things like that and you know have struggled to get the design or the pictures right or whatever it is but this is quite wonderful in the sense that it was and like I like the purity of your intention because it was all about your father and your mother and like a like a cathartic healing process but do you think there was something in that in those original in the in the original building that is just really kind of talks to people yeah and i mean like i think it's also luck because i think the timing was really good in a way uh like i said it was like it wasn't it before that it was kind of when when cabins actually started to become an architecturally respected uh yeah creation i would say um So there's definitely also a lot of luck in timing.

39:41I do think for me, it was such a literal translation of what I felt. It was so like I want to, I need to reconnect. I need to peel off these layers and reconnect. And I feel like, so for me, it's very much connected to my father's passing and also studying physics. but it's maybe a bigger it's not just my I have a feeling that it's something that a lot of people feel this need and I'm not sure if it was especially then I think it's still maybe it only gets worse I mean the world gets more busy, more confusing, more digital so there's this urge and I think by making it very literal I imagine that Or maybe, you know, I think also the beauty, I think something really cool about making things, making objects, making art, making architecture, is that the moment you make something and then another person on the other side of the world sees it and is touched by it, and it immediately means there's also a connection between you and that person.

40:59and I've noticed this with all the Anna the Anna owners, the Anna stewards around the world they I feel at home with them, I go there and they always invite me to either stay in Anna or stay at their house and we have dinner together and we connect, we understand each other so I think it it's yeah, I think it sort of translates something that It's not just my emotion, but with many people. And yeah, I don't know.

41:42There's a kind of purity almost with the intention of what you were doing. I think I'm sure that that kind of is beyond words and is kind of embodied in the design and the architecture and is something that's kind of very connecting. people can kind of feel that contemplation um that you've that you've channeled and it's quite deep i'm interested to know you went to architecture school you went the aa right you went to the yeah um so and so you started your architectural education kind of like after you've already created something that's um you know been very touching to people did your education enhance your skill set you did it make you want to kind of go into a career of architecture or like what what did you get from going to the aa and do you want to get get registered one day or i i i've never been particularly interested in that and but also not that also not the opposite like from i i so i actually did my i did my part one at a right and after that anna became bigger and bigger and i i decided okay i'm gonna do my year out and see if i can i had totally naive i thought i'm gonna do year out set up a business it's gonna be really successful in a year and then i'll go back and i'll do part two uh obviously after a year there was nothing there was literally nothing it's super hard i mean it's super hard and it takes a lot of time and and but i was super dedicated and i i found it it felt like a really big opportunity and i uh so i i never went back and i don't think that will that will happen um but who knows but yeah and I yeah and another thing again what I said at the beginning I did discover that I still wonder I do feel like I'm an architect but at the same time I'm not I don't see myself doing any of these large projects I mean that can also grow and can change of course but at the moment yeah for me I admire it a lot but there's so many things that are that come into the process that I'm not good at or not excited about that I feel really at home at the scale that I'm working now but your question was like how did it yeah how did I one thing that it did the AA for me was I think for me it was the perfect school because I did already six years of hard labor you know academic labor in terms of big books sit and study calculate and and so i needed some i needed something that was the opposite so i could go to swiss school or dutch school but they're very traditional uh yeah just learn the books and and great education of course for many people but i kind of felt like part of that i already did and i wanted to see the opposite.

45:05So that's why I went to Gerrit Rietveld Academy. And then AA is kind of, for me, it's very similar to the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. It's very conceptual, very free, make your own project, play around, work hard. You push to work very hard. And so it was incredible for me. I felt so at home. I felt the friends I mean not to play down any of my friendships before that. I have very very dear friends from Amsterdam and before that but I felt at home immediately between the people studying architecture. They're all sort of yeah kind of introverted weirdos or also extroverted weirdos or like but you know very kind super nerdy about what it's super passionate we understood like we were from 60 different countries in one year 80 people 60 different countries and and i was a bit older also than most of it because i already had the there were also some other older people but i was among the older ones and um all the differences of culture age gender whatever is completely completely disappears because we were all artists and architects and so that's what i felt completely at home i kind of knew yeah this is me i i did after that i just knew uh and the second is um i was that is an amazing library and i was introduced to so many new uh yeah architects and artists that i'd never heard of um and yeah that was just super exciting had amazing first year super like work it also socialized me by the way i i'm quite an introverted uh my brothers i have three older brothers they joked always that i'm kind of a very asocial like uh uh afraid of people kind of being in my in my room and a you cannot do it alone like like any architecture school i'm sure like you yeah you would just get super miserable you have to go through it together you have to support you you have to work till 12 in the night or later in the in the same space and and be tired together and help each other and despair together and um yeah for me in the beginning it was so intense go to school at 10 in the morning and leave at 10 o 'clock in the night you know it's insane and so it was really hard but i by letting go and letting it happen i i became quite a social being amazing amazing no and i can i can i can see as well that the somewhere like somewhere like an environment like the aa or the bartlett down the road those sorts of schools very open to very open to different backgrounds as well and that's often quite interesting because you'll meet people from you know who have got degrees in physics who are now studying architecture or putting something together people who have been historians or and it becomes very interesting kind of melting pot of like you're saying ideas and culture and different ways of looking at the world and everybody's very intelligent and kind of just mixing things up and everybody has a very intense level of curiosity and the ability to go very deep and probe into different subjects and then people are just stitching things together like from yeah you know from all these different subjects and it's it's it's that's what's really wonderful about architectural education yeah so cool it's such a cool education so weird so especially coming from from physics where you you try to model reality and and test reality and hard facts you try to find hard facts and here was like i the first year was for me letting kind of go of that like it it it doesn't matter if it's real we'll make it real you know we'll make up the story we'll make up the the shape we'll you know like and uh yeah super exciting it was really i in that sense i would i would experience it again i would so i start again i mean i wouldn't do it again but in in another life i would totally go back to architecture school it's such a weird and cool degree um do you still kind of carry out experimentation and this kind of level of inquiry and philosophical thinking through making or are you now more kind of just focused on the kind of refinement and iteration of cabinana well it's both i in the beginning i struggled a bit like well so i built the first one then We started building more prototypes.

49:58In the beginning, also very hands-on. I was very much involved in almost everything of the first prototypes. And then it became more and more professional, and you get a bit of a team and a bit of a bigger team. And then at some point you become, which I'm also really not good at, you become almost like a manager, and you become a salesperson, and you become so super, yeah. I mean, you learn so much. I learned so much in all those different roles. But I did after, like a couple of years ago, I started feeling that I was getting a bit more tired. And it was because I was spending so much of my time and not where, my heart is with Anna.

50:45My heart is with the object that we made together and how we developed it in the detail and with the team. But in terms of how I would spend my days was really from, yeah, instead of being out there building something or in a workshop or, and, and, and, and, yeah, just experimenting and doing, yeah, just trying stuff out and making cool stuff. it was more like okay today we have this video call and that video call with that and then and and you like someone is in the field installing a cabin in america something goes wrong he makes a notice this it should becomes very structured which is very necessary but that note goes to the team okay this should we change it yeah like maybe let's change later talk to your engineer engineer says yes maybe it's a good idea let's make a prototype as part go to the manufacturer make it part it comes back is no that's not what we meant send it back again so you're very separated at some point from the actual object and and that's also almost contradictory to what i want my work to be about i want it to be about that connection so last year or a bit before that two years ago i made a conscious decision that i want to spend a reasonable amount of my time ideally half or more making stuff and it can be either soldering in my desk little scale models or ideally even work on the on the real thing and ideally both you start with a model playing and then so uh i i i've managed to sometimes still really hard it's because you kind of really try to combine sometimes you work a whole day in a workshop and when you come home tired at eight o 'clock you you kind of have to start your office day so can get really intense but at the same time it's totally worth it and i i want to push anna forward i don't yeah i just it's very strong feeling that i want to bring anna to many many more beautiful locations and in the other hand uh yeah i just want to keep building these objects these structures these sculptures and so this is now the way to do it and uh and then and and so i'm sometimes very tired but it's totally worth it and and keep pushing both and and then there's also the joy and the moments to actually take a rest and so i i consciously make sure that i'm using my hands uh making stuff is Is there anywhere that we can see the experiments?

53:27Yeah, Tony. I am working on a new website now, and it should go live next week. And yeah, that's another thing. I decided that I'm not going to put everything on there, but a good selection of stuff too, even things that haven't been built, to show to people what I'm excited about and make people also understand that Anna is part of a family. And, yeah, part of a family. And so I want to share more of the experiments. And so soon I'll start putting things online on Instagram and the website. And so Cabin Anna as a business, it's kind of fully up and operational. it brings in you a like a livable salary and you can employ a team of people yeah no totally i mean it's still hard i mean i think we still have a long way to go or whatever i mean what our goal is but i think it's it's it's it's a life it's a work it's a life work when i'm when i'm 70 i'll probably still be working also specifically on cabanana and maybe there will be many one-offs hopefully like i want to just build one-off structures for people i want to build all the series so i kind of feel that that's what i'll be doing like experiments that turn into one-off sculptures that like functional sculptures that you can live inside or meditate inside or gather or meet and you know there will be series of like maybe maybe 100 maybe 10 so it's i think the one thing that i learned that a year let's say six years ago i thought i was going to do it in a year and now i understand that you're never there you know like because you also shift every time you're you feel like you you you hit a goal then you you have a new finish line so you know i'm never there I will never be there.

55:37That's for me very clear. But Anna is moving forward. We're building in super excited new locations. We're working on versions of the models. We're still investing also very much. But yeah, we have a very good team. And yeah, we push it together. We come up with new ideas. and sometimes you have also big setbacks and then suddenly you have, yeah, you're super lucky and I think the whole situation with we get lots of attention and requests from the United States, but yeah, at the moment it's also, you have to be very creative in a given situation where sending anything to the United States is very difficult.

56:35So, yeah, you have to work with all of that. And every time you think, okay, now, okay, now it's going to be relaxed and quiet for a while. And we're doing great. The moment I think this, I know, okay, now I have to be alert because probably a new challenge is going to come up. But for me, it's like accepting that fact changes everything and makes it very joyful and a very amazing journey. amazing yeah there's probably a separate podcast that we could do just on sending things to the us that we could that we could talk about yeah no totally amazing i i i'm so inspired by your story and it's such a a unique and meaningful genesis of a project and very delighted to hear that it's you know it's grown into a fully operational business and that it's really captured the hearts of so many um people again when i first when peter sent me the um the website of it i was kind of taken aback by just the sort of serenity and the beauty of the of the projects and then to hear your narrative and story about it is i think that's it just makes the whole thing even more magical and and thoughtful so thank you very much casper well thank you very much Really appreciate that you reached out and I thought it was super fun talking to you.

58:04And I respect a lot what you're doing with Business of Architecture and it was a great pleasure to be a part of it. Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Scope creep thrives in firms without clear systems, turning every change into confusion, conflict or compromise. When your staff sees you bending the rules after telling them to hold the line, everyone loses. The Scope Creep First Aid Kit helps you align your team with firm-wide standards and gives them the tools to say no without the awkwardness. Get the smart practice tool 100 % free by going to businessofarchitecture.com forward slash creep.

58:43Thank you to our recent listeners who left reviews for the podcast on iTunes. Your reviews help others find this podcast, so this rising tide raises all boats. To be acknowledged on this show, open the podcast app on your iPhone, search for Business of Architecture, and after clicking on the show, scroll all the way to the bottom and leave a review.

59:23compensation planning. Gelt helps architecture firms unlock strategies most accountants miss. And exclusively for Business of Architecture listeners, Gelt is offering 10 % off your first year. Don't wait for next tax season. Schedule your complimentary consultation at joingelt.com. That's J-O-I-N-G-E-L-T.com to learn more and mention BOA when you sign up. Today's episode of Business of Architecture show is sponsored by the Smart Practice TM, the world's leading step-by-step solution for architectural practice owners that want to structure their existing practice so the complexity of business doesn't get in the way of the architecture because you see it likely isn't your architecture skills that hold you back it's the business aspects of running a practice managing projects and people dealing with clients contractors and money so if you're ready to quit being a glorified administrator and get back to architecture again go to smartpracticemethod.com to discover the proven simple and easy to implement smart practice method that is revolutionizing firm management for owners and teams.

1:00:24Fast forward six months, are you still trying to patchwork free advice or are you executing a clear plan designed for you? That choice determines your results. Hey, Ryan Willard here and I want to thank you for joining us today. Remind you that the views expressed on the show by our guests do not represent those of the host and we make no representation promise guarantee, pledge warranty, contract bond or commitment except to help you do your best work and be handsomely paid for it carpe diem