Sneak Peak! 👀 How to Build Less, Better: with Oktra's Jenny Edwards

0:00Jenny Edwards:And the problem now a little bit is there's a huge influx of these AI generated images. So quite often you will pin something and then, you know, and it shows you similar images. And I'm like looking at them, I'm thinking it's a shame because like 70 % of them are AI generated. And I'm looking at it and I'm thinking it's beautiful, but it's not, it's not real. And it's also couldn't be real because of, you know, you look at it and you're thinking you couldn't rebuild it. And it's like, I think AI can be great when it's used in the right way. but i think it's quite dangerous certain people because what you've got now is sometimes clients using ai to create an image and whilst ai can create an image there's no soul there's no reason right it's i like brown chairs and i like cats and you can put that in and it would give you an image and it has brown chairs and it has cats right but it doesn't mean anything it's just pictures it's just pinterest yeah yeah just pinterest gatherers but putting your pinterest images into an image that's one main thing and i think like and that's what people always hear people say to you like what do you think but do you think ai is going to take your job yeah that do you but you probably get all the time get all the time especially if you had a few drinks do you think ai is going to take your job yeah yeah and i'm like well me personally i don't think so because like the whole reason that most designers and i can only speak to myself but i think most designers similar reasons is that we absolutely love it and it's like you come for design with a soul and it's like if you're looking at a project and i can tell you every detail about why why did you do that why do we pick this finish why do we do this why is this this height there's a reason behind everything and that reason may be completely practical which is the spring closer here and we have to do this or it may be completely impractical do you know what i mean is the one each create survival experience and you want to create we want to create this moment so you built a shield so that when you come around the wall and you get that you know that whoa moment which is what we're all looking for in a project right can't you just use ai and you're like well you can but it's just not going to give you the same result and it's not going to it's not going to spend that time and it's not going to be somebody sitting like me and you are and we go back and forth because the visualizers they aren't just machines they're not tools they're people they have an opinion they have training they have a point of view and so anything that we do with a visualizer isn't just them doing exactly what we say and having no input like they're saying to you you know yeah this this doesn't look good you know this looks like this this was i don't think i'm not sure about this and and you think actually that does look bad but you need that and it's like i think people don't understand that the visualizer as a person is not the same as an ai visualizer because the ai visualizer they don't talk back to you i need that i want that i want something to be like this i moved from perkins to maris because that quite a shock it was a culture shock the culture is super super different and a lot of people have a lot of strong opinions about maris i personally really liked it so dynamic it's so like loud and there's always something going on it's never dull there's always something and i just like because i'm a very energetic loud person i think for me like i kind of thrive in those types of environments no it's ever gonna be like you're too loud no that's never gonna happen at maras like never they'll be like you're not being loud enough and they'll be like and i kind of love that dynamism that's kind of there's like a vibe and it's like super energetic and super intense and some people find it too much and they're like oh it's too much for me like i feel yeah like it's too much yeah whereas like if you like that type of thing i think it's really good and I think coming out of COVID and it was to try and like jolt myself out of this kind of I think COVID brought up a lot bad habits for a lot of people and I think like it was that kind of right I'm going to be back in the office I'm going to be back in an energetic busy environment and you know lots of energetic people and I think like it was really good for that and actually looking at design in a completely different way than I never had before there was a there's a aspect of if you've been trained as an architect you've gone through the very traditional very linear formal process that in some type of way your approach may be slightly better than someone who maybe has come from a different avenue whereas now I actually don't believe that at all because I think creativity I don't think is really taught you can be taught how to follow a process you can be taught how to you know speak articulately you can be I strongly believe you can be taught how to pitch but I don't think you can teach creativity I think it's something you either have or you don't and I think like you can teach so many things you can teach about how to react quickly how to respond when a client says I hate it and you're like want to cry but you can't and I think there's so many things you can teach people right but creativity I think is like yeah it's in it isn't it is it's in there yeah and sometimes you have to bring it out in people right and sometimes it's about having confidence and trusting yourself and saying you know trust this process designers need to take responsibility for you know they have this thing about tread lightly on the planet right and I think it's super key people used to say a design and build project you're looking at like a two-year lifespan right and I really really really strongly disagree with that I think that no we're not we don't want a tournament in two years I'll do your other office in a different location but I don't want to be doing that same office in two years time because to me then we haven't really designed it very well in the beginning like obviously you make tweaks you live in an environment you make tweaks right that's just what happens but I think if you're wholesale changing environment that you built two years ago there's a flaw which may be the design isn't thought through you haven't had enough time you know maybe the client didn't know what they want maybe maybe their business has entirely changed in which case you know it's more understandable but i think now we really strongly are pushing more towards designing for lease events if you're taking this space for another 20 years i want what we put in to have the ability to be there for 20 years and there's a lot of talk now about should we do things like material passports where you can see the product life cycle.

5:39Jenny Edwards:So if I put something in and then, you know, facilities change hands, people move on. So how do you track the life of that product from when you put it in? So we're talking about with a couple of different companies in terms of material passports. So you can actually, when you do a building and it's a cat-a and you put all your cat-a things in, that all those lights that you might put in, that you can track how old they are. I mean, ideally you wouldn't do cat-a at all. Because I think cat-a is a contentious issue in the industry anyway. I didn't know that there's a whole market for, you can get everything basically secondhand.

6:10There's pre-used lights, fan coils. Or commercially. Yeah. There's now, there's a whole secondhand market so I didn't know existed. There are people and there's so many people and it isn't just me. There's so many people that do genuinely, truly care and are investing so much time and so much of their clients' time into really trying to find the best solution that is cost-efficient, but that is also creating this amazing, healthy environment. and I think that to me has been the biggest thing in recent years that's really made me fall in love with design again where it's kind of like I love that aspect and I love working with clients and for them to really get it and for them to you know when you just that will be where I educate them on the journey a little bit and help them along and where they buy where they really buy into it and they're like oh my god that's great yeah and then you're saying it and you're not selling it you're genuinely saying this is what I believe is best for you because I always feel like you should be designing for us if your mum or your sister or your dad or you were working there what would what environment would you want them to be in your baby nephew or your son where would you want them to work you would want them to work in the place that someone's thought about what's going into that building