How an Architect Reads Space and Designs for Meaning with Randall Comfort

Vance Crowe [00:00:06] What is up guys? Today's interview is with an architect named Randall Comfort. Randall is a very interesting eccentric guy, and I've known him for years. In fact, I know him so well that we spend at least once a week together trying to find new ways to think about the way the world works around us. Randall is one of my closest friends, and I invited him over here to come talk about the ideas that he has shared with me. Over time, some of these ideas have actually changed the way that I feel when I'm in a room or when I walk up to a building that I've never seen before. It's been fascinating to me to learn about how you can think about space and how space puts you as an individual in a different context, and it can make you feel things that you didn't know were possible. So I hope you enjoy this interview. Randall is a fascinating and interesting guy. Our conversation meandered all over the place, but I think you'll pull things out of this that you'll be able to apply in your life. Enjoy. I had lived basically my entire life, not really having an appreciation that someone built the buildings around me. And I say this in the context of I work construction all through high school, so I knew that somebody built it, but I never really thought about who dreamed it up and the space that, that you were creating, that somebody had to envision that before you got there. And it wasn't until I was, I don't know, maybe in my thirties when I had met you and you pointed out something as simple as a parking garage that really changed not just my view of architecture, but really was one of the very first glimpses that I had of being a conscious being.

Vance Crowe [00:01:51] And I think that that is probably the power of knowing and, and being able to talk with an architect. And so maybe to give an example, you had pointed out to me that there is a parking garage in this small suburb of St. Louis. And instead of just putting this thing up there where people would park their vehicles, they had created a sculpture that allowed you to see the wind and that the building itself was in a way somewhat breathing. It, it it was interacting with the environment so much so that the building changed depending on the weather. And I remember hearing you tell me that, thinking about it, and then going there and staring at a parking garage with this sense of awe. And that's when I looked back and thought, oh my God, Randall Comfort lives like that all the time. So I thought you would be a very fun person to have on the podcast to talk with about how do buildings get built, how should we think about 'em, and how do they place us as a conscious being in the universe? Well,

Randall Comfort [00:03:01] Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Vance Crowe [00:03:02] Glad to have you. So Randall, you're an architect now. Yes. And you do everything from commercial buildings to homes.

Randall Comfort [00:03:09] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:03:10] But you didn't start out this way. Did you know an architect or did you go to college and somebody pointed you in this direction? How in the world did you ever even find out that there was a field called architecture?

Randall Comfort [00:03:22] I was, I was told since I was a, a young child, that what I like to do, that the things that I like to do would make me an architect. Like I used to love to play with, I, my parents got me a set of, of plastic bricks, not Legos, but they were similar, but they, they were plastic bricks and they hadn't came with instructions on how to build, like make a little house or a little building. And so I took a look at that, threw it aside, said That's not what I want to do. And I started making things that I wanted to make, you know, things that were going on inside my head. I said, I wanna make a little space here that does this, or is for that, maybe a bridge and it has a tower and this and a fort and things like that. And I would be making these things. My mom and dad come by and look and say,

Vance Crowe [00:04:03] Whoa,

Randall Comfort [00:04:05] I think he's gonna be an architect. And so I just, oh, I looked up and I thought, oh, okay. Yeah, whatever you say. And then as I got into school and in high school, I, I noticed I liked like mechanical drafting. I really liked to do that too. And you needed to be able to do that at that point in time.

Vance Crowe [00:04:19] And mechanical drafting, what is that?

Randall Comfort [00:04:21] That's where you have a, a drawing board and a T square, a device called a T Square. And it runs up and down the side. So it's always parallel to the top and bottom of the board. And you a tape a piece of paper on there, and then you can start drawing with this, with this T square. You run it up and down and draw lines. And if you wanna draw a line in the other direction, the 90 degrees, you have what are called triangles. And they were, there was a 45 degree triangle and a 30 60 triangle, and you could put those on there and draw lines up and down on this sheet. And so I was really good at that. You know, the teachers would tell me, you, you have a really good, good talent for that. And so I thought, well, okay, well that's fine. And so I started taking classes in high school and things knowing that I was gonna go to KU and, and study architecture in the architecture school. So it was just never really, really even an issue for me. No one, no one had to tell me, or, or, and, and the other thing was, I, I noticed from when I was a young child that I seemed to be noticing things that other people weren't about the build environment like that. Like I remember that when we would gonna, my grandma's house, she lived in a big old Victorian house in a little town in, in rural Kansas, a little town, Minneapolis, Kansas. And we'd go there and I would feel this sense of elation. I mean, of course to see my grandma, but more, even more to see her house when I go to her house. I thought, this is the coolest house in the world. And I compare it to my house where I lived, and it was bland. And it, it, the thing that was cool about her also, you walk up a set of stairs and there's a little window seat there with a window off the side.

Randall Comfort [00:05:55] And then you go up another set of stairs. And I used, used to sit on that window, this is a great space, this is a great place to just sit and relax and enjoy things. And there was another other spaces like under the stair, you know, like the Harry Potter space, you know, under the stair. And so I would notice these things and I noticed, well, nobody else seems to be paying any, my brother and sister, they didn't seem to be paying attention. My mom and dad, they didn't seem to care. So I thought, Hmm, I'm, I'm a little different in that regard. I didn't really find it to be a problem. But I did notice that wherever I went, I would be looking around and thinking about how I felt in there and what was going on, what was attractive, what was good, what was bad, what, what did I like, what did I not like? And so that's how I came to, came to be an architect.

Vance Crowe [00:06:39] So the interesting thing about being an architect is that you have to have a subjective idea of how people will experience the room when what you're describing is most people don't even know what they like or don't like, or even if they do or don't like the space that they're in. So how in the world do you, do you do this? I think

Randall Comfort [00:07:01] They, they don't really, I think they know whether they like it or don't like it, but they don't give it much thought at all. They don't really, they don't really focus on it too much. So when I work with people, they tend to tell me, I I, I, I don't really, it, I don't, it doesn't work well when people come and say, I wanna do a, I wanna do a new house, or I wanna do an addition to my house. Look, I've got a whole bunch of pictures here of what I wanna do. Now most people think, well, that's great 'cause then you'll know just what they wanna do. Right? But it's a problem because those pictures, they found something in there. I don't know what there's, and, and sometimes I can pin it down, but there's something in there that they like, but the rest of it, they don't, you know, they don't care about, they just saw something in that photo. Here's another photo. It does. And for me, it's a problem 'cause I look at one photo and the other photo and they don't look anything alike. To me, those, the sense of being in this space would be nothing like being in this space. And so then you've got to think, well, how do I get to the bottom of this? And the way I found to get to the bottom of it is to ask 'em about themselves. I need to understand what they're all about. What are the, what do they think about, like, what do you do say when you come home, when when you come home to this new house and walk up to the front door, what do you are, are you gonna walk in the front door, you gonna come in the back door If you come in the back door, do you want it to be as important as the front door? Or is it, or do you think, well, it's just me. It doesn't have to be important at all. But to me, if it were my house, I'd think wherever I'm going in my house, I want it to be pretty nice. 'cause to me it's important. It's my house.

Vance Crowe [00:08:23] I can imagine that as you're talking with people, that's gotta feel a little bit for, for many that that would be like, like a stutter step. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know this is the way that I, but I showed you that I want this fireplace. And so you it is.

Randall Comfort [00:08:36] But they're a little confused sometimes they think, they think that they got everything just right. You know, I've got all these pictures and, and, and, but they usually don't mind if I start telling, sometimes people even have diagrams, like floor plans that they've laid out what they wanna do. And I look at it and say, and I think, Hmm. And then I ask the questions that I'm talking about and find out that some of the things they didn't address with their, with their drawing. And by the time the conversation's done, I say, well, I can take this away. And from our conversation, your drawing here, your pictures and things I can come away with. I can come back to you with the design, but I'm already seeing ways to do it that are different than what you're, what you've shown here on planet. And, and they may be better. They may not be. I don't, I think they probably will be, but maybe they won't. Would you want me to do that one too? Or you just want to do want me to do this one? And they say, well, no, I, I'd like to see what you've got in mind too.

Vance Crowe [00:09:29] That's like, I've got a mystery box here and if you're willing, you can look inside of it.

Randall Comfort [00:09:36] And so they, they, they say, sure. And then when I come back and show 'em, I, I always show 'em their design for here you go see just like this, you said you wanted to go here, you wanted to come in here and do this, but here's another alternative. See the way you can now do this, it's, remember you said you wanted to do this and have this happen. And they go, oh yeah. And that would be a lot better than the way I had it. And so almost invariably we end up going with, with the one that I've come up with, because they don't have the ability to, they're not architects, you know? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:10:05] I mean, I didn't even know. People think

Randall Comfort [00:10:06] It's easy to draw floor plans and it is, but floor plans with the me with meaning that will represent a physical reality. That's another matter.

Vance Crowe [00:10:15] So, you know, you went from, I'm a good draftsman and I can put together blocks to now talking about how you get into the, the mind of somebody that has decided they want an architect. Did you learn this skill in school? Is that what they teach you in architecture school?

Randall Comfort [00:10:33] No, they really don't. They do, they do have a, it's a process called programming. And some schools emphasize it more than other schools. A school I went to, they didn't particularly emphasize the programming aspect. You know, they, you ask questions, find out what the client wants, and you respond to that. So, but, but there's a, but I found after doing it for a long time, that there's a certain skill to what questions you ask and what, and you have to be aware of what the answers are because you want to build on the answers. You know, someone will say something that makes you think, oh, well then, then you ask another question and you just keep building on that. And then I come away with a, with a pretty good understanding of, of how the people want to use their, how, what they think is important, how they're gonna use it, things like that.

Vance Crowe [00:11:24] When, when most people start a conversation with an architect, what is it? What is it that they are anticipating you are going to be like, and what's the delta between what they expect an architect to be? And Randall,

Randall Comfort [00:11:38] I, you know, I don't know because I only have, I can only state my experiences, you know? So I don't know what, although I will tell you a couple things though. I've, I've gone to some clients and they're really grilling me and they, they wanna know this, they wanna know that. And they're kind of looking at me with kind of not that friendly of a look. And finally after I've answered the question and they start to get a little friendly, they say, well, you know, you're the second architect that would be involved in this project. The first one we had to fire,

Vance Crowe [00:12:07] Red flags go off, you know, I think,

Randall Comfort [00:12:08] Whoa, do I wanna work with these people? You know, if they fired their architect, are they, are they a problem or what's going on? So I have to get to the bottom of that one. And so the first question obviously is, well, why? What happened? And usually they say, well, we told 'em we wanted a square room. And he came back with a circular room and told us it was better. We didn't want a circular, we wanted our square room. And he, and he gets in, well, yeah, I can do that, but this circular one, it's really, really good. So that's when I realized that I need to do this technique where I say, yeah, yours is a nice plan, but I could do another one. You want me to show you that one too? Then it's their decision. It wasn't my decision. I didn't come in and say, your idea is bad. Here's mine. It's much better. So I think people really respond well when you listen to what they have to say. Architects that don't listen to what they have to say, I think have more problems working with clients.

Vance Crowe [00:13:02] And so what would be, what would be maybe an example of that? Like where a person thought they had an idea and then you said, well, well why don't we think about this?

Randall Comfort [00:13:12] Well, he, here's another one that I always check. Like let's say somebody wants to do a two story house, the first thing I do, and they have two floor plans, obviously, one for each floor. So I look at the floor plan, the first thing you gotta check is, well, where's the stair? Because it seems obvious, but the stair has to be in the same place on both plans.

Vance Crowe [00:13:27] Oh, they're not always.

Randall Comfort [00:13:28] They're not always. And then I know they really have no clue as to spatial allocation and the way things work. And that's when I have to say, well, I'm gonna have to tidy this up a little bit because, and they usually, it's a big problem because if the stairs don't, aren't in the same place, then when you start moving things around, it's, it's, it's a domino effect. Well, if you move that over, well then where does that thing go? It goes over here, but it doesn't really wanna be, or it wanted to be where it was, then you have to move, well, in order to fix that, you gotta move this and you end up moving the whole thing around. That's why a lot of times if I, if I do run across a client that has floor plans that are pretty well developed like that with stairs in the wrong place, I, I figured a way not to do the project because the people will not. And after I've interviewed 'em and they, I found that they're just not, they're, they're not, they think their way is the right way, even when it's not.

Vance Crowe [00:14:16] You know, there was an interesting experience that you and I figured out. We were the couple of our friends and we did a thought experiment. And the thought experiment was, alright, let's pick a room that we are, we all know, and I want you to draw it and you to draw it. And we kind of all talked about how would you go about doing this? And, and we had a dry erase board and we were drawing it out. And we quickly figured out that three outta the four of you guys all did it from the top. You could view the room and the, the space that you were in and be able to place your mental mind above the

Randall Comfort [00:14:54] Place you're projecting from to experience it, right?

Vance Crowe [00:14:56] That's right. Yes. And so your experience could be from above it's remote, it's removed and, and I drew the room almost as though I had a flashlight and I was walking in the front door and I could point my attention at things. And the fidelity that I have of what was in the room is really, really high. But the dimensions look like, you know, totally off.

Randall Comfort [00:15:18] And the relation to the next room were all a little off.

Vance Crowe [00:15:21] Oh yeah, remember? That's right. They

Randall Comfort [00:15:22] Were all a little, they were a little off. So

Vance Crowe [00:15:23] I could tell that it was there, but I would have to like, see it this way and then be like, okay, so I'll put this over here.

Randall Comfort [00:15:32] And I have to watch that with clients too, because I tend to think about architecture from anywhere. You know? In other words, like, I can imagine where we're at now. From the point of where I was when I first arrived here and had the experience of getting all the way down through here, I could, I can imagine what it would be like if I were, you know, 40 feet in the air looking down at the floor plan, which is what I do with architecture and what you can do with computer science or computer technology. Now with, with architecture, I can build a virtual model of a building and then I can look at it any way I want to. I can look at it from underneath on top, split it apart, look at the halves, you know, put it

Vance Crowe [00:16:06] And did you always have that?

Randall Comfort [00:16:08] Yes, I always had that ability to visualize things from somewhere else. And

Vance Crowe [00:16:13] Yes, that's, do all architects have that?

Randall Comfort [00:16:15] I think they probably do. I, I can't imagine that they wouldn't. But I do have to be careful with clients. 'cause sometimes I make a presentation and I show them various views and things, and I think that they can understand things like this too. But they say, well, do you have any views where it's just like walking along like you really would do?

Vance Crowe [00:16:33] Yeah. That's the only one that would matter to me.

Randall Comfort [00:16:35] Yeah. And that, and then I find, and you're not, you're not alone a lot. There are a lot of people like that.

Vance Crowe [00:16:41] And so, you know, I think that the, the interesting component of having that view of the world, it also has made it much more difficult for me to be able to place myself in the larger order.

Randall Comfort [00:16:56] Yes, I can see that. I was going to say that if you, if you look at it like that, you miss the, you, you miss somewhat perhaps things about the architecture that are important, then unless you stood back and looked at it like this, you wouldn't grasp. Like there are like cathedrals in, in Europe, Romanesque cathedrals and things in Rome where if you go in and start walking around, you don't appreciate the relationship of the things. If, if you saw a floor plan of it, you can say, oh, so the transept is crossed here and this and this, the dome is on the center of that space. And things like that that you wouldn't really pick up. You just appreciate it as a nice space and that, and that's enough for most people. But for an architect, for me, it, I like to understand the space. I like, I like to, to me, it gives me great satisfaction to understand how all this pulls together and relate how the parts relate to each other.

Vance Crowe [00:17:49] Do you then really enjoy the experience of traveling to go be in the spaces? So where would be some of your favorite places to go?

Randall Comfort [00:17:57] Well, Europe was great. There's a lot of interesting things to see there. But some of the best spaces are places to, to go and see things are, are you, you wouldn't consider 'em as all that important. You know, like say, well you and I visited the Pulitzer Foundation building here in St. Louis. I really, that's one of my favorite buildings in St. Louis. But it's not very big and it's not, there's not much to it. It's pretty straightforward. But the way it all relates, the parts that are there are really, really powerful.

Vance Crowe [00:18:27] So how do they relate? What do you mean?

Randall Comfort [00:18:29] Well, when you're, when you come into the space and that, and that's the other thing that you have to appreci that, that helps in appreciating architecture is an awareness of you have to keep track of things. Most people keep track of where they're at. You have to pretty much where you're going. So you're looking a little bit ahead, a little bit where you're at a little bit ahead, right? But if you can keep track of where you've been as well. In other words, if you're moving along, you're keeping all of this in your mind, right? So you can say, oh, I just passed through those doors and you came through here. Well this is a great space. And then you turn around and think, oh yeah, because that's because the doors opened up and now they're, and now we've opened into this big space. But so before you got there, there was a nice interlude before you got there that was really nice, but you didn't know it yet because you hadn't been to the vigor space. And at the Pulitzer, there are places where you can look ahead and see a, a vista, what I call a vista. When you look ahead at the end of what you're looking at, there's something there and it directs your attention around the corner where there's another cool space that you, you're, it teases you a little bit. I think that's a fun thing to have happen in architecture where space where spaces or components of building kind of tease you a little bit into thinking, Hey, something's coming up. I wonder what it is. And you, and you get there and it's right. It it, it was, you know, it wasn't a tease. It was the real thing. It's, it's, it's a especially cool

Vance Crowe [00:19:49] Meaning that like you can tell that the room is really gonna open up in there. I, I imagine or

Randall Comfort [00:19:54] Something's gonna happen. Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:19:55] It's not

Randall Comfort [00:19:55] Always there. That's just an example,

Vance Crowe [00:19:57] Like looking from the end of a hallway at a gymnasium where you can see the doors and you know that it's gonna get big there, but you don't know exactly what it's going to be. You

Randall Comfort [00:20:06] Don't know what, yeah. That's, that's kind of fun. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:20:08] You know, I would think that one of the difficult parts about your work is that it is both visual, but in order for somebody to be able to convey the visual experience, they also have to have a very strong command of the English language. The ability to articulate why something is the way that it is.

Randall Comfort [00:20:26] Yes. The, the more descriptive a person is, the better the client they are because, and, and the more in touch with themselves, they are the, a lot of people aren't in very well, very in touch with themselves. And so they don't really know the answers to the question. It's like, when you eat breakfast, what kind of a space would you like to? Well, I don't know. I just sit and eat my breakfast and look at my phone. I'm, what do I care what the space looks like? You know, those are tough clients to work for because anything, anything works, you know, the, if you showed 'em one thing that was bad, one thing's good, they would know the different that to them. And, and, and I, and I think I should be careful to hear when I say something's good, something's bad, architecture's good, architecture's bad. It's really subjective obviously. So, but, but the game is to, or the object of the game is to try to figure out subjectively why it's good. If there's reasons for why something's good, why something's bad, then I think it's legitimate. But if it's just say, but I don't, I don't like clients that will say, well here, here's my design. What do you think? Oh, I like it. Why? I don't know. I just do. Whereas somebody says, I like it because I told you that I wanted this thing to happen in my life and, and I didn't think it would be possible you made it so that, that that'll be a great thing that's gonna happen there. That's just what I wanted to happen.

Vance Crowe [00:21:37] Like a person that says, I really, I always eat my breakfast and I wanna be able to look out and see the birds.

Randall Comfort [00:21:42] Yeah. Or if they say, I wanna sit in a room where I don't even perceive that there are walls there, I want it to just be like I'm sitting out in nature.

Vance Crowe [00:21:50] You've had people say that?

Randall Comfort [00:21:52] No, if they did, that would be a good one, wouldn't it? Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:21:56] I know

Randall Comfort [00:21:56] How to do that. If they didn't wanna do it, I could do a room like that.

Vance Crowe [00:21:59] So that's interesting. So you are actually intrigued by the idea of having clients that are going to give you a challenge because it's something they care about, but they don't know the answer to.

Randall Comfort [00:22:12] Yes, exactly. That's exactly it. They don't know the answer to it. And that's why it's a challenge for me because I don't know the answer yet either. But they, and, and I, but I keep asking questions and I find out enough about 'em that I'll be able to figure the answer out.

Vance Crowe [00:22:25] So you, if you have a, a client that is coming to you with a grand idea and they want to talk it through, how does that even begin? Like, I I, so I'm asking you a question that I kind of already know the answer to, because I remember that after I had the experience of the parking garage, I was like, oh my god, Anne, we have got to do this. Even if we don't build what we had talked about. The experience of having somebody show you what your space looks like is profound. And so I know what it is, but when somebody says, Hey, I wanna do something different with my space. What, what do, because I think most people, when they think of an architect or hiring an architect is a little bit like being like, I'm gonna go hire a, a manager of a rock band. Like, I, I don't know anything like what that would be like. Yes, yes.

Randall Comfort [00:23:12] People do. People dunno what to expect. So I, I try to keep it really low key and just, just ask questions like, well, so, so you wanna do a new house? Well, why, well, why, why are you doing a new house as opposed to where you live now? Well, is there something about your house that, that you live in now that you, you you need a new house to fix? Or, or, or what? Get the answer to that and it just goes right along, you know, just, oh yeah. Well, when you're at your house, what do you like to do? What do you spend most of your time doing? Do you, do you just, just tell me what you Well, you know, everybody's got, got a different story. They come home, I like to exercise. I, I, I sit and read the paper. I, I, you know, there's, there's all kinds of things I like to, in our family plays games or cards and whatever. I don't know, there's just, so, it's a matter of listening to those, what those things are that people do, and then realizing what kind of a space they need in order to do it, and whether there's spaces and then, and you can also find out things that overlap. Sometimes. I, I think a lot of homes, everybody says, well, this is the dining room. That's just where you eat, right? This is the living room. That's just where you sit. And this is the bedroom where you go to sleep. But you know, like a kid's bedroom, it's more than just a bedroom. It's their whole world, you know, it's their, they study in there. They, and, and they've made furniture that accommodates that kind of thing. You got bunk beds with a little desk underneath. I love those kind of things. You know, those kind of spaces. It's like a space within a space that, those are fun. I, I look, I, I'm always looking for that too.

Vance Crowe [00:24:45] Yeah. I was always looking through the catalog and, and the Sears thing. And you'd see like the race car with the shelves underneath it. Yeah. You just dream and dream and dream of it. You'd

Randall Comfort [00:24:53] Think, oh, that'd be great.

Vance Crowe [00:24:54] Middle child of seven doesn't get the race car, a bunk bed

Randall Comfort [00:24:57] Or even a room by

Vance Crowe [00:24:58] Yourself. You definitely got the bunk bed to share with your brother. Yeah. When I was, when

Randall Comfort [00:25:01] I was young, I had shared a room with my brother. I had a brother and a sister. So the two boys had it, and we had a three bedroom house. So the two boys stayed in one bedroom and the sister stayed in the other bedroom. And, and it was okay, but I, I wanted, you know, I got a little older. I wanted a room on my own. And so we moved to St. Louis, we used to live in Kansas City. We moved to St. Louis. And we rented a little house up in Ferguson, actually. And I made a room in the basement out of moving boxes, the moving boxes to come. They got the clo, you know, those boxes that are pretty big with clothes that, that rack.

Vance Crowe [00:25:34] So

Randall Comfort [00:25:35] I took those, we got all the clothes out. I took them, took 'em in the basement and built a room for myself. It was dark down there. It was in the ba but I didn't care. I at least I had a space of my own.

Vance Crowe [00:25:46] And your family accepted that you, the they,

Randall Comfort [00:25:48] They said you'd rather live in the basement than with your brother in your in, up upstairs. I said yes. And so my brother didn't care. 'cause he got in a real

Vance Crowe [00:25:55] Nice room.

Randall Comfort [00:25:58] He wasn't complaining, but, so it was fine with him. And then we moved out to Creve core, and my parents got a five bedroom house, so we all had a bedroom and one extra one. So that was nice. And so when was, it was a really bland house. It was, it was not a good house. It was very straightforward. It looked like a monopoly house. It was a, the two story house with a pitched roof front and back. Gables on the end, two, two car garage on the one end of the house. You can imagine they look like a, it looks like millions of houses. And we moved there and I went in my bedroom. I thought, whoa, this house, it's like they took everything out of it. I looked at the windows instead of trim that go up around the windows and a sill and an apron underneath the, underneath the window. There was nothing. It was drywall came, drywall GM returned into the aluminum window, had a plastic laminate sill, you know. And I thought, whoa, this place is planned. And that's when I started looking around my neighborhood. I thought, well, all the houses out here are awful.

Vance Crowe [00:26:55] And do you want those things because you want them to be fancy? Like, what is the purpose of having those? No,

Randall Comfort [00:27:00] I think it's, it's just to create a little interest. Can you, now you, you can do that kind of a thing where you don't have trim, but you have to really be careful. It's more effort to do it without the trim than it is with the trim.

Vance Crowe [00:27:13] How could that possibly be true?

Randall Comfort [00:27:15] Well, because you have to do things to fix the problem with, like on your door over there, if we just took the trim off, it wouldn't look good, you know, because when they put a door in, they leave a little space on each side of the door, shim it up, you know, so that it gets, but if you don't have that, you have to figure out another way that the opening that the door fits in has to be perfect. You have to slip the door in, nail it in place. And the tr there's no trim. It's just a line, just a fine line that goes up and around the door. So it's,

Vance Crowe [00:27:48] So you were

Randall Comfort [00:27:49] Got to be, you got, there's a lot more work.

Vance Crowe [00:27:51] You were talking earlier about the overlapping of, you know, the dining room and the living room and Yeah. Where the kids will be. And, and what came to mind is that, that phrase form over function or function equals form, form.

Randall Comfort [00:28:03] What

Vance Crowe [00:28:04] Are those phra phases and what do they mean?

Randall Comfort [00:28:06] Well, that, yeah, form follows function is, I believe it's attributed either Frank Lloyd Wright, I believe it's attributed to him, but I'm, I couldn't swear by it. But the idea is that the shape of a building should reflect what's going on inside of it.

Vance Crowe [00:28:24] It seems fair.

Randall Comfort [00:28:27] Somewhat, I think. But I, i i, it, it's not enough to make a mantra out of it. Form follows function in that there's all kinds of forms you could do that would follow the function, right? It's not just one, you know, in other words, so does that really say anything?

Vance Crowe [00:28:41] Oh, interest, that's

Randall Comfort [00:28:42] Your guess. Because you could have all kind countless forms that would all responding to function. And some of 'em would be really good, and some of 'em would be really bland. So I don't know that that's really much of a,

Vance Crowe [00:28:53] And when he was saying that, he was like, if you're gonna build a prairie home, then you wanna build it low and, you know, integrate it into the grasslands.

Randall Comfort [00:29:00] Well, he, he was one of the first people that started doing things like taking all the walls out of the inside of the house and just have it open. You know, he said, he said people when they get done dining, they just like to hang, you know, they like to walk across the room. Nowadays, people take it for granted. You're, most, most people love houses that have the open kitchen and the hearth room and all, all connected up, or everybody just meanders from one space to another. And, and formal dining rooms, formal living rooms, they, they, they're not as used as much as they used to.

Vance Crowe [00:29:29] I remember, I remember when I was in high school, we went to see a Frank Lloyd Wright house up in Schaumburg, I think.

Randall Comfort [00:29:36] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:29:36] And I came home and I announced to my parents that when I grew up, I was gonna have a house with no doors, you know? And, and I had no idea what I was saying. And my mother just laughed and was like, that's because you don't have any idea what you're talking about,

Randall Comfort [00:29:51] But you were, but you saw what was going on. That's what attracted to it, right? Say, wow, you just go from here to there to there and saw

Vance Crowe [00:29:56] The,

Randall Comfort [00:29:56] I mean, the,

Vance Crowe [00:29:57] The thing that is interesting that I was kind of pointing out in the beginning is I could go to a room or, or to a building and say, Hey, that's neat. But it was such a fleeting concept that I wasn't even aware I am here in this space. Let me soak it all in. Right? So as soon as we started the, the tour at the, in Schaumburg, or as soon as we went to the Unitarian church, my goal is to get from the point where we start to the point where we end and walk through it and be like, okay, saw the neat room. Saw the neat room. Like I, I didn't have an appreciation for it. And it's, it's one of these things that I find to be really important about why people should get mentors and why people should encounter those strange oddities like the Randall comforts of the world, because I was not naturally drawn to art. I can appreciate it now, because I had a mentor that pointed out to me, stand here, look at that now tell me what do you feel when you see that? And it never crossed my mind that a painting would make you feel something, or that you could actually pause for a moment and, and it would be almost like, what, what I would now consider meditation and say, all right, I'm gonna let this wash over me. But even having had that experience with art, I never converted that to the experience of Objection. Looking at a building. Yeah. Or being in a building. Just, yeah. How does it make you feel to sit in this place?

Randall Comfort [00:31:24] I've, I've had, I've had experience like that too. I went to the Frank Lloyd Tally in Wisconsin,

Vance Crowe [00:31:29] Frank Lloyd

Randall Comfort [00:31:29] Write Holman Studio, and there was a tour, and I went on the tour and I noticed I was walking around, you know, looking at every, trying to soak it up, you know, and, and well, when I walked into the space, I got a certain feeling and I'm trying to figure out why that happened to me. And so I look around and figure out what he was doing to me that he would, how he achieved what he did. And everybody else, there's a, there's a docent walking around with you and, and reciting interesting things like, you know, the wife was killed here and the fire, stuff like that. And everybody else is like up right next to the docent looking at 'em and listening to what they have to say. And everyone and the docent will point something out. They'll look over and see it and look back. But I'm, I'm walking around looking, I can hear and see at the same time. So I hear what the docents saying, but I'm experiencing the place. I thought these other people are missing the entire experience. They're not experiencing it all.

Vance Crowe [00:32:22] So if you, they're

Randall Comfort [00:32:22] Just hearing what the docents tell they could be anywhere. So,

Vance Crowe [00:32:25] So of course the narrative makes the story. It's actually, I think one of the cases that I would make for that would be, it is so much easier for a guest to be able to articulate the narrative of, we went, went to the Frank, Frank Lloyd Wright house where the wife was killed in this spot. And it was so interesting as opposed to, I sat down and, you know, in the great room and I felt this thing. So if you were leading that tour, how would you give people, because people go to have, I would contend that most people go on experiences not only to have the experience, so, but so that they can tell someone about it. So how can you help somebody have the experience in such a manner that they could talk about it, or,

Randall Comfort [00:33:11] Yes, I think in, in the case of the Frank Lloyd Wright house, I, I, I saw some things that I think the, that could be pointed out that they didn't like. I would've said, like, as we enter this room, notice how the ceiling's only like about three or four inches over your head. Hi. And notice how you feel kind of constricted. You feel like, ooh, it's kind of that, that ceiling's kind of low, it's about to hit me in the head. And then when you, then when you walk into the walk a few feet further, all of a sudden it gets a little, it gets higher, but there's windows everywhere too. So all of a sudden you've got this interesting sensation of, wow, I was feeling a little distress, or No, I feel great. Did you notice that anybody see that? And then people say, oh, oh, yeah, or I didn't notice. They might try it and say, oh yeah, I see what happened there. That kind of thing. I think they could do more of that. And they, there was another interesting thing att us, and there's a wall that's called the mistake wall. And it's on the back of the house, and it's the stone at the bottom, just kind like stone built up. And as it gets up, it starts changing as it goes up. When you get to the top, it looks like the stone on the rest of the building, which is very unusual. He, he had a certain way he wanted do that. And, and the docent tells us, he said, well, this is the wall where they started building the building. And Frank Lloyd Wright came out and said, no, you don't understand. You don't, you don't have it. He told 'em what else to do. And so they'd leave and, and come back the next day and they built some more. They'd say, no, you still don't have it. And he would keep this up until they did get it. And he told Esther, I think, wow, that's pretty impressive. Because now he didn't point it out.

Randall Comfort [00:34:41] But I thought, look at that. All of a sudden we've got a, a, a little bit of history here, a story embedded in stone. You know, if now most people, if you just looked at it, think, hmm, they didn't do as good a job on the bottom as they did on the top. Oh, well walk on. But when you hear that story, it's like a story that, that will last forever. That, that story's gonna

Vance Crowe [00:35:00] Be forever. Oh, it's almost like a volcano coming in and, and petrifying everything here. Yeah, yeah. And then petrifying and freezing in time there. And you can actually, so

Randall Comfort [00:35:09] You've got a little time capsule that'll last forever.

Vance Crowe [00:35:11] Absolutely. That

Randall Comfort [00:35:12] Story, that story will all be there as long as the building will be there, you know, that, that

Vance Crowe [00:35:15] Aspect of it. So this is one of those great things that I actually really enjoy about talking with you. And sometimes it takes a little while to warm up the gears, but it is the experience of walking past buildings that we've walked past a hundred times and then having you say, wait a second, look at this. Did you notice this fence? Did you ever notice this? And so it's one thing for you to notice it, but it's a whole nother thing for you to notice that you are noticing it, right? Like, so, and, and not to be metaphysical about this, but Right. You, you have to be aware enough or conscious enough to be able to grab onto the fact that you are seeing and observing and experiencing something that makes you feel,

Randall Comfort [00:35:55] Yes, you have to walk around with a mindset that you're, you're curious, you're curious about the world around you, and you start seeing it, right? And when you see things, you start making connections, you, you start noticing patterns. Patterns are really important, you know, I don't mean just like, is it a plat or is it striped? I mean, there's a, there might be a repetition going on of some sort, but maybe it's not uniform. And when you start looking, you say, well, that's a, that's a, that's a logarithmic progression that they decided to use here instead of a linear one. You know? And you think, Hmm, that's interesting. Those kind of things interest me. Now, most people, I don't think they, they might not, they might not care. You know?

Vance Crowe [00:36:34] What would you say are some of the, the most interesting patterns that are hidden in front of people that you wouldn't, you wouldn't even normally? Or where, where are the places that maybe you see the most patterns that are regular?

Randall Comfort [00:36:49] Well, it can occur anywhere, anytime. You, you, you just don't know. There's, I, I see it once in a while. I, I, I see things like that walking along. Like looking at a, the other day I was walking along and I noticed that there was a, a grate, a steel grate in the sidewalk. And I looked at it and when, and I noticed that when you walk this way, the sun shone through a certain way and cast a shadow on the, but then when you walked door over here, cast a different kind of shadow. And they were both really interesting shadows. So I got, you know, you just, it just kind of fills you up with this, with this sense of happiness or satisfaction.

Vance Crowe [00:37:29] Well, I, I can remember one time you showed me, it was when we were very early in our, our friendship. I was over at your studio and you pulled out all these drawings of transom or, or whatever, like a gazebo. Not, not that, where you, it's creating shade, but it's just, oh,

Randall Comfort [00:37:47] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:37:47] What do you call that? Yeah,

Randall Comfort [00:37:48] Trellis.

Vance Crowe [00:37:49] A trellis,

Randall Comfort [00:37:49] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:37:50] And I thought, what a waste of, of a, of a space, because there's no roof there. So if you're sitting outside and it rains, you

Randall Comfort [00:37:58] Get wet,

Vance Crowe [00:37:58] Everybody gets wet, wet. It's like, what do you want this for? And then you were pointing out about the shadow and about how this essentially acts. All of these beams act like a sundial, right? And depending on where the sun is, the shadows are gonna change. The

Randall Comfort [00:38:13] Shadows change.

Vance Crowe [00:38:14] And that during the different seasons of the year, the shadow will change where it's located. Yeah. And even still, I found that to be like, ah, that's really boring.

Randall Comfort [00:38:23] So what? Until

Vance Crowe [00:38:25] I started noticing the on my own porch that I could come home a after work every day at the same time. And the shadow that my porch was projecting was different ever so slightly every day. So slightly. And that was like a bang moment of there really are all of these patterns and how much of architecture is integrated into nature, that, that, in order for it to be really good, the

Randall Comfort [00:38:52] Best architecture is tightly integrated into nature. But you're right, architecture, it isn't just form follows function. It isn't just about the function. It's about the fact that a building is tethered to the earth and has to be there. And its relationship with the way it sits with the earth. Some, some buildings are, they just kind of gradually turn from nature into a building are pretty cool. Other buildings, starkly contrast with the landscape, that's pretty cool too. It just depends on the design, but it's gonna relate one way or another. Most buildings are, are just, they don't relate very well at all. They're just kind of planted there. In fact, a lot of buildings. And you've noticed when you drive around you, you see the same style of house on the north side of the street and on the south side of the street. Well, that house is gonna work much better on one side or the other because the sun only shines on the south side. So the house with the, with the entrance on the north side, to me it's a little better off because the sun's shining on your front of your house and it's shining in your front rooms and that kind of thing. The house on the south side, the, the, when you open the door, you'll never see the sun. You know, you're always going outside where there's a shadow. And that's an important thing because, and it changes during the year too. You know, the, the, the sun is low in the horizon in the winter, but, but dead overhead in the summer.

Vance Crowe [00:40:10] So I, you know, I'm thinking about you describing all of the, you know, the, the various variables that are going into it. And this is just one, right? The sun where it is, this is just one. Yeah. And the seasons,

Randall Comfort [00:40:19] That's what makes architecture so cool is there's so many variables. That's

Vance Crowe [00:40:22] What I was gonna ask. So, so as you come up with, let's say you've sat down, you've spoken with the people, you've even watched them cook some meals or, or had them kind of play out the way they like to spend their Saturday afternoons. When you come up with the design, is it you, it happens in a flash? Or do you, are you sketching? Or how does this

Randall Comfort [00:40:45] Work? No, I'm sketching. But if somebody were to look at the sketches I do, they say, well, that just looks like gibberish. You know, it doesn't look like anything. I, I'll sketch things and, and I'm just really using the drawing as a placeholder to keep track of a few things that are going on in my mind. You know, like there could be a, a drawing that has overlays of structure, shadows, form, function, all of those things all wrapped up into a little sketch and, and, and then I'll, and I'll, but the thing that decides how it all comes together is the function. It has to be, the function has to work, right? So even though I might think of a really interesting form, if I can't shoehorn the function into it, then it's not a good form, right? And so what I have to do is quickly go through iterations really quickly. I'm, well, I consider thousands of options not in detail. I, I look at one and say, well, that's not gonna work. 'cause the structure will, the, the spacing of the columns will be too far. That's not gonna work. That's not gonna work. And I even find things that, and after you discard the things that don't work, and you start zeroing on things that do work, it gets to be a smaller and smaller group. Until you get down to a point, you might have 90% of it figured out, but something's not quite working. I, I don't care. I'll discard the whole thing if I have to, to make

Vance Crowe [00:41:55] Oh man that,

Randall Comfort [00:41:56] To get rid of the last thing that doesn't work. Whereas a lot of architects, I noticed it in school when I was in school and professors told me this, they said, that's a good thing that you do is don't, don't settle for, just move on. But if people, sometimes people get latched onto something, they really like it a lot, they really like it and they just won't turn.

Vance Crowe [00:42:14] They fell in love with some part of, of it at

Randall Comfort [00:42:16] A certain point. And they keep working it and working it and working it until it becomes a mediocre design because part of it doesn't work. The part you like might work great, but the other part doesn't. Whereas I figure like sometimes people, I'll do a design for a client, excuse me. And it will be determined that it costs too much. They say, oh, we're gonna have to change some stuff. And I always tell 'em, well, don't worry about that look great. It's every time we design it, it's just a new design. Just discard the other one. The next one might even be better than the other one. Then the, the only one we just discarded. And, and it's true. A lot of times, I, I say, wow, I hate to discard this design. It's 90% of the way there and it's really cool, but that

Vance Crowe [00:42:53] Has to be, but I'll

Randall Comfort [00:42:54] Look on and I'll go to the next one. Nine

Vance Crowe [00:42:56] Times outta

Randall Comfort [00:42:57] 10. The one that come up with after at the final is, is better than the one that I thought was so great and discarded.

Vance Crowe [00:43:02] That has to be a deep, deep part of your personality though, because I, I to, to, I don't know, but the, the, the concept of sunk costs, right, is one that is so difficult for most people to be able to, to get past to say. But I liked that idea. I don't want to give it up or, you know, I, I, I do something. I spent all that time writing that chapter and I knew that that's what I wanted to do. Sometimes

Randall Comfort [00:43:25] That happens. People have a hard time letting go. They do.

Vance Crowe [00:43:29] And have you always been like that? Just No, no problem. I mean, 'cause I definitely know, as we've, you know, spent time many, many hours over the years, you never really hold too hard, tight to an argument or too hard to a point of view.

Randall Comfort [00:43:41] No, I think I'm pretty flexible. I, I like, and I like that I, it feels good to me. I, I, to me, if I'm zeroing on something, it's, it's kind of a flaw. It's kind of like a Marcus Aurelius thing, you know, you just don't, when something doesn't work, you just don't worry about it. You just get rid of it. You don't sit around and, and, you know, be all upset. And if you're, if you're, can you imagine the people that, that were in school trying to finesse that last 10% and they just couldn't do, think of the stress they're going through, you know, trying to make it work, trying to make it work. What I'm saying, eh, get rid of it. Let's just keep, let's just move on, do something else.

Vance Crowe [00:44:15] Okay. So, you know, you've got the elements of nature and you've got how people are hanging out on Saturday night or where they wanna drink their tea, but what else would, would,

Randall Comfort [00:44:26] Well, there either, there's structure, a lot of times structure can make a meaningful design. I think I, I showed you a photograph of a building that's down in Northwestern Arkansas. It's a, a Wayfairs chapel and it's, it's just,

Vance Crowe [00:44:41] Oh, out in

Randall Comfort [00:44:42] The woods? Yeah, out in the woods. It's glass and wood frame. So, so the, the wood frame is just, it's just a magnificent, it, it was voted, well, probably by a layman, that it was the best example of American architecture that there is, it was the favorite that people had ever seen. So that can be an important thing, but the most important thing or the best thing, and it hardly ever happens, but when it does, it makes architecture really great. And that is when there's some meaning to the design. You brought up the example of the garage in Clayton that moves, and what makes that so great is that it's, it's a public sculpture, but it's a public sculpture. It's like the architects gave a gift to nature, not a gift, but an opportunity. They, they gave basically like, like an instrument and nature plays the instrument for the benefit of us as observers. We don't hear it. It's not like a musical you don't hear, but we, they gave 'em this building with the little silver disks on it that can move and the wind plays that instrument 24 hours a day and think, why do people like that? Why would people like the fact that it's moving along and you don't know how it's gonna move? And it's different. Like if you ever go by that building, when there's a a, a

Vance Crowe [00:45:55] Strong, I intentionally do that. If there is a, if there's a storm, I go see, it's

Randall Comfort [00:46:00] Great then, isn't it? Yeah. And so, but it's similar to, and that's why people gravitate, I think to nature. You think, well, why do people like that kind of thing? And it's because it's natural they know that nature is making it do that. It's nobody, it's just happening without anybody controlling it. It's sort of like, it's similar to looking up at the sky and watching the clouds. You know, they come by and they're all different and they, but it's fun to do. Right? I think I, I think you'd have a hard time finding a person that doesn't like laying in the grass and looking up at the clouds, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:46:30] So tell me about that. So is that, is that only, does meaning only get created when you're interacting with the environment or No,

Randall Comfort [00:46:38] No. Lemme let me give you another example. There's a, there's an, there's an architect, a Danish architect, b Engles, that got the commission to do a power plant in Copenhagen and the pa. And the assignment was that we're gonna take, make a building that the trash trucks come dump the trash. We process the trash, turn it into energy and release steam only, it's the cleanest power plant in Europe. And so there was an RFP for architects to respond to, to that, to building form. Now, obviously the most the, you'd think a utilitarian type of building that'd just be a big box with, with a smoke stack that comes out the side or off the top or whatever. But Bianchi Engels came up with the idea. He said, you know, we get a lot of snow in, in Copen in Denmark, but we don't have any mountains, so people can't go skiing. They have have to go across the, over to Sweden to go ski, to go skiing. So he proposed, take the flower plant building. Instead of it being a big pock, you take it out so it has a high end and a low end, and you turn it into a ski resort. It was that big. And so the way that building works is you, you go and you can go to up an elevator and you can go skiing down the side of the building until you get to the bottom. So he's got two things for one. And there's an important thing, there's a meaningful thing. And the other thing he did with it, just so that everybody would know that, that, that their power is being processed in a clean way or it's, or it's, they, they did a thing where the smoke smokestack the smoke that the steam that comes out city just coming out, they save the steam.

Randall Comfort [00:48:10] And when there's, when they've processed one ton of trash into energy, it emits a smokery that comes out the top. So everybody goes, oh, we just made another ton of tr ton of, you know, got rid of a ton of trash and made, made,

Vance Crowe [00:48:24] Oh wow.

Randall Comfort [00:48:24] X amount of energy. Now that's pretty cool, don't you think, to have a building that can do that. It's not just a building that sits there and has a function. It's a building that speaks to other, other things.

Vance Crowe [00:48:34] Have you had clients that didn't know that you could impart meaning into their, into their projects? That, that ultimately you've, you've been able to do it?

Randall Comfort [00:48:44] Yes. Yes, I have. I, I had a project where a, the owner was also a builder and he, they wanted to do a room edition out the side of their house, but there was a big cherry tree out there, and they didn't,

Vance Crowe [00:48:59] Oh, this is great. They didn't

Randall Comfort [00:49:01] Want to kill the cherry tree, you know, 'cause they really liked it, but it got a disease and died. So he took it and cut it, had it cut down and had a, a portable sawmill come and saw it into lumber. And he dried it and everything. And so we took the cherry wood. He said, I want to take this cherry wood and incorporate it into the design. So what I did was, you know, we took it inside. We, we made a fireplace, man, we made trusses, we made, we made cabinets for his kids to keep their toys in and, and stuff like that. So now the, the building has a certain meaning for 'em. You know, they, they, their cherry tree's still there. It's not alive anymore, but it's still there

Vance Crowe [00:49:40] Preserved maybe for longer than it would've been. Yeah.

Randall Comfort [00:49:42] Preserved forever, you know, and it sits on the same place that the cherry tree was, you know, so they really liked that. When I, when I explained that to 'em, they, they thought, oh, that is so cool. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:49:53] And so how, how often does that come along? Is that

Randall Comfort [00:49:56] Not that often? It's hard to, it's hard to bring that into the equation. You know, there has to be something important in people's lives for one thing. So

Vance Crowe [00:50:06] The other thing that you have to deal with is the, the materials that are available. Yes.

Randall Comfort [00:50:11] And,

Vance Crowe [00:50:12] You know, I've been to your studio and I see that you have an enormous amount of reading material and things that are going. How, how in the world do you keep up with the materials and technology and things that are coming out and, and available?

Randall Comfort [00:50:25] Well, there are online, like architectural record is a periodical that used to be a mag. Well, it still is, but they have an online presence too. And there's, there's a lot of periodicals like that. And, and trades, the trades publish things like the glass manufacturers publish things that say, oh look, now we can make curved glass that's 40 store, you know, 40 feet high. We only used to be able to do it 10 feet high. Well, you think, well, that's to keep in mind because, you know, you might want to, you might want to use that. So that's how I keep track of the, the latest materials and, and manufacturers and technical representatives are, are, are get in touch and wanna, you know, come by and show you the latest products and

Vance Crowe [00:51:09] Things like that. So one of my, the way that you and I met was that we were at a Toastmasters group. Yeah. And I, I think Toastmasters is one of the great clubs that anybody can join because you go to an event and every single person there is there only because they want to get better at speaking in some way and communicating. Yes. And nobody shows up for any other reason. I mean, you, you could have other reasons ancillary to that, but your primary one, that's the one, the one. And so it's almost like having an AA club, like where you, you don't have to give up drinking alcohol to join it. So it, it's, it's an interesting thing. And you and I met there and, and we struck up a conversation, which is something that I am kind of natural, naturally pulled to do. But if you were to say, I noticed

Randall Comfort [00:51:58] That about you, that's why that,

Vance Crowe [00:52:00] Yeah,

Randall Comfort [00:52:00] That seems like he's a pretty, pretty good guy now.

Vance Crowe [00:52:03] But the, the thought that I have when you meet somebody, like you as an architect who's eloquent and thinks a lot about this stuff, is what question do you wish people that didn't know an architect, if they ran into you, what is the best question that they could ask you to strike up a conversation where, and not just you any architect, what is the thing that you can ask an architect that's just gonna make 'em light up and just jibber, jabber gibber ever talk So that, so that the, so that the Enquirer doesn't have to do any heavy lifting. All they gotta do is get that one question in.

Randall Comfort [00:52:38] Well, I think a lot of architects like the question posed to them. Well, what's your, what is it that, when you, when you do architecture, what is it about you? What is your, is it your, what is your style or what is your, what, what, what do you bring to bear when you, when you do architecture? Well, what, what is it that, what is it that makes you wanna be an architect and, and the things that go on in your head that you bring out in your archite? What is it,

Vance Crowe [00:53:03] What is your style?

Randall Comfort [00:53:05] I don't have one.

Vance Crowe [00:53:06] Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.

Randall Comfort [00:53:07] I, I don't, my, my focus is always on what the client wants and what the opportunities are that exist. And, and, and I like to bring those together. And I don't have any preconceived ideas. Like, you know, some architects, there's a style to 'em. Like, well, I can think of some examples, but their buildings have all have a similarity to 'em. You know, I would,

Vance Crowe [00:53:30] Yeah. I mean, you can tell Frank Lloyd Wright,

Randall Comfort [00:53:33] Well, to some degree, yeah, he did quite a bit of different things too. But there was an era in architecture called Postmodernism. I know you've heard, heard that it was, I think in the eighties around then. And there was a, there was a, an architect who was a champion of that and all, and everything he did, you could tell it was him. When you saw, when you saw a building, a building, you didn't even have to look at the credits to know

Vance Crowe [00:53:54] What's a postmodernist building.

Randall Comfort [00:53:56] Well, that's where they took there originally there was classical classism, classical buildings that, you know, that lasted all the way through early about the twenties. And then modern modernism came about, which is a radical departure from classism, which is, buildings were arranged along a certain predefined kind of thing called bozart's design. And the modernist came along and said, no, we don't want any, we don't want any trim. We were talking earlier about trim and, and decorative aspects to it. We don't want any of that. We want, we just want plain, we, we want glass and materials. That's it. You know? And so that was pretty popular for a long time. And the trouble, and the very, the very best examples is that are really, really good. But it's like with any style, a lot of architects come along, try to try to replicate it, and then it gets watered down and gets, gets pretty bad.

Vance Crowe [00:54:49] So would this be what you think of when you think of like the Great Gatsby style of architecture? Would that be modernist?

Randall Comfort [00:54:55] No, no. The Great Gatsby, it was during that time it started coming out. But the great guess, if you look at the, if you see the movie or go to the house, it, it's traditional.

Vance Crowe [00:55:03] Okay. It's

Randall Comfort [00:55:03] A traditional house. But I'm trying to think. There's a, there's a building here in St. Louis. It's a modern building. The one right across the street from the post office on the west side,

Vance Crowe [00:55:16] No idea.

Randall Comfort [00:55:16] Building idea, never even noticed.

Vance Crowe [00:55:18] Never even noticed. Well,

Randall Comfort [00:55:19] Right now they're, they're giving you to build a big development there. They're gonna take over that whole block and build a huge development. And there's an outcry about having that, have that building be torn down. 'cause it's one of the, one of the few true modern buildings in, in St. Louis. But postmodernism, they came along and said, no, that modernism is too bland. There's nothing going on. It's, there was a famous, a famous architect that came up with the saying for modernism. Me, Vanderau said, less is more. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:55:49] Okay. You probably heard that saying, right?

Randall Comfort [00:55:50] Well, there was another postmodern architect that came along and said, Les is a bore. That was his credo. And then architects started doing things where they would take the classical elements and they would transform 'em into forms that were sort of a, almost a caricature of, of the original buildings. And, but they were pretty interesting. Some of the, the best ones did some really interesting things. I was fond of it when it was occurring.

Vance Crowe [00:56:19] So what would you describe? But

Randall Comfort [00:56:20] It didn't last long. It only lasted about 20 years. And then people said, no, no, because it's like any style, the very best practitioners things look really good. But then everybody says, oh, I like that. That's the latest style. And then all architects start doing it, then it gets watered down. And let's face it, not all architects are as good as others. Same with any field. Right. But the bad architects are the ones that aren't as good. They start doing things that are kind of iffy and not so good and kind of, and so people start turning against that style because if they see it everywhere, and they'd say, that's postmodern. And I hate that. Whereas if they saw the true example, they'd say, whoa, this is, there's something to this.

Vance Crowe [00:56:54] So if somebody wanted to get like an entry level, just, I wanna understand architecture, I wanna see it through the, I wanna see buildings through the eyes. Where, where would they begin? Should they start trying to follow people on Instagram? Should they go on YouTube? Should they buy a book? That's a

Randall Comfort [00:57:10] Question. There are probably books about, but I don't know. I don't know. I've never seen one. But there probably are books like that.

Vance Crowe [00:57:21] You use Instagram, don't you?

Randall Comfort [00:57:23] Yes,

Vance Crowe [00:57:25] I do. So what do you use it for?

Randall Comfort [00:57:27] I just, I like to show off things that have the basis for a thought. You know, like show off interesting things that I did one the other day, I don't do 'em very often, but I was doing a project where we, where we were gonna take out a floor to put a stair and kind of an atrium in. And we thought it was in a house residential, so we thought it was wood. And it turns out the floor was, well, we started looking in the basement, the electricity was going, why? I don't think I'm gonna get my wiring up there. Look, there's a hole here, but there, there's no, it's solid in there. And so just look at that. Oh my gosh, this is bad when we take this out. It's gonna be expensive to tear this out now. But then we started looking a little closer and we drilled up in there and it turns out that they were made out of hollow clay tiles. I know you're familiar with those, but the way they used to make this was, they would, they would, the garage walls are poured, right? They, they set up a set of form work, plywood on top guys were walking around. They were taking these, cut these clay blocks and lining 'em up in rows, leaving about three inches in between. Okay. And then they put some re two rebars in between each one of those and set 'em on a little piece of wood, or not wood, but they probably use a little piece of block or something. And then they pour concrete over all of it. So it goes down in between the, in between these clay blocks and on top so that it forms a structural slab. But it does it way much because it has most, a lot of it's air.

Vance Crowe [00:58:52] Wow. But

Randall Comfort [00:58:53] The places that go down in between, it makes little beams. So there's these little beams, but it seems like a solid slip. So we, we cut through that with a saw, a concrete saw and drop the part we didn't want. I took a picture of that and explained this in a, in an Instagram.

Vance Crowe [00:59:06] Oh, that's a hell of a use of incident. 'cause

Randall Comfort [00:59:08] I thought people might find that interesting.

Vance Crowe [00:59:09] Oh yeah. Yeah. Because

Randall Comfort [00:59:11] It looks pretty wild, the way they cut through the floor like this, you know? And so I thought, well, that's pretty interesting. Somebody might find that interesting.

Vance Crowe [00:59:17] And what is your Instagram handle?

Randall Comfort [00:59:22] I don't even know.

Vance Crowe [00:59:23] Comfort architecture.

Randall Comfort [00:59:25] I just published stuff. I don't even know what it is to tell you the truth.

Vance Crowe [00:59:27] It's gotta, I, I think it's comfort arc. It's gotta be. Yeah. I, I'll look it up and through it on the, on the video.

Randall Comfort [00:59:32] Yeah. You, you follow me, right?

Vance Crowe [00:59:36] I'm sure. But I don't use Instagram that much because I'm, I'm not as visual. I don't Right. I don't

Randall Comfort [00:59:40] It Yeah, that's what it's good for.

Vance Crowe [00:59:41] It's, I mean, I think that I'm, I've gone through and seen all your stuff. I mean, like it's, I wish I,

Randall Comfort [00:59:45] I wish I had time to do more. I see things and I think, oh, I'd like to publish it.

Vance Crowe [00:59:48] Yeah. I mean, that's kind of where you spot your patterns and put them on there.

Randall Comfort [00:59:51] It is. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:59:53] Well, so as we wrap up, I, I'd be interested in hearing what is the field of study that is not yours, but that you've encountered over the last, I don't know, few years that you've said? I'm glad I encountered that because it helped me think about my work in a different way.

Randall Comfort [01:00:13] Hmm. That's a good, that's a good, quite interesting question. Let me think. I, I think probably it would be computer science. I think I found that the approach that computer, computer people, people that are knowledgeable about computers, the approach they take is really attractive to me. It's similar to the way I think. And I, and I've talked to some people in computer about that. And, and we agreed, in fact, in computer now computer science, there's even a job called architect in the field of computer science

Vance Crowe [01:00:47] Of data architect.

Randall Comfort [01:00:48] Yeah. So when you, anymore, if you say I'm an architect to a young person, they may not associate the fact that you're an architect for buildings necessarily.

Vance Crowe [01:00:55] And so what, in what way did, did computer science have any impact? I mean, those seem like your field, I mean, aside from CAD drawings and things like that, but, but how,

Randall Comfort [01:01:05] Well, it's an approach. It's the approach to solving problems that's similar and, and I think's interesting. In fact, I took a little computer science when I was in school, but it hadn't been developed very far. And so there wasn't a whole lot you could do. But I found it really interesting the way that if you figure out how to tell this machine specifically what you wanna do, it'll do it. And you have to find the way, you have to understand what it needs in order to get the, the response that you want. And, and you have to be able to do it in an eloquent way. I've, you know, I hear people say, well, you can take this and if you use that program, then it'll just take this one thing that you were doing that was taking quite a while and do it a whole lot more efficiently. Those kind of things really intrigued me. Efficiency, things like that.

Vance Crowe [01:01:52] Well, I can tell you that the, that learning about architecture had a profound impact on me and really in a lot of the ways that I give speeches. And I remember the, the, there was a, there was a time when you pointed something out to me in pop culture that probably anybody listening would find interesting. But it made an impact on me for how I spoke, which was pointing out the various styles of thrones in the Game of Thrones.

Randall Comfort [01:02:21] Oh, yes.

Vance Crowe [01:02:21] And the experience that people would have communicating with the king or queen in those various scenarios.

Randall Comfort [01:02:29] Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I like that. That's, that, that's an intriguing thought. Like I remember that conversation too, because the way the thrones were situated in the room in relation to the rest of the room and the people that we're coming up to, it makes a big difference. Like, like when you encounter someone at your level, it's one thing. But if they're sitting up, but if you have to walk up a set of steps to get to the plate where they're sitting on this big chair, that's a whole nother thing. They have sort of a command over you that, that you can't help but feel, you know? And that was, that was what was intriguing. I thought about those spaces.

Vance Crowe [01:03:03] And for me, I took that lesson and I applied it directly to, what is it to go up on a stage? You know, why is it that, you know, having a vaulted room, even in a room where, you know, you could be in a room of 200 people and it'd be a very big difference if you're on the floor with everybody else versus being up two feet versus being up five or 10 feet. Right? Yes. It's a very, very, very different experience. I

Randall Comfort [01:03:30] Imagine it would, I've never had that experience, but I know you have. And so I would think you would have a certain, a feeling of command when you're up higher that you're in control of what's going on.

Vance Crowe [01:03:40] I don't think it's quite that simple.

Randall Comfort [01:03:41] Isn't that,

Vance Crowe [01:03:42] I, I think, I think, I think that that would be the perception, right? That would be the, it seemed to be. Yeah. But you are also held up there and there's nowhere to go. And it's very clear that you're not an equal that just happens to have the microphone you got called up there. Yes. So, so the, it's, yeah, I, I, you know, I often make the comparison of public speaking to surfing. And if you go up on a stage, just like up on a throne, you are getting on a much bigger wave. Yeah. And you have got to know what you're doing because the expectations of the people out there is that you are going to say something that's worth their time.

Randall Comfort [01:04:19] If you're up on this big stage, you

Vance Crowe [01:04:20] And you say something boring, man, that's all the more reason for people to really, really despise that you're up there wasting their time. And so anyway, I could go on and on about this, but this is one of many conversations I hope we'll have. And I'm very grateful that you stopped by tonight. Well,

Randall Comfort [01:04:38] Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure. Thanks. It's fun.