it's a daily talk show in Los Angeles and we're in a very cool I mean I've never been to Coachella before but we're in the boardroom called Coachella and we've got Brooke at Brooks and we're next to us how are you buddy hey good to be here thanks so much thanks for inviting us to Coachella you're absolutely welcome it really is like a Coachella kind of moment and the the experimentation that we do here is very aproposo Coachella is a good word are they drinking La Croix at Coachella I could imagine that's very hip they're probably drinking CBD infused teas at Coachella so we're in Culver City this is the the HQ office untitled what is office untitled office untitled is a unique creative agency focusing primarily on architecture and interiors but but more with an experimental attitude of questioning realities or questioning universal preconceptions like what is a house or what is a children's museum and really kind of like approaching projects from that unique kind of angle you took us for a tour there's some pretty quirky bathrooms that you got here I just took a selfie while's in there you wouldn't be the first well I mean then it has the debate of some people don't like some people don't like the thought of other people using their phone in the bathroom but your bathrooms here make you want to use it so I've been I think that's a good thing yeah I love it there's you know what did you like Josh walking around these creative corners I think the smell I mean you weren't you and it wasn't the bathroom I was it's not there's just a sense of good I feel like I could smell a bit of glue going on there's like we've got heaps of small models of things that you're building but there's you're actually printing shit out there's stuff on the walls it feels a little bit willy wonka for creatives absolutely you know what now that I think about it's unlike any architecture office and I hesitant to say that we're architecture as office untitled as a creative agency but there's been other magazine editors that have come through and they made the point of like this is looks like a studio at a university in a way of like experimentation is encouraged and that's a culture that we try to create here where you're able to experiment and test out ideas all of course for the benefit of the project to make the projects better but it has that kind of Los Angeles experimentation all like less test and fail quickly obviously but let's test let's test and fail out ideas and talk about ideas so it means that minimum viable product to design I mean how do you how do you grapple with perfection and that approach because that approach doesn't allow to make it perfect well you know what comes to mind is the disco ball so there's a disco ball hanging happens to be above my desk but that's the skylight that gets the most natural so it's a win win for me and the office and the disco ball I think if you look at perfection into disco ball disco balls are not perfect at all in fact it's incredibly difficult to make a sphere using tiny squares of mirrors and they're not nicely glued on there much from afar looks amazing and the effects are extraordinary so what we what we we actually strive for excellence on all the projects and we have a culture of like technical abilities and know-how and that's as equally as important as design but so is experimentation so most architecture practices or other practices are about executing well and doing a high level of design but I think what separates us out is this idea of experimentation up front and like this conceptual phase that we come in really heavy and strong at the beginning so as I mean as you could sense when you walk around for the tour there's a culture of like ecstaticness or like static electricity in the air of like you know I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it because like you never know what's gonna happen whether somebody like puts on a different song or there's a dance party but we also have like design review Thursday so there's an hour that we take out of our day of like let's talk about something important about anything it could be anything and it's a free safe space I use that word safe space because the whole office is a safe space so once you come through that door like all ideas are on the table nothing is stupid nothing is out of bounds and that's important to create that kind of safe environment for experimentation and creativity to thrive as a designer what's your relationship with collaboration it's all it's a hundred percent collaboration if you're not collaborating like you know I mean one brain is not that good but like a bunch of brains way better also in order to be creative and innovative it's about connecting things that aren't connectable or shouldn't be connected like you know that bird that I saw this morning in this weird helicopter and then meeting you guys and you're talking about the smell now I have this idea in my head but that took three people or four people to come up with those ideas. So we're doing an academy. What's going on? Oh no god no but you can put it as a footnote and so I guess a lot of people struggle with the collaborative process because you know bullshit you don't think no I mean that's that's on them so you have to remove ego you can't have an ego you can't collaborate with an agenda you have to be totally neutral and what's awesome about us as I mentioned we all have young kids I have a five-year-old is that five-year-olds in particular you don't know this yet but they just say whatever is real like the salmon tastes weird and like my son was right it wasn't good so we thought it was at a restaurant like right it's not taste good but what I mean is like you have to remove the mask that you're wearing or you have to remove your ego or like you can't be concerned like what other people are gonna think of you or like having your feelings her it's like no let's all throw out these ideas and work together because that's what's gonna make a better project I am not a genius you're not a genius nobody's a genius even Einstein's not a genius he was picking up on the context of what was happening around him and so that's what we try to cultivate in the office here and even going out and even collaborating and even talking to other architects and other designers and we even actually go out and tour other people's projects under construction to see like hey that's a really great idea how do you find people's reception to that because I really like that approach we can't collaborate with anybody yeah but I could imagine there's some people who have had some wins is solo operators or solo creatives that think no no I know it because I've had the past successes no I'm gonna say BS on that one what I think is great is that and all of our clients are repeat clients and they come back because of that collaborative process like because we work with them we also ask strange questions that nobody's asked them before but a year later they'll be like I'm still asking that same question like we're designing an entire warehouse district in the middle of the country and the very first meeting we had with this developer we asked the question what is an awning can in this kind of submarine kind of submarine be an awning and it was about how do you get people to come into the district and how do you develop a language of a design language for an entire district all the way down to the lobby experiences so you know that starts with an awning and what you're gonna see first so even a year later he still talked about that question like what is he still trying to figure it out did you have to learn that was their times in your life where you felt the friction of collaboration or where it didn't necessarily you're wearing a mask as you described yes so if you're in a space that's not a safe space then it could be threatening or intimidating to other people if you're throwing out ideas especially if they seem wild like what is an awning is a submarine awning where it's not it's not a wild it's not a wild question it's actually incredibly hyper-specific to humans and how you're using space and what space feels like and the temperature of the hatch when you touch it and like what's the air tastes like I mean it's very important of how you go into a space so I think it's very important to ask those questions the the kind of training that I've tried to put myself through in terms of like almost like a Buddhist regimen of like creativity of like a religion would be to remove what people think of me in order to be able to collaborate with with our clients or whoever we're working with or even fabricators when we're doing custom furniture or whatever right so it's removing yourself removing your ego and that takes a lot of practice over time but then also if you surround yourself with the right people they encourage you they encourage that to happen and that's what's great about working here in this office office I'm titled is that everybody's encouraged to think differently and be unique and creative and everyone that has equal input on all the projects we're in LA right now you haven't lived here for your whole life you like you were in New York yeah I mean I'm just a kid from the Midwest I was born in Kalamazoo Michigan how important is location to creativity so New York is a great energy of New York I feel creative there oh wow yes 100% agree location has a huge impact on creativity especially me I tend to pick up on like the vibes and energies of the places that I'm in and I use that to my advantage in terms of like creative outputs New York is super creative in a in electricity that's just palpable that you can just walk down the street bump into somebody and be like oh excuse me hey do you want to create something together and they'll be like okay tonight let's meet and like make up a couch or design a new skyscraper that actually happens all the time and so there's this energy there that you just never shut off like you're just everything you do like I would crash my bike all the time and run into park cars because I'm looking at something I'm like that's a great detail crash we're just not good if you're pushing a stroller yeah but the baby safe nothing ever happens to the baby so New York is that do you think where you've had the most creativity or no I think Los Angeles yeah I'm super excited about that and like love to be here I've been here three years now I was a little bit nervous moving here because it's like vastly different than anything on earth and like just being from the Midwest Los Angeles seems like a foreign planet I had never been here before so it's a little bit weird there's cactuses and they bloom all year and it seems like a fairy land of like Willy Wonka but the creativity and the like what people are doing here is fascinating and the mindset of experimentation and failure and testing and inventiveness is so palpable that doesn't happen in New York and New York it's like creative energy and people are doing things but in LA it's like there are no rules design wise like you can do anything you want as long as you have this like great narrative and you're testing and experimenting with things yeah but there aren't any like rules about color or pattern or space or what the temperature is supposed to be like when you lick the door handle or like there's no rules at all it's like if you want to go and make that thing go and make it like there's makers and fabricators all over the place here you just have to figure out where they are yeah hiding I heard you use the fries licking the details what is that mean and what are some examples of where you're licking the details that other people might completely ignore well I don't lick random things but I think it's important to have like be engaged with the tactile experience of the spaces that you're creating if you're making especially if you're making immersive environments like you need to know what the temperature is you need to know how the marble feels and what like what kind of marble is it is it silky is it rough is it smooth is it oiled like when you especially if you're gonna set your cell phone down on like a marble surface what does it sound like when the marble comes in contact with your you know iPhone right so it's important to me to touch everything before it's made like in a hotel right if you're making the side tables or the mini table or the bed like how squishy is the mattress so I'm gonna go and jump on the mattress and I'm gonna sit on it and sleep on it and jump on it with my son and be like hey do you like this mattress and he'll be like no cuz he's gonna say it straight up and so I did lick the marble and I did lick the wallpaper for this hotel in Portland but you know it pays off when you lick the details of the hotel was on time magazine's greatest 100 places to go this year and it won most innovative hotel of the year so I mean I feel like because I care so deeply about the experiences that people have when they're in the rooms and when they're in the hotel that I also feel like it's important that I need to be fully engaged in all the materials and the choices and how it feels as if I was also staying in the room so yeah so you've got someone who walks into a hotel room say for instance the one that won the award I mean as a I would call him a Gronk as a Gronk I'd walk in and I wouldn't really understand anything I'd just be experiencing right so I find out I'm like what if but I know that there's something going on where I would probably be disrupted if I felt a certain way are you a is that is that your job is what you say your job is to identify the stuff people don't consciously pick up on and then fine-tuning that absolutely I think a lot of it has to do with like unconsciousness of how people are gonna feel when they're in the side of space should there be no friction or is friction an important part of the I guess it depends on what you mean by friction especially in hotels the friction might be a bad word of like that there's problems when a person comes into the hotel before they get to the guest room of like that's causing friction so in that regard you don't want any friction but I I would want you to set your phone down or like for example like I put leather on this bottom of this table and you would never know that unless you like put your foot on it which you might so then you'll be like oh wow that feels good on my foot and then you look at it and you're like that's not black leather it's like navy blue textured leather it's very weird right so it's like these little secret details even the base of the lamp looks like pink concrete but it's actually stained pink wood because it's more natural and so there's this in this particular hotel aesthetic was feminine Pacific Northwest and that doesn't exist that's all doesn't exist I had to make that up and so I think the idea of like how do you invent a style and how do you how do you allow somebody to go into the room they don't care what the style is they just want to feel at home and they want to feel comfortable walking around in their bare feet and jumping on the bed I mean it's such attention to detail and then there's a there's a bunch of designers architects that aren't doing that is like they don't even care or what's the what's the opposite approach to this the the opposite approach would just be like you're churning out a bunch of rooms in a repetitive fashion and whether it's like budget conscious or you're just rolling out so many of the rooms you just don't have the opportunity to like fine-tune every single detail you can probably control a few but I'm trying to control everything all the way down to the smell down to like what it feels if you're rubbing up against the wall you know I love it or if your head is touching the headboard like you know the people are loving the headboard in this particular hotel it's really cool but also just the lights we custom designed all the lights of the tiles are custom designed like everything what do you think a quality and premium main well that's a good question like I think luxury doesn't need to be expensive like a gold toilet doesn't necessarily mean luxury I would rather put the bathtub in the middle of the room and let you like have a bath and watch the sunset at the same time to me that's more luxurious than a gold bathtub and so that's what we're trying to be like BG because like I would say like it's way better to have sex in your bathtub watching the sunset than just stuck in the bathroom like why am I in a small tiny ass room taking a bath right I should see something I should experiment with the world in a better way while I'm taking a bath and so what about it from a user experience point of view sometimes like I'll go to an amazing hotel with my girlfriend but then the bathroom is very open and so before you know it you're having to take a dump in that same area where you want to have this sort of intimate experience how much you thinking about that user experience hundred percent thinking exactly that thing yeah absolutely you know you have to consider all those scenarios and like I guess like I would live them like like mentally you know like I would put up a bunch of chairs and like tape off a space in the office and see like is this close enough to sit next to somebody or does this create an intimate scenario so I would reenact it in real life you know like as a mock up to be like how does this play out right where the hotel rooms go wrong do you think what's like the obvious thing when you walk into a hotel room I'll just give you the shits no pun intended light switches lighting outlet locations like if somebody's like looking for an outlet that's a problem what's the deal with it I don't know if it's just the u.s.
but sometimes like the light switch is actually for a lamp and then there's a fucking master light and so then you can turn the master light off but keep all that sort of stuff yeah I mean that there's like different like code code things of like what kind of lights you have to have on stuff like that but again like when you when you first come in like why am I seeing this sharp corner side of an amenity table or a credenza piece like that's not inviting to come in and just see the side of something and it's a sharp corner so you know in this hotel in Portland the woodlark we are rounded all the edges of the amenity table and it's actually has a whole cutout and so you can see like wine and or sparkling water or something is like a little gift bag in the side of this thing it's also curved I was also raised by the totally insane father who we made wooden sailboats and like everything is curved wood and we actually had to build all this stuff and so like all this kind of strange like sailboat making stuff and like weird construction projects that my dad would make me do just as influencing yeah and on all the projects and grew up racing sailboat so you can't I can't get that out of my head so it actually has a kind of a nautical theme to it if now that I told you that secret because I haven't admitted that in different interviews but like if you look at the hotel now and think like an article it's about it's about hotel have you mentioned your son quite a few times and it's almost like that naive approach just like no I don't like this or I do like this how do you think we go wrong getting older getting a bit jaded not maybe speaking out about the things that we don't like or do like a great question and I think this kind of ties a little bit about into my teaching philosophy as well because I taught for 10 years architecture and tears I'm in product design and seeing these 20-somethings come in and if being afraid to fail was terrifying me and I was like our education system is crushing creativity out of our kids and so I would actually bring my two he was doing I would bring him into class and let them see him and let him see them and not that I was trying to scare the crap out of my students although I was but I would do it in a way where I was with them like I was one of them so I was a hundred percent honest with them I would be out of jail if I got arrested I would give them my cell phone on the first day of class call me anytime text me 24 7 I will text you right back and so for me to be on the level of like I'm a hundred percent committed if you are I will give you a hundred percent of me if you do right so a lot of that and a lot of the initial couple weeks of classes is a lot of frustration from the students because nobody ever spoke to them that way or swore in class I never seen a professor jump on the table and start dancing screaming but it was about eliminating universal preconceptions and that sounds so easy but basically you have to forget everything that you were that you learned and what's great about having a five-year-old is that he doesn't know shit he's stupid right they're dumb like his or dumb like they don't know what they don't know and so they asked the most basic questions and those are the best questions even the statement of like the same it tastes weird you're right like I should have said that but I didn't because I was afraid to upset the chef or something or like I didn't want to offend anybody but like I mean there are of course social norms and you don't want to upset you so that one is a fine but the idea is that you see things new try to see things new from a child's eyes or a child's perspective and the world will open up to you in a totally different way so then what do you think about schooling and classrooms in general as a way to try and unlock those those types of things well that's a great question I would be a huge advocate to go around and talk in every like public school in America across America to encourage creative thinking and creative problem-solving because in the future I think the one skill that you're going to need to know to get any job is creative problem-solving anybody you can learn the trade you can learn anything you can learn long you can learn how to be a doctor but creative problem-solving is hard to teach especially if those skills are crushed out of your soul when you're a kid so playing through experimentation and playing and learning while you play and play bass learning and play bass experimentation and this idea of like nothing wrong with failing I feel every day I just do it fast because I'm not afraid of feeling so I just fail a bunch of times and then because the first couple things you do are shit so you got to fail quickly get those out of the way and then the really good ideas come in later so it's about that kind of thinking process so the fear of failure is crushing people's creativity I would say 100% we've got a young 20 something in the room mr. 97 and producer he he said before that he doesn't think he's creative what do you think I mean you've just met him can you I mean there is there is that vibe that everyone is creative or everyone has that and they just need to unlock it but then there's some people who think I'm not creative what do you think about that school of thought I think everyone is creative I think that because of society being afraid of new ideas that the social norms would be like yeah maybe you're not creative like Albert Einstein or like Andy Warhol you might be super creative like folding your laundry that I never thought about like I had to watch this YouTube video on how to fold the fitted sheet 20 times because I couldn't figure it out I still can't do a double Windsor it's because I watch and just copy the tie and the bow ties are too tired and reverse the YouTube videos right but I can't do it but I think people are creative they're just creative in different ways that's why I love to collaborate and the TEDx talk I gave which I joke it's like how to make a baby the title is actually like collaborative opportunities are everywhere so collaborate on how to make dinner right and like that's creative like some people are more creative in like how they cook that's creativity you know it's not it's doesn't have to be for design or for one thing or to invent something it's just about how you think about things you can be creative about folding laundry or creative about writing a bike or crashing a bike or whatever what's something you've identified that's not your area of strength I would say before we get into that before I admit all my abilities I would say just watch any kid any every single child that I've ever seen now is off thousand percent creative no filters whatsoever they're drawing crazy things yeah weird trees like what there's no rhyme or reason or right or wrong that's a creative and for what what what that shows me is that there's an innate thing in human beings that they are a hundred percent creative people or humans humans are a hundred percent creative entities and it so what happens to you then then society and culture must crush that out if you think that you're not creative later in life because that's yes I mean I get a whole bunch of paintings I got a rock from my son with splash paint on it genius genius genius genius genius but I think I think you're someone who really knows your strengths and to know your strengths you also have to know what where you don't shine how do you identify the areas where you don't shine well I wasn't prepared for that question but so I would say like I would I will admit it here for the first time ever on interviews ever but I feel very vulnerable a lot like I I I'll put myself out there as a far out into the region as possible and then like tether back into reality so I'll try to push the boundaries with what I'm working on in the clients as far out as I can go sensing that they get uncomfortable and that's a really exciting space to be in and then we can tailor it back you can't you can't start small and then later try to switch it and say hey what about this option then you can't go backwards so you have to start out far out and that then it makes me I'm vulnerable in that state and I feel vulnerable 100% of the time so I think that vulnerability allows me to operate in a way where it removes the ego because I'm letting I'm asking for what do you think and I'm collaborating with other people and I'm challenging and I'm constantly asking questions and I think that allows for design opportunities to flourish. How do people charge or make money through creativity? Well there's there's different ways of charging.
It just depends on the projects. So I guess for someone who's just getting started where it's like it's it's not necessarily tangible like early in the early days there is that sense that you need to do like small tasks that's very very basic. Do you remember grappling with how am I going to do this thing I love to do but also I make cash so I can feed myself. So I think that's a trick question from your earlier question of like what are your like flaws and I think like running a business would be one of my not my tricks and so I love to be part of a collaborative where we can all like help each other and learn as a group and and we learn from each project and how to do things differently and run things more efficiently as we go and our profession is such an old school profession that really hasn't evolved very much in terms of like a business so I think you know we're really like looking to radically kind of rethink what the business of design is and how that works so whether it's charging hourly or project based or even based on the value that you add a lot of people are doing different things I love the value kind of proposition where it's not really based on hourly or how long it's going to take you but the value that you give to that project because of your unique skill set and you've got to I feel like a strong spirit and there'd be a bunch of younger people who look up to you and see what you're doing I guess you're in a position now where you can be a bit fucking crazy a bit wacky you can tell clients hey no this is how I wanted to do it how did you grapple or work with the early stages where it's like this is Brooks fucking out there having fun with the realities of being an early designer someone who's just sort of getting started well I think it's important and especially for me to try to like experiment and do things even if I know they're gonna fail yeah like I remember my mom giving me all this advice and saying like don't do that and I would be like thanks mom I hear you I have to do it anyways I know it's going to fail but I just need to feel what it feels like for it to fail yeah and so like I trust you and I know you're right but you gotta let me do it anyways even if I break my arm I'm still gonna jump out of the tree you learn the hard way I gotta learn I gotta learn that but being part of a collective and a place like office on top with with so many talented people we're all able to do it together and that allows for the safety of like great ideas and great business strategies and practice and like thinking of projects holistically that's what's allowed us to grow so fast because we're only like five six years old at this point and we've grown so fast in the scale of the projects that we're working on are so radically huge at this point that doesn't normally happen until like you're in your 80s to be able to be working on projects of the size and magnitude and it's so exciting but I think that's because the talent and the collectiveness and the direction that the principles are going with the firm it's just so so powerful where do you like to spend most of your time in the creative process I mean I like to interject all different stages of the projects obviously like the conceptual phase at the very beginning like brainstorming is super exciting for me but I also like to see like how that gets physically translated into real things and made and so that because that's also very difficult and also very fun and also very creative but my background is also super technical and my dad's an engineer my brother's engineer and so there is this love of figuring stuff out also so those are also exciting so it's all exciting for me I love the fast-paced nature but also like you also need to stop take a breath and like think on things for a second and that's important to kind of just like build that into the design process where you just like nope I'm gonna just like let this percolate for a second what are you obsessed about at the moment oh what am I obsessed about well looking details I think I'm obsessed of like a like a mode like how can I invoke emotions to things so like this idea of nostalgia I really like I was so against nostalgia and I've won 80 and now for it and like I love the fact like I recognize like that was a limitation like why am I stuck on this thing nostalgia like what's what do you think it was well I thought the to my own you know my own detriment I thought nostalgia would hold me back creativity or great creatively or in a way to innovate because that was I was stuck yeah I was looking back and like somehow the past was holding me back and I don't want I don't live with regrets like I don't have any regrets because I also think that if you have a regret then then you're closing something and I want to be open to things even if it's a repeat so I thought nostalgia would just be like oh you can't that's just gonna hold me back I wanted to make new things and I was like I was really pushing the boundaries but also look nostalgia is a really nice kind of feeling it's a good emotion it allows you to connect to something in a deeper way and I think those deep connections are super important when you're making spaces and and that idea of how people will feel in those spaces what are you nostalgic about like from your past because you're sitting next to one of the most I love being into the world well that's a great it's a weird question because we moved around so much so many things so many times growing up that I never had one house so if you ask me like where I'm from I it's hard was super hard to answer I just say all of the Midwest because we moved everywhere around in the Midwest and I never lived in one place longer than like three or four years what would you do when you got home from school the first thing that you would do when you get home nostalgia question yeah I'm gonna do it juggle yeah pretty balls yeah for I was doing four and five I was doing rubber chickens and you know so I was kind of nerdy not I was not cool and my mom is so crazy it's super fun yeah but this is not how you get girlfriends don't walk to school juggling if any teenagers are out there listening don't do that but I was like hey mom what did I do and she would just come up with the greatest things ever she would she would she would be like you know buy a Volkswagen Beetle and fix it up and so like well we did that one time with my friends we bought a old Volkswagen Beetle I was 15 I didn't couldn't drive and we just bought it and we worked on it for two or three years and then I'd be like how much do we do today and she'd be like well why don't you teach yourself to juggle so we'd spend like four months learning how to juggle and juggling with our friends and when we didn't have you to teach their name you had to teach yourself yeah or you had to go and talk to somebody yeah you show me how to juggle and there's not too many like juggling circus people in the Midwest but like you know you can find them what sort of fast food they have in the Midwest food yeah well I mean there was McDonald's and stuff but we never right there we always just stayed at home and my mom would ring like a cowbell and we would all run home really what would she cook well so she's southern so she would cook super southern food like fried chicken rice and gravy and like biscuits and just like heavy delicious food I love it so that's very nostalgic like always eating at the dinner table and telling about our day so that was very important to me like that kind of like connection at the table is that translated into your parenting do you think yeah so we have to know we dinner at the table but we draw at the table also and there's no rules of like hey if you're full then I'm not gonna force you know the food on your plate like I was I mean he's a great eater so no worries but I also like we draw weird stuff and color things in and like maybe during dinner we'll just start painting our faces with meat and it turns into a peat fest moving around you said every three three or so years you've lived anywhere longer than three years do you think that like your past in that moving around has has been a place of inspiration for you in the creative field that you're in totally yeah I would think just being able to see so many different places and what I liked or didn't like or even even even like design aside just being like I know there's another place other than this that I will belong to and so I've discovered there was this place called Chicago and I was like oh this is a thing like I'm gonna move there and then I discovered a place there's a place called New York City I was like wow this is a fun place I'm gonna move there we asked to cut a movie drive the other day what do you think of a lie and she said I don't know anything else yeah it's a good answer yeah that's a good answer but if you it's like a being a writer like to be a writer you got to go and do stuff like you have to live and like you know I have experiences and I would say the same thing with designers you know and that was the number one thing I was trying to get my students like you have to go out and do things every day you go and do something I randomly moved to Paris so like from like one week to the next I sold all of my earthly belongings and just like packed up my bags moved to Paris I was in my 20s didn't speak French didn't know anyone didn't have anywhere to live I just showed up in Charles de Gaulle airport what inspired you to do that just like I needed to see how another country taught architecture I was in 30 architecture school and I was just like I got to get out of here so I I moved to Paris and it was crazy and yeah it was difficult but also like I went out every single day 365 days out walking around and or I would hop on a train and go to another country because you can just do that and go to a different position I was here about a year and a half yeah and so just like you know even just like arriving I got a migraine headache in the airport through up everywhere which is a great arrival for Charles de Gaulle yeah welcome to Paris you know and then but I figured out I got downtown and my school was at the Bose Art so I went there it was fucking closed nobody was there I went early to try to learn French right and they was close so I didn't know what to do so I just went to the cafe next door and I didn't have anything to do so I just sat there I was reading and drinking coffee like you do and so I just started I heard music so I started dancing on the sidewalk and then somebody started yelling at me from above like out in second story window in French and I was like I don't know what you're saying and so he's like can you dance and I was like of course like I'm dancing like he's like can you dance all the time I was like yeah he's like I need you to dance in my nightclub and I was like wait a minute like I know I'm fresh off the boat but like what's going on here and he's like I need you to dance in my nightclub do you encourage other people to dance like you dance first I need a place to stay I'm homeless I just got here I need an apartment he's like I have an apartment you stay in my apartment I'll pay you you dance in the nightclub and so now I'm a professional dancer because I got paid to do what kind of dancing was it just fun to just get people to get out on the dance floor and then I got to stay for free in that apartment for a couple weeks we've talked a lot about traveling and sort of the it's almost a persona or an energy or a courage that's it summons up it sounds like you went over there and it's you know thrusted you into a world that was not like at home was that is that fair to say that all you dancing back at I mean I was dancing everywhere but I was yeah I was still terrified right I mean it's scary I was scared you know I didn't know what I didn't have any life experiences I never had the country I don't know what's going on no I was totally right into it and it's funny cuz that's how my son dances right five you dance like nobody's watching that's a real thing so that's what I was doing in Paris like on the sidewalk so so what do you think about traveling in sort of the energy it provokes in that sort of courage it brings and how do you channel it back home you're living in LA it's home you can sink into some habits and just you know come comfortability how do you how do you get out of that and do you get out of that well I think just me as like a human like I do things I go out and look for trouble basically what do you do the more trouble I can get into bad the better and that and that and I mean that like a good thing like like this idea of like rebels right and rebel thinking but you know rebels have this kind of bad connotation like they're like messing up things but I believe that there if you look at it from a different perspective they're just challenging the norms and they're maybe they do it in a in a way that has a negative connotation but if you think of rebel thinking in terms of design and experimentation it's incredibly insightful how to approach design because you have to be a super expert with tons of training to be a rebel but then totally disregard all of your experience and training and to and to approach things with totally like kid eyes and then you'll come up with a new a new idea but it's because you have tons of experiences that allows you to think differently if you're just an expert and you just have like college training and no experience then you're not gonna like come up with a totally radical new solution you're just gonna base it on your own limited experience but if you have tons tons of experience you're gonna come up with like radically new ideas so the more you can go out and travel and meet people and hear other people's stories the more experiences that you have then the more design ideas you're gonna come up with what's something you've a what's a piece of trouble or something that you've done that you've looked for that's ripped a great reward where you've gone I've got the great idea based on doing that you like what was the most amount of trouble I got just yeah yeah something that then it's got you a great reward on the other side using that rebel mindset yeah well I would say there was these there was this project okay so Showtime that like the network showtime they do this charity house called the Showtime showhouse and they'll choose a designer and they'll give you a TV show that they have on their show on their channel they'll assign you a TV show and then you design a space around the theme of that show so they asked me to come in and give a pitch and they didn't tell me what the show was yet you could be pitching by the way good at pitching yeah so so I was like okay so so we designed a bunch of really weird things just randomly because I didn't know what we were gonna do but I had this idea that I wanted to simulate more so I wanted to make a room to simulate multiple personality disorder which is an audible disease so you can't distinguish the voices in your head and so yeah then you know that Bob Dylan video where he has everything written on key cards and he just throws him down I think it's like subterranean homesick blues so we did a whole presentation we hand drew all the sketches on these big cue cards with words kind of synced to a song and then we came in playing I'll be your mirror by the velvet underground and then I threw all the key cards down on the floor kind of like singing the presentation and then we walked out of the room that was it like walked in played this thing for performance space and then walked out and they're like you're hired and they assigned they assigned us the United States of Terra with Tony Collette from Australia and so we created this room to simulate multiple personality disorder but it was very scary and terrifying causing a lot of trouble because it's very strange but everybody was excited about it we created an avatar we we invented our own tracking software so the avatar on the TV was a Tony Collette look like my friend looks like Tony Collette so we filmed her they actually gave us Tony Collette they said you can use her but she was filming somewhere in Australia so we couldn't use her I was going straight down the straight and I looked over it's Tony Collette yeah I tried she's amazing I ended up meeting her later but so so there's an avatar on the TV will follow you around facial recognition software we created at that time the world's longest free-spanning CNC wood structures with puzzle joints so I think it was 35 feet at that time which was the longest free span with no hardware it was just self-joint like a puzzle and then we painted it chroma key blue which is what they use in films to green screen people it's blue paint actually and then everyone had wireless headphones and I collaborated with my friend Daniel purland an amazing sound designer and an immersive environmental environment designer and so he created all these weird noises in your head so you're wearing wireless headphones everyone in the room was isolated because everyone had headphones and everyone had different sounds in their ears so and then you were in this weird room with this woman following you around on TV so it's that's what it feels like to have multiple personality and yeah it calls a lot of trouble but it was the favorite room of the of the event so that's good they loved it so much that they asked us to do the top the roof which was just a bar and so what was beautiful about the wireless headphones is if you kept them on and you went upstairs it changed to a silent dance party and so everybody was dancing upstairs and then my mom comes to the opening and my mom's wildly entertaining way more than me and so she's told the show they're like oh your brooks mom they all hang out with my mom which was even cooler have you got a mini mate like he's your son like you yeah yeah I would say yeah pretty much he's pretty much like both of us in like just like a free spirit like to dance anywhere he he's like he has drawn he plays drums and guitar and harmonica and saxophone like at the same time like all like simultaneously it's pretty funny and then but he's like into art and painting and dancing and he told me yesterday he wants to be the singer in a band like the leader of the band electric guitar so it's like okay let's we gotta start working on that so that's the beauty like there's no limitations there's no rules just do just like to encourage I'm just here to encourage him to just be as free as possible does it scare you for watching him for the future and what the world's becoming and where it's going or is it excites you know what I was thinking a little bit more in the cynical spectrum when he was like an infant but now I'm thinking like this is great the world is great you can do all these things and I'll help him do it and it's scary to think like that some of the creativity might get crushed out of him so I'm trying to keep it as open as possible now but you know some people think the world is scary now or I think it's just like so much fun to be alive right now in this world yeah it's a fascinating it's fascinating time to be a creative person especially in LA it's just like a crazy building boom going on here it's just wild wild projects huge scale projects the Olympics are coming here the world cup is coming here and all the filming production studios are moving here Apple Netflix Amazon everybody it's just an amazing creative mecca of the universe unlike anything else the rebel thinking the pushing back on rules where does structure fit into your life well I try not to have any structure but kids need structure so obviously like there is like some structure sometimes yeah what do you find the structure do you wake up at the same time every morning no I mean I tried desperately not to do that so every day when I take notes I take notes differently so some days I take notes on post it sometimes I write it on my body sometimes it's a notebook because if you do something repetitively then you then it becomes unconscious and then you're not aware of it so if you have to make notes differently every day how do you keep track of all your nights it's kind of like you don't you know things things move fast and so like I just write the notes to remember to do something and then I do it and then and then it's done so but you know I try to do different things at different times of the day each day but I also try to set a time like heads down don't bother me like I'm in the zone like don't mess with me so do you have certain rituals or routines then no no no the ritual would be is is that I approach my ritual would be I approach everything as if it's a project so even taking a she bath with my son I'll be in the bathtub with him and maybe we have a bread bag an empty bread bag cuz like you know maybe we don't have any toys so and then we'll fill it up and we'll use it as a punching bag because it's just like funny and like what is water splashing around the bathroom hell yeah but is that a problem no so you know it's just like have fun make some bubbles punch some bread bags what about driving around so like obviously I've been previously New York East Coast I guess people driving less LA you sort of need a car how has that changed the way you think about ideas and create well that's a good question I grew up driving cars not good at them I crashed a lot when I was younger then being in New York I hadn't had a car for 16 years I did have a car for a couple months my sister bought this BMW for a dollar gave it to me I had it on the upper west side I got a ticket every day sometimes twice a day so after like a thousand dollars in tickets and like a week you're like no way forget it you know get rid of the car so I gave it back to my sister why would the ticket to move your car every like ten hours to change and so on so I did get I ended up getting a motorcycle which I think that's maybe more interesting story of how I met Christopher Walken with on the motorcycle bus so but now to back to your point in LA driving I kind of use it as a safe meditative moment where I listen to pop creative podcast another podcast it says a great time to be just because it's an hour commuting from Los Feliz to Culver City and so it's weird to have a car it also feels very liberating and free because we'll just drive like randomly to Ohio or to Palm Springs or Joshua Tree just like randomly like people think it's so far but it's like it's only an hour two hours like that's nothing like we can go there and back like I'll go to oh hi for dinner and come back and so I love that the freedom that that gives plus in LA in 45 minutes you're in in totally new paradise you never have to go have vacation because you're in vacation but the car I mean that book on the road by car about just had such a profound influence on me I just like love that idea of like freedom of just like and I'm a Sagittarius also just like being able to go anywhere I want at any moment it's important to me what you've been to Melbourne a few times yeah what's any I mean that's out the town any any good stories any kind of creative inspo that's come out of Australia well first of all Australia in general just fascinating design wise just like all the design experimentation that's going on there is wild I was incredibly touched and moved by the the amount of thoughtfulness that went into all the design that I saw there no one in particular just because I ended up there and like all the people that I met were mostly in Melbourne super fascinating very experimental and creative group of people like LA in the way and it's not like I don't give a f but it's like let's try stuff because we're in Australia and we're far away from anything so you don't you don't care you're just going to end it you're just like what we're we love food and coffee and like live to live a life and that's the people and that's the attitude I got there even so like random strangers I met we're like hey let's collaborate and let's make a music festival and so we ended up doing that three or four years now it's called swell music festival it's just like an experimental choose your own weird interactive how to interact with music in general but also like how to act with musicians and bands and it's a super experimental like on the cusp of cutting-edge how to listen to music in a totally new way it's really it's really cool I need more random saying to me let's collaborate yeah because then I might I might think this person might be bullshitting how do you know when someone says let's collaborate and you go yes or no how do you know when to say yes or no random so like I'm not totally into astrology but I just had my star chart red I don't know anything of what it means but what I'm getting from it was I'm like all my signs are heading towards all being Sagittarius with some I think my moon is in Pisces so what I was told was is that I pick up on the energies of the people that are around me and so I feel like when somebody's like hey you want to collaborate I can tell right away if they mean it or if they don't mean it and plus like if you have a second meeting or third meeting then you'll know right away so like say you want to collaborate and then like just have a follow-up meeting and then you'll know how serious people are but I think people already have a sense for me of like I'll do it like I'll do anything once no matter what it is so I'm totally game with collaborating on anything shoes I did make a pair of shoes based on like sound so the shoes would move around while you walked around based on the sounds of the environments that they were in with United nude and like other like weird collaboration so yeah I mean if you're gonna come to me and be like do you want to collaborate I'm going to say yes I'll think of an idea and then I'll be giving you a visit before before the episode started you grab your phone put it onto your desk how has the connectedness and phones change the way that you create or live life you know I like the ability to share ideas fast with random people in the office or outside of the office friends will be like hey check this out hey check this out or even just like people in the office or like Brooks I saw this you know this and it's so great to be able to see and share ideas fast we don't use them in terms of like inspiration per se of like oh look at all these images and I'm gonna just turn the design into these images what we'll use like emotions and feelings and ideas that we get from the images but then you know we have discussions about them and and we you know we kind of like iterate from there but it's a great starting point and a way to share ideas quickly which didn't happen before even clients and this is a really unique way of operating of like clients are texting us like gone are the days that you spend three months putting a huge presentation together and the presentation is like six hours long it's like not representing every two weeks intermediate quick fast so we can do things much faster and much quicker and so when clients are sending you Instagram images through direct messaging in Instagram it's just a faster way of communicating and I think it moves and pushes the boundaries faster and further quicker it's intense everything becomes more intense that way but I believe it pushes the boundaries quicker and it allows for everyone to feel that they're being that they're collaborating with a team and not just like one person have you had to create limitations around it or I guess if you're having that stimulus like I guess you're into a lot of input just constantly having input and stimulus if you've got a noisy client who might not necessarily be providing the best inputs can you just sort of filter self-filter that in real time or do you have mechanisms to control your inputs I mean that's a good question I think all like like just give it to me and I'll filter it you know like just I think all all input is good input and you know this idea of like a win-lose scenario that's what people talk about win-lose I haven't found a scenario where the lose scenario cannot be flipped to a win so in any given moment I'm gonna try to take the win-lose and make it a win-win everyone benefits this way so if you just go around with your life in your life now and like your everyday like just think oh this is a win-lose like just flip the lose and it is a win-win and then everyone has so much happier that way how do you find out if you're in the middle of a pitch or you're speaking to clients how do you identify when it is that win-lose and how would you adjust well I mean ultimately like the pitches can be win-win pitches and you still not selected for the project so that's fine too you know it's just the projects take a long time so you also need to vibe with the people and like the the personalities all it's a lot like matchmaking I think when you are working with with clients I think of it as like a matchmaker in a way but in terms of like recognizing the lose scenarios I think it's pretty it's pretty easy because you're like why is there friction going on you're like if you're asking for this and I'm trying to deliver that if there I think it's just a communication issue like I didn't communicate it correctly or your your wishes were communicated to us quickly and so it's just about fine-tuning our our our method of communicating with each other our ideas so I'll try to just like well I hear what you're saying but like did you think about this or I'm hearing this is that what you said so it's just like kind of reiterating what the clients switching it do you think time restrictions say on a project conducive to you know nailing a creative concept so time expands to the task expands to the time assigned you have a short period of time can you still do a great work in the short period of time the answer is yes time time time time time time time time so sometimes the more time is not good then you then you you lose focus sometimes short amounts of time are really good but it's a very intensive I mean it's like that story about Picasso doing the sketch on a napkin for this guy in like 10 seconds and then the guys like how much you went for it and Picasso was like 20 million or whatever and he's like but it took you five seconds you know he's like but it took me my whole life to draw that for you right so a lot of it is like that of like the the relativeness of time doesn't matter you're the same creative like I'm not gonna be less creative and because I have less amount of time it's just it's just the willingness to be intense about it upfront the project moves so fast now time really isn't a considerable considerable factor the expectation you're doing the same amount of work in this in a faster amount of time now that's just a norm and unfortunately but although it's it's exciting but it's just an intensity level goes beyond personal branding or personal brand do you think is it a dirty phrase or do we embrace it well I think brand is important so people can understand like what services and what difference you different differentiates you from other other offices no I don't think that's dirty word at all I think it's super helpful like you know what you're gonna get when you go to Apple and you know what you're gonna get if you go to you know the gap or something so what about like the personal level so I guess you've got your business but then you've got you as an individual yeah how much of the things come natural to you and this is just these are the glasses that I wear and this is the place that I have on versus this is what Brooks would wear this is what I want this is what I'm wanting to communicate to people yeah well I think the beauty of office on title in particular is like you're encouraged to just be you like what we would never like crush people's identity or their own creative freedoms because what that would be limiting that would be like putting blinders on right and so we don't want to do that you know I'm just I'm just born this way and so like yeah I have a funny jacket on and like cuz that's just the way that I like the jacket I mean it's like a smoking jacket right but like with weird Japanese tattoos on it I couldn't pull it off I couldn't rely just because I get hot very quickly yeah is it like to place and stuff becoming shoes in our line or your layers are important so leather is really great that's the main reason I moved here is so I can wear leather I want to hear the story of Christopher Walken okay okay so well you talked about what does the car mean to you and it's really more about a motorcycle and so I grew up racing sailboats with my dad he started racing when I was three and like so being on a sailboat is very philosophical and that sounds weird I know but like it's very quiet you're following the we're chasing the wind basically you're watching the wind move around on the water and then you chase it to try to go faster so it's very Zen it's very philosophical it's very beautiful to me also being from the Midwest being out on the water being pushed around by the wind also was very scary but in a beautiful way like it felt like flying then I'm living in New York and I'm a younger brother and I go out to Connecticut and my family lives out there and I was like his name's Will I was like well teach me how to ride a motorcycle and so he did ha and then I just took it and drove it back to the city the same day like I just stole it from him I drove back to New York City so now I have a motorcycle in New York City which is crazy because I live on the upper West side I'm wearing leather pants I have a motorcycle that's not the vibe of the upper West side I'm standing out so everyone in the neighborhood knows me there that's Brooks you know he doesn't motorcycle okay so I'm driving around on the motorcycle leather pants I don't fit in I went to Columbia for my master's in architecture so that's why I live up there on the West side plus the boat basin on 82nd Street is like a hundred feet from my apartment so I ended up sailing sailboats on the Hudson and giving tours I have a captain so I have my captain's license my friend has a 42 foot sailboat so I'm sailing giving tours after work around the Statue of Liberty blah blah blah sailboat so that's super funny so anyways so I have the motorcycle and I'm just sitting on my street when you start the motorcycle you warm it up for a second so I'm sitting on the motorcycle I'm warming it up and then I get this tap on my shoulder of this like man hand I can tell because it's like a tough tap on my hand and he's like hey kitty boy what's up and I was like what the fuck so I turned around and it's Christopher Walken and I was like oh hey Chris what's up and I turned off the motorcycle and he's like hey I seen you around and I was like okay okay I hope that's okay good thing and he's like yeah do you live here and I was like yeah I live right there across the street and he's like you got a motorcycle you don't fit in around here do you and I was like no you know Chris no I don't fit in and he's like so I live right here and I was like okay cool you know and it's right there I'm in front of his house and his brown stone he's like you want to come up for a glass of wine and I was like you're not gonna cut me up into little pieces and eat me are you because like I was terrified like he might do that I don't know like he's been in there part of me in the face of the southern guy yeah that's a lot from what I mean exactly so I was terrified but also like yeah dude of course of course so he brought me in and like gave me a tour of his house which is crazy awesome because he has all these like weird things from different movies so it's like definitely a place to cut people up and eat them like that's the place to do it and maybe you wouldn't think a famous guy is gonna do that yeah but not he wouldn't do that Chris well he's giving me the store and then he he his wig maker lives next door so and they're like conjoined the brown stones and he's like I'll come over to check it out and I was like this is weird because now I'm having silence of the lands flashback because it looks like if you never seen somebody make wigs they make them with real human hair and it's like a loom and it looks like they're going to cut you up into EU and then put you on the loom and make a wig out of you so I was like even more terrified so I was like I'm never coming out of this place alive like you've taken me and I'm never gonna see the light of day but no they didn't eat me and I'm here talking to you now that's great a week make it I mean is that a common thing Chris walking ways a week is that I don't know I mean I don't know I mean I can answer that yeah it'll be weird you're talking about podcasts that you listen to what what are some that you enjoy so right now I'm listening to Dolly Parton's America it's amazing I love her so much too she's amazing and it's a fascinating insight into her and how she everyone loves Dolly Parton everyone doesn't matter who you are or where you're from or what color your skin is or where you came from or if you're an immigrant or not like everyone loves Dolly Parton it's amazing and why is that and that's what the podcast is kind of about yeah cool so I'm listening to that and I'm listening to hidden brain on NPR which is a fascinating podcast and I also love radio lab is another those are my top ones yeah great I'm lovely well thank you so much for giving us the full it feels like the Brooks experience yeah getting the toy getting to say both toilets getting to say out the back with the three day printing we get a photo of us in the toilet sound weird but I think we need to leave for the photo we post you have any plans of coming back to Australia anytime soon I would like to come back I would probably do another music festival it's also well you know I actually haven't actually gotten to go to any festival just because I had my son and something coming up so I got missing it but I would like to go back if we do another one otherwise like come back for design week and see what's going on yeah well thanks for having us yeah in the Coachella room yeah thank you so much I'm honored to be here today I appreciate the time thanks thanks Brooks it's a daily talk show if you've enjoyed the show feel free to share it on Instagram and the stories tag us up feel free to email as well hi padella talk show dot com otherwise we'll see you guys