Ladies and gentlemen, happy Friday and welcome back to another SLD meetup, your host, have a great evening, another interesting guest and we're finally in here Miami is seeing a completely beautiful sky in Miami and with everything that we've been facing with here here we can end, it's good to finally get a little bit of calm weather in here and for that we're gonna have one of our favorite architects here in Miami, his name is Cody Fehmann and he's the CEO and founder of Fehmann Architecture, Plaid Design which is a Miami-based architecture company that specializes on super high-end residential projects. How are you? What's happening Cody? How you doing?
I'm doing well, I'm doing well, just trying to stay busy. Well that's a good thing right? This is productive, which is going a lot at the moment. We are, we're busy.
I saw you yesterday with a good friend of ours, Gustavo. Yeah that's a great time meeting Gustavo in person, he seems like an awesome guy so we're looking forward to working with him. So you as I like this energy I like this vibe so it's a lot of what we work for it or look for when we work with people so it's good. Exactly, well thank you for joining us obviously you've been leading the weight of everything that he comes to building all these super high-end properties here in Miami, you're the CEO and founder of Fehmann Architecture, Plaid Design and I'm gonna say the projects that you've been doing, look unbelievable and there is needed to say that a lot of people have been flying into Miami, they wanted to build their new homes, those are here, they want to upgrade and that's why businesses like yours come pretty handy these days huh?
Yeah it's great, it's been, we're very fortunate, we like that people like our work and we like that Miami is a culture of people that come here and they look for something that's unique and bespoke and on that luxury side of thing so it's cool and it's a very interesting time for the city because of this massive massive influx of people in finance so it's been fun and it's been a good time to launch a practice fortunately. So we'll get more into details into the DNA of the brand and the projects that you're currently working on but obviously everybody has the same question right, is this Miami hype ever going to slow down, how do you see it from an architect standpoint, do you still get a lot of requests coming in? We've been getting a lot of requests, a lot of requests still coming in which is good, what I think seeing two things happen, one of which is there's been people that have seen the increase in pricing and everything from the GC and from the actual building side and they're saying hold on let's wait a little bit a few months to then wait till these prices come down to a more reasonable dollar amount and then they're ready to go at that point. So I think what's starting to happen is the second wave of people that have held off for a few months are now starting to say hey well I think now that we're ready to go we're seeing a cool off a little bit so now it's becoming more of a time to get started on our project.
That's one point but then the second point is you know there's still this weird global unrest type of thing happening the COVID is still out there and then you've got a lot of the New Yorkers that are still coming down so you know obviously you've got the Ken Griffin's and their team is all coming down here to Florida so I think with that high-end energy and with that finance those educated individuals that are moving down here those tech companies as well that's going to still continue to happen they're still building infrastructures here that I think Miami probably doesn't even have yet for those kind of large large massive companies and I think it's Miami continues to grow and that aspect still takes those companies I think that that demand for these higher-end homes is still going to continue. As you mentioned makes more sense to build a new home or to buy a property. There is no definite route ever but I would say it really just depends on the client you know if somebody's in 3500 square feet now and they want to get up to 4500 or 5,000 square feet and they own a property doing a renovation in an addition is going to be much better for them but if they're really not happy worth where they're at with the location they want to totally redo their entire home they're going to redo and gut and redo a 4500 square feet at 3,000 or 4,000 square feet I mean you're getting to a point that you could buy a new property and move in and do a brand new home that's going to be financially still a little more expensive but you're going to be getting exactly what you want as opposed to working around the bones of what was existing previously. Do you see opportunities like looking into homes there and some other areas that maybe before they were not as popular?
I think not as much homestead that I'm aware of that I've seen on our end but definitely more towards the North Miami Beach, North Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood so somewhere where if you're not on the Venetian Islands and you're not at that price point where it's 20 million just to get a piece of land you know you move up to that 6,7 for a plot of land and you're getting more reasonable and there's a larger market for that. So as an architect yourself and with a business obviously with big demand what have you experienced being one of the most difficult things to deal with? Starting the practice it's a lot of coming from hands-on to absolutely everything in an architectural project to now you have that plus you have running the business side you have getting the clients if there's any marketing involved so you almost take on this second, third, fourth and fifth job that you need to also roll into and you have to make sure every one of those is successful that is probably been the most challenging part and I think what I've learned from that is just being more trusting in the guys the team I have around me. It's been a balance of really pushing on all aspects of the business and then also making sure to delegate and find new ways of creative ways of you know expediting our processes if something takes two weeks typically how do we get that down to one and how do we systematize it so those kinds of things that you know you're you're transitioning from working on one single project and you're in the thick of the details to okay how do we improve on all of our projects and all of our systems it's more global in thought process.
So how do you end up landing these types of guys how do you grow your business? So I think a lot of what we've found now is that you know people have come down and they've seen these ultra modern kind of more white box houses we definitely do very contemporary modern architecture but I don't like to kind of pigeon my hold myself into one specific design style or aesthetic so if you look at the projects we do we've done you know hyper industrial looking projects to mid-century looking projects to Balinese looking to more traditional looking they've all got a modern spin on that but finding ways to pull elements from all these different types of styles and then manipulate it in a way that it becomes super unique and bespoke here in the Miami market. That's amazing and we'll just say that in the next five years what was the vision for the entertainment architecture? If everything goes well I would like to expand and get you know larger office space maybe get you know 12 to 15 guys and then it'll branch out a little bit from just single family you know I am interested in mid-rise I don't know about high rise so much but maybe some more high end hotel fit outs things like that so diversifying a little bit I think would be good but you know for now and for me when I've always dreamt of is the single family market I also think expanding outside of the more south Florida market I think getting over to Tampa possibly California I'm dying to get to New York the Hamptons international projects will be amazing so I think focusing more so on that but for the time being I haven't really thought too too much that far but it's like I want to make sure that the projects we have ongoing now are as great as they can be and I think that's naturally going to lead to some additional opportunities.
Unfortunately what we've been seeing in the last few days with Hurricane Ian devastating everything that went through those areas you know so horrific videos from Naples, Formayers, Tampa and everything through the coasting that the mall is a lot of the houses so as an architect is that an opportunity to help out with the renovations and get into that market or how do you face a situation like this? I think so I think so I mean obviously I'm weren't it's awful it's you know it's a storm like that there's only so much you can do but I think one of our biggest things is educating the clients you know if someone comes to me and they say well I want to save every dollar I can I don't want to raise my floor slab I don't want to put in new windows we want to save a low 50% rule so we don't have to do all those things you know there's a certain liability that we have that we say you know we can we could get there we could do that but if you look at these natural disasters that happen we are you know one of the beautiful things is we're right at the sea level and people love that and people come here for that but it has this natural risk for it so I think our job as architects is to say hey if you do this if something like this happens there's going to be massive massive repercussions so informing them you know raising your floor slabs doing understories making sure that we're meeting all the wind loads so when you see and as I hate to say this but when you see those homes that are left standing now those are all typically elevated they're structurally very strong they have hurricane impact windows they have hurricane straps so there's all these things that the code now requires you to do to withstand that for you right now when you're working with these clients have you seen a shift in their I guess demand or on the stacks on how they want things done yep absolutely I mean that was the first conversation we have with one of the clients yesterday they were saying what is the elevation of our flood zone how high are we're going we're going here we're going here but the wind it was 145 mile per hour wind well we're rated for 175 we can go up to 225 so just letting them know that we're doing all the things that we should and can be doing you know we've got all the flood bins in the garage and letting them know that hey if you're below flood that is supposed to be for building access storage and parking so anything that goes down there is is meant and can be ruined in a massive storm like this quick question and just a random one what's the weirdest or wildest thing that I never requested you to do right now we're working on a property it's a good sized property but they have a pickleball court on the a large portion of the property so as a result the house has had to kind of fit along this long slender piece of the property whereas you know it's still it's a double size lot but because you want to have that pickleball court north south it really pushes you know you can't have the sun in your eyes so it really pushes the house so we've got a footprint of the house that has the opportunity to be this long big sprawling footprint and we're now reducing it to the very small so we're working around you know the pickleball court is the project and the house is almost you know secondhand that's probably the most interesting ongoing thing right now sure that we always ask all of our guests is about the word luxury it comes in so many different shapes and forms but what is it for you to me I would think oasis so you know every day you go out you use things you take trains you write in cars all these things that you walk into and you do that are designed and built by other people and you're just kind of you know you have to use those things when you come to us and you get to build your own home it's this really special moment in time where you get to create your own personal oasis so what's something that you could share with the audience i take away something that you learned over all these years i think and i don't think i came up with this on my own i think i naturally is just in my DNA is i think must have set it at one point but it's i hate to say don't sleep but it's you know if you've got 40 hours of working time in a week and there's certain expectations that are set well if you work 50 if you work 60 you're you're rapidly increasing your acceleration of times of learning your input on projects the people that you're meeting i think that's one of the things that maybe to my own health detriment but you know really really working a lot a long hours and a lot of time and you know weekends and things like that and just fortunately for me it's it's a passion of mine so i enjoy it so it doesn't really feel like work but you know it's hard to tell someone to do that on something they're not passionate about but if you have something you're truly passionate about i would say just work at work at time and time and just getting as much time as you can and something learning as much as you can i think that's going to elevate you a lot quicker than you know if you kind of just go the status quo and wait for things to crop up no i i i think that's fantastic and i love it because we also refer to the same thing it's like okay they might outplay you or whatever but i'll work you something that you can control it's like okay i'm gonna work more than anybody else the key is to make sure that within that angle of outworking people you're starting to outsmarting people you start to do it right it's gotta be effective go right otherwise you're just like pounding your fingers yes but work usually leads to failures with failures lead to experiences lessons and therefore growth so i do believe that more work that you put into the more of those failures that you'll have and the more successes that you'll get over time so i agree with you and it was you know a pleasure having this conversation with you you're a very happy for having me on very special so big plans and obviously if we can help you achieve your vision of the next five years we're here for you and for those watching or listening now or later please follow Cody and the theme and architecture team that you know i love to see all the post because to see those beautiful properties is just inspiring i actually live right in front of Stylan so every time i come first the first thing i do is you know i aim and i look at a property and it's like money for station that's gonna be my fault so right right this is like an easier way to to to manifest something daily just to go into Cody's stage and just look at all these beautiful homes well when you get that one on star you better be the only one you call right there you go let's make it happen all right Cody well anything else that you would like to share before we're up this up i think we're good all right well thank you again Cody we should do best of luck and i'm sure we'll get together at some point here in my own awesome thank you so much bye thank you everybody bye bye and thanks again for everybody tuning in today we hope you enjoyed it and remember embrace each beautiful success in life my name is Alvaro and i'll see you next time