How Root Architecture Designed the $11M Green Gables Visitor Centre — and Why Atlantic Canada Architects Can't Specialize | Kendall Taylor

0:03Welcome back to the Atlantic Construction Podcast. I'm your host, Daniel Arsenault. On this episode we have Kendall Taylor of Root Architecture. We'll be talking about Kendall's 10-year anniversary of starting his own firm, his experience working on the Green Gables Visitor Centre in Prince Edward Island, many other milestone projects throughout the Atlantic provinces, and more. Hope you enjoy. Welcome back to the Atlantic Construction Podcast — very excited to have with us today Kendall Taylor from Root Architecture. Thanks for being here, Kendall. Thank you for having me. Your 10-year anniversary—

0:40Yeah, Root Architecture. It's been a lifelong journey. I was very lucky as a kid — I had a father who was sort of a cabinet maker and a grandfather who was a carpenter, and my other grandfather was a jack of all trades. So I learned how to hammer and saw when I was old enough to hold them in my hand and be of some help to somebody. And when I turned about 14 I knew I wanted to get in the construction business, and I thought, well, maybe I'll try this

1:11architecture thing and see how that goes. I went to Saint Mary's and took general sciences, then I went into engineering, and then I made it into architecture. I graduated in '85 at 23 years old — very young, which is good and also sometimes challenging, because you need to be very mature and know yourself really well as a person to excel in the business. It's very subjective. But you're one of the first LEED-accredited architects in Atlantic Canada to become—

1:50LEED accredited? Is that right? Yeah. I was lucky — back in 2001 I worked on a project at BIO and they were very interested in sustainability, so we started doing research and developed a project with the first green of its kind in Canada, actually, at the energy centre. It was a seawater cooling plant, so it was kind of cool that way. And then we put in some PV panels — there were hardly anybody who could supply them then — so that kind of got me thinking about LEED and things that

2:23were starting to emerge out of the U.S. around that time. And so myself and a bunch of fellow architects and people in the industry that were keen on it, we started the Atlantic chapter of the CAGBC. And then I became LEED accredited, and then in 2004 I put my name into the arena to be on the national — the first national board of directors. So I sat on that for four years and it was just an amazing experience, some amazing people. Give us a little background on the Canadian Green

2:54Building Council and what it is and how it — yeah. So it emerged out of the U.S. There are three or four noted people that sort of founded the U.S. Green Building Council, and several of the founders of the Canada Green Building Council were very connected to that. There were four or five people at the time — Kevin Hydes, Peter Busby, a few others — started the Canada Green Building Council with the help of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and Vivian Menasquez, another person.

3:28So they were sort of the groundbreaking people that started getting it going in the country, and it started really in 2003-2004, and it was in 2004 that it got some traction right across the country. I wonder if you could give us some perspective on just the timeline — seeing as that's something you were involved in from the start, you know, 25-30 years ago now — the way things are now with sustainability kind of being at the forefront more. Like, what have you noticed most about the

3:59the shift and the change in the last 20 years? Well, it's been amazing and yet it's a long way to go. I mean, you know, in the beginning we had set some goals that we thought we could achieve by 2015, and that's six years ago now, and we still haven't achieved them. But you kind of have to put things out in front of you and chase them to do things. And the challenge — the challenge was in Atlantic Canada, working here — most

4:30of our projects are relatively small. We have a lot of levels of government and policy changes that need to be implemented, as opposed to a big city like Toronto or Vancouver where you know you have one mayor, one type of thing. So getting the traction in this region was hard. It's geographically the most complicated place in North America, climate-wise. It's just, you know, to get to parts of this region is very complex and time-consuming, and we don't have a mass of people in one area. So

5:09trying to transform this market has been challenging. We don't have a manufacturing base here like other parts of North America, so a lot of challenges. But you know, when I started my project at BIO I had to source the PV panels from Germany — there was nobody that could do that in Atlantic Canada at the time — and now you could go to any industrial park in Atlantic Canada and find several suppliers that would be more than happy to sell them to you. So for our listeners that don't know, that's

5:42photovoltaic — solar panels? Yeah, yeah. So the photo panels — sorry, the acronyms just creep in everywhere. I know, so many acronyms. Yeah. But everything's, you know, been definitely going in the right direction. I mean, having the past president of the United States hasn't helped progress, but we had a similar problem when we started — the government of Canada wasn't supporting us like they used to and we were worried about it. We had a backup plan; we were working

6:15on a backup plan. But the CAGBC originally, when it started, was growing at a rate of 10% per month despite the fact that the federal government pulled funding. And when the Liberals came back in power they put the funding back in place again and supported it again. So it's gained more traction. I'm not as involved in it as I was in the early years — my practice has just kind of made me focus more on my business — than yeah, than that. But I spent 10 years

6:45both locally and at the national level. Right, yeah. And you've won some awards over the years as well, with your business, with Root Architecture. Yeah, yeah. And those were awards that you were nominated for by your peers. Maybe tell us about a few of those — I know those are really exciting milestones for you. Yeah, one of the — I guess the greatest one that I — you know, as architects, most architects like to design their own homes.

7:14I was very fortunate to do that, and I won an award of merit for that in 1999. And I still live there — I plan on living there for as long as I can. And then I won a few awards for different firms I worked with over the years and with teams that I worked on — some really exciting projects at Dalhousie. The air traffic control tower was quite a project. And just recently, since we started our business, the Green Gables project has

7:47gotten some good traction. Unfortunately, with COVID, a lot of the awards programs have been put in stall mode. But hopefully as this year unfolds, maybe we'll get lucky. I was very flattered and humbled by being given the 2019 Architect of the Year award from the Atlantic WoodWorks group. That was quite an experience. I was in a room full of people I had a lot of admiration for, and walking around the room and seeing all the projects that

8:22were there — people are working with wood in this region — I thought there was a lot of talent in Atlantic Canada. I was quite taken by some of the quality of the designs throughout the region while we were there. They had quite a nice exhibit. And just recently we got a Canada Wood Council award. That's just fresh off the plate — that was probably two or three weeks ago. Yeah, I know, that's nice.

8:54It's great. It makes all of the — makes all the hard work worthwhile. Yeah, there's a lot of work that goes into running a business and you've got to do a lot of difficult, you know, utilitarian projects before you get one that's a little more glamorous sometimes. But they're the ones that help you thrive. When you do get a good design project you say, well, you know what, I can spend some time on this, make it worth something. Yeah.

9:22When those ones come around it really gets your passion for the — yeah. I remember the day that we were awarded the Green Gables project. It was a Thursday. I was going away for a four-day trip in August, and I had just been rejected on two small RFPs that morning and I was like, yeah, that's not so great, but we'll get by. And I got this email from Public Works: you've been selected, the project manager will be reaching out to you next week to discuss the

9:52startup for the Anne of Green Gables Visitor Centre. And I was like, what? Are you serious? It wasn't like — the reaction I had to that email — the email was just another email to the person who sent it, but to me it was like, holy — and from that moment on it was just exciting. And to have been involved in that project — this is located in Cavendish, PEI, yeah. And one of the author's — one of Anne of Green Gables' creator Lucy Maud

10:25Montgomery's sayings, if I can quote it correctly here: "It's delightful when your imaginations come true, isn't it." And it was her talking about her book, and it's written on one of the fences there, and it just resonates so well with an architect — to see your buildings being created. And the people that ran the facility had such amazing things to say at the grand opening. It's just really nice. If I never get a chance to design a building of

10:58that order of magnitude again, at least I'll always know that I had some contribution to that one. Tell us a little bit about the specific building, the Green Gables Visitor Centre, and the design — things that stand out to you. So it started out — we had a big design charrette that was held in Charlottetown with all different levels of Public Works and Parks Canada. It was originally set out to be a three-phase project because there was an existing visitor centre

11:29that was old and didn't do its job well. The first phase was to add on to the old barn. So what we did is we sort of pulled a little bit of contemporary architecture into the north side of the barn — we're not allowed to touch the south side, that's very historical — and so we pulled a few modern elements into that. And then when we got into phase two, which is the main building, it's about 12,000 square feet.

12:02The overall budget of the project was around $11 million. It primarily had the visitor centre — the main purpose of it was to start to showcase the author. Everybody goes to see the aura of Anne and what Anne of Green Gables means to people from all over the world. But the author was the main focus of the exhibit centre — to tell that story. And so there are three different zones in the exhibit hall, and that's sort of the main

12:36focus of the building. Plus we created a very large lobby space to allow people to gather and collect. People travel from China, Japan — and this is one of their stops on their route. They can arrive there — sometimes there are 500 people land there at that site at once. Twelve — you know, 12, maybe 18 buses can be accommodated now. And they have 45 minutes to 90 minutes to be on site and then they've got to go again. So we had a scenario that we planned the

13:11building out for — they call them the "stairs," the "streakers," and the "strollers." The streakers are the people that don't want to read anything — they just want to go right to the house, get through there, and go have an ice cream. The strollers are people that might meander through the exhibit but they don't read anything. And then the "stairs" — they read everything. So you kind of have to — we had to really think about how people move through the building that way and go through

13:38the other challenge we had: the biggest building on site was the barn at 6,000 square feet, and we had to build a 12,000 square foot building. And so we studied local architecture there, vernacular architecture. They were looking for a modern contemporary building, but we needed to really make sure that when you walk up to the building you don't sense that this building is a monster on the site — it needs to fit in. So we were very respectful of the building forms. I'm sorry —

14:14it fit really well into my past and my history because as a young kid I used to spend time at my grandparents, and I was in the barns every weekend when I was around 10 years old. Is that here? No — it's up in the Musquodoboit Valley and Dean settlement, yeah. So to draw from your childhood — oh, it was like, okay, I can get into this really easy, you know. It was very natural for me to be inspired by barn structures and

14:40the simplicity and the beauty of them, you know. And so we built on that. And then as we were working along, we kind of migrated from a conventional barn structure into a post-and-beam frame, which went really well — it was a full natural sort of old school post and beam. And then we moved into mass timber on phase two, sort of eventually making one step away from the past but still respectful of the architecture and connecting it all together.

15:13And so Green Gables — the Green Gables project must have been part of your winning the Atlantic WoodWorks — oh yeah, yeah. It's got some elements and features that are really good for the industry. The nail-laminated timber is so simple — it's just basically two-by-fours on their side nailed together. They're engineered; they come in components. They were 14 feet wide, maybe six by 14, and put in place by crane. Very simple technology. You can use two-by-six to

15:46two-by-eight, two-by-ten — you can span a long ways with these — and they're such simple structures yet they're so beautiful in the end. Yeah. So I know there's a hip roof there? Yeah, there are a few — there's a flat roof that kind of pulls it all together, there's a clerestory at the centre with the tree structure in the middle, and then there are a few roofs that pop up just to kind of break the mass down, create some interest inside. Well, it's amazing to hear you talk

16:17about that project — obviously a lot went into it and it seems like it was meant to be. Yeah, it's — you know, really great. When we finished phase two we had the grand opening. There was a princess from Japan who arrived and a lot of fanfare. And then myself and the project team from Parks Canada and Public Works went out and had dinner and a couple of beverages, and that in itself is a nice ending, I guess, to a project. And

16:50you know, people are still quite working together, and we created relationships, and I think that's a reward in itself — to end the project and still celebrate like that. Yeah. To not only accomplish something together — we never knew each other before this project — and yet we became friends. I'm very proud of that too. I think that's — I like the awards but I'm pretty

17:22proud that we're still pretty good friends and have great respect for each other too. And you're working so closely with these people on these massive projects, so much attention to detail. Yeah. And to become an advocate for a client and someone that they can count on — to tell them what they need to hear and tell it to them the right way, and be honest and hardworking — that's a great reward. Yeah, for sure. Other than Green Gables, is there — I

17:52know you mentioned the air traffic control tower at Halifax International Airport. Is there any other project that kind of stands out, recently or in the past? Either good or bad, maybe? Yeah. In this market you end up — you have to get your sleeves rolled up and get involved in all kinds of scales of projects. You just can't survive in this market as a specialist —

18:23you know, people ask me that all the time and I say absolutely nothing — I don't specialize in anything intentionally — because if you're not in Europe, it's Atlantic Canada. Well, if you're in a bigger market and you have a passion for healthcare or you have a passion for houses or something, you can work from that. But in this market I think you can't specialize in building here without having a broader client base — you have to move beyond the borders of this region. So there's lots of projects.

18:59I found when I worked with — I used to work with Lydon Lynch, and we worked on the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Dalhousie with Diamond. I was about 15 years into my career at that point. I was feeling a bit stale, and that project just made me realize what's possible. I worked with the firms at the time and it went on to win an award of excellence through the architects association. It just reminded me why I got into this business and why I'm going to keep

19:33working on it. It was kind of a turning point — it was a refresh, and it was a nice time to reflect on. It's a great addition to the Dalhousie campus. I've worked on a few projects at NSCC as well. The Governor's Hall is an interesting study of historicism — replicating the past is sort of the culture there — and it's an interesting project. It just went up as design-build. Yeah, there are a lot of different projects like that over my career that

20:10the air traffic control tower — we used to say it was like building a Swiss watch. It was amazing what we had to fit into this building. The upper two floors were above and beyond the building code — the building code didn't matter on those two floors, it was air safety that mattered. And the way in which the tower was built, the glass is like 800 pounds each piece of glass, and it's set in place on 30-degree angles, and then 19 — I think it's 19 segments of

20:43the circle. And the technology of building it and designing it was pretty intense — a lot of custom stuff. And it was fun, it was challenging, and rewarding in the end. Everything had a backup system, you know. Yeah, it was pretty amazing, pretty serious operation in there. Yeah, yeah for sure. And yeah, we have a few projects — we've got a nice little project we designed in Eastern Passage, a little

21:16art gallery for an artist there, Art Hanneberry. Unfortunately they're just going into fundraising when COVID hits, so that's going to be put on the back burner. But a very colourful individual from Eastern Passage who started painting — and his paintings are amazing. When I saw his paintings I was like, you have to walk right up to them and realize that they're not a photograph, the detail is so fine. And they're all ocean-

21:49driven. He's got one of the Bluenose, the Titanic — he's got about 40 or 50 of them. This is in Dartmouth? It's in Eastern Passage. It's going to go in right by their property, Fisherman's Cove. And that'll be a nice little addition — it's a nice little spot over there. Cool, yeah. So yeah, it's interesting as a small firm — we try to find our identity, what it is we're doing. And I like to be very active in the projects.

22:19I don't see myself being a 20-person architectural firm and managing people. I want to be — and so you just have two employees, is that correct? Currently, yeah. I'd like to get two to five, I think that's my goal right now. Shout out to anyone looking for — yeah. But yeah, like a senior technologist with 15 years of experience — yeah. Never know who's listening. That's right. Yeah, but to me I don't want it to grow just by numbers — I want it to grow

22:53because the person is the right fit. It's hard to recruit people right now — it's a completely different time. When I started the business it was hard to find work, and now it's hard to find good employees. That's just the luck of the draw. Yeah, but even if the skill and the competencies are there, sometimes the core values — like you said, the person's fit — yeah. And you know, it's a tough business when everybody's

23:22now recruiting, you know, like everything's going through recruitment. Yeah. It's hard to — you've got to be cautious as an employer to your staff like never before, and provide them — I always tell people, you know, working with Kendall they want to work with you. It's kind of like what you're saying — you have to build a rapport, you have to have a reputation that goes with your business. Yeah, yeah. No, it's — after a while I have great rapport — not just

23:57with some of the clients, but in the construction business I've had people say, you know, "You're firm but you're fair." I said that's a very good compliment coming from the construction side — to say that you're fair. And you know, people are going to make mistakes and you've got to find solutions. There are mistakes on everything that I've ever worked on — there's no perfect job. And if you can see

24:27through why someone's coming to you with a problem, or what the problem is, and then sort out the solution — you get a lot of respect. And when I go to a construction site I try to connect with people and at least acknowledge them. Wearing a white hat, as an architect, I know I'm a target, and it's — you try to connect with people whenever you can and make them realize that you're just like them, you're here to do

24:54a job. And you can learn a lot too — there's a lot to learn. You don't learn everything you need to know in this business in the office. Yeah, 100%. Well, it's funny you bring that up because that's really one of the biggest motives of this podcast — to try and bring together all the players in the industry, right from the guys building on site to architects like yourself to developers. Yeah, so many players, and you're right —

25:21you could never stop learning. There's just so many — every project has its own challenges. And in this market, I mean, we've got what, 25 cranes in the air right now? I mean, 15 years ago nobody really put cranes up in Halifax — maybe once every 25 years. So there's an evolution of change. I've been in the business a long time and I never saw any cranes on construction sites very often at all; now it's become very common, yeah. And people are seeing the benefit

25:54of setting them up. And technology too on site — like project management and yeah, it's endless. I have a friend who runs a forming company, and he tells me all these things he's done. I don't know anything about putting cranes up — they're all around us but it's not my business. So there's a lot of stuff. I mean, here we are sitting in front of a barge that's building — yeah, I mean, that's just another whole

26:22industry, right? Exactly. And I think it's healthy that as architects we go to the site with the idea that these people here — they're here, they're proud — they want to do a good job. They may not fully understand where you're coming from, or read the spec the way you wanted it to be read, but they're all here trying to do their job. And we do need each other. I mean,

26:51different mentalities, different ways of looking at things — it's hard. I do find it hard as an architect to go to a construction site. It's not in my DNA to set the tone. My hope is that the tone is — let's work, that's my hope. It doesn't always work out that way, but that's my take on it: let's work together, we're going to need each other. Do you think the industry is more collaborative today than it was 20 years

27:21ago? Yeah. I think a lot of architects and contractors work in the design-build world a lot, and I think that helps the relationships — makes them better and not at loggerheads with each other. I think that has a big impact. I mean, the fact that the contractor is bidding on a job in a design-bid-build and then the next time you're working together in design-build — clients need to understand that that may be the case,

27:51but I've got a job to do here and we're going to work through this. And yeah, there's certainly not — and like you said before, you mentioned earlier, sometimes the strong relationships come — they're a result of having to go through those challenges together and staying with it. And when you know it could go another way — yeah, yeah. You mentioned a certain circumstance that happened years ago, one of your clients, and how you became lifelong friends. Yeah, and you know, just doing the right

28:23thing. And again, "firm and fair" is quite a compliment — I think that means I'm doing my job and I'm doing it the way it should be done. Right. Yeah. And I think the other part that's important is that — as architects — I was lucky when I started. Noel Fowler had — I worked with him for the first three years. And Noel sent me to a project meeting — I was about three months out of school and I had no idea what I was doing. And he

28:54cycled me through three or four projects in a row over the first three years of my career, from design right through to construction administration. I just got to know the business so well during that period of time, and it just gave me a real solid footing. It makes architects better architects when they follow the projects that they're working on from start to finish, as opposed to working in silos where you're the designer, then somebody does the production, then somebody else does the contract admin. On large-scale projects you don't get

29:24the luxury of having somebody doing all three of those components — you need teams in each portion. But well, even with larger architecture firms too, you may not get the chance to — yeah, there's so much segmentation. So it's something I just swear by. It makes better architects, and you go through those cycles — you go through design, production, contract admin, and back again — and what you learn in the field comes back to the drawing table. You learn a lot about the

29:54English language over your lifetime when you're producing drawings, and what you thought made sense doesn't make sense to the person who's reading it. It's clarity — and details. You know, the details can make a lot of difference. As you know in construction, if it says something should be 42 inches, don't say it's

30:20and I think the same thing with contractors and estimators. I remember someone telling me one time, the best estimators are often the guys that had worked on the sites for years, because they're able to just have that inherent intuition — looking through drawings, knowing how long it's going to take. It's not overly difficult to do a square-foot or linear-foot analysis of a set of drawings, but when you know what the details and stuff come up — yeah, you know how long it's

30:51going to take. Oh yeah, that's how it's going to be done. Yeah. It's definitely a great learning experience. And I always — I've got a couple of friends that were site supers; my father-in-law was a site superintendent and we used to talk endlessly. He's a great guy, and I always connect with the site supers. There's something about some of them — I don't know — the fact that they must have to be very good personalities to become site supers, and I think they do. And they have such

31:21a wealth of knowledge. I really like learning from them. I've been in the business a long time and I still like learning from them. Yeah. They — I think that's great. It makes the construction part of things really, really good. They usually want to do the job, get in and get out, and they want their company to make money and they want the job to go well. And

31:47yeah, and it's often a very stressful, high-pressure role. Yeah, for sure. So they have to be that kind of personality that — you know, they're not taking things home with them at the end of the day. But I think it's neat to hear that from an architect — that kind of respect and those relationships with site supers, and even foremen for certain subcontractors, whether it's masonry or landscaping or drywall. Like, these guys are running

32:15crews of 30 to 50 guys, and then they have to collaborate with all the other trades and organize. And you know, my father-in-law's name is George Hatfield, and he was in the construction business his whole life. And when I would go to a construction site and I told them he was my father-in-law, I had instant friends — people would just connect with me. I didn't have to say anything or do anything good or bad; they just loved him. Yeah, he had that kind

32:42of calming — smart, yeah, smart man. Cool as a cucumber. Nothing really got him too upset, and people just rallied around him. Yeah, he was a natural leader probably. Yeah, he just treated people really well and they felt good around him. He was never threatening to them; he just made sure they did their job and he supported them. He was pretty good. Yeah, and that was great for me to always sit and chat.

33:15Yeah, you know, often — yeah, there's so many great people like that in the construction industry. Obviously, in those positions, it's fast-paced and you have to be very intelligent, very organized — all the logistics. But at the same time, the guys on the site that are the blue-collar workers — yeah, they've gotta want to be talking to you as well. So yeah. Yeah. There's a lot — you know, those guys deserve a lot of respect. Those guys are good at what

33:43they do. And often these jobs — these buildings get built, some amazing projects — and nobody outside the industry is going to hear these people's names. But if they're there, the guys know. Yeah. And I think too, the tradespeople that work on an amazing building are pretty proud. Absolutely, yeah. Like, I know the Green Gables crew over there — there are a lot of people that worked on that job who are pretty proud of what they contributed to it. So

34:15yeah, they all should be pretty proud of their contribution. Yeah. I do want to touch on one thing — in case we do run out of time — something that I think is really neat, something that's in your bio and something that's really important to you. Your two daughters Courtney and Sarah, and your wife Krista. I just think it's — and we had a conversation earlier about work-life balance and

34:47you were talking about — in the field there is sort of that rockstar persona, and there's so much going on, it's endless, it's easy to get caught up in. If you had heard an interview of someone you respected years ago who said what regrets he might have had, and it was that he didn't spend enough time — I just, you know, personally and people I know, it's a tough balance in any industry. And I don't think construction is any

35:19different than any other one, but it is a fast-paced industry and there's so much going on in Atlantic Canada right now. So I think it's a good topic to hear someone like yourself chat about — that work-life balance and how important that is. So when I started my career I didn't know where I was going to end up. My family's been here since 1810, and I met my wife and became really good friends with her brothers and family. My brothers and her brothers, we all got

35:51along together really well. Eventually we got married, four years later we built a house in 1996 — five-minute walk from her parents' house and five-minute drive from mine. And when her kids were born, their grandparents became a pretty important part of their life. I tried a couple of times to look at moving away just to re-energize my career path, but we knew what we were giving up — not just my children and my wife, but our extended family. And

36:27you know, it was simply — I don't oversimplify it — but I had no hesitation about knowing what was important. And yes, I could have gone to a bigger city, maybe a bigger centre, and worked on some amazing projects as part of a team with other people. But I could tell that I had a great thing in my life and I wasn't going to compromise it whatsoever for my career. I put my career second, my family first, and that was never a difficult decision for me.

36:58I don't have any regrets that I didn't do it. I'd love to go work somewhere else just for the enjoyment and experience of it. We were ironically thinking of going to North Carolina about 20 years ago when my wife was starting in the IT business, because that was a real hotbed for IT and they had some really good architectural firms there at the time. And the IT business went kind of sour in 2001 after Y2K and so we didn't go. But we would

37:29have only gone for a few years for the experience, for both of us. But no hesitation for me. Yeah. What advice would you give to, you know, young contractors listening — whether they're subcontractors or they have their own business — and they're just kind of overloaded with work, overwhelmed, it makes it tough on the family life? Is it just about saying no to projects that you don't need, or not overextending yourself? Or is it

37:59about having those priorities in order — that you've got to make this time work for yourself? In this industry especially. You know, cut it off at five o'clock or — yeah. I think so. I mean, it's harder in construction — when the sun shines there's a lot of pressure to do the work because it's going to rain tomorrow and you're not going to be working. You can always have a plan. It's a lot harder for the construction

38:25side than if you're working in an office when the weather is determining your fate as far as finances go. But yeah, I think if you've got a life that is pretty important — whether it's your friends or your spouse or your partner, your parents, or whatever it is — work is always going to be there. And there are all kinds of clichés about, you know, you don't reflect back and wish you'd spent more time at work, blah blah blah.

38:55But yeah, I value what I have and how great it is. And as great as it is to win an award as an architect, there's nothing like the rewards of having great friends and relationships with your kids. My two daughters come to supper every Monday night at our house — one of the girls commutes — and we have vegan suppers every Monday for them. They hang around every week — it's just a thing we do now, it's our new ritual.

39:32But yeah, it's a pretty great experience to be a dad and a husband, and I can find another way to make a living. That's amazing — so much respect for that, Kendall. Yeah. Just in closing, is there anything that you'd like our listeners to know, currently or in the future, regarding Root Architecture or anything that comes to mind? Well, I think we're starting to — I guess "we" as in me — I think I'm

40:12a late bloomer, and I think that's okay. I mean, everybody is on their own time clock, and a lot of people are talking about retiring and I'm like, I don't want to. That's why I like your story earlier about the guy who's 65 and decides to start painting — yeah, kind of like a career change. I don't really aspire to retirement from that perspective. I'm getting off path here now. I want to maybe regroup — I had

40:46anything — yeah, anything that you wanted to get out to the listeners and followers, specific to Root Architecture? Anything happening currently or coming down the pipe in the future that's exciting? Yeah, we — we were at an interview yesterday for a really exciting project on a lake in Dartmouth. And I think that type of project — it combines the real strong technical demand. Building a building over top of a lake — how do you do it, how do you build it,

41:18what components go into it? Talking to people I know in the construction industry and saying, hey, how would you do this if you were building this? Because that can influence the design too, right? Respected people, you know. And also at the same time, this is an iconic building and it's Dartmouth — the city of lakes. So I think the one thing I really like about my experience, and I believe in as a strength, is the balance between

41:46the arts and the science, and the ability to — I'm very comfortable talking about building envelope and I'm very comfortable talking about good architecture. And I think I'm very fortunate to work with some really good people and the influence that they've had on me. And that's something that people who come to work for our office — if they can get me to pull my head away from my computer and spend some time with them, which is always challenging in a small firm, but

42:15I think there's a lot that I could teach the youngsters that way, and just sort of share that. It takes time — and you need to experience things on your own too. And passing on your knowledge is a little challenging, I find, sometimes — because you know a lot and you've accumulated it over time, and trying to pass it on to others and communicate it is another new learning experience for me as an employer. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great experience so far. I don't plan on

42:49— as long as people want to keep hiring me I'm going to keep working. That's great to hear. Where can people find Root Architecture? Website, Facebook, Instagram? So we started out — ten years and their website with — we didn't have a whole lot of content, and unfortunately I let that go too long. But we are going to launch a new one in the next probably four to six weeks and focus on our projects that we've done over the years. And I really like — you know, social media has evolved in the last 10 years, and

43:20Instagram is kind of where — I don't subscribe to it daily, but it's a great way to push your stuff, whether it's big or small issues, out into the social media world and send it to where you want it to go, right? That's what I — because it's hard to get people to come to your website. I mean, they can certainly go there, but under our media section we're going to have links to Instagram so that people can also

43:48connect back and forth, because it's too hard as a small firm to keep up with. I mean, there is news, but when do I have time to publish it? So as a small firm we're going to focus on social media, and Instagram seems to be the one of choice — who knows what's coming up next. But yeah, there are all kinds — hard to keep up. Yeah. But they are a great tool for business, yeah. No, it's been

44:17great having you, Kendall. I really appreciate your time. You're the second architect we've had on the show, and we hope to get you back sometime. That's good. I enjoyed it. Thank you very much. All right, thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Be sure to follow us on any podcast platform you use. You can also find us on LinkedIn and Instagram — Atlantic Construction Podcast. Be sure to send us a comment or a review; we'd love to engage with you.