Side of Design
A podcast from BWBR, for those with a craving to take their organizations and spaces to new heights, with a side of design. We explore topics and issues affecting how we heal, learn, work, research, play and pray with those whose passion and expertise centers on the spaces that enable us to do all of that.
Side of Design
Side Notes: The Human Element in High-Tech Facilities
In the debut episode of Side Notes, a bite-sized version of Side of Design, host Matt Gerstner sits down with Nate Roisen, BWBR’s Science + Technology Practice Leader, to explore the evolving world of design and innovation in the market. In just under 15 minutes, they cover what excites Nate about the current landscape, the biggest challenges clients face, and what makes designing in this field so rewarding.
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Welcome to Side Notes, the bite-sized version of Side of Design. In 15 minutes or less, we'll explore one idea, one insight or one conversation worth hearing. Let's get to it. Welcome to our first episode of Side Notes, the bite-sized version of Side of Design. I'm your host, Matt Gerstner. Joining me today is Nate Roizen, Principal and Science and Technology Practice Leader with BWBR, and we're going to take a closer look at the science and technology market today. Nate, thanks for making time to be here Terrific to be here. Thanks, Matt. All right, we're just going to get right into it. So, Nate, what are you most excited about in the science and technology market today?
Nate Roisen:Well, I think we have clients that are doing big things and over the course of the last four or five years, I mean projects have a gestation period right where, where you're in the room when it's being conceived of. There's design effort, there's cost, there's construction. We have some great projects that are going to be occupied at the end of this year oh, fantastic and that's that's something that's just really exciting at this point.
Nate Roisen:So, thinking about our work with the state lab up in North Dakota, a few others that might be slightly more confidential, but all of these are great opportunities both for us to really see our design ideas come together, have lessons learned and take advantage of conversations with the client about oh, this could have been done a little bit better, we could have tweaked that over here. And, unlike some other professions, we have the privilege of actually having a physical thing in the world that is the sum of our work and we rarely get the opportunity to just sit back and appreciate that. But this coming year is going to For us to really celebrate some of those accomplishments over the last five years. Well, that's fantastic. It sounds like a great, great lot of the factories that we work on aren't extremely labor intensive.
Matt Gerstner:Okay.
Nate Roisen:But they do require people to operate Right right and the jobs within them are really highly skilled, especially when you're talking about computer chip fabrication or pharmaceutical or pharmaceutical. Finding the people to actually do the work of assembling computer chips, making drugs, making medical devices, is something that all of our clients really struggle with. The workforce shortages that you read about are in the newspaper or online are very much. They're very much on the front line of that. Yeah, are very much. They're very much on the front line of that. And so helping our clients through good design.
Nate Roisen:Creating spaces that people want to work in is something that I see as a really important and maybe somewhat underrated aspect of the work that we do A lot of. It's very functional. The room needs to be this big. We need to meet building codes. It needs to have certain adjacencies.
Nate Roisen:It needs to have certain equipment in it, but does a person actually want to work in there, and is the room set up in such a way that, when a person is spending eight, ten hours a day for years and years in that room, they're giving their best all the time? There are certain things that the space can do that actually make their lives a little bit better, and sometimes it's not the space that they're actually working in, but it's the space outside the production environment. What does the break room look like? Do you have good access to daylight in office areas if you're doing your documentation outside of a production area? Yeah, all of these are, you know, spaces that sometimes don't attract all the attention as you're conceiving of a project, because it's the spaces that are going to make you the money that attract the most attention, right? Really matter, though, to the finished example or the finished experience of the people who are working there.
Matt Gerstner:I can completely see that. I mean it's all about employee quality of life at work still, and I can see how supporting that through the built environment can definitely help them retain their employees or even find employees that want to be there.
Nate Roisen:Yeah, I mean we're spoiled. We have a beautiful office space with a nice view and great access to daylight, and sometimes it's easy to forget just how important that is when you're not the one experiencing a room that might feel a little bit more like a cave, or might be really dated, or the ceiling's really low, or the air conditioner or the HVAC system isn't up to snuff and it feels stuffy or clammy. All these different things really matter, and it's fun to be able to bring that kind of elevated experience to different project types where the people might be used to working in something that's a lot less human scale Fantastic.
Matt Gerstner:That is a great way to support the client. So when you're thinking about these things right now, you're thinking about your market. What do you love about designing for this specific market?
Nate Roisen:Well, so it's funny, I hate puzzles. Okay, like actual puzzles. Yeah, you know, you lay a thousand pieces on the table, can't do them, my brain doesn't work that way.
Matt Gerstner:Really Okay.
Nate Roisen:Okay, but I love designing science and tech projects, yeah, which are, in a lot of ways, like a puzzle. There's different parts and pieces that need to fit together in the correct way. There's certain adjacencies that you need, there's certain requirements dictated by building codes, some dictated by a client, some dictated by by um, uh, uh, like, like regulators, fda, things like this, and yet, um, you lay those pieces out. It's really fun to put them together.
Matt Gerstner:And.
Nate Roisen:I never quite understood why. Why a puzzle of a beautiful mountain scenery?
Nate Roisen:uh, is is not something I enjoy, but the puzzle of of putting a building together and figuring out how, how it works on the site, how how it uh, how it functions with material and people moving through it in in ways that make sense is is just a challenge that never gets old. Yeah and um, I I think uh, a lot of our projects in in, you know, any of the markets we work in do have that aspect to it. But I think the science and technology world has a unique depth to the different types of things you have to solve.
Matt Gerstner:Fantastic.
Nate Roisen:And it's always a new challenge for every client, right, right. And the other thing is that the things that our clients do in these buildings, it's like magic. Things that our clients do in these buildings, it's like magic.
Nate Roisen:I mean, it is when you learn about what it takes to make computer chips, when you learn about the testing processes that a sample of soil or water goes through to find out if it has PFAS contamination. Oh yeah, and you know, we get this like little bit of a window, a little bit on the shoulder of the people who actually do this incredibly challenging, sophisticated and ultimately like world-changing work. And it's amazing just to. I'm talking with them and they're talking about the number of microns in different wavelengths that they're working with and the design of a computer chip or something. But it's also like that's how the world works Right, everybody's got their thing, and when our experience complements each other, they know computer chips but we know buildings Right, and when we work together we can make a really great building for assembling computer chips.
Matt Gerstner:That's very cool.
Nate Roisen:It's a fun place in the world to be, a really fun place to spend one's career. A place in the world to be a really fun place to spend, uh, to spend one's career.
Matt Gerstner:Very cool, very cool. And beyond all of that, what inspires you? Where do?
Nate Roisen:you find inspiration to do this work. Well, I mean it's, it's interesting, right? I mean it's one time I I uh happened to be, uh at a place with my dad, um, dad, and didn't realize that it would have a view of one of my projects. Oh really, I said Dad, look up on the hill there, that's my project. Yeah, and it happened to be the backside of a kind of nondescript building.
Nate Roisen:Okay, and he looked at it and he went oh, and the thing that I could tell was going through his head was like was like how much money did this guy spend on architecture school?
Matt Gerstner:Yeah.
Nate Roisen:But you know it's, it's really something the sophistication of, of the buildings that we work on, are might. They might have nondescript exterior sometimes, but you crack them open and there's a lot going on in there that really makes you know, really create intellectual challenge. And so when we can, you know, have our voice as part of the design of something like that, it's just fun. It's interesting, if we can make it a little bit better.
Matt Gerstner:Oh, even better, Even better yeah.
Nate Roisen:If we can be the you know walk around on the job site and kind of see it coming together and say, oh, that doesn't quite look right. Maybe we need, you know, maybe we need to rethink something that we had designed before. All these things are just, you know, great opportunities to just make the world a little bit better place in the work that you're doing.
Matt Gerstner:That's a fantastic place to end things today. Nate, thank you for your time and the insights you've provided, and listeners, thanks for joining in today. Can.
Nate Roisen:I look at the camera now you can look at the camera now.
Matt Gerstner:Thanks everybody.
