Tag: #studiopoints

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To speak of a garage.

Shifting from a familiar structure we all know as iconic to our houses in America and blurring right past the decades of customizing the workshop with fancy benches and shelving and lighting, bumping over the grunge bands that grew up there and the inventors that found solitude ‘out in the garage’, and landing right..splat..in 2026 where we just passed codes removing the requirement to store an automobile on your property. And just like that – the end of the mandated garage. There is a crack in the solid foundation of what we think of as house. A house has a garage because you need to store a (or many) car(s). Perhaps the time has come to rethink what we are storing.

What are we storing in our mind: Dismantling a belief

Unique shapes are hard and expensive to build…says who?  

Recently, my meditation landed the following on my lap: “Don’t get into street fights.” I tend to be a coward anyway, so this did not frighten me. It wasn’t until I recalled a moment in a game with friends where, as the tension built toward the end of the game, one of the players pointed a finger and disclosed something that instantly put me at a disadvantage. I cringed and protested. In the height of the emotion that thickly spread over me, I completely missed the opportunity that had also presented itself. Completely missed it.  Sometimes things do not look like what they truly are. Poche is a simple manufactured truss AND all trusses are custom.

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A garage is a garage, is a garage, is a garage…until it isn’t.

I have a story about two garages. In the first, the client is excited to finally get their workshop in the garage. They have a meticulous layout of every tool and bench, fully dimensioned and set. As we designed, every decision was second and third guessed. Their builder pushed for what he knew how to build again and again. You can see where this was going, right?   There was no way to reconcile what was possible with the existing garage with all that was holding it in place. It remained a garage. In the second garage, the owner had slowly been inhabiting her garage for her creative work. A wall had broken free, the tilt up door had given way and the floor had been overlaid with a thick slab containing radiant heat and was pigmented in a mottle of color. It didn’t take much to release the rest of the garage. Can you feel the difference? In one scene the garage refused to let go, in the other, little bursts of letting go were occurring all around. The first client had occasional flickers of joy in his eyes, but, always, thinking overcame. The second client could hardly contain her joy.

If you want to get new work done, check in to see if you are able to surrender your thinking. This isn’t so much about forcing something because, quite frankly, sometimes you are ready and sometimes you are not. Which garage is yours?

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Looking today’s moment in the eye

A week ago I posted the one with me at the summit of Kilimanjaro. What I didn’t do, was look today’s moment directly in the eye. I am championing the creation of a Collective to put intelligent small house options into housing for the people. What? Grab a cup of tea, sit down and see how this fits: Poche 2026: a collective

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This is the architect who summited Kilimanjaro

It was 10:15am on the 25th of September, 2002 when we stepped onto Uhuru Peak. The energy on that peak far exceeded any expectation and furthermore, it left me with a very powerful intent. Recognizing the momentous lineage of humanity that allowed me to be here, I vowed to do my part to evolve us. 

I climbed mountains for over a decade, managing to summit 34 of Colorado’s 14ers and summited the tallest point in the continental US, Mt Whitney. The tip about mountain climbing is to train as best you can to get as strong as you can, then go climb ze mountain. In architecture, I have trained for over 4 decades and built capacity that only arrives by having done it, again and again. I am now climbing the mountain with everything I have. Join me: Poche Introduction 2026

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What Does It Mean to Innovate?

What if breaking through isn’t about being first or loud? What if it’s about seeing something that has gone unnoticed and taking the time to have a good long stare at it?

Take trusses – they have been around for thousands of years, modern plate connected trusses came about in the 1950s, yet the Poche truss was awarded a USPTO patent in 2025. This truss frame came about from my pivot away from big custom houses to small houses and the relentless sketching of small buildings that followed as I searched for the key to customizing shape without the complexity of framing. I like intelligent buildings that respond to their circumstances, a lot. A perfect storm took shape as my love of trusses entered the sketching delirium. IT showed up as a wobbly structure being pushed and pulled. Once seen, it became undeniable.

Part One: when the patented Poche went onto its first jobsite and I watched it disappear into the hands of people who build, I was stunned. Something unexpected happened. I saw that this new way to build was not a novelty. They got it, those framers just picked up the trusses and built, as they had thousands of times before. It was elegant, it was beautiful. It was undeniable. It was intelligence made visible. Those framers understood it immediately because it made sense. Poche got the quiet nod from someone who hadn’t needed to sketch it for the umpteenth time to know.

That moment shifted something in me. So maybe the question isn’t: “Is this new?” but rather: “What does it expose that had been unseen?”

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Brooks ADU

I have waxed poetic in many past posts on this project and my work in general, at the end of the day we must move on. The house belongs to the owner. Our job is done.

It did take a while.

We hit some snafus.

What work does not?

Here is what we did accomplish:

8 hours to frame. Versus 60+ to frame conventionally.

Custom shape. No upcharge.

Sheds snow and rain. Without gutters.

Shades summer sun. No extra overhang.

No drywall.

Low embodied carbon.

Linoleum floor.

Low embodied carbon.

Air Change per Hour: 1.6 (code 3.0, Passive House 0.6)

HERS Index Score 46 (code sets a max of 60)

We also made a beautiful dwelling that should be a pleasure to live in, Watch our video: Brooks ADU

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POCHE

We know it will happen.

Architects do.

The poetry and transcendence.

After months and years

the thing we aimed for

the thing we willed

the thing we trusted to happen

…has begun.

The building is waking up.

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Poche Snug

The Poche has long spoken about performance and intelligence. Now that it has achieved its Patent (USPTO #12227946), it is exposing its heart, aimed at people who want to be their best human.

Why would a startup with a patented building framing system, promoting economical, performance, and wellbeing advantages in a housing shortage market jump on a track for people who want to be their best humans? Aligning more with yoga, meditation, rock climbing, forest bathing, and the like? The housing market is real and the Poche offers a true solution to some of its hardest problems. So what’s with the Snug and its promoting space where you do nothing on the chance you might become everything?

This is the wall I have been staring at for a number of months as we standardize ADU plans for online purchase and entertain small house projects using Poche. Exciting times to be sure. But my heart keeps getting turned to face the Snug.

It’s an earth floor with a stone It’s a tree These are the superpowers

The Poche Snug is just the pinhole through which you get into a concentrated experience with nature. Not soluble. You either get it or you don’t. 

I have no illusion that my stepping off the rail to propose a place for doing nothing is not deeply uncomfortable, but you see, evidence suggests that many of us suffer from something called place blindness, which is an inability to orient oneself in one’s surroundings due to a lack of direct experience. Here is when I begin to remember Slow Architecture. Places that aspire to create a direct experience. Places that by virtue of extraordinary intentionality concentrate an experience such that you vanish into pure presence. Slow Architecture historically dwells in the realm of the rich, the creatives, and the craftsperson. So the Snug with its modest scale and common materiality is plunking what was privileged into greater reach. Standardizing the wellbeing we gain through nature into a sliver of space we can put in your backyard or in a public garden or maybe even on a farm.  

The idea that nature is of substantive benefit to us is well known…from ancient Chinese healers to Western writers such as Thoreau, the belief that connecting with the natural world improves wellbeing repeatedly appears throughout recorded human history. This is commonly experienced by folks of who get away to forests and beaches to recreate and decompress. Is it such a far reach to suggest that a small sliver of space intentionally connected to nature might become a commonly available space to re-create yourself?  Do we create the world we dream by fixating on the material or do we create that world by becoming our best human?

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Outside the Studio: what about affordability?

As we struggle with affordability in housing construction, the Poche_Truss brings a modestly priced framing option to the table that significantly reduces material cost and installation time plus it sets up a super preforming building envelope. The challenge, however, to retain affordability throughout the entire construction, lands on minimizing complexity and, quite frankly, plucking housing out of the custom build business model that is emulating commercial GC construction instead of master builder construction. Master builder, that is how houses used to be built.

Here is how we are minimizing complexity: we are pulling the Poche_Truss projects increasingly into manufactured components (of which the Poche_Truss is one) and using flat-pack (such as IKEA kitchens) and off-the-shelf build out options (such as lumber yard interior panels). We are not, however, reducing complexity by creating generic boxes. That is the beauty of the Poche_Truss, we can custom shape space and form at no upcharge.

Plucking housing out of the current residential GC business model, turns out, comes right along with those same minimizing strategies, for you see, they all align with a more direct connection to the provider. Eliminating the middle man markup is like farm to table food. There are not many of us architects and industry professionals still practicing who worked in the master builder world. We want to align providers directly to the work.

As I have shared in previous posts, thinking beyond a GC model of building has been a learning curve. But not one I will leave as I find it. For you see, my work has always answered to the highest calling of my profession: create beauty. And beauty is inherently equalizing, because when you have the craft persons doing what they specialize in, everyone is a master. We are working hard to learn our lessons on this first build with the Poche_Truss framing system and to assemble our team of masters. With a goal of putting modest affordable houses smack into the crosshairs of a Heck Yea! project, we are preparing to help people find their joy.