Innovative Real Estate with Three Squared, Inc.
As specialists in efficient residential and commercial prefabricated design, Leslie Horn, Breck Crandell, and Jill Ramirez of Three Squared, Inc. share their greatest insights, tips, and case studies from their years of experience in the industry. They'll be giving you their best advice through, trainings, guest features, and Q&A segments so you can turn your innovative vision to a reality.
Innovative Real Estate with Three Squared, Inc.
Sticks and Bricks: Why We've Built The Same Way For Centuries
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Have you ever wondered why we have been building the same way for centuries? Or why the AEC industry is the hardest industry to enact change in?
In this episode we sit down and talk about the history of building and how we have gotten to where we are today...still mostly building with sticks and bricks like we have for hundreds of years.
Breck gives a quick history of building, shares the implications cheap lumber has on the quality of houses, and how modular construction may be the answer to the housing crisis.
Here's what you'll learn:
- History of building with sticks and bricks
- Why lumber prices are so high
- How the GI bill changed the building industry
- What role does modular construction play in the future of housing
- Breck's project highlight of the week: David's Garage
Ready to move forward with your project? Contact us here and we will put you in contact with the right member of our team.
Make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay up to date on new project releases, trainings, and more.
Welcome to the Innovative Real Estate Podcast with your hosts Leslie Horn, Brett Crandall, and Claire O'Lilla. We're here to make your life easier as a real estate developer and teach you everything we've learned about designing and building innovative homes, multifamily, and mixed-use structures. On this podcast, we'll be giving you our best advice, trainings, and QA segments so you can learn from our years of experience and make your innovative vision a reality.
SPEAKER_00Welcome back to the Innovative Real Estate podcast. And today we've got a conversation between me and Leslie and Breck, where we're going to be discussing sticks and bricks as a construction material. You know, that we often have guests on and conversations around alternative construction methods and the future of housing. And today we're going to be dissecting sticks and bricks as a construction method, why we've been building the traditional way for centuries, some of the shortcomings, and also what we're up to and how we work with our clients to really analyze and determine what makes the most sense for their project as a developer and make sure that they are uh choosing the right thing based off their project and all of the different variables involved. So we're going to kick it off with our project highlight of the week. Breck, what have we got today?
SPEAKER_03Project highlight of the week this week is coming to you from our good old hometown of Detroit, Michigan. Uh as we're talking about sticks and bricks and traditional methods of construction, we're going to point to a historic project that we're helping a buddy out here. Uh, we actually were tasked with demolishing a garage in a historic district committee, which means that there's some very strict requirements around what can be built and how it looks, because there is a historic element throughout this neighborhood. And the plan reviewers in the city of Detroit are really, really dialed in on making sure that they retain the historic value that those designs bring. Um, a lot of these neighborhoods were built between the 30s and the 50s, and so we want to look back at how they were constructed and what materials and decorations they used on the exterior of the buildings. So if you talk to us, you're probably talking about something weird most of the time, like shipping containers or foam buildings or something else. And in this instance, obviously it made a lot more sense to stick with the historic nature of the project, not only to decorate it in a way that matched the historic context, but also to build it in a way that was similar to the way that it was originally constructed. Now, this garage has seen a lot of water damage and has not been maintained by the previous owners of this house in the past. But we're going to actually take down the single-car garage and we're going to replace it with a two-car garage, which will be built out of sticks, not necessarily bricks, because the original siding was a milled clapboard wood siding. So we're going to do that. But we're actually going to retain a lot of the materials of the original garage. Like we're going to deconstruct it, not demolish it. It's not going in a dumpster. We're going to slowly take it apart piece by piece and save all the materials that we possibly can. And when we met with the historic district committee, we actually discussed this and they were ecstatic to hear that we're going to reuse as many of those materials as possible and then match any of the remaining materials that we need to complete this project. So coming to the Grandmont Rosedale neighborhood in the Historic District Committee of the City of Detroit, we'll be building a new garage. Fun, exciting stuff.
SPEAKER_02Well, Brett, there was a couple of big hurdles on that. It was a actually, it was masterful the way that you and the client were able to propose it because I rumor in the yard is that it was not approved uh prior to the two of you walking into that meeting.
SPEAKER_03Well, it's a really, really strict overview process because they have to retain that historic value. Uh, but the the biggest thing here was uh a matter of safety and security, and being able to park two cars off the street in this neighborhood was of the utmost importance. And so by making that concession to retain the materials and match it to a science, uh to the original design of the garage, they they actually reversed their decision in that hearing, uh, which was really, really exciting. It was a big win for us and the team and the clients. So we're excited to get this project wrapped up here.
SPEAKER_02Well done, Breck. Well done.
SPEAKER_03So today we're gonna take a little walk back and talk a little bit about history. Um, my you know, abridged version of history because I I'm not a history buff, so I don't get too far in the weeds, but we're gonna look at how we've been constructing things for a while, which you've heard probably the terminology stick to bricks, because that's how most homes are built in America. Uh, that comes from obvious reasons, honestly, uh, because that's the material that was most readily available to us. That's really important. So we talk about vernacular. Vernacular is referring to uh to the tried and true way of doing things specific to a region. And so in the United States, when we started colonizing here and making our westward expansion, there were a lot of trees. And trees, lumber is a fantastic and renewable, ecologically friendly, sustainable resource until it's not because we chopped down a lot of wood. Uh, most of the uh cities in America that were not along major uh water lines or transportation routes were founded because of lumber, uh, because they were logging societies, and that's really what built the wealth of these areas. I mean, northern Michigan, that's how all these cities popped up. It was a logging community because we had so much of this old-growth hardwood material that it was a readily available resource. It was easy to cut down, it was easy to mill. And if you've ever worked with wood, it is a very, very forgiving substance. Uh, you can add more, you can cut more away, you can attach pieces together. It's very easy to modify with low-impact tools. You don't necessarily need power tools. Everything was done by hand back in the time. Uh, that was that was our vernacular. Uh, but if you look at other areas of the world, their vernacular is obviously different. There's Adobe, uh, the original is stone. We would we would actually quarry stone and cut that. And that's why those buildings last for centuries, eons. You know, some of these projects are gonna last almost indefinitely because of the way that they were constructed, because that was the readily available material there. If you look down south into um South and Central America, there's a lot of Adobe buildings by actually using the soil of the earth and uh combining that with water in order to formulate bricks and then sun-dry them and then stack those into place. And those buildings are gonna last a long time because they were built out of their vernacular material. And so for America, uh, that meant a lot of wood for us. And so that's the way we've been doing things for a long, long time. And it's worked uh for a while. And if you've been following the price of lumber, uh it's it's slowly starting to not work so well um for a couple of reasons that we're gonna get into. Uh, but but that's that's mostly because we we ran out of wood. If you look at a two by four from a house that was built in the 20s, it's not gonna look the same as a two by four today. And that's for a couple of reasons. Number one, we had true dimensions back then, which meant a two by four was actually two inches by four inches. Now we deal with nominal dimensions, which means that a two by four is actually an inch and a half by three and a half inches. And as you get incrementally larger, those nominal dimensions kind of change. So never expect that a two by four is actually two inches by four inches, because it's not. The wood that was used in those original studs was true old growth hardwood. Trees in a forest that have been there for decades and decades, sometimes longer, that were cut down and milled into the lumber that we use to construct homes. If you take down an old house, you've probably heard the terminology good bones. It's got good bones. Uh, that is true because it the lumber that was used in those projects is far superior to the lumber that we're using today. And the reason is because uh supply and demand. When you demand that you're building a thousand times more houses, we've got more population, we're expanding at a uh a much quicker pace than we ever were before. Uh suburbia uh obviously kind of took it took it out of control. And now we're building everything all the time, which means that we needed more lumber and we needed it faster. And so if you take a two by four today and you put it side by side, I'm sure you've seen these pictures on the internet or any of these videos around it. The wood that we're using today is from trees that are grown much, much faster and harvested at a more significant rate because we need more lumber. So they plant these forests, they let them grow for five, 10, 15, 20 years, depending on the species, and then they harvest that wood and they mill that wood down. Now you go to a Home Depot or a Lowe's or whatever big box store is local to you, and you look at the lumber, you'll notice that there's very few pieces of lumber that are actually straight. And that's because just like humans, uh, trees are very flexible in their younger years. It means that if we're cutting down young green trees and trying to make structurally sound materials out of that, that it's going to have a lot more flexibility. It's going to be bowed, it's going to twist and turn. You can look at the end of a piece of lumber from back in the day versus a piece of lumber today, and you'll see there's uh way more rings in the pattern at the end of that wood grain. And that's because each ring represents generally a year of growth that that tree went through, which means it's more dimensionally sturdy. It's going to be much stronger in its long dimension against the grain. And the newer lumber is just grown so quickly and harvested so rapidly that it doesn't have the time to mature into that strength, into that uh that dimensional standard. So when we cut this lumber, it's drying quicker. There's more water content in the lumber, and so it starts to contort. And so you're lucky if you find dimensionally stable wood. So then we started trying to solve that problem by engineering wood materials, which is uh which was a big leap for everything in building and construction. And we use these materials all the time today, which is actually taking raw material and then using the machines and tools that we have today in order to compress them, shape them, heat them into really dimensionally standard materials. And so a good example of that is plywood. Plywood is sheets of wood that's cut off in a roll off of uh off of a trunk of a tree. And then we layer them together and then glue press them so that they are dimensionally standard. Now that is a material that is processed. Uh, it's not just cut lumber, it is cut lumber plus. And so we've got plywood, you've got oriented strand board OSB, also known as particle board, where you see all the wood chips. That's just all the leftover scrap of material from all these various processes of modifying materials and then pressing them under extreme pressure and heat with a lot of adhesives or glue in them that make that a dimensionally stable material. We also use LVLs, those are big laminated veneer lumber. And those can make up the difference in a lot of these projects. Where, you know, maybe you got these two by fours and you put all those together to frame your exterior walls, but you need something really strong that's going to be able to hold up your main roof or a beam in your basement that supports a large chunk of your project. That dimensionally stable material of post-processed wood in order to make engineered projects, uh products such as LVLs is really important in order to keep this going and to meet the growth. You know, back in the day, you could actually buy a piece of lumber that was 12, 16 inches deep and 8, 10, 12 inches wide. We just can't come across beams like that anymore because we don't have, we don't have the trees to be able to provide that. Now, if you're really, really rich, you can afford that. Uh, I think log homes were, you know, one of the traditional standards. If you go to any reenactment site, historical village. Here in Detroit, we have Greenfield Village, which is a fantastic example of you know life in the wilderness as we started to colonize and expand. And it was all log homes. Today, uh, good luck of buying a log home because it's gonna cost you significantly more than just about any other type of construction on the market right now, because we just don't have access to those materials. So the times have just changed. And we've been trying to keep up with this forever, but you'll notice that the cost of lumber is skyrocketing right now because of that supply and demand. And I will point out that it depends on where you live. Uh, some areas of the country have more water, some areas of the country have more wood. So if you live in the Pacific Northwest, the chances of your Douglas fir being a quarter the price of someone who lives in Arizona is pretty high because you actually have access to all of that lumber and that material. And so there still is a vernacular to the United States. There are some areas that use cinder block instead of pouring concrete. There are some areas that still do a lot of wood construction because they have those forests available to them. But in general, I think we can all agree that the construction and architectural industries are kind of shifting to used more engineered products and look to alternatives to the try-to-true sticks and bricks.
SPEAKER_00I have a question for you on that. So you mentioned you mentioned these younger two by like these younger trees that are being made for these two by fours. And I always wonder what actually is like the real risk in using those, like as far as these buildings being structurally sound. Like, is this a problem that is a big problem, a little problem? Like, how concerned should people be in using this this newer wood or these younger trees for the structure of their homes?
SPEAKER_03Well, that's a great question. Structurally speaking, you shouldn't be concerned at all. They wouldn't let it on the market if it wasn't structurally stable. And there are a lot of requirements in order to get approval to use these building materials structurally. That's why when a new building and construction technology emerges, it takes a while to get that tested and proven that it's going to meet the same stringent requirements that we've had for centuries. Um, that's why this is an industry that, as we know intimately, is slow to enact change. It's because we've been doing things the same way for so long that those rules are very ingrained. And that that goes all the way into building codes, fire codes. Because you have to you have to think also about you know how flammable are these things. That we would be remiss if we didn't actually think about the flammability of construction types. Um, there's a reason why we are slow to allow high-rise timber buildings. That technology is there structurally, but in order to make sure that it's safe for the users, and just looking at the history of America, we we lost pretty much every major city at least once to major fires that can that can really wipe out buildings. And when you talk about houses, so that there's there's five construction types in a nutshell. Um, construction type one means it's an impenetrable fortress and there's nothing that could possibly burn it. Uh, and construction type five means build it out of whatever you want. It basically is a tinder box. Most houses in America are type five, where they they have rules and regulations on how many exits and ways to get out of your building there are, including doors and windows, but they will not limit you to the type of material allowable to construct these homes. Um, that includes two by fours. I think the the concern is more around the availability, the dimensional stability, because you're you're you're getting closer, dare I say, to to building with junk, honestly. I mean, your walls are bowed, they're flexible, you'll look at the siding of a building, and the siding is kind of all warped all over the place because the the pieces that were put together to build that wall weren't straight to begin with. And so you're spending more time and energy on the job site correcting these issues and trying to force this material to work properly. Meanwhile, you've got this bell curve of we've got less of it and more people using it, which means that that price is going up and up and up. And we really don't see those prices going back down to pre-pandemic fixation anytime soon. I think we're kind of stuck with the with this new pricing of materials like that.
SPEAKER_02Well, we are. And I also see that I mean, for example, it takes approximately 22 trees to build a house. That's like insane. I mean, especially when you consider the number of housing units that are are needed. And I see we all see all the time these apartment complexes that are going up, they are big tender boxes. They're just all these sticks. And it and unfortunately, because of the some of these less quality materials, it's what's going into our affordable and attainable housing. And it doesn't have to. I think I think I'm gonna get in trouble by saying this, but I do think sometimes our general contractors, and I love GCs, and I'm just gonna preface it with that because my next sentence is gonna be harsh. I think that sometimes they get lazy in their research for new technologies, new materials, because they're used to doing the same things the same way for you know decades. And I don't mean that to be controversial, but I do I do announce when we're on calls with potential clients how proud I am of Three Squared and the team that we have, because this team is extremely forward-thinking in identifying you know what's what's new on the market. Will it work? Is it attainable? Is it affordable? Because we do have a crisis in this can in this country right now. 22 trees for an average 12 to 1,500 square foot house. That's crazy.
SPEAKER_03Now we've talked a lot about sticks, so let's talk a little bit about bricks. Bricks are using earth-based material, soil, and compacting it and leaving it out to dry. Uh, then we started fire firing them in a kiln, uh, basically a giant oven to bake them, which made them even harder, even more standard. And bricks were a way of building things. I I honestly, I if you asked me what is the best way to build a house, I'm gonna tell you bricks every time. I'm talking like four or five bricks wide. That's called the the width. Like how how many, how many widths of brick do you have? That's with a why. And uh, you know, a five-width brick wall is gonna last centuries, truly. Like if you drive around your neighborhood, I I mean, we're we're lucky here in Detroit. Detroit's a very interesting skyline because it's sandstone, limestone, and brick. And those buildings are gonna last forever. We don't have a ton of glass, we're getting more glass in this latest building boom. But for a while, Detroit was all stones and bricks. There's a reason why cathedrals are gonna last as long as they do, uh, because they're built out of materials that we just can't access anymore. These historic mansions, if you were to price them out from the day they were built to the price adjustments for today, and we're talking, you know, millions on the thousands, right? Like it's just not, it's not possible. It's not feasible. Now, there are those that are fighting the good fight that are still building brick homes, and those will be around a thousand years from today. But I'm talking to most clientele, and most clientele doesn't have the skill set, they don't have the access. And you talk about finding bricklayers, like good luck. Good luck finding skilled bricklayers. Now, again, this is regionally specific. Uh, you might find an area of the country where you will find uh a collective of bricklayers, you will find people that are still firing bricks. Mostly when you hear sticks and bricks today, that means it's a stick-framed house and we have skinned the outside with bricks. That's one width of brick. That's called a veneer. So we're actually just applying bricks that structurally aren't doing anything. Now it is a very long lasting material that will outlast traditional violence. Siding, clap board, you know, hardy board is the new big one. Uh, fiber cement siding, that's been a big leap in the in the siding and cladding department of the industry. But but bricks are a great way to clad your building. It's timeless in its uh in its appeal and it's aesthetic, and they don't really change color. They're they're easy to repair and to fix and to patch. But when we say sticks and bricks, we're talking about a wood-framed house that has a brick veneer on the outside. And then as a cost savings measure, drive through a new cul-de-sac in your neighborhood. If you see bricks on the front, there's a good chance you won't see bricks on the sides or the back because it's really a cost savings measure where they'll do vinyl siding everywhere else. Just junk, frankly. Um, it does a good job of keeping water out, but if you hit it with a hammer, you're gonna break it and you're gonna have to replace that panel. It's it's not the longest lasting material we could ever think of, but but bricks themselves are a much longer lasting material. And so now we're now we're slowly shifting away from even using bricks as a veneer just because of their cost and because of the skill set necessary to install them. So then we talk about the advent, and all this kind of happened in similar timelines, but a point in history that we can point to that that really made a shift was uh was post-war, when we had the GI Bill and we needed housing for the returning soldiers who we knew were gonna make families. If you're a boomer, you lived it, right? The the the late 40s and the early 50s was when most housing in America came in existence. And that was based on standardization of materials. So if you've heard of 16 on center, you know that that means that there is a stud every 16 inches centered on that 16 inches. And that number is very important because all the other materials used to construct your house from the ground up were based on 16 inches. Eight and 16 tend to be the magic numbers within construction. A four-foot panel, 48 divisible by eight, uh, 64 inches divisible by eight. Uh so when you have a four by eight sheet of plywood and you put that plywood up against your studs on your wall, that means that you're gonna be able to overlap where that stud exists. So that means that every panel on the outside and on the inside of your building is always gonna have a stud, a stick behind it so that you can fasten to it. And that sped up construction significantly in just about every department. We stopped doing plaster and lathe with the advent of gypsum board. Gip board kind of took over. Not only was it a uh a decent insulator, it dries out very quickly and it is fire resistant. So it's gonna be hard to beat drywall when it comes to the performance of that material. All these things were standardized around the dimensions and the shape of the materials that were coming. And we were able to build them, put them onto pallets, deliver them to a job site, and erect things much quicker than we used to before that moment. We also have screws and nails. Screws and nails have changed a little bit. Here, let me use an analogy. Nails are like ketchup. There's different kinds of ketchup, but most ketchup is just ketchup. And screws are like mustard. There's Dijon, there's Grey Poupon, there's yellow mustard, there's all sorts of different screws, but those are the two main types of fasteners. And those, you'd be surprised if you look into the history of nails or screws. I mean, industrial manufacturing in the machine age definitely launched those forward. But we've been using nails since the construction of Egypt. And we've been using screws since Greek and Roman times. Uh, was really when both of those fasteners came about. Now, we really aren't going to come up with anything better than fastener department anytime soon. Uh, but those those materials have been standardized and are used throughout the industry and probably will be for all of eternity as we as we look into different ways of fastening these things together. But we're at we're at an impasse where where sticks and bricks are are hard to come by, the the costs are going up, and the standardization is clearly pointing in one clear direction and one clear direction only, and that is modular construction. Doesn't matter if you use sticks and bricks, doesn't matter if you use steel, doesn't matter if you use concrete, it matters that it's built off-site and delivered on site, and that could be in piece, or that can be in whole. Uh, most times we think of modular construction as double wide trailers. Sure, that's where it started. Um, that in itself is an American vernacular. Truly, the American vernacular, as one of my professors in college best stated, is a mobile home because we're always on the go, right? You take the Oregon trail wagons all the way to our uh fifth wheels today. Uh, we're we were we were transient in nature for a long time. But if we look at how we're building things today and what the future is, it's factory building uh large portions of a building. So three squared has been uh working in the container space for a while, and that's so aligned with modular construction and just about every single way. Uh modular construction is based on the dimensions of a shipping container. If you talk to any man modular manufacturer, um they're basically using container chassis, they're just not built as containers with the doors and you know the hardware and stuff like that, but they're still using the same out-to-out dimensions. Um, that's why pretty much everything in transportation was standardized. Uh, we use those dimensions: eight feet wide, 40 foot long, eight and a half feet tall. Uh, that's standardized roads, bridge heights, road widths, uh, trucks, chassis of vehicles, ships, bridges. I mean, you you name it. Like everything goes back to rail cars, like they all go back to that dimensional standard of those materials. But we also have seen a lot of prefabrication as well. Not to be confused with modular, because modular insinuates that more of it's done at once. The typical typical adage is 90% is what most modular construction uh hopes and aims to achieve, is that 90% of the construction is done off-site and they've got 10% to finish on site. Whereas uh prefabrication can be 5%, 10%, 20%. It doesn't matter. It's just a chunk of the building is built off-site. And 3Squared, our architecture firm here in Detroit, has been working a lot with both modular and prefabrication, where chunks of a building are built within a factory environment and then allocated on site and then erected on site faster because a lot of that work was done in an enclosed environment where you have all the tools ready, you have the space to move, you don't have weather delays and rain and snow because you're doing it under a roof. Uh, it can speed up the process and it can standardize the outcome where you have control over those finicky little details, like what you asked earlier, Claire, is like, what should I be afraid of? Well, standardization really helps alleviate a lot of those concerns. And obviously, it has its implications in cost and in quality.
SPEAKER_02Breck, why do you feel that modular construction has is not like in the forefront? It's not, we have seen over the last 15 years, I can count on two hands, if not more, certain manufacturing companies that are have started the process, but then have just closed and failed. Why are we not to the point of doing making building houses the way that we're doing cars? Why is that not acceptable today? Why is that not a normal way of construction?
SPEAKER_03Well, it will be. It's inevitable. It's going to happen. I I think we touched on in this episode in a lot of past episodes, those contributing reasons as to why it hasn't happened. I I think one of the biggest issues is that there is no federal rules and regulations around modular construction. Right now it's still state by state. And even though we pretend like this is a new issue, it's not. I we've been trying to do there's a lot of smart people in the world. There's no such thing as a new idea. So obviously, when the GI Bill passed, there were architects and engineers at the forefront fighting that fight. And one of my personal heroes, Buckminster Fuller, architect, engineer inventor, was advocating that we take all of the airplane plants that were building bombers for the war efforts and use a lot of that same aluminum material to make houses. And he had this incredible proposal of how we could just shift some part. We didn't even have to retool the machines. We could use the same machines to make panels that should be on an aircraft and build houses with them. And the general public was terrified by these spaceship-looking uh steel onions. And so the Dymaxian home failed, as did many other types of projects. You know who wants them?
SPEAKER_02Sears, yeah. Oh who?
SPEAKER_03You all you were gonna beat me to the punch.
SPEAKER_02Oh shit. I was just gonna talk about that, but wow.
SPEAKER_03The winner was Sears Roebuck. It was a catalog where they compiled all of the pieces you needed to build your home, and then they put it into this beautiful list where you could see exactly how much it cost to have it delivered to your doorstep, but you put it together yourself, and people weren't afraid of that. You know, homes are they're there's a lot, but it's not complicated. Oh, honestly, if you if you really take the time to disassemble your home in your brain, there's a lot of little pieces, but it's it's pretty straightforward in terms of of how this comes together. You spend enough time on YouTube, you can build your own house. Guarantee you that. That goes for most people. Uh, and so here's Robuck kind of met in the middle where they're like, we're gonna modularize this, but we're not. We're just gonna send you the kit of parts, and the kit of parts model took over, and that was the winning solution at that moment of time in American history. We are now again facing a housing crisis that we know is here and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. Sure, our birth rates are slightly down, but there are still more people coming, and we don't have anywhere near enough housing for the people that do already exist. Full stop. Like that is that is a serious issue that everybody has acknowledged from east to west coast, north to south. And now we're at this impasse again where we have to decide where is the industry going to take us. And yes, federal legislation is going to be something that can help spur this forward. But Leslie, you said it so eloquently, uh, you've been doing something the same way for 35, 50 years. Why would you change?
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_03I I mean, I'm I'm only in my 30s and I'm already getting stubborn about some stuff. I didn't choose to be stubborn. It's just when you do something the same way long enough, why would you change it? And then you you get an opinion. And if you're handed down a generational skill, to break away from that generational skill and to do something radically different takes a certain kind of individual, a certain kind of mindset. Yeah. And uh I think a lot of people are struggling with that and reckoning with this. Uh, there are a lot of people trying the modular route and have been for decades. We're finally seeing some of these in the industry that are breaking out and actually starting to go wild. Um, if we look to Europe for for some example, because we're unfortunately usually a decade or more behind when it comes to uh construction methodologies, Europe's been doing modular construction for a long time. I mean, Germany's half constructed with concrete boxes because they were prefabricated, they were easy to install. Japan is is all about modularization. That's how a lot of their construction, modern construction, is accomplished. And we're seeing it in in the states, just not at the same uh not at the same rate. And so I think it's gonna be a combination of the industry from the inside out and from uh from the political side moving in that eventually we're gonna meet this line in the middle. And 20 years from now, no one's going to be building in a way that's not modular, at least in some capacity.
SPEAKER_02I see that there's a lot of like, for lack of a better word, ugly like modular stuff that's out there. And I know that's a very subjective word. Um there I I I think the improvement needs to happen on many levels. And again, going back to Three Squared and Breck under your leadership, it's been it's been a pleasure and a privilege to see you not only you know embracing you know cargo architecture as a way of modularization, but also to think differently when containers don't make us make sense. What can we do that might, and what material can we use? So you're always, you know, again, to our core value, one step ahead and being good stewards, those are two of our highest core values. I applaud the team by embracing those core values in every project that you touch. Because I see now that you know, having our our the new foam house, we call it that, the the new type of SIP panel, which I really I like the idea of the foam house, the name, but um that um which looks incredible, right? It looks beautiful um and can be prefabricated again, different than modular, modular, however, it can be modularized. We're just not there yet in a factory. Nonetheless, I do believe that you know it's the highest and best use of an architect to be in that position of knowing not just what history, which you've given us a great lesson today, thank you, but also what can we do to make it better, do better, be better. And that's what I believe the three squared and under your leadership has done with with every project. I don't care if it's David's garage, right? Or if it's you know a 24,000 square foot Baptist church. I believe that across the the whole gamut, um, it is architect response architect's responsibility to do better and be better. We're fighting enough with general contractors. I think they have a role in this as well. But in the meantime, I think we have a good bridge from where we're going to be and kind of meeting the industry where we're at right now. Any other final comments?
SPEAKER_03Oh, in the wise words of a fellow Midwesterner, Dave Chappelle, modern problems require modern solutions.
SPEAKER_02Gotta love that, Dave Chappelle. I like that. Fantastic. Fantastic. Claire, I think you can take us home now. Oh, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_00I think I just hold up the seat at LTU.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Oh, I'm gonna give my professor a five-star review today. That's what I'm gonna do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I just learned a lot today. Thank you for that. Awesome. If you are listening to this, if you've got a project you want to connect with our team on, go ahead and find the contact form link in the description below. We'll connect you with the right member of our team based off of your project type and just get you started on some homework to make sure that you're headed in the right direction. Otherwise, we will catch you right back here for another episode. If you have any suggestions, go ahead and drop us a line on Instagram. We'll link everything below, and we will see you next time.
SPEAKER_01We hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you found it so valuable, you want to connect with us one-on-one, click the link in the description to tell us all about your project so we can help you get started. And to get notified on the next episode here on Innovative Real Estate, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you never miss a beat. Get out there, put today's advice into action, and we will see you in the next episode.